Corruption has many tentacles and is difficult to ferret out, but some clues can be found on a little-known website called watchourcity.com that has previously documented the blatant public corruption in the cities of Bell, Maywood, and Huntington Park. (*more about this remarkable site below):

Though media outlets have explained the Charter initiative that allowed officials to give themselves these crazy pay raises, none of them seem to have followed the trail of absentee voters. Why so many absentee votes? Who were they?

My search for an answer led me to watchmycity.com:

Bell's passage of its Charter city initiative was achieved with 82% absentee ballots. In Bell, city employees in officers uniforms were deployed to deliver absentee ballots to registered senior citizen housing projects, and carry the completed ballots back to city hall.

The site notes that these housing projects are owned by "George Cole's Oldtimers Foundation, a recipient of Bell's Senior Citizen housing management contracts. Cole has direct access to senior citizens through his management contracts and uses that direct access for political advantage.

watchourcity.com calls Cole "the brains behind Rizzo's $800,000 salary and author of Bell's push for the Charter City initiative" [LINK]

A pattern is emerging

It seems that voter fraud in a 2009 election also involved absentee voters, with uniformed police officers appearing at residents doors delivering ballots, and even telling residents how to vote:

A lawsuit filed Monday by a former Bell police officer makes a variety of serious allegations about city officials and suggests voter fraud in a 2009 election.

According to the lawsuit, filed by James Corcoran, off-duty police officers in Bell distributed absentee ballots in a 2009 municipal election and told would-be voters which candidates to support. LATimesblog

Now what about those astronomical pensions? Despite his resignation as Bell city manager, "Razzo" Rizzo will get a $710,000 pension every year for life! I mean c'mon, how can that be????!

No word yet on status on the pending multi-million dollar retirement packages due all three administrators. For Rizzo, it is estimated that his yearly retirement will be approximately $600,000 per year, for the next 30 years.

A spokesperson from the Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS, stated that budgeting for Rizzo's retirement payout alone would bankrupt the PERS treasury, and would severely impact its ability to maintain payments for rank and file retirees such as teachers, firemen and librarians. Unless State Attorney General Jerry Brown can find criminal wrongdoing, Rizzo will make history a second time as California's -and quite possibly the country's - highest paid retired public employee

According to several media reports, including the Times, California's Attorney General Jerry Brown announced a sweeping investigation into the city of Bell's criminal-level salaries, accusing the elected city council members and top administrators as having failed their "fiduciary duty." - watchourcity.com

Bell could turn out to be a political windfall for Jerry Brown and his candidacy for governor. If he can get the goods on these crooks, possibly indict them on criminal charges, his election could be assured.

* Back to watchourcity.com. When the site was first launched in 2004, the L.A. Times called it "A courageously innovative, muckraking web site that focuses like a laser on the political, financial and legal shenanigans of the local government."

The founder, who remains anonymous and works alone without funds, deserves high praise for his work. It's clear from what has happened in Bell, every town in California needs a site like this to keep a close watch on the shenanigans of local officials.

UPDATE! (7.29.10)

Schwarzenegger to Calif. cities: Post salaries
California cities should post top officials' salaries after scandal in Bell

3 former Bell administrators won't collect pensions until California clears them
Three highly paid administrators in Bell will not be permitted to draw their state pensions until the state attorney general determines whether the city broke the law in awarding the hefty paychecks.

Let's put more public documents online
"Thanks to WikiLeaks, we now know more about the war in Afghanistan than about how much public officials are paid in Los Angeles County."

U.S. Senate (R) - Fiorina seems to have consolidated the "outsider" vote, seeing as she is the only one of the three that has not held elected office and it seems that being an outsider will get one far in the Republican primary (though not so much in a California general election).

Governor (R) - Exactly as I predicted, this race has unfolded to be 2006 in reverse. Whoever wins the GOP primary here will be so radioactive that many Republican voters likely will cross over to vote for Jerry Brown, like many Democratic voters did for Arnold last time. If Jerry Brown pulls similar numbers among Republicans that Arnold did among Democrats, then Brown is likely gonna win big. And I'm unsure about how indies will go, so I just went with an estimate similar to the 2006 numbers.

