Above: money doesn’t make the world go ’round–but it does keep the system moving.

Yeah, pretty sad when things in the real world happen like they would in a novel–you know when the people you trust betray you in a way you would never have expected? Let me get more specific.

Remember that thing called “government” that’s supposed to protect your rights and help organize society in a way that allows humanity to have an easier, more enjoyable time?

How about corporations? Remember them? They’re the groups of smaller businesses that team up to help better provide for the communities they exist in.

Well, that’s the way both were originally supposed to work, anyway. Alas, they’ve supplanted those wonderful ideals with concerns only for themselves. Corporations have the same rights as we individuals and, while they can’t vote, politicians make sure big businesses are more than equally represented in government.

Capitalism is dead and probably has been for years–it’s only recently that we’ve discovered its body. See, Capitalism too, has been supplanted by the system of Corruptionism.

The basic idea is that our leaders (both political and corporate) tell us that they care about all humans, our rights, the environment and our morals, but all they really care about is taking from us and giving to themselves. We give our money to corporations in exchange for products and services we don’t need (but are literally brainwashed to believe are necessary) and the corporations take that money and pay off politicians to make laws that make it easier for corporations to make even more money off of us.

Politicians are corrupt because they take money for favors. We are corrupt because our money comes from corporations that we then use for things we don’t bother realizing we don’t need. Corporations are corrupt because the people who run the corporations take money, ignore their own morals, and keep the corporate interests going.

Everyone is corrupt in this system.

Maybe the Corruptionist system (like most systems) can actually function to make life easier for us. However, take it to the extreme and we get what we have now.

Last month Matt Taibbi wrote an amazingly in-depth piece that you can find at RollingStone.com that covers the bail-out, the AIG mess, corrupt politicians and most importantly how this whole thing has functioned as a non-violent coup meant to wrest control of government (and therefore us) from our elected leaders. Of course, I’d suggest that our elected officials haven’t had any substantive power for years. Regardless, the reality seems to be that now they don’t. Here’s a bit from Taibbi’s article:

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

That article has been sitting in a tab in Firefox since last month and is so incredibly long I still haven’t finished reading the whole thing. It’s a pretty good read, so far, though.

As much as I’d like to be wrong about this, the moral of the story seems to be that, ultimately, every ounce of stereotypical paranoia any of us have had about politicians and businessmen being liars has been accurate.

Politicians and businessmen are all lying–all the time. They may not even be aware of their own dishonesty, but the reality sure seems to be that eventually, any corporation and every politician will sacrifice what ever it/he/she needs to in order to make as much money as it/he/she can.

Click here to see visit my Disgusting People (Magazine) page which I set up just days after 911.

One good example of this is when People Magazine put out their 911 Memorial Issue, just a few days after 911. They ran ads opposite pictures of the disaster. My “favorite” was a picture of a man on his knees, mouth agape, seemingly staring across the gap between the page his picture was on and the page facing him which featured an ad for State Farm life insurance.

I emailed the editor and complained. She replied with a bunch of rationalizations and apologized only for my offense. Members of an email list I was subscribed to at the time seemed nonplussed by my offense at People Magazine’s behavior.

“They have to make a living don’t they?” said one person on the list.

Here we are 8 years later and things have only gotten worse. We’re all just fodder for the machine of Corruptionism–we seem generally OK with that and so do our political leaders. So much so that, morals are put aside in favor of bringing in the cash so we can buy our iPods, pay our bills, and feed our kids. Our government takes our money (both directly through taxes and indirectly by having the Fed inject new cash into the system) and gives it to these corporations to keep them going and to quite literally reward them for their horrible behavior.

Just keep doing what you’re doing, the government seems to be saying.

But “corruption” is the right word for it, isn’t it?

I first found this Salon article through a posting at DisInfo.com a great Digg alternative for folks who like to think for themselves but still like to see what sites/articles other, like-minded, folks are checking out. The Salon.com article in question is entitled “Is a shortage of patients hurting hospitals?.

