The Truth Is Out There

Posts tagged ‘economics’

Social Justice, Destruction of Property Rights, and Government Tyranny (Part One)


You are a poor minority living in a government housing project called “Affordable.” It’s all paid for by the tax dollars of mostly middle-income Americans. Included are still more government programs that are providing monthly checks and coupons to supply food, free healthcare, free education, and let’s also throw in free cell phones.

Does that not make us a generous nation? Are not the poor well cared for and satisfied? Aren’t the taxpayers proud of their contribution to the common good? The answer to every one of these questions is NO!
 

First, consider these facts about that stipend income from the welfare check. Originally, it was called “assistance” and the purpose was to help out when the paycheck wasn’t quite covering needs during difficult times. Over time the system changed from “assistance” to “Government Benefit.” Now it’s an entire system of total dependence. While promises to help provide job training and even some actual jobs exist, few actually provide enough income or security to allow recipients to leave the program. In addition, if a recipient even tries to put some of that money away in savings, as an attempt to provide for an emergency, it is confiscated and possibly the welfare check stops all together. It’s no longer “assistance” during hard times. Now it’s control.
 

Then there is that public housing situation. Here’s what it’s like to actually live in those government projects. In many cities the neighborhoods are drastically rundown in disrepair as lights, air conditioning, and appliances fail to work. The roof leaks, windows are broken, and the plumbing backs up. Trash around the grounds is in ever-growing piles, and is rarely, if ever cleaned and hauled away. Don’t even think about any kind of yard work to create a place for the children to play. Worse, the residents live in fear of gang elements like MS-13 that have taken over the neighborhoods to rule as their territory. Pimps, pedophiles, and drug dealers prey on the children. And no matter how many times residents may ask for repairs, it never happens.
 

Why are the conditions so bad in this government-controlled housing? Government is a monopoly that has no incentive to be efficient. The taxpayers are forced to pay and the money rolls in so the politicians can puff out their chests over how generous THEY are in helping the less fortunate. Meanwhile, the management of these properties is overseen by government bureaucrats with no personal stake in the projects. Their paychecks keep rolling in, no matter what happens to the properties they manage.
 

In such an atmosphere, the inherent hopelessness leaves little room for making future goals for their lives. There is rarely a way out once the system has a hold on you. By herding minorities and low-income families like cattle into these tenements, the government is committing them to a future worse than poverty. They have lost their rights, their choices, and their ability to excel through self-determination and personal growth.
 

Yet, proponents of government’s fair housing want you to think that those favoring the programs are the compassionate ones, helping minorities to survive in an oppressive capitalist world of the rich. Essentially fear is the common tactic used to keep minorities under government control. Anyone who opposes the system and promotes sound economics and a system of equal opportunity, is accused of heartlessness and racism, determined to pull the plug on the welfare lifeline.
 

To promote the fear and division, politicians, the news media, and the public education system continually drive home the message that our nation’s founders created an oppressive society in which Whites get all the goodies and minorities are deliberately oppressed. In addition, goes their propaganda, the free enterprise system is designed to take the money from the poor and put it in the rich man’s pocket. And so, the result is strife, jealousy, and hatred between the races. Meanwhile, the middle class actually funds most of it from their weekly paychecks, purchases, and property taxes.
 

The true purpose is to move forward to impose the agenda now powered by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and others driving to change our culture and system of representative government toward their goal of global governance.
 

This, then, is the determined mission of today’s radical Leftist movement now in control of the Democrat Party They are driving to be seen as the saviors of the oppressed. Government oversight, redistribution of wealth, and social justice are the chosen tools to enforce this false equality. Yet, the only true result has been the massive growth of poverty.
 

Now these forces are moving to expand their tactics by pushing the failed government housing model into your neighborhood. The new drive is to eliminate single-family home zoning protection. Our new controllers insist that such policy is really designed as a means for wealthy homeowners to “self-segregate” themselves from those they don’t want living in their neighborhoods. Specifically, they charge that private property ownership is racist. To establish true “FREEDOM” in America, they tell us we need to open these “white privilege neighborhoods” to allow federal fair housing programs, including high rise government rental units in every neighborhood. They claim single family home neighborhoods contribute to a growing housing shortage. So goes their argument: “we could put ten families in the area where only one now lives in those neighborhoods. It’s only fair!”
 