DEM 42%-GOP 33%-OTHER 25%
Brown: 93%/22%/60% = 61%
GOP nominee: 7%/78%/40% = 39%

Lt. Governor (D) - This race will be very interesting: a classic NorCal/SoCal matchup, between Gavin Newsom and Janice Hahn.

Lt. Governor (R) - Newly-appointed incumbent Abel Maldonado will face a tough primary with more conservative State Senator Sam Aanestad. Given that moderates have fared pretty poorly in California elections of late, I give Aanestad the edge.

Sec. of State (R) - Any race with the Birther Queen just has to be a race to watch, more so for the comedy value, though I think most Republicans don't buy her BS, so I see Dunn getting the nomination. No matter who wins, Debra Bowen is likely a cinch for a second term.

Attorney General (D) - Very crowded primary here, with 3 term-limited Assemblymen, Torrico, Nava, and Lieu; S.F. District Attorney Kamala Harris; Facebook attorney Chris Kelly; and disgraced ex-L.A. city attorney Delgadillo, though the race seems to have narrowed to just Harris and Kelly. From what I have heard of Kelly, I am rooting for Harris.

Controller (R) - Not much drama here, but I am hoping for Tony Strickland to win so he can lose to John Chiang even worse than in 2006. Unfortunately, he is not up for reelection to the State Senate until 2012, so if he wins the nomination but loses the general, he will still be in the senate (hopefully until 2012).

Insurance Commissioner (D) - Here we have two strong candidates in term-limited assemblymen Hector De La Torre and Dave Jones. I have no preference in this race, but since Jones has more money and establishment backing, I think he'll win the nod.

CA-11 (R) - Will David Harmer, who lost by only 10% in the more Democratic CA-10 in the special election (albeit with lower turnout) be able to make it past the primary against Tony Amador and be more competitive in the general?

CA-19 (D) - I am pulling for Loraine Goodwin here. Any campaign based on health care reform is a big winner in Democratic primaries and in general elections in most parts of the state. Not sure what the HCR numbers are in this neck of the woods.

CA-19 (R) - I think I will root for Denham here, as he has won in more Democratic turf, so he is relatively saner. (And Denham is term-limited, so CA-19 run or no CA-19 run, we have a great shot at winning SD-12.) Pombo shouldn't really be of much concern, as he has placed a distant third in the recent primary poll.

CA-26 (R) - My hometown district, where Dreier faces a primary challenge from businessman Mark Butler. While I consider Dreier to be the heavy favorite, this primary challenge could further drain his campaign coffers. If he wins the primary, Dreier has the advantage of incumbency and a year more favorable to his party (though anti-Obama sentiment is much weaker in California than elsewhere). A disadvantage Dreier has is depleted campaign coffers, from spending like crazy to win only 52% against Warner in 2008 and possibly from this primary challenge.

CA-33 (D) - Former Assembly speaker Karen Bass is likely the heavy favorite, and I hope she wins.

CA-36 (D) - Harman/Winograd redux, only with more fireworks this time around.

CA-42 (R) - Even though Gary Miller's voting record is unabashedly conservative, he is still getting teabagged by three other Republicans. Count on yet another incumbent scoring a subpar primary performance.

CA-45 (R) - Mary Bono Mack has drawn teabag primary opposition from Clayton Thibodeau for her vote for cap-and-trade. She also voted against repealing DADT in spite of her district having the highest concentration of gays of any Republican-held district, possibly out of fear of getting teabagged. If Thibodeau upsets Bono Mack, this Obama-voting R+3 district could be put into play.

CA-47 (R) - Will Tan and Van split the Vietnamese vote, allowing Kathy Smith to sneak through?

CA-50 (D) - I like Busby, but I think her time has passed, if she couldn't beat Bilbray in the far more Democratic-favored 2006. Attorney Tracy Emblem seems to have most of the grassroots support.

