Bill Moyer's Journal... It had me sputtering.

The pbs program had me sputtering like a merchant marine tonight, but to be honest the information was not shocking in and of itself. It was putting it all together and laying it out there and having someone say it out loud...to see how badly government has been raping and pillaging our country, our citizens, for their personal gain... them and their "cronies" as mccain likes to phrase it. I want to hit somebody. I want to take a bat and beat the crap outta someone. Bush. Chaney. Get up here!! You go first!!! And you know what else? I wanna take this information and cram it into Hasselbeck's tiny little pea sized brain... that's how angry I'm feeling.

I know you're tired of all this dirty politic-ing. I am too. So please don't read it if you don't feel like it ... why ruin a perfectly okay day. I just have to get it out here so I can walk away from it. Otherwise it will pester me and pester me.

(the whole transcript can be found here and you can also see the program instead. See 'watch & listen' tab. I would recommend watching it. Its easier than reading.)

James Galbraith is an economist and his current book is titled The Predator State... no shit, Sherlock.

Here's an excerpt of the program transcript:

BILL MOYERS: You call your book THE PREDATOR STATE, what do you mean predator?

JAMES GALBRAITH: What I mean is the people who took over the government were not interested in reducing the government and having a small government, the conservative principle. They were interested in using these great institutions for private benefit, to place them in the control of their friends and to put them to the use of their clients. They wanted to privatize Social Security. They created a Medicare drug benefit in such a way as to create the maximum profit for pharmaceutical companies.

They used trade agreements to extend patent protections for various interests or to promote the expansion of the corporate agriculture's markets in the third world. A whole range of things that were basically political and clientelistic. That's the predator state.

BILL MOYERS: You call it a corporate republic.

JAMES GALBRAITH: It is a corporate republic.

BILL MOYERS: Which means that the purpose of government is to divert funds from the public sector to the private sector?

JAMES GALBRAITH: I think it's very clear. They also turned over the regulatory apparatus to the regulated industries. They turned over the henhouse to the foxes
in every single case. And that is the source of the decline in, the abandonment of environmental responsibility, the source of the collapse of consumer protection, and the source of the collapse of the financial system, all trace back to a common root, which is the failure to maintain a public sector that works in the public interest, that provides discipline and standards, a framework within which the private sector can operate and compete. That's been abandoned.

The introduction to the show pointed out that the United States is fourth in the world for having the largest span between the Haves and the Have Nots...we even beat out Mexico and Turkey. Imagine that, she said sarcastically.