Rather than being villain turned hero, as in the television version of The Dirty Dozen – The Deadly Mission, our version of The Dirty Dozen is even more sinister. ARII’s Dirty Dozen are agents—bought by global money interests—from the three branches of American government. They are congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and presidents gone rogue. How have they defrauded us?

Americans are a thrifty lot—and we have the expressions to prove it. Ben Franklin coined what is probably the best known: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” And if he were to appear on the current scene, he would be the first to agree that the American people are being robbed by their government.

In irony, it has been said that we have the best government money can buy. But that is true only for the lobbyist. The public at large is painfully aware of what our government is costing us—programs, wars and tax cuts that have driven up the deficit, and a refusal by Congress to come to a budget agreement, causing the first ever downgrade of our national credit rating. And that is not to mention our government’s culpability in the failure of our regulatory agencies to foresee and forestall the failure of our banking system, causing the average American citizen the loss of 40% of his net worth. “The stunning drop in median net worth—from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010—indicates that the recession wiped away 18 years of savings and investment by families.”

There is public outrage. Such grassroots movements as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have given voice to widespread concerns, but the message goes largely unheeded. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a voice crying in the wilderness. His message is sound, but few of his colleagues are listening. Perhaps the problem is that enough of us aren’t listening—or at least responding.

Much has been made of the fact that following the 2010 Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United, the airwaves have been dominated by political messages, most of which are negative and many of which are also misleading. Yet, they have been shown to be effective in influencing people’s opinions and actions.

But we know better! Few people are so naïve as to take as gospel truth something solely because it appears on their favorite news channel. What doesn’t happen enough is for citizens to spend the time and effort to read and watch a spectrum of print and electronic media as a basis for political judgments. There is a reason why freedom of the press is guaranteed by the First Amendment and why democracy is so slow to take root in countries where news and commentary are controlled by the government. Do we ignore a freedom so sacred that men and women in different parts of the world are willing to die to maintain it?

Money undeniably equals influence in our society. But powerful as it is, we still have access to reality—maybe not in the mainstream media, but certainly in the multiplicity of independent blog sites and print media. Yes, it’s time consuming, but it provides the basis to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth—virtually our only weapon.

An old friend told me he believes in term limits for elected officials—one term in office followed by a term in jail. I thought he was a bit extreme—but our current political stalemate calls for extreme measures. The focus of this website, has been on corruption and inaction in our government, particularly in Congress, where legislators spend most of their time raising money to finance their next elections. So, they get reelected (most do), but their constituents get the shaft—read about the Political Theater of the 112th Congress—a tragedy, not a comedy. Why do we keep returning these guys to office when they take their instructions from billionaire lobbyists?

An election is before us. Let’s shake things up! If voting somebody out of office is the only way to get his attention, let’s do it! I’m thinking primarily of men and women in leadership positions who arrogantly dictate party policy with no concern for the needs of their constituents. If we send Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan packing, it has to get the attention of not just the House but also the Senate. None of our elected officials is beyond the reach of the voters! Let’s take back our government now! When the 113th Congress opens, let’s see that we get more bang for our buck!

This is the first of several articles, titled The Perfect Storm, dealing with how our government is failing the American people. The average American citizen lost 40% of his net worth in the 2008 recession as noted above. The next few articles will explore how the checks and balances established between the judicial, executive and legislative branches have been eroded and what can be done to restore them.

What can you do—you are only one person? True, but you are only “six degrees of separation,” on average, from any other person on Earth. You become powerful when you share information with your friends and ask them to share it with their friends—it becomes a global revolution. As Stephen King suggests in The Long Walk, when these “society-supported sociopaths” come, step aside, and find the strength to run…

Continuing with our comparison of a gambler versus a banker, there is a crucial distinction: a gambler uses his own money—a banker gambles with your money. In the Old West if a gambler were caught out in cold-blooded fraud of the everyday garden variety routinely practiced by some of our biggest banks, he’d first be shot through the heart and then dragged through the street behind a horse until there was nothing left of him.

In those days “regulation” consisted of a shot through the heart. In these more civilized times, our regulations are written by Congress. Modern day legislation arose in the wake of the stock market crash and the ensuing failure of many banks during The Great Depression. The Glass-Steagall Act made a distinction between commercial and investment banks, acting on the perception that unregulated bank investment in the stock market was one of the causes of the crisis.

In the years that followed, the financial community increasingly found fault with Glass-Steagall. It limited banking profits, and came to be considered an overreaction to the problems of the 1930s. “Consequently, to the delight of many in the banking industry (not everyone, however, was happy), in November of 1999 Congress repealed the GSA with the establishment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which eliminated the GSA restrictions against affiliations between commercial and investment banks. Furthermore, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allows banking institutions to provide a broader range of services, including underwriting and other dealing activities.”

Fast forward to the banking crisis of 2008 and the stubborn recession/depression that followed. Twenty-five U. S. banks failed during that year. J. P. Morgan picked up the wreckage of Washington Mutual, making itself the largest bank in the U. S., ahead of Bank of America. Later it “rescued” Bear Stearns, while Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch.

The survivors, now unmistakably “too big to fail,” had not, at the same time, become better servants of the American people. Speaking of Bank of America, Matt Taibbi writes: “All the government bailouts succeeded in doing was to make the bank even more prone to catastrophic failure – and now that catastrophe might finally be at hand. Bank of America’s share price has plunged into the single digits, and the bank faces battles in courtrooms all over America to avoid paying back the hundreds of billions it stole from everyone in sight. Its credit rating, already downgraded to a few rungs above junk status, could plummet with the next bad analyst report, causing a frenzied rush to the exits by creditors, investors and stockholders – an institutional run on the bank.”

Suddenly it was inescapable—our bankers were greedy bastards, incapable of acting in the best interests of their clients. They had no more restraint than an habitué on a roll at Vegas. Since they couldn’t control themselves, maybe some regulations were called for. Out of the Democratically-controlled Congress in 2010 came the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

This is how Matt Taibbi describes the outcome in his Rolling Stone piece, How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform. “At 2,300 pages, the new law ostensibly rewrote the rules for Wall Street. It was going to put an end to predatory lending in the mortgage markets, crack down on hidden fees and penalties in credit contracts, and create a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to safeguard ordinary consumers. Big banks would be banned from gambling with taxpayer money, and a new set of rules would limit speculators from making the kind of crazy-ass bets that cause wild spikes in the price of food and energy. There would be no more AIGs, and the world would never again face a financial apocalypse when a bank like Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.”

As in Taibbi’s companion article, Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail, he documents how, while the congratulations were still flowing, forces were already at work to strip the legislation of the very elements that made it necessary in the first place. “The giant reform bill turned out to be like the fish reeled in by Hemingway’s Old Man – no sooner caught than set upon by sharks that strip it to nothing long before it ever reaches the shore. In a furious below-the-radar effort at gutting the law – roundly despised by Washington’s Wall Street paymasters – a troop of water-carrying Eric Cantor Republicans are speeding nine separate bills through the House, all designed to roll back the few genuinely toothy portions left in Dodd-Frank. With the Quislingian covert assistance of Democrats, both in Congress and in the White House, those bills could pass through the House and the Senate with little or no debate, with simple floor votes – by a process usually reserved for things like the renaming of post offices or a nonbinding resolution celebrating Amelia Earhart’s birthday.”

Taibbi’s disturbing account leaves little to the imagination. He presents five “strategies” banks skillfully use to circumvent