AD-05 (R) - In this open, evenly-divided suburban Sacramento seat, the Tea Party has gotten into another Republican primary, backing Craig DeLuz against party-backed Prop 8 backer Andy Pugno. I am rooting for DeLuz to win the primary so in one election we defeat a Prop H8er and increase our chances of winning this district too.

AD-30 (D) - The Parra/Florez feud continues, with Nicole's dad Pete Parra facing off against Dean's mom Fran Florez, who lost to Danny Gilmore, who didn't like being an Assemblyman and that's why he's not running, which I at first found surprising.

AD-36 (D) - Linda Jones, who ran here in 2008, faces primary opposition from real estate broker Maggie Campbell and police officer Shawntrice Watkins. This time I am rooting for Watkins, because this Antelope Valley-centric district is very law-and-order, being the home of the Runners (Sharon and George, of "Jessica's Law" fame), and incumbent Steve Knight also having been a police officer before being elected to the Assembly. Watkins could cut into Knight's law-and-order advantage. Plus Watkins' endorsement from Equality California can't hurt either.

AD-68 (D) and (R) - I am really looking forward to an all-Vietnamese matchup here. Will be interesting to gauge the Vietnamese vote if it's Phu Nguyen (D) vs. Long Pham (R).

And what is a California election without some ballot measures? Five are on the ballot this time.

Prop 13: Tax break to property owners for making seismic retrofits. I like seeing tax breaks used as incentives for good causes. Vote YES!

Prop 14: Top two votegetters in the primary would go on to the general election, limiting voter choices. Vote NO!

Prop 15: Repeals ban on public financing and raises fees on lobbyists to fund a public financing system for SecState election beginning in 2014. Vote YES!

Prop 16: PG&E power grab that requires a 2/3 vote to create public power districts or allow local governments to purchase their own renewable power. Vote NO!

Prop 17: Weakens consumer protections and allow car insurance companies to charge much more for late payments. Vote NO!

Cross-posted at Swing State Project and Calitics.

Competitive and/or open state legislature districts are over the flip...

SENATE

Republicans (6)

Democrats (6)

ASSEMBLY

Republicans (19)

Democrats (19)

Cross-posted at Swing State Project and Calitics.

Breaking news: We now have a registration advantage in Assembly District 5 and are closing in on CA-03!

Our current numbers in the Senate are 25 Democrats/15 Republicans, with winning 2 GOP-held seats necessary for 2/3; and in the Assembly 49 Democrats/29 Republicans/1 Independent (who is term-limited)/1 Vacant (Dem seat which will be filled before Election Day), with winning 3 GOP-held seats necessary for 2/3.

SENATE

Republicans (4)

ASSEMBLY

Republicans (16)

Democrats (15)

In the article, which lambasts “the government’s” (code for the Obama administration) $787billion stimulus plan for providing “few or no incentives for private-sector job growth,” Gingrich relies on a favored technique of the conservative right: convoluted statistical analysis that links the plan to increases in the national debt and unemployment. “Since the first authorization of these four stimulus packages, the national debt has increased by $2.9 trillion while the unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high before backing off slightly to 10%.”

Yeah, right. And since the first authorization in February 2008 I’ve lost 10 pounds and gotten more gray hair.

But the GOP’s new math doesn’t stop there. Additional stimulus, according to Gringrich and Varroney, would not create jobs but instead “lead to even higher budget deficits.” Real job creation, they contend, should start “with the goal of a balanced budget” — and (though not mentioning him by name) a return to the fiscal discipline not seen in government since the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton! “From 1995 to 1998 federal spending rose by an average of 2.9% per year, the lowest increase since the 1920s. We can apply the same principles that worked at that time to create jobs and balanced budgets.” In a delicious bit of irony, their call for financial sobriety amounts to a repudiation of Republicans’ Reagan-era spendthrift policies, which were trumpeted in 2002 by then-Vice President Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”

Predictably, Newt’s plan for rebuilding American jobs and business calls for smaller government, less taxes and more domestic oil drilling. Just what you would expect from a revolving-door Washington insider who “pulled in an impressive $8.1 million in the first half of 2009, a cash haul that enabled the former speaker of the House to finance a robust political operation that includes at least 17 employees,” according to Politico.com. Major contributors include oil interests and anti-labor groups such as the Workforce Fairness Institute, a business-backed group opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act.

