THE BOSSES OF THE SENATE [Keppler, political cartoon, circa 1889]

On the one year anniversary of the global economic collapse, there are thousands of news articles and blogs being written about the Wall Street bailout.  Personally, I have read over one hundred articles written by financial analysts, economists, business people and academics just in the past two months.  What many of them have to say about this economic crisis is mind-boggling – - the information is beyond the understanding of many Americans (and for most of the others, they simply do not want to take the time to really learn the complex intricacies of modern business and economics).  I do not say that with any degree of arrogance or contempt.  The fact of the matter is that in this era of cable news programming, radio talk show hosts, blogs, and other “resources”, Americans have resigned themselves to simplistic answers for very complex problems.  And most of those conclusions are drawn down partisan lines.

However, just this morning I read one of the most direct indictments of the bailout and it’s consequences from someone with obviously no partisan score to settle, and no vested economic agenda.  Dylan Ratigan,  a financial writer, reporter, and now the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting”, wrote an Op-Ed piece titled  ”A year after bailout, Congress hostage to banks“, and the byline,  “Corporate greed has taught our government nothing.

In it, he writes that the economic system “all of us, left, right and center, need to demand that our politicians stop serving” business interests that steal from us, and produce nothing of any value for our economy.

In the wake of all that has occurred, I have been researching and preparing a series of essays on the problem with the American political system and the direct correlation with money.  To put it bluntly, there is a river of money running through Washington, D.C., and the source is primarily a very powerful Corporate America.  If you want to see the most direct evidence of this problem, look at the campaign contributions by major banking and financial services firms to BOTH the Democrat and Republican members of the of the Senate Banking Committee (unfortunately I cannot find a link to the information at the moment, but will update this post later).

Many people reading this will say, “Yea, we all know what you are talking about, so what’s your point.”  The point of this website, ScrewedUS, is to identify those blind spots that we all have, both Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, which keep us polarized, as well as oblivious to most central issue that faces this country today – - the United States of America DOES NOT belong to its citizens anymore.  It has been bought by some very powerful interests in this country (and around the world) in order to do it’s bidding.

Open both your mind and your eyes.  If we continute to engage in rank political bickering while the politicians fiddle, their powerful business interests loot the national treasury, and “Rome burns”, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.  Calling each other names, or personally attacking one another by saying “You lie”, will not change one thing. 

Wresting control of this country back from the powerful monied-interests who have hijacked it for their own devices is the only way to save it from a long, painful decline into poverty and irrelevance.

NOTE:  The cartoon at the top of the post, The Bosses of the Senate,  can be found at the U.S. Senate website.   Here is the language from the website describing the drawing and what it portrays:

“This frequently reproduced cartoon, long a staple of textbooks and studies of Congress, depicts corporate interests–from steel, copper, oil, iron, sugar, tin, and coal to paper bags, envelopes, and salt–as giant money bags looming over the tiny senators at their desks in the Chamber. Joseph Keppler drew the cartoon, which appeared in Puck on January 23, 1889, showing a door to the gallery, the “people’s entrance,” bolted and barred. The galleries stand empty while the special interests have floor privileges, operating below the motto: “This is the Senate of the Monopolists by the Monopolists and for the Monopolists!”

Keppler’s cartoon reflected the phenomenal growth of American industry in the 1880s, but also the disturbing trend toward concentration of industry to the point of monopoly, and its undue influence on politics. This popular perception contributed to Congress’s passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890.”