Baltimore, Maryland became one of the first cities to feel such pressure and threats as the NAACP sued Baltimore over alleged housing segregation. The NAACP argument was that Section 8 subsidized housing programs “bunch people together, and that it only fuels more crime and other problems.” Not fair! The solution, says the NAACP, is to “integrate the poor among wealthier families.” Outrageous as it sounds, such social justice mongers actually claim this will help increase the income opportunities for the poor when they begin to live in those affluent neighborhoods.
 

The pressure from these groups, has resulted in Baltimore being forced to agree to spend $30 million of tax-payer dollars over the next ten years to build 1,000 low-income homes in affluent neighborhoods.
 

The result will be a destruction of property values and the loss of equity for the homeowners. In short, destruction of earned wealth leading to destruction of the middle class creating even more poor. It’s a growth product. Meanwhile, massively powerful corporations like Blackrock will move into the neighborhoods and buy that property at a massively reduced cost. They will then build the apartments and public housing, earning a fortune.
 

In Portland, Oregon, the infamous “poster child” of federal Smart Growth development policies, the city council unanimously approved a new tax to raise $12 million per year to pay for “affordable housing.”
 

Said Portland Commissioner Dan Saltsman, “The lack of affordable housing is the greatest crisis facing our city right now.” Perhaps he should take a long look at the twenty-year Smart Growth history of Portland in which massive amounts of land was locked away to limit the “sprawl” of the city. This led to land shortages, which led to bans on single-family homes, which led to the need for massive high-rise apartment buildings, all of which led to higher costs and shortages of homes. Now, Portland has a “crisis “over a shortage of “affordable” housing. Their solution is another tax on construction, driving up housing costs even more.
 

These same attacks on private property are growing across the nation. Landlords of privately-owned apartments are being labeled the new boogey men of our day. They now must deal with more taxes, rules, regulations, and even a ban on their ability to determine if potential renters can afford to live in the building. Such policy is the destruction of private property rights, targeting an entire industry.
 

Of course, the government argues that denying people who can’t afford to pay the rent to live in your property is “discrimination by right-wing capitalism.” Anyone with a small amount of rational thought would logically ask how the landlord could survive and provide his property for housing if the tenant can’t pay? The only result will be fewer landlords and fewer choices for housing. Housing shortage, indeed!
 

All of these policies, instituted in the name of social justice and redistribution of wealth, will very quickly lead to one final solution. Private homes, privately owned rental properties, and the individual owner’s ability to prosper, will disappear. That means the rule of law is dismissed in favor of “fairness.” Social Justice is purely based on redistribution of wealth. Your wealth. That’s money you worked for, saved, invested, and protected for YOUR needs; YOUR dreams; YOUR future.
 

Eventually – and very soon – the only source of housing will be from government. Take a good look at the destroyed neighborhoods now under government control and see your future. Property rights and personal ownership are equal opportunities for everyone to build wealth and freedom. It’s how the United States quickly became so prosperous in its beginning.
 

Our founding fathers fully understood that private property ownership was the vital key to freedom. They also understood that local government representation is the key to protecting liberty against a tyrannical central government that has no real stake in the lives of the citizens. Central government destroys personal choice, incentive, and the wealth created from it. It’s the reason we are now plummeting into poverty.
 

As our nation now moves toward the celebration of our 250th birthday, to save our Republic it’s urgent that American citizens unite to demand an answer from our locally elected representatives, who do you represent – the citizens who elected them or powerful special interests armed with a destructive agenda?

The Static Fallacy Of The CBO And The Virtue Of Growth


Screenshot via X [Credit: @amuse]

The Federal Reserve‘s data repository, FRED, presents one of the most quietly subversive truths in modern economics. Across administrations, tax regimes, and political ideologies, federal tax receipts have hovered around an average of 17.5% of GDP. This single metric, consistent across time and policy, should provoke a complete reconsideration of fiscal strategy. If no matter how high or low tax rates go, the government captures roughly 17.5% of the economy, then the only sane objective is to grow the economy. This is not ideology, it is arithmetic.