When you know who’s bankrolling his operation, Newt’s ideas and opinions are revealed for what they really are: more of the same fake populism that sparked the recent Tea Party demonstrations against health-care reform and that Republicans will intensify in the run up to the 2010 elections.

Whether they will be able to recapture one or both houses of Congress depends on how vulnerable the public is to the non-stop propaganda coming from the right-wing media echo chamber, which now reverberates throughout the mainstream communications network with equal decibels.

Richard, Alias, Cosanostradamus, and Sara -- you've done great work!

Peace, love and joy to everyone!

Sadly, the party of Abraham Lincoln has today become the know-nothing, do-nothing, feel-nothing party of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin — a multi-millionaire talk radio blowhard and a quarter-wit ex-governor/VP candidate turned best-selling author, respectively.

But despite the folly of the GOP's political agenda — built on a subprime foundation of tax cuts and unlimited military spending — it still rings true for a large segment of the public due to the failure of invertebrate Democrats to offer real solutions to today's complex problems. And because it enriches the few at the expense of the many, the stage has been set for greater economic and social turmoil in an era of celebrity worship and gossip as news.

As The New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman writes of last Friday's House of Representatives vote on financial reform, "every single Republican...voted against a quite modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses." Krugman goes on to describe a conservative narrative that "reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy."

"Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

"Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative."

Krugman traces the roots of the current crisis to a pattern of financial deregulation that removed the safeguards to the system put in place after the Great Depression, which had worked effectively for nearly four decades since World War II.

"The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess."

While Krugman concludes that GOP's obsolete belief system could lead to another economic meltdown, Chris Hedges warns that our obsession with the "trivial and the absurd" in "a world of make-believe" make it nearly impossible to face reality and address society's ills.

"Many have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans... Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age."

In other words, contrary to the Obama administration's military build-up in Afghanistan, it is time to withdraw from the American empire and rebuild the republic...Holding those responsible for the worst financial crisis in our lifetimes accountable for their incompetence and greed is a good place to start.

If the declaration is seen as a rehash of old platitudes the food summit (like next month's Copenhagen summit on global warming) could end up as a farce, yet another cruel joke on the 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population, suffering from poverty and hunger. "The summit was prompted by a surge in the prices of staples such as rice and wheat which last year sparked food riots from Bangladesh to Haiti," the FT story said.

Non-government organizations said the food summit, the first since 2002, would be a waste of time unless last-minute changes were made in the declaration, according to the story. Rich countries rejected the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's initial proposal to "achieve in five years the target level of 17% reached in 1980" by increasing agriculture's share of official development aid, which by 2006 had plunged to 3.8% of the total, the story said.

The rich countries are spending trillions on bank bailouts that line the pockets of Wall Street hucksters responsible for spreading economic chaos throughout the world. Poor and undernourished people, whose plight has been aggravated by the global financial crisis, receive a few crumbs.

As a result, every 3.6 seconds someone in the world dies of starvation – and 20,000 children a day die of poverty

For a shocking account of the devastating impact the industrialized countries' social-economic-political agenda has had, not only on the poor but the rest of us as well, check out the exceptional new documentary Collapse. "A chilling monologue of imminent catastrophe," The New York Times review said of author Michael C. Ruppert's one-man crusade to connect "the dots between population, economics and energy."

After seeing the film don't be surprised if you are moved to a) increase your charitable giving this holiday season and b) make a New Year's resolution to become active in restoring government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Either that or you might find yourself taking Ruppert's advice to stock up on gold and organic seeds.

Repair California, the umbrella group for the coalition of citizens, reformers and advocates, submitted the measures that would reform four areas of the state constitution: the budget process; the election and initiative process; restoring the balance of power between the state and local governments; and creating new systems to improve government effectiveness.

In endorsing the idea of a constitutional convention as a way to solve California's nagging political and fiscal problems, the Los Angeles Times editorialized: "A convention can work. It can give the constantly evolving state an updated government that better serves its restless people."

