Business Seeks to Bottleneck Reform

The very group that helped get us into our current financial collapse wants to make sure the status quo is maintained: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6E7B6EA8-18FE-70B2-A87C3F1CB4228163. Toward that end, they are essentially using the profits they continued to accumulate in the run-up to the mess, and during it among some banks. So let's get this straight . . . banks and others act irresponsibly (or criminally by most ethical standards) to help cause the financial crisis. They then get bailed out by the government for their risky and predatory behavior. Then they return to profitability (in some cases) and use those funds to ensure that they can continue this risky and predatory behavior in the future. Makes sense, right?

The media plays along, more or less supporting conventional wisdom on the right, and thus the cycle continues. Who suffers? Everyone else -- including some of the low level workers in the very companies that are spending some of their profits to maintain practices that hurt the average Americans. It is disconcerting to recognize how difficult it is to change the irrational rationality that continues to dominate political discourse in America (tax cuts, inflation and deficits as more important than unemployment and quality of life, shrink size of government, privatize, deregulate, cut social services and increase the gap between rich and poor) -- even as the majority of citizens voted less than a year ago for change. Can Obama break the cycle or will he also fall prey to the power of money, conventional wisdom, a media increasingly bedazzled by money and power and a corrupt system in Washington that continually choses the interests of the elites over everyone else?