And yet, the progressive left persists in chasing higher tax rates, even as history and hard data render the strategy self-defeating. Why? Because for the modern progressive, revenue is not the end. It is the excuse. The aim is not to feed the treasury, but to reshape society. That makes tax policy less a tool of statecraft than a weapon of social reengineering.

This is not speculation, it is doctrine. Consider the words of Denis Healey, the British Labour Chancellor, who once promised to tax the rich “until the pips squeak.” The goal was not productivity or revenue, it was punishment. Redistribution as retribution. What mattered was not how much government could collect but how much it could confiscate from those it resented. The modern American progressive inherits this moral absolutism: high taxes are right, low taxes are wrong, and results be damned.

Yet the results do matter, especially when judged by the very standard progressives claim to uphold: the public good. Empirical evidence from FRED undermines their moralizing. The US government, regardless of tax rate, collects about 17.5% of GDP. If rates go up and GDP slows, the government collects less. If rates go down and GDP grows, it collects more. In real terms, the size of the pie matters more than the size of the slice.

This is the heart of supply-side logic. It is also the lesson ignored by static modeling agencies like the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO consistently underestimates the growth impact of tax and regulatory reforms. When Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed, the CBO predicted modest effects. Instead, GDP growth surged to 2.9% in 2018, well above forecast. Capital investment jumped, business confidence soared, and tax receipts increased. It wasn’t magic. It was motion.

The same fallacy mars the CBO’s score of Trump’s latest initiative, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Projecting a paltry 1.7% long-term growth rate, the CBO forecasts a $3.8 trillion increase in debt. But a growth rate of just 2.2% cuts that shortfall by more than a trillion. A 2.7% growth rate nearly wipes it out. Add in the revenue from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, conservatively estimated at $2.3 to $3.3 trillion over a decade, and the fiscal picture flips from deficit to surplus. The math is not fuzzy, it is just inconvenient for the central planners.

Why does the CBO get it wrong? Because its models assume a static world, where tax cuts are giveaways and regulation is costless. This is Keynesian nostalgia dressed in academic robes. It denies incentives, discounts dynamism, and assumes the private sector merely reacts rather than innovates. That intellectual blindness is no accident. Most CBO directors have never built a business or managed payroll; instead, they are drawn from the ivy-covered halls of Harvard and Princeton, trained in theory but untethered from enterprise. Trump’s economic team does not share these illusions. Neither should the American people.

The Trump agenda focuses on unleashing growth: simplifying permitting for nuclear energy and pipelines, accelerating drug approvals, expanding domestic mining and drilling, and building AI infrastructure without bureaucratic drag. Each policy removes a bottleneck, and in doing so, expands the tax base. Yet the CBO ignores all of this. It includes no measure for the acceleration of permitting, no accounting for regulatory relief across entire industries, no projection of the increased oil and gas exploration, production, or refining, and no scoring for the trillions in foreign direct investment secured by Trump. Why not? Because it cannot model the real-world effects of policies it ideologically opposes. If FRED is right, and it is, then unleashing GDP is the only serious strategy. Everything else is political theater.

This is where the progressive project reveals its true priorities. It is not simply wrong about tax policy. It is hostile to economic growth. Because growth reduces dependency, and dependency is their currency of power. A larger GDP gives people more autonomy. That undermines the case for state intervention. Progressives, despite their rhetoric, do not trust people to live freely and prosper. They trust themselves to allocate resources, distribute privileges, and engineer outcomes. Higher taxes are the toll they place on that liberty.

Redistribution is also their electoral strategy. By taxing a demonized few, they buy votes from a politicized many. Student loan forgiveness, rent subsidies, welfare expansions, these are not programs, they are payoffs. That the math does not work is irrelevant. What matters is that the bill arrives after the election.

Even worse, high taxes empower the permanent bureaucracy. A complex tax code justifies an army of IRS agents, compliance officers, and lobbyists. These are not mechanisms for revenue, they are instruments of control. Simpler, lower taxes threaten their sinecures. They resist simplification not out of fiscal concern, but institutional self-preservation. Meanwhile, only a minority of Americans actually pay federal income taxes at all, further concentrating the burden on a shrinking pool of producers. This creates an upside-down incentive structure, where most citizens vote for benefits paid by others, while the tax code grows ever more opaque to sustain the illusion of fairness.

