On the eve of USA's November 2008 national election, an urgent proposal for an unsecured $700-Billion, maybe $800-Billion loan to mismanaged banks and stockbrokers was generating understandable controversy. In its initial form the Bush Buddies Bailout was one more Weapon of Mass Deception, a (later, a two-step) public welfare program for wealthy people who game the system. But the problem remains.

What, exactly, went - and continues to go - wrong? What ARE reasonable goals, what are NOT, and how might a more populist government reach good ones?

Jill and I searched, asked friends, and found part of the discussion in the mainline U.S. Press. It is dominated by large corporations, and is quickly becoming a large corporation that reports with bias and too-often avoids reporting. We find the parts they don't want us to find - overseas, in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and in the Alternative Press. Some favorites are: Alternet, Campaign for America's Future, Common Dreams, Demand Progress, Democracy Now, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, The Nation, Nation of Change, The Raw Story, TruthOut, and Russ Baker's WhoWhatWhy.org. But we keep a sense of perspective; know which news is biased, and how.

The more we read, the more we realize that - as much as we want our money back - that is only one of many ways our country is becoming impoverished. Often by corporations, which most definitely are NOT people! (For one thing, these rapacious corporations have no shame.)

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that, is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.
- Rahm Emanuel (Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview, Nov. 7, 2008)

Never waste the opportunities offered by a good crisis.
- Niccolo Machiavelli (Fifteenth Cent. Florentine writer and statesman)

Yes, as through this world I've wandered,
  I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
  And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
  Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
  Drive a family from their home.

- Woody Guthrie, Dust Bowl Ballads

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?
- Bertolt Brecht

Yes, We're Corrupt.
- A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics

It is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working-class--especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions.
- What Life Means to Me, by Jack London (1905)

... peace was not in the interest of a stable society, that even if lasting peace "could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it." War was a part of the economy. Therefore, it was necessary to conceive a state of war for a stable economy. The government, the group theorized, would not exist without war, and nation states existed in order to wage war. War served the vital function of diverting collective aggression. They recommended "credible substitutes" and paying a "blood price" to emulate the economic functions of war. Prospective government-devised alternatives to war included reports of alien life-forms, the reintroduction of a "euphemized form" of slavery "consistent with modern technology and political processes", and - one deemed particularly promising in gaining the attention of the malleable masses - the threat of "gross pollution of the environment".
- Wikipedia's summary of The Report From Iron Mountain (1967)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
- John Adams, letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1780), The Works of John Adams, vol 9, p.511.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
      -- President Abraham Lincoln (1864 letter to William Fletcher Elkin), or faked in Caldwell Remedy Company pamphlet (May 10, 1888), or...
         <http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/1-1.pdf> (pp. 4-6)
        <https://americanmissive.com/2009/03/20/did-abraham-lincoln-say-that/>

What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth. For the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish, and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs to him only?
- Massasoit

Only when the last tree has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will you realize your money cannot be eaten.
- an old Cree saying? Maybe not; but good.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.
- U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938

Train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.
- Walt Whitman

Time Trade Circle (Time Banking in eastern Massachusetts)

Calculated Risk (blog)

The Conscience of a Liberal (NY Times blog by Paul Krugman)

To Build A Better Ballot; an interactive guide to alternative voting systems, by Nicky Case, 2016)

OurFuture.org (Campaign for America's Future)

The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America, by Peter Turchin (Cliodynamica, 2013)

NEW: It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider (The Nation, 2012)

The New Populism (Campaign for America's Future, 2014)

Freethinkers and Libertarianism, by David Niose

NEW: Scientists Are Pro-Testing (Science, 2017)

NEW: Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income? (Freakonomics,2016)

NEW: We All Want Healthcare To Cost Much Less  -  But We Are Asking The Wrong Question, by Joe Flowers (Medium, 2017)
"Imagine this: Healthcare  -  the whole system  -  for half as much. Better, more effective. No rationing. Everybody in."

