5/12/2011 PERMALINK
Two recent events elevate America's politicos and regulators to world class 'banana republic' corruption levels. Some months ago all 50 state attorney generals jointly announced that they were shocked, shocked to find that the Federal government's regulators were doing nothing to punish all the mortgage processing crooks that helped the nation's largest banks perpetrate the biggest fraud in human history.

This massive fraud was targeted directly at the largest asset of most American families, their equity in their home. So far, $6.5 trillion in household net worth has been stolen or destroyed as a result of the housing crash that directly resulted from this massive conspiracy of fraud.

This is far more damage done to America than Osama Bin Laden could have accomplished had he lived a thousand more years, rather than being executed without trial for his crimes.

But the 50 state AG's promised to make things right, even if the banksters have Federal regulators and Congressmen too much in their pocket for them to do anything about this massive fraud. Those who had destroyed so much of the wealth of so many fine American families would finally be brought to account for the many blatant violations of law that are being uncovered daily by the state AG's. A $20 billion penalty would be accessed from the banksters that orchestrated this massive fleecing of America's families and those most culpable would be jailed, promised the 50 AG's.

But soon it all began to go the way of Federal law enforcement.

The 50 attorney generals, the men most directly responsible for enforcing the laws of our land, decided to reduce the penalty to a pittance, not $20 billion as first claimed, but chump change for the banksters a mere $5 billion dollars. And rather than jail the guilty, they promised as part of a proposed settlement to guarantee the banksters that no one will be prosecuted individually for their role in the biggest fraud scheme in all of human history.

Why the complete turnaround? What did the 50 attorney generals get in return for backing off?

You guessed it, campaign contributions, cushy jobs for their kin folks and all the other favors from the banksters that Federal politicos and regulators have long enjoyed are now being showered on state attorney generals. Even before the bankers could even get their Washington lobbyists on the road to the state capitals to offer, the attorney generals were contacting them asking for favors similar to those showered on the Feds.

And simultaneous with this massive sell out of the American public by those entrusted to enforce our laws, the blatantness of the payoffs at the Federal level hit a whole new level of obscenity this week.

A little background here.

When cable companies like Comcast buy content channels like NBC, consumers can only lose. Because then Comcast has less incentive to roll out the higher speed internet service that many other advanced nations already have, but very few in America enjoy. Service that would obsolete cable channels, by letting any American watch any movie, sports event or TV show in full HD at any time they desire. They could chose to watch commercial free by paying a small fee or watch for free by accepting commercials.

However, letting the old cable and content companies control the roll out of the faster internet service capable of this, is exactly like putting the buggy and stage coach builders in charge of developing America's roads back at the start of the last century. If we'd done that, we would all still be traveling on roads too narrow and muddy for any vehicle other than a horse drawn buggy. Our modern highway system never would have gotten built. The auto industry never would have developed. Most of us would still be tilling the soil with even the few privileged enough to live in a town enjoying the aroma of streets covered in horse droppings.

You may remember that there was one very vocal FCC Commissioner in favor of purchase of NBC by Comcast. A Commissioner who demanded there be no conditions on the deal what-so-ever. A Commissioner who claimed letting a cable company buy a content company would "bring exciting benefits to consumers that outweigh potential harms." Even though anyone with a grain of common sense can see that exactly the opposite is true.

Well, a mere four months later that same FCC Commissioner, Republican Meredith Atwell Baker, has been rewarded by the newly formed Comcast/NBCUniversal with a cushy job in their Washington lobbyist office, paying the kind of salary most Americans can only dream about. This regulator, just the latest of many, many Federal politicos and regulators to sacrifice the public interest for personal gain, is now Comcast's new senior vice president of government affairs.

And with these two events, the United States of America achieves that for which our crooked politicos and regulators have long strived. Our nation has now officially ascended to the highest level on the corruption scale. The United States of America has achieved full recognition that our corruption level has reached 'banana republic' status.

Civilizations advance most rapidly by fostering the rapid creation and spread of new utility. 'Utility' being any product, service or idea of real value to individuals. The fundamental flaw in Representative Democracy is that it strongly tends to favor those that control existing utility, over those seeking to create new and improved utility. This turns free markets into destructive controlled markets and true capitalism into destructive crony capitalism, two extremely powerful destroyers of healthy civilizations.