This leads to an uncomfortable truth. The tax code is not designed to raise money efficiently. It is designed to raise influence. Every deduction, exemption, and bracket is a node of political leverage. Progressives exploit this to reward allies and punish dissenters. Conservatives should dismantle it with the same clarity and resolve that Trump brings to regulation.

Growth, then, is not just an economic imperative. It is a moral one. A growing economy elevates the working class, funds national defense, and underwrites the social safety net. It does all this without coercion. It also reaffirms the central conservative principle that liberty, not redistribution, is the path to prosperity.

Trump’s approach, often derided as simplistic, is in fact the most sophisticated policy vision in Washington. It recognizes the limitations of static models, the distortions of bureaucratic incentives, and the moral hazards of dependency. It wagers, correctly, that the American people are not liabilities to be managed but assets to be unleashed.

The 17.5% rule is not just a quirk of FRED’s database. It is a mirror reflecting the futility of progressive fiscal policy. If the government only ever captures a fixed share of GDP, then policies must aim at increasing GDP. This is the only strategy consistent with both sound economics and limited government. Anything else is vanity or vendetta.

CHANGE THE DEBATE AND TAKE BACK LIBERTY LOCALLY


Most Americans tend to think of private property simply as a home – the place where the family resides, stores their belongings, and finds shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. Most people don’t give property ownership much more thought than that.
 

There was a time when property ownership was considered to be much more. Property, and the ability to own and control it, was life itself. 
 

John Adams said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” 
 

The great economist John Locke, whose writings and ideas had a major influence on the nation’s founders, believed that “life and liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure.”
 

Locke warned that human civilization would be reduced to the level of a pack of wolves and cease to exist because lack of control over your own actions caused fear and insecurity. Private property ownership, Locke argued, brought stability and wealth to individuals, leading to a prosperous society of man. That’s because legal ownership of property is the key to productive development. 
 

Private property ownership is the reason the United States became the wealthiest nation on earth almost overnight. Free individuals, using their own land to create commerce and build personal wealth through the equity of their property, are the root of American success. Sixty percent of early American businesses were financed through the equity of property ownership. And sixty percent of American jobs were created through those successful businesses. That’s how a free-market economy is built. Private property ownership is the source of personal individual wealth for the average American.
 

John Locke advocated that if property rights did not exist, then the incentive for an industrious person to develop and improve property would be destroyed; that the industrious person would be deprived of the fruits of his labor; that marauding bands would confiscate, by force, the goods produced by others; and that mankind would be compelled to remain on a bare-subsistence level of hand-to-mouth survival because the accumulation of anything of value would invite attack.
 

One must only look to the example of the former Soviet Union to see clearly what happens to society when an outlaw government exercises brute force to take control of private property. Under that tyrannical government, each of Locke’s predictions came true. Throughout its history, the Soviet government excused its every action under the banner of equality for all. There were no property rights, no freedom of enterprise, and no protections for individual actions. Instead, the Soviet government enforced redistribution of wealth schemes, confiscating homes from the rich and middle class. Shelves were bare, freedom of choice was non-existent, and personal misery ruled the day.
 

The same basic redistribution schemes of the Soviets were later used by Zimbabwe’s former dictator, Robert Mugabe, to destroy that agriculturally rich African nation. Mugabe confiscated farmland owned by white farmers and gave it to friends of his corrupt government – most of whom had never even seen a farm. The result was economic disaster, widespread poverty, and hunger in a land that had once fed the continent. The nation of South Africa is now following in the murderous footsteps of Robert Mugabe as it attacks white farmers, taking their property and again putting it in the hands of those who know nothing about running a farm.
 

Clearly, John Locke’s warnings have been vindicated. Private property ownership is much more than a house. It is the root of a prosperous, healthy, human society based on the individual’s freedom to live a life of his own, gaining from the fruits of his own labor. Take that option away, and people will always react the same way. They stop producing.
 

THE LOST DEFINITION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS
 

In the 1990s, an all-out assault on property rights was well underway, led by a radical environmental movement, resulting in massive federal land grabs in the name of conservation. As one can imagine, courts across the nation were flooded with cases of people attempting to defend their property rights from government takings. 
 

