A report by the New America Foundation details the systematic undermining of the financial aid system by colleges and universities who are using financial aid to attract wealthy students rather than open doors for poorer ones, forcing poorer students to either not attend or take on high debt burdens.

The American Dream leads most Americans to believe they are entitled to prosperity and success. Some feel they are more entitled to that prosperity and success than others. Some also are more willing to toil for that prosperity and success. If one is handed down prosperity and success, there is an even greater weight to hold up on one’s shoulders, since failure can mean losing everything a family has built from years of hard work and sacrifice.

The failure of the Treasury Department under Tim Geithner to rein in bonuses for companies bailed out by taxpayers has been an issue since TARP began.

On Sunday I went down to Occupy LA with world traveler and gentleman of leisure, author Dr. Paul Koudounaris, whose book Empire of Death will be featured on Firedoglake’s Book Salon October 30, and we found ourselves in the midst of an Occupy LA March. So we traipsed along, picking up bottled water from a volunteer.

Reckless Endangerment describes the players that helped create the housing bubble and bust that were at the heart of the financial crisis. Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner focus on how regulators and other officials were complicit by promoting liberalized housing finance as a way to increase homeownership. Their account chronicles how a naïve vision of the American Dream, that of homeownership as the foundation of upward mobility and stable communities, turned into a nightmare in the hands of a growth driven and increasingly predatory mortgage complex.

If you haven’t been on facebook, twitter, or following the news, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced yesterday that he would be introducing the DREAM Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos tweeted last week that Reid wanted to move the DREAM Act before November. Now we know how Reid wants to move it. The DREAM Act could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday of next week.

The unemployment figures were so bad Friday—half a million U.S. jobs lost in one month—some in the corporate media actually sounded a bit alarmed. Still, the overriding impulse of mainstream journalists is to look on the bright side.

Like NPR for instance, which offers a handy chart showing how unemployment was worse in the early 1980s than it is now.

They sold their homes. They said goodbye to their families. After paying recruiters $20,000 for visas to take part in this nation’s H-2B guest worker program, they traveled from India to Pascagoula, Miss. There, the Indian welders and pipe fitters were promised good jobs at the Signal International shipyard and the chance to bring their families here.

In Lafayette Park, just in front of the White House, more than 70 guest workers rallied in the cold rain to demand fundamental changes in the nation’s guest worker program, which President Bush is trying to expand. They also want a congressional investigation of their former employer, Signal International, a marine construction company they say held them in modern-day forced labor in its Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard.

The workers, who traveled to Washington, D.C., carried signs stating: “I Am A Man.”