The ballot language filing came within days of a favorable Time magazine cover story on California, which concluded that despite being "stuck in an awful recession," the Golden State is "not imploding, which ought to be heartening to Americans regardless of ideology or geography."

The story advised readers to "ignore the California whinery. It's still a dream state"...on "the cutting edge of the American future - economically, demographically, culturally and maybe politically."

With 38 million residents and a $1.8 trillion economy (which would put it in the G-8 if it were a country), California is "the greenest and most diverse state, the most globalized in general and most Asia-oriented in particular at a time when the world is heading in all those directions," the article stated. In addition to leading "the nation in agricultural production," Time said California is "also an unparalleled engine of innovation, the mecca of high tech, biotech and now clean tech."

While highlighting California's "immense resources," its "incredibly dynamic economy" and its "enviably young and productive workforce," the article also called attention to the state's problems including a "dysfunctional" budget process and notorious "lobbyist-produced ballot initiatives," such as Proposition 13, which since 1978 has severly limited property-tax increases and choked off funding for schools and local governments.

Fortunately, the constitutional convention would directly address these issues as well as the state's two-thirds rule for increasing revenues. (For more information on the ballot measures, including the routes to become a delegate to the constitutional convention, click on the Repair California link above.)

We owe it to ourselves, and future generations, to seize this historic opportunity to restore the California - indeed, the American - Dream by supporting the effort to get the constitutional convention measures on next year's ballot.

Butler, who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, was America’s most decorated soldier at the time of his death in 1940. Despite his antiwar views, Butler was a hero to rank-and-file military men for his bravery and support of the 1932 Bonus March on Washington by out-of-work veterans petitioning the government for stepped-up payment of their promised WWI bonus. He went on to gain national attention by testifying before a Congressional Committee investigating a conspiracy against President Franklin D. Roosevelt by right-wing business interests, described in the History Channel documentary “The Plot to Overthrow FDR.”

Written with piss-and-vinegar during the Great Depression, War Is a Racket was a work of conscience, as Butler explained: "Now that I see the international war clouds again gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out." Butler pulled no punches. The experiences that informed his tragi-comic condemnation of the profit motive behind war were summarized in the following passage from a 1935 issue of Common Sense magazine:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his in three
districts. I operated on three continents."

Within the pages of War Is a Racket, Butler exposes the military-industrial complex as a tool of capitalist greed. The "speeches about patriotism, love of country" notwithstanding, only a very few enjoy war's "fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people - who do not profit," Butler warned more than 70 years ago.

In the chapter Who Pays the Bills?, Butler describes how the financial sector benefits in times of crisis. "We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the banker. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us - the people - got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par - and above. Then the bankers collected their profits."

He also discusses how the state-reliant information apparatus beats the drum for military intervention. Recalling the lead-up to World War I, Butler writes: "We used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

"So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed...

"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the 'war to end all wars.' This was the 'war to make the world safe for democracy.' No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason."

When it comes to picking up the tab for war, Butler reminds us that "the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

"If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veterans' hospitals in the United States...In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men - men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago...

"Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays it too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly - his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters."

Having first-hand experience as a racketeer in uniform, Butler knows precisely how to put an end to war. "You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parlays at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions," he says in offering up a three-step plan to "smash the war racket."

"We must take the profit out of War.

"We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

"We must limit our forces to home defense purposes."

At barely over 40 pages, War Is a Racket would be a quick read for the president. He owes it to himself, and the millions of Americans who elected him overwhelmingly to serve as their commander-in-chief, to consider the wise counsel of a true American hero (if only as a counterweight to the adroit lobbying of the swivel-chair generals in Washington) in deciding whether to continue to conduct a war that benefits the very few, at the expense of the very many.

"It was a time of growth and abundance," Starr writes in his preface, recalling a time when California was not only a part of America but also something more. Or as Joel Kotkin reminds in his book review on Truthdig.com, "To millions in America and around the world, California grew to mean opportunity, sunshine and innovation."