MichaelMoore.com

Our Revolution

NEW: Angry White House Staffer

NEW: GOP Rape Advisory Chart

NEW: The Loneliness of Donald Trump; On the Corrosive Privilege of the Most Mocked Man in the World, by Rebecca Solnit

Three Years Later, What Has Come of Occupy Wall Street? (Huffington Post, September 17, 2014)

New labour laws in France protect workers from responding to emails after 6pm, and a trial in Sweden is reducing work hours to just 30 hours a week (The Guardian, April 9, 2014)
"We must always come back to what is normal, which is to unplug, to stop being permanently at work."-- Michel de la Force, Chairman of the General Confederation of Managers, Franc

U.S. policy has gone liberals' way for 70 years (Washington Post, April 8, 2014)
Or, as I learned about 1950: "First the Socialists propose it; ten years later, the Democrats support it; ten years after that, the Republicans claim it's their idea and vote it in."

Supreme oligarchy, by E.J. Dionne, Jr. (Washington Post, April 6, 2014)

Alert: Nuclear (and Economic) Meltdown In Progress (Chris Martenson, March 16, 2011)

God On The Table, by Michael C. Ruppert (Collapse Network, November 1, 2010)
"Arguably, the cause of the collapse of human industrial civilization has been a fundamental disconnect in consciousness that has led humankind to tell itself that it is exempt from the laws of physics and nature - that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet."

Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics (The Chronicle of Education, October 3, 2010)

Heavy in dollars, China warns of depreciation (Reuters, September 2, 2010)

Covert Operations: The billionaire Koch Brothers are waging a war against Obama (The New Yorker, August 30, 2010)

This Is Not a Recovery, by Paul Krugman (NY Times, August 27, 2010)

Ask Not Whether Governments Will Default, but How, by Arnaud Mares (Morgan Stanley, August 26, 2010)

How facts backfire (Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains), by Joe Keohane (The Boston Globe, July 11, 2010)

Enough is Enough (report of the Steady State Economic Conference, June 19, 2010)

Wind's latest problem: it . . . makes power too cheap, by Jerome � Paris (Resiliance.org, May 1, 2010)

Poll: Majority favors increased taxes on wealthy Americans (NorthEast Pennsylvania Business Journal, April 6, 2010)

A Sad Obituary; Conservative Supreme Court Kills Uncle Sam, by Ferguson Foont (Bare-Knuckles Politics 3.0, January 21, 2010)

Copenhagen's Hidden Agenda: The Multibillion Trade in Carbon Derivatives, Washington's Blog, (Centre for Research and Globalization, November 8, 2009)

Obama team makes it official: Budget deficit hits record. By a lot. (Today, October 16, 2009)

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?, by Paul Krugman (NY Times, September 2, 2009)

Losing my religion for equality (Jimmy Carter, July 15, 2009)

Goodbye, GM, a letter from Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com, June 1, 2009)

The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind, by Jerome a Paris (The Oil Drum, May 6, 2009)

Builders & Titans: Bernie Madoff, by Michael Moore (The 2009 TIME 100, May 1, 2009)

"We the People" to "King of the World": "YOU'RE FIRED!", a letter from Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com, April 1, 2009)

Oh, What a Lovely Class War!, by Michael Winship (Bill Moyers Journal, March 13, 2009)

Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America, by Robert Weissman and Harvey Rosenfield (Wall Street Watch, March 4, 2009)

A Proven Framework to End the US Banking Crisis Including Some Temporary Nationalizations (Adam S. Posen, Peterson Institute for International Economics; Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress hearing, "Restoring the Economy: Strategies for Short-term and Long-term Change"; February 26, 2009)

www.Recovery.org belonged to the U.S. Government (February 24, 2009). But on May 19, 2014 we were notified that this URL no longer is appropriate.

Taking Apart the $819 billion Stimulus Package (Washington Post, February 1, 2009)

Orlov: Russia Was Better Prepared for Collapse than the U.S., by Dmitry Orlov (TruthNews.us; January 16, 2008, originallly published December 4, 2006)

A guide to the credit crunch, audio slideshow (6 minutes) by BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston (BBC, January 1, 2009)

Protectionist dominoes are beginning to tumble across the world, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph, Dec. 22, 2008)

Madoff: The man who sold the world, by Rupert Cornwell (Independent, Dec. 21, 2008)

Senate to Middle Class: Drop Dead, a message from Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com, Dec. 12, 2008)

Automakers fail to cash in on big GOP donations, by Ken Bensinger (LA Times, Dec. 12, 2008)

White House, Democrats Near Short-Term Deal For Automakers; Loans to Carry Firms to March, by Lon Montgomery and Kendra Marr (Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2008)