In the state of Washington, one of the major targets for such programs, the state Supreme Court realized it didn’t have an adequate definition of property rights to use in considering such cases. That’s when State Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders wrote a “Fifth Amendment Treatise”, which included the following definition of property rights:
 

Property in a thing consists not merely in its ownership and possession, but in the unrestricted right of use, enjoyment, and disposal. Anything which destroys any of the elements of property, to that extent, destroys the property itself. The substantial value of property lies in its use. If the right of use be denied, the value of the property is annihilated, and ownership is rendered a barren right.”
 

“Use” of the land is the key. Using the land in a productive way that is beneficial to the owner is what gives the land value. According to Justice Sanders, paying the taxes and mortgage while some undefined government entity can rule and regulate how the property is used, is a “barren right” that annihilates its value.
 

When you purchase property, how much of the land do you own? What is the depth of the soil? Do you own the water on the land? Do you own the air above it? As property rights expert Dr. Timothy Ball wrote, “All these questions speak to political issues that transcend private, regional, and national boundaries. Nationally and internationally, lack of this knowledge is being exploited by those who seek control…”
 

HOW TO FIGHT BACK?
 

For several decades, the radical Left has been dedicated in its efforts to organize at every level of government while advocates of limited government failed to do the required “dirty work” of local organization and activism to protect our freedoms. We gave the Left a pretty clear playing field to organize and seize control, and now we are suffering under the result.
 

For the dedicated Left, no position is too small. No appointed board is ignored. When was the last time local Conservative activists cared about positions like City Attorney? Yet these are the very officials who enforced the COVID-19 lockdown policies. Local government is now infested with Planners, NGOs, and federal agencies dictating policies. And the only reason they have power and influence now is because the Left fought to elect representatives who then gave it to them.
 

Today, too many elected officials, even the honest ones, fail to understand the roots and goals of the “Sustainable” policies they are enforcing. In their ignorance they respond to critics, saying, “well, that’s just the way it’s done.” As they surrender their elective powers to appointed boards, do they even think of asking themselves, “Who do they actually represent – the voters or the NGOs and appointed boards?”
 

The threat of man-made climate change is the center of the Deep State’s hold on power. That’s the unrelenting fear tactic that claims the earth will become uninhabitable in ten years unless massive government power controls every human action. Power for the state!
 

Yet there is ample scientific proof that such claims about man’s effect on the environment are basically non-existent. However, many leaders of the freedom movement wrongly assume that all we need to do to counter the misinformation from the climate alarmists is to simply write a scholarly paper disproving it and set the record straight. It doesn’t work because few will understand it, fewer still will ever attempt to read it. In short, we badly overestimate the knowledge, intelligence and attention span of the average citizen and government official whom we are trying to convince. Emotions tend to decide debates rather than facts.
 

The first step in fighting back is to stop depending on one person, one icon, one president to lead us forward. We must take responsibility ourselves to ensure that the government does not move forward unattended. We need to be directly involved at every level, especially on the local level.
 

Change the debate to attack anti-freedom policies and expose non-governmental (NGO) carpetbaggers hiding in the shadows dictating policy. You can change the debate by making private property protection the key to your local fight. Sustainable policy cannot be enforced if private property is protected. Challenge local elected officials to stand with you in protection of private property. If they refuse – expose them. Force elected officials to be personally responsible for their actions.
 

Picture how different our nation would be if we dug in to elect a majority of governors across the nation who understood and operated under the Tenth Amendment, which acknowledges the States’ power to stand against Federal overreach. What if you had a county commission that refused to participate in non-elected regional government? How would your life change if your city council was made up of individuals who guided your community under the three pillars of freedom, including protection of private property, encouragement and support for local businesses, and the lifting of rules and regulations that stifled personal choices in your individual life? How do we make all of that a reality? 
 

Set a goal to turn your local community into a Freedom Pod. Simply focus on making these goals a reality in your community and if successful, as prosperity spreads, the idea will certainly spread to a neighboring community and then to the next. The challenge is to create a successful blueprint and a cadre of dedicated elected representatives that will begin to move from the local to the state level of government. 
 

