This is our “monocracy” at work. One dollar, one vote. It isn't about people, but corporate profits. Gotta protect those campaign contributors.“Earmarks” aren't enough for them.

Excellent letter!

JUST THIS PAST WEEK, the lobbying and big corporate industry has worked to cram more of their anti-American positions down out throats…
- With billions in bailout dollars in hand, GM announced in Congress that they will increase to 23% the amount of their production done in Mexico, S Korea, and China! Suppliers will have to follow them to remain competitive. Good-bye middle class jobs and thank all of you for your tax dollars at work to put more people out of work.
- An amendment to give all Americans the same rights in bankruptcy court as the rich was killed thanks to the every single financial lobbying group and corporate association literally walking office-to-office in the halls of Congress to stop the amendment. You reckon the $370 million in political contribution over the past 10 years help to influence a few Congressmen???
-$400 million/year in fed funding to states to help with housing illegal CRIMINAL aliens was cut to $0. Tens of thousands of criminals will have to be turned loose in the next few months. Thank you Chamber of Commerce.
- A report was issued about the top 25 lenders of subprime mortgages showing how these corps lobbied Washington to weaken regulation of their behavior. Most of those 25 lenders are now out of business or have been sold to avoid bankruptcy, even as some of the nation's largest banks that owned or financed them - Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America - are being bailed out by your taxpayer dollars. The Center for Public Integrity says, "The banks...were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers..." Read the report Center for Public Integrity, "Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?"
- The hedge funds, in bankruptcy court, complained about the Chrysler loan.“And their argument is, rather than the possibility that Chrysler might survive, they would rather see it liquidated, so they make more money. Liquidation, of course, costs tens of thousands of jobs at Chrysler and many other suppliers and material men. It also means that thousands of retirees might lose their health care benefits, and ultimately, that the government WON’T recover the loan it has made to Chrysler Corporation. And you have to ask yourself. At the bottom line here, how could these hedge funds stand up and say, "This is better for our country." It isn't. With all of the people who would suffer as a result of it.”

Charles Munger, vice-chair of Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway: "We need to remove from the investment banking and the commercial banking industries a lot of the practices and prerogatives that they have so lovingly possessed. If they're too big to fail, they're too big to be allowed to be as gamey and venal as they have been and as stupid as they have been."

Paul Simon, "You get in late at night in your hotel room. There are ten telephone messages. You're only going to make one of them,'cause you're so darn tired’, and you look through the list and there's somebody who had a fundraising event for you. Now which one are you going to call? And we all know the answer. You're grateful to somebody who helped you. But unfortunately, that takes its toll, in terms of your integrity.”