How the state went from being a symbol of in Starr's words "a better American life" to the butt of late-night talk show jokes is rooted in Californians' "conflicting visions," according to Kotkin: "In 1964, the first year after the era chronicled in 'Golden Dreams,' Watts blew up, shattering the comfortable assumptions of a progressive, post-racial state.

"The business elite and the middle class were financing the ever-expanding California state. They saw their money go to the poor, to minorities and state employees. Particularly annoying were the university students, many of whom were in open revolt against the state, in the mind of much of the public that had nurtured them.

"By the early 1960s many of these latter Californians also were angry, but their rage would express itself not in riots, but at the ballot box, ushering in the age of Ronald Reagan. The period that follows 'Golden Dreams' emerges as one of conflicting visions, between greens, students and minorities, on the one hand, and largely suburban middle-class workers and business owners on the other."

What lies ahead for the state, and by extension the country, given California's status as a bellwether of national trends? Kotkin concludes the jury is still out. "The question now is whether California, down on its luck, will find a way to rebound, much as imperial Rome did after the demise of the Julian dynasty, or fall, like Athens, into ever more squalid decline. Does the state have a bright 'destiny' ahead or only more ruin?"

Despite California's much-heralded budget crisis and legislative gridlock, there is plenty of reason for optimism. The state is rich in natural resources; it is blessed with agricultural abundance; it remains a magnet for the businesses of the future including high-tech, entertainment and green industries and, perhaps most important of all, its diverse population and flexible labor force overflowing with knowledge-based-, service- and manufacturing workers are valuable assets in this era of globalization.

To be sure, we Californians have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set the state on a course of sustainable prosperity for all based on good government, responsible revenue and spending policies and cultural harmony.

The movement for a constitutional convention is an important first step in putting our political and fiscal houses in order.

Yet our most significant challenges are cultural. For once we overcome what novelist and sometime California resident Thomas Pynchon calls the "invisible class force fields in the way of communication" between progressives, students, minorities, middle-class workers and business owners, California's Golden Age will return for good.

As part of its ongoing series on the Future of Investing, the FT recently ran an editorial package that focused on regulatory reform of the financial industry.

Various FT writers covered all angles of this important story - from bank capital requirements, risk management practices and investor protection to government bailouts and "moral hazard," how to wind down institutions deemed to big to fail and the inherent conflict in housing commercial and investment banking under one roof.

Unlike their counterparts across the pond the international writers were not preoccupied with the secondary issue of bankers' pay, which seems to dominate media coverage here.

FT contributors delve head-on into a topic that up until now has pretty much been taboo in the US press - namely Wall Street's magisterial influence on Capitol Hill, which is rivaled only by that of the military-industrial complex.

Other than RollingStone - which painted a not very flattering picture of the revolving door between Goldman Sachs, the US Treasury and Federal Reserve - domestic coverage of financial industry reform has predominately focused on solons' concern over bankers' outsized pay packages. What is missing is insight into Wall Street's monopoly on the legislative agenda in Washington.

For that we have to turn to the FT.

John Plender, in a piece on regulatory reform titled "How to tame the animal spirits," warns: "As the shock of the Lehman Brothers collapse a year ago retreats further from public consciousness, some experts fear that a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put to rights the system of controls and strengthen investor protection is slipping away."

The problem, as Plender and others such as FT columnist John Kay point out, is that any reforms "focused on the needs of consumers" at the expense of "the promotion of products and remuneration of producers" will be "violently opposed by the big banks, whose lobbying clout is legendary." Continuing, Plender recalls that Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary fund, "said in recent testimony on Capitol Hill that the culture of deference towards the financial sector in a Washington heavily infiltrated by former investment bankers is similar to the emergence of financial oligarchies in emerging markets."

Plender cuts to the chase in a sidebar to the main article.

One congresssman, five finance lobbyists

Efforts by governments and regulators to improve investor protection by curbing what big banks and the like can do will run into resistance from a financial sector whose lobbying clout is strong.

Notably in the US, that power derives primarily from its deep pockets.