The headline alone turned me off to reading the rest of the article, though–the DisInfo post points out: “Hospitals, doctors, and dentists are of late experiencing a shortfall of patients, as people who have been laid off lose their insurance (and thus the ability to pay for treatment)”

So, this is where the rubber hits the road–the private health care industry, that forces all Americans to pay for health care is now too expensive for a growing number of Americans to pay for.

The economic downturn is now putting a tremendous number of human lives at risk.

And it’s all in the name of making a profit, making a living, keeping businesses alive.

So, now businesses are more important than the lives of average Americans.

THIS is where our wonderful system has taken us.

Maybe now we can agree that capitalism unbridled is a bad idea.

Maybe now we can agree that the free market in all corners, unregulated, is a bad idea.

Perhaps, at this point, we can move toward universal health care for everyone since so many more of us now, thanks to the mistakes/insane greed on Wall Street and in Washington DC, can’t afford a doctor’s visit.

I don’t see any other way to cut this one.

You can’t blame all the people who got laid off during this economic crash for getting laid off.

Free health care MUST happen now.

If only our politicians would realize this.

This is just a quick post because the thought occurred to me while considering the blatant hypocrisy of the Federal Reserve and the USG bailing out/taking over banks.

See, we need banks in order for our monetary system to function. Without them we’d all be carrying too much cash or we’d make our homes a magnet for home robberies. Banks also allow for a much smoother and faster (believe it or not) transfer of money from one person or corporation to another.

Sure, they also allow for quite a bit of money laundering (read: crime) but there’s essentially no modern tool of society that can’t be repurposed for corruption and greed. The point is, we need the banks.

So, the USG and The Federal Reserve effectively nationalizes a bunch of them. Now the Fed is not really part of the government–the USG pretends to oversee it but really, the Fed chairmen over the years have been so good at obfuscation that I blame no politician for not wanting to exert force over these guys. Of course, I DO blame politicians for not doing it despite not wanting to–but I’m getting off-topic.

OK, so here the USG/Fed are, taking over banks–essentially owning said banks. So, now our tax dollars (and any investments in the Fed) make each of us (and investors in the Fed) partial owners of these banks. You know what this looks like, right?

Communism.

Or even Socialism.

Or both!

So, isn’t this completely hypocritical of a government whose excuse for not nationalizing health care is that government-run health care would be too much like socialism?

Doesn’t this make the government completely full of shit when it gives us any reasons for anything (especially after losing all credibility in stating facts about “enemy” countries)?

Let’s also consider how nationalized health care benefits would help hundreds of thousands of people–possibly millions of people–who don’t have health care insurance (like yours truly).

Yes, banks are important, too.

But which is more important to prop up?

1) America’s financial health
2) Americans’ actual health

I say both. Instead, we worry about “isms” and assume that they’re all bad except for the one the rich folks practice: Capitalism.

The catch is, that we can see that no regulation on banks has gotten themselves into this predicament. Our economy is failing and some people are calling for even LESS regulation. It’s unchecked greed that caused this problem.

Surely, as with complete socialism, you can see that complete capitalism is also dangerous. Leaving everything to the “free market” means greed and power can rule all things.

Only a just set of regulations can keep the power-brokers from abusing their power.

This is especially obvious when you consider that sometimes socialism is OK. The USG/Fed and the rich folks of America are happy to see the banks be bailed out. Meanwhile, I would like to see health care be free for all Americans.

So, once you realize that in some cases socialism is OK, why do so many people insist that we stick to one “ism”? Surely, ANY extreme is bad–so why not regulate socialism AND capitalism and any other “ism” that will help America and the American people be stronger?

Why is Muslim extremism bad and Christian extremism not?

Why was Soviet extremism bad and American extremism not?

Why is Socialism bad, except when it helps the rich?

How can you say your way is better or best and assume that other folks who say the same thing about their own way are wrong?

What if you’re both right and in some ways bits of all ways just might be the best way of all?