That will set the stage for effecting a federal government as conceived by our forefathers. The result will be the growth of Freedom Pods across the nation. Here is the end game for the forces of freedom. No matter who is president, we must take control of our cities, counties, state legislatures, and governors. Only then can we stand up to the potential tyranny from Washington, DC. To live your life as YOU choose, start right there in your community – build that Freedom Pod. Act Local and Stop Global!
 

How do you do that? The American Policy Center (APC) is now working with organizations nationwide to train and motivate local residents to take action in their own communities to push back and restore American freedom. APC has created a Local Activists Handbook and a Tool Kit with all the details you need to start organizing, training, and improving communications between activists and organizations, to share tactics, ideas, and successes. Learn more at www.americanpolicy.org.

The “Financial Coup” That Seized America


In the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis, former chief economist of the IMF Simon Johnson warned that the same dysfunctional policies he saw in his basket case banana republics had taken hold in the United States.

Johnson warned that if America didn’t act fast, we would plunge into a “Quiet Coup” as the American financial system effectively captures the government, bailing itself out until we run out of money.
Well, we didn’t act fast. In fact, we got worse.

And here we are.

Our Bankrupt Financial System

In recent videos I’ve talked about the trillion of distress in the financial system, the common thread being that you, the taxpayer, will be bailing them all out — we saw this in the 2023 bank bailouts, pre-paid in the dark.

Of course, given our $35 trillion in national debt we can’t afford it. But pay it we will, driving that 35 trillion to, according to the CBO, 50 trillion plus.

At some point, it gets too big to bail out. Meaning either hard default — they stop paying interest. Or the more likely soft default — they let inflation rip, melting away the national debt along with our life savings. And between here and there is a wholesale fleecing of the middle class and the working class who relies on them for a job.

The Ignored Warning

So, first, the ignored warning by Simon Johnson. I’m no fan of the IMF — their role is essentially feeding their client dictators fresh drugs at massive taxpayer expense. But one thing the IMF does know is dysfunctional governments.

In his warning, Johnson detailed the typical pattern when countries collapse — when they come in desperation to the IMF.

First, a small group of powerful elites takes over policy. This is typically financial elite, or large companies when the country has them.

Because these elites know they’ll be bailed out, they take excessive risks in good times. An iron law of finance is that risk pays reward. Meaning if you know you’re going to get bailed out, you’d be a moron not to take on too much risk.

If every hand at the poker game is all-in, inevitably you lose. You pass your losses to the taxpayer, and start over with fresh chips, courtesy of the suckers.

The Quiet Coup

Johnson lays out his numbers: from 1973 to 1985, America’s financial sector never earned more than 16% of domestic corporate product. But by the early 2000s, it was earning 41%.

It turned a chunk of these profits into lobbying, repealing Depression-era prudential regulations separating banking and investment banking. In other words, freeing banks to gamble with taxpayer-guaranteed funds.

Then it lobbied to raise leverage — meaning how much the financial sector could borrow. So it could make large gambles with a small amount of money — again, all taxpayer guaranteed.
The end result was the 2008 crisis, where banks made trillions in risky loans to people with no income, no assets, and no credit.

The leverage meant they had bet the farm and then some — keeping all the profits. Then when it turned south, they sicced lobbyists on Washington to line up bailouts, using the real economy as a hostage to wring out yet more lobbyist favors.

The Washington-Wall Street Racket

In return, they gave politicians and their staff plum positions or even outright bribes.
Ben Bernanke got $250,000 for a single speech at a financial conference.

Janet Yellen was paid *$7 million in speaking fees by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks — hedge fund Citadel paid Yellen $292,500 for a single speech.

London-based Standard Chartered paid $270,000 for one speech — interesting for a foreign bank when we can only imagine what favors were done in return.

Johnson sums it up: the American financial system is “desperately ill,” kept alive only by an endless series of bailouts, like the ones that headed off bank failures last year.

He says the only solution is forced recognition of bank losses — which would bankrupt them — then selling them to new management that will not have access to bailouts.

What’s Next

Given their lobbying power, the odds of breaking up America’s megabanks are slim to none.
Meaning unless Washington reins in the banks, we’re in store for more existential financial crises, more bailouts and national debt, more running out the clock to financial catastrophe.

We missed our chance in 2008, and in all likelihood, it will take an even bigger crisis before politicians turn on their lobbyists and the financial coup that has seized our republic.