What will be the outcome of the shutdown?

How do we overcome these two obstacles to real democracy?

1. As Mayer Rothschild said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws," bankers have an effective veto over our democracy and can dictate policy to both major parties in the US and even the social democracies of Europe.

How can we make banks subordinate to democracy instead of vice versa?

2. How can we have representative government that isn't subject to corruption by lead or gold? That is, or representatives can be bribed or threatened (and the threats acted on if they don't comply) into doing other than what is in our best interest. The very wealthy have one or two other tricks they can use at election time too: ridicule in the media or simply having the media ignore candidates regardless of how popular they are with the public.

Campaign finance reform only partially addresses the gold part--jobs after politicians leave office as lobbyists, CEO's, and do nothing board members are also a financial carrot the rest of us can't match even if we could theoretically scrape together the money to match the donations of the wealthy.

Why isn't debt limit AUTOMATICALLY raised when Congress votes to spend more than they tax?

When I finally heard an explanation of the debt ceiling that made any kind of sense, this was my first thought.

HOW can you tell someone to spend money they don't have but not allow them to borrow it either?

Maybe we need something like the opposite of sequestration: if Congress doesn't pass taxes to pay the bills or raise the debt limit, a tax increase (preferably on those who can afford it most) will automatically be enacted to make up the difference.

RAVITCH: Bill Gates: "We Won’t Know for a Decade Whether Our Ideas {for public education} Work"

It's hard to think of a better example that our education policy has been as corrupted by big campaign donors as our economic, trade, and foreign policy.

Bill Gates has money to spend, so politicians will force whatever idea he pulls out of his ass on public school teachers and kids.

If he really thinks he knows how to run schools, he should open up some entirely private ones, and see how many paying customers he'll get.

the Wall Street take over of public education

In reviewing Diane's Ravitch's book
Reign of Error on the corrupt corporate take over of public schools and what real reform would look like, this reporter summed up what they reformers want, why, and what it will and is actually doing to public schools pretty well.

We have to take education policy out of the hands of the sociopaths who broke our economy, gambled with our mortgages, stole private employee pensions and working to steal public employee pensions, and would like to steal our Social Security too.

The financial sector's behavior in the last ten years alone is reason enough to keep them miles away from our children.

A possible unintended side effect of Obamacare

California has set up their exchange and has a calculator to show what your premiums would be if you used it to get your insurance.

My family is currently covered through my job, though if my wife lost her job, I'd have to pay quite a bit to cover her and my daughter with my job's insurance.

So I was curious to see what the exchange would cost.

I plugged in our numbers and got about $1200 a month for the three of us for the gold coverage (the ones below that had such high deductibles it wouldn't make sense for us).

I had two reactions to seeing that number:

1. That is significantly cheaper than it would cost to get covered in the past (I've checked).

2. It's still a hell of a lot.

That second reaction is the one I'm wondering if more people won't have.

Since most people get their insurance through their job, they probably have no idea what the total cost of their coverage is.

I've worked with my union local, and the only time I felt the least bit sympathetic for management was when I heard how much health insurance costs went up every year.

I think a lot of people will appreciate the lower cost, but after the initial gratitude wears off, I wonder if they won't be a bit critical of the total number and ask if their isn't a way to reduce it further--like taking the for-profit leeches out of the equation altogether.

Is anyone sad to see Larry Summers withdraw his name for Fed chairman?

Given his advocacy for bank deregulation not just for the US but every other country in the world during the Clinton years, and his strong arming of Brooksley Born, an financial regulator who was actually trying to enforce the fews laws and regs that remained, it is hard to think of someone worse for the job.

Larry Summers was a slug in the garden of our battered democracy, and I for one am glad that he salted himself and melt his own political career.

But I'm curious what the defense is that could possibly have been given for him in the corridors of power, other than that he did exactly what Wall Street bankers told him to do.

Can someone make the case that bank deregulation was GOOD for the US and the world?

Or that intimidating a regulator from doing their jobs was somehow GOOD for America and the world?

Are you sad to see Jabba the Summers go?

Will it turn out that Kerry/Obama played 3D chess on Syria or that Putin pulled us back from war?

I'm not sure.

Though if the last decade and a half is any precedent, I suspect it is the latter.

When the US invaded Iraq to gain further hegemony over Middle East oil, that COULD have triggered World War III, if Russia and China saw it as one of the last dominoes that could lead to US business having a stranglehold on their economic growth through control of oil.

But they held back and let us screw ourselves rather than jumping in screwing themselves too.

Likewise, when we invaded countries on the eastern and western border of Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq, they could reasonably have taken that as a provocation, just as we would if Russia invaded Canada and Mexico.

But instead, they mostly held back.

It seems in this War on Terror era, it's like those two women who came to Solomon claiming the same baby, and Solomon proposed cutting it in half because the real mother would give the baby up rather than do that.

The baby is the world, and we and Russia are the mothers, but our government is the "mother" who wants the baby cut in half--as long as they get both halves.

But I would be glad to be proven wrong.

Which of the major explanations is more likely true?

I finally realized why Obama and Congress never punished Bush/Cheney war crimes...

You can't punish your own war criminals, other countries have to do it for you.

So who should teach us a lesson?

We will certainly have to suck it and say we deserved it if some of our civilians who live near depleted uranium, white phosphorous, and napalm facilities are accidentally killed.

But that is far preferable than Congress impeaching a then president or the attorney general indicting a past president and his cabinet for war crimes and a judge and jury trying the case, which, while unlikely to result in prison time, would be an embarrassment and inconvenience to those charged.

Many in Congress voted to give Bush the power to commit war crimes against children

and earlier voted for sanctions against Iraq that killed up to half a million people by keeping medicine out of the country.

But you go right on thinking they're going to attack Syria for the children.