It boils down to who decides. Take the quarrel about the supplemental. My representative Himes ran as an anti-war candidate, but he’s going for the supplemental. I’m not sure why, but I assume he takes the generals at their word-they are the experts after all, and then there’s pressure from the White House saying they will hurt his reelection chances. If you want to abdicate decision making, and most people do, following a leader makes sense. There’s only two possibilities-either we follow the leader or we do what we think best. If we want the latter, we need to get organized.

Something like that has to take place today. As far as political reform is concerned, I think the answer has to lie somewhere in the reform of Congress and our political institutions and how those institutions manage money especially in how they get themselves elected and re-elected. It’s all well and good for the Supreme Court and defenders of our bankrupt political system to intone that money is a form of free speech but then money is also a form of property, a contract, it is a means of storing wealth, etc. Under the Constitution, Congress is given the money to coin money which also means to print it. This financial crisis is about political mismanagement of money in the sense of allowing financial institutions to buy people to govern the country in their interests and then failing at it. Even free speech may be regulated when there are compelling circumstances requiring protection of the public weal. At some point, if there is to be an honest accounting of this, the funny money system which has brought these things to pass has to be replaced with something that does not allow these atrocities to occur.

Here’s how I would begin. I’d create a local (town) web site that could be copied for every town. That site puts the town’s check book on line, so citizens see where every public dollar goes. My town will provide the information on an Excel spread sheet, but I have no idea what to do with it. This might be of sufficient interest to get citizens to vist. The site could compare per pupil costs, police and fire costs with similar communities, and other matters of local interest. In my state any town that objects would, I believe, violate the Freedom of Information Act. We don’t know for sure until the judges weigh in on it.

Assuming you have this sort of network, how do you get people talking about say single payer health care? You can create a wikipedia kind of page with people listing links and accumulating all the information on single payer health care they can muster-Then, and here’s the hard part, get people to demonstrate their will to Washington. Maybe pick a day when no one buys gasoline or goes to a movie. If the demonstration is successful, it gives us confidence. Perhaps we can get an idea of the number of potential participants using the vote mechanism on this blog. If it fails, that’s another matter. I have no idea how to get something like this, or something similar, started, but I’d like a dialogue. The internet is an immense tool which we don’t use for anything other than conversation.

We need an alternative to the present political system.

OK. What did you have in mind?

It is also interesting that the bailouts were aimed at lenders rather than borrowers. If the bailouts went to borrowers, they pay off their toxic loans which are no longer toxic. We wouldn’t have to worry about marking to market. Consumers whose homes are now unencumbered use what had been their mortgage payment (or part of it) to buy stuff.

That solution was not considered although the costs are identical, because the powers that be wanted the debt to remain rather than be paid off.

It should also be clear that expecting the guys who made the mess to clean it up is not realistic. We need an alternative to the present political system. It’s time we started talking about it.

My immediate thought was hedge funds.

Them too.

They’re one of the main reasons we’re slapping $3 a gallon again at the pump, despite demand for oil being at 19 year lows.