Scum is something that collects in stagnant water, isn't it? (not trying to imply anything nasty about anyone there...just asking a simple question)

Bobert - Pretty much everything Songwronger is saying is correct, in my opinion. In particular, he said this:

"The U.S. government is now a shell corporation for the big banks. You pay in your taxes, they get sent to Goldman Sachs. And the media lies to you about the amount stolen.

Like the scam going on now with the "Payroll Tax Cut." Big political football between the Democrats and the Republicans. Obama says he won one for the working guy, but those tax cuts mean less money going into Social Security. So it'll help kill Social Security. Which is what the Republicans have historically wanted. The two parties work together on this stuff, always have. That's why you're only allowed two choices in the voting booth."

Dead right. You have no REAL choice at the voting booth, Bobert, because a consortium of giant banks and giant corporations control both political parties AND own the mass media and thereby control your government and shape people's perceptions of reality and run your society. And it's NOT a conspiracy...it's simply a very well-established way of conducting monetary and business affairs...a way in which the richest people IN society are enabled to RUN society...with the objective of making themselves EVEN richer. And it's done with fake money...fiat money...money created in the form of debt...by banks making loans...thereby creating trillions of dollars out of thin air...and past governments have allowed the banks to do it through fractional reserve lending...and it is orchestrated at the top end by the Federal Reserve Bank which is a private corporation that has the USA government and the Obama administration tucked firmly into its shirt pocket, just like it had the Bush administration before Obama. Through organs like the IMF and the World Bank, this corrupt way of doing business subverts governments and extends its fingers of control all over the world...and when it wants to, it also arranges for wars. It has arranged for an endless war by supposedly fighting a war against "Terror". Orwell predicted something very similar to that too.

It's the achievement of Orwell's 1984, Bobert, but it's been done in a rather different way than Orwell envisioned. It's been done not by the power of the police state, but by the power of MONEY. The police state is beginning to show itself now...but it didn't initiate the process, it's an after-effect of the process. Businessmen and bankers allied with the military-industrial complex initiatied the process.

Eisenhower warned what could happen. Kennedy warned what could happen. It has happened.