Sync, and Swim Together, by Daniel Kahneman and Andrew Rosenfield (NYTimes, Nov. 24, 2008)

Colossal Financial Collapse: The Truth behind the Citigroup Bank 'Nationalization', by F. William Engdahl (Global Research, Nov. 24, 2008)

Systemic Risk, Contagion and Trade Finance - Back to the Bad Old Days, by London Banker (RGE Monitor, Nov. 14, 2008)
 
A Credit Crisis or a Collapsing Ponzi Scheme? The Two Trillion Dollar Black Hole, by Pam Martens (Counterpunch, Nov. 13, 2008)

Financial Crisis: Washington's $5 Trillion Tab, by Elizabeth Moyer (Forbes.com, Nov. 12, 2008)

Failing Like Japan, by Bill Mann (Motley Fool, November 11, 2008)

US Taxpayers Violated; The Looting Operation Continues, by Chris Martenson (Financial Sense University, Nov. 11, 2008)

The First 100 Days (The GOOD Sheet, Nov. 6, 2008)

This Is Not The End Of Capitalism, by Mark Shuttleworth (Here Be Dragons, Nov. 4, 2008)

Hedge Fund Manager: Goodbye and F---- You, by Matthew Malone (Portfolio.com, Oct. 17, 2008)

NEW: Voting Your Conscience for a Third Party Candidate Is Not A Wasted Vote (American Free Press, Oct. 13, 2008)

It's a Solvency Problem, Not a Liquidity Problem, by Mark Shuttleworth (Here Be Dragons, Oct. 9, 2008)

Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy, by Peter Goodman (NY Times, Oct. 8, 2008)

Europe Struggles for a Response to the Bank Crisis, by Andrew Purvis (Time, Oct. 7, 2008)

Why the $700 Billion Isn't Helping, by Jeremy Caplan (Time, Oct. 7, 2008)

"There were still aspects of this package that I didn't like.", by Senator Barbara Boxer (Calculated Risk blog, Oct. 4, 2008)

Here's How to Fix the Wall Street Mess, by Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com, Oct. 1, 2008)

Congresswoman Kaptur Votes Against Bill To Bail Out 'Reckless' Wall Street (Sept. 30, 2008)

Congratulations, Corporate Crime Fighters! Coup Averted for Three Days!, by Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com, Sept. 30, 2008)

Shocked the Bailout Plan Failed? You Shouldn't Be., by Robert Zimmer (Sept. 29, 2008)

The Rich Are Staging A Coup This Morning, by Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com, Sept. 29, 2008)

A Shattering Moment in America's Fall from Power, by John Gray (The Observer, Sept. 28, 2008)

Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs?, by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (US House of Representatives, Sept. 28, 2008)

Last Chance for the Truth, by Martin Weiss (Money and Markets, Sept. 28, 2008)

The Bailout: What's At Stake, by Chris Isidore, senior writer (CNNMoney.com, Sept. 26, 2008)

Proposed $700 Billion Bailout Is Too Little, Too Late to End the Debt Crisis; Too Much, Too Soon for the U.S. Bond Market, by Martin Weiss and Michael Larson (Weiss Research, Inc., Sept. 25, 2008)

Real reform or nothing, by Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (US House of Representatives, Sept. 25, 2008)

The 'Oracle' Speaks: Listen Up, Hank, by Jeff Matthews (blog, Sept. 24,
2008)

Our Federal Economy, by George Will (Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2008)

Main Street Before Wall Street, by David Korten (Yes! Magazine, Sept. 24, 2008)

Stocks and Stockbrokers, by Paul Lutus (Lutus website, June, 2008)

World carbon dioxide levels highest for 650,000 years, says US report (The Guardian, May 13, 2008)

NEW: Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican, by John Gray (Thom Hartmann, January 28,  2008)

Hillary Clinton: A Bilderberg Presidency; European elite back Democratic frontrunner (Old-Thinker News, November 8, 2007)

Living Wealth: Better Than Money, by David Korten (Yes! Magazine, Fall 2007)

Orlov: Russia Was Better Prepared for Collapse than the U.S., by Dmitry Orlov (TruthNews.us; Jan. 16, 2008, originallly published Dec. 4, 2006)

The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, by William K. Black (Amazon listing; April 1, 2005)