Aztlan-Network-News Blog: From Latinopoliticsblog.com: Sunday: What we are reading and working on post

http://latinopoliticsblog.com/2009/03/22/sunday-what-we-are-reading-and-working-on-post/

Updated info on the Esteban Nuñez Case

Sunday: What we are reading and working on post

March 22nd, 2009 ~

Seneca and I have been working on a few new blog posts, which will be posted soon. In the meantime, I thought I would share with you some things that I have been reading, writing about, and pondering for the week ahead. Feel free to share your thoughts as well.

"Are the immigration raids 'un-American'?"
Obama to Push CIR (Comprehensive Immigration Reform)
"White Collar Criminals, The New 'Illegals'"
And Finally, "The Big Takover: The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power.. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution."

Regarding the final article, "The Big Takover," I particularly want to highlight this portion:

"People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy [AIG CEO] put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers."

This sums up how I feel about the latest stunt that AIG pulled. For the past eight years, we have lived in an environment where our phone calls were subject to wiretapping, we endure long lines at the airport dumping our pockets, purses, taking off shoes, belts, etc., yet we did not implement any meaningful regulation of these huge financial institutions, who have the ability to hold our lives hostage. And we, the tax payers, are left holding the bag of bad debts resulting from poor Vegas style decision making.

Tags: Economics · Immigration