Between 1998 and 2008, Wall Street investment banks, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates paid an estimated $1.7bn in political contributions and spent a further $3.4bn on lobbyists. The figure comes from a report by Essential Information and The Consumer Education Foundation, two non-profit organisations. Their research shows that in 2007 the financial sector employed nearly 3,000 lobbyists, or five for each member of Congress, to influence policymaking.

Such purchasing of political influence is widely believed to have helped secure for Wall Street the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited the merger of commercial and investment banks, and the blocking by Bill Clinton’s administration of a Commodity Futures Trading Commission initiative to regulate financial derivatives.

“Over the past 30 years, this sector has benefited from a process of ‘cultural capture’, through which regulators, politicians and independent analysts became convinced this sector had great and stabilising technical expertise,” says Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “Big banks are, amazingly, still presumed by officials to have the expertise necessary to manage their own risks, to prevent systematic failure and to guide public policy.”

In a separate commentary elsewhere in the paper, Plender returns to the "culture of deference" theme: "Even today, many policymakers in the (Anglo-Saxon) countries continue to hold bankers in awe, in spite of the damage wrought by the financial crisis."

Finally, FT associate editor and chief economics commentator Martin Wolf said he doubts "the financial system now emerging from the crisis is safer, or better at servicing the public's needs."

As for "how to remedy this dire situation," Wolf concludes: "The most important point is that where we are now is intolerable. Today’s concentrations of state-insured private wealth and power must surely go. At present, the official sector believes tighter regulation, particularly higher capital requirements, can contain these risks. But this is likely to fail...the financial system is so inherently fragile that radical reform cannot be pronounced dead."

If you thought health-care reform was an uphill battle, try crossing swords with these guys. Big banks and their well-healed lobbyists will fight tooth and nail to restore "business as usual" and sky-high profits.

What, then, can progessives do to neutralize the "culture of deference in Washington" and give "radical reform" a fighting chance? Here is a three-point plan that combines advocacy and fun.

1) Run, don't walk, to see Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story," which opens nationwide tomorrow
2) Jam congressional in-boxes with email letters in support of a financial-transaction tax (see following post)
3) Organize anti-bailout tailgate parties across the country demanding citizen "death panels" for too-big-to-fail banks

If you have any more ideas, we'd love to hear them. And if you think economic justice is something worth fighting for, feel free to join us in spreading the word throughout the blogosphere.

If there is one thing that unites those on the right and the left who are speaking out against the direction the country is headed, it is their mutual disgust at the government’s hugely expensive bailout of the financial industry. Nothing provokes anger and distrust among people of both political persuasions than seeing the culprits behind the biggest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression become even more powerful compliments of "we the taxpayer" – especially when bonus payments on Wall Street now go hand in glove with massive layoffs on Main Street.

Despite the crisis, the remaining financial market participants have benefitted greatly from government bailouts. Thanks to capital injections, guarantees, treasury lending and asset purchases, liquidity provision and other central bank support the financial sector is cleaning up – and with fewer competitors.

Two years after the start of the crisis, some $18 trillion of taxpayer money has gone mostly to prop up banks while ordinary Americans are facing record home foreclosures, job losses and credit card delinquencies. This as industry lobbyists are working overtime in Washington to thwart even the limited, piecemeal reforms that Congress and the administration are developing in a half-hearted attempt to level the playing field.

It is clear that the financial industry’s blackmail has taken a toll across ideological lines. Indeed, conservative columnist David Brooks in an op-ed piece in The New York Times argues that “Red and Blue America” must move beyond “the obsolete culture war” and unite in “a movement to restore economic values.”

The goal of the movement, according to Brooks, “will be to make the U.S. again a producer economy, not a consumer economy. It will champion a return to financial self-restraint, large and small.”

Brooks frames the issue in terms of personal responsibility, calling on both sides to join together to reverse the “slide in economic morality.” In doing so, he emphasizes the movement “will have to take on what you might call the lobbyist ethos — the righteous conviction held by (special interests) that their groups are entitled to every possible appropriation, regardless of the larger public cost.” Furthermore, he says all options should be on the table. "A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes and spending cuts that are now deemed politically impossible."

We agree that K-Street should be ground zero in the effort to restore fairness to our economic system. We also concur there should be no sacred cows. Towards this end, the movement’s first order of business should be to demand that the financial sector pull their weight in the crisis. The best mechanism to ensure their compliance would be a financial-transaction tax.

Such a fee on all trades of financial products, also known as a "Tobin Tax," is gaining advocates in world financial markets, most notably the UK and Germany. One proposal calls for a .05 percent tax to be levied across the G20 countries, which could yield $690 billion a year to finance the costs of the crisis.

The Wall Street bailout was an indirect assault on US taxpayers to cover the cost of the financial-sector's malfeasance. Citizens across the political spectrum are outraged, rightly so, that the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve acted as middlemen in a brazen scheme to transfer wealth from the working class to the rich.

The time has come for progressives and Tea Party demonstrators alike to put aide their differences over so-called "wedge issues" and unite behind a mutually beneficial campaign of economic justice. For without new forms of fiscal burden-sharing, those responsible for the crisis will continue not to pay their share - and the dispossessed will lose their faith in the democratic process.

But as Chris Hedges, writing on Truthdig, points out: their run has ended.

Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy. They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources even as, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 1.02 billion people on the planet struggle with hunger...

The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save the criminal class on Wall Street and the international speculators of the kind who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.

Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is among the protesters from around the world in Pittsburgh, told Hedges the leaders of the G-20 (the managerial representatives of the power elite) are scrambling to protect "their power and money after everything that has gone wrong."

"The draconian security measures," including the deployment of "a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq" that have been "put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh" are a response to "the fear gripping the centers of power," says Hedges of the steps being taken to subvert the protests.

The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city’s police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.

Despite such obstacles, Hedges implores the left to "move quickly" for "no one will save us now but ourselves."

Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do—stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price.

Ralph Nader, the tireless consumer advocate/corporate critic/author and presidential candidate suggests another way to break the grip of the power elite. In his first work of fiction, "only the super-rich can save us!", he envisions a group of enlightened "megamillionaires and billionaires" answering the call of Warren Buffet, the world's richest man, to use their influence and resources to rescue the planet and its inhabitants from the plunder of the plutocracy.

Nader's utopian fantasy opens in a luxurious mountain resort overlooking "the lush green island of Maui and the far Pacific Ocean." It is the year 2006 and we see Buffett addressing his guests—who include such real-life personages as Ted Turner (the "Mouth of the South"), media mogul Barry Diller, Yoko Ono, hedge fund guru George Soros, Paul Newman, Bill Cosby and others—for the first time.

My friends, what brings us here is a common foreboding—a closing circle of doom. The world is not doing very well. It is spinning out of control...Many solutions have been proposed, yet even at the basic level of abolishing massive poverty and advancing public health, they are applied too slowly and haphazardly to achieve any real human betterment...For my own part, I must tell you that I am not the person I was a year ago. I've been thinking hard about what I want to do with my remaining years, with my capital, credibility and hopes for coming generations...I want to go out with having advanced and implemented a grand design, and I want to do it now with the best talent available. I suspect that similar feelings are stirring in your minds and souls as well, and that's why I put out the call to you.

Nader, speaking about his new book the other day on DemocracyNow!, said: "Our imaginations have been stifled by the grim reality of concentrated corporate power.

"And that's why I really wrote this book of fiction, because we are not imagining...what is necessary by way of money, organizers in the field, strategy, smarts, determination to break this massive corporate-state gridlock that's put our country into paralysis.

"So we have to break through, and the only way we can break through is the majesty of our mind generating a higher level of imaginative 'what if.' What if we have this kind of resource or these kinds of film(s)...or these kinds of mass media?"

With the promise of globalization exposed as a sham and a farce, Hedges and Nader definitely are on to something. One calls for direct action before it is too late against a rogue ideology that is fracturing the country, the other challenges us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery in order to develop creative solutions to the seemingly insurmountable problems facing mankind in the 21st century.

Good ideas, both...But if all else fails, there's always the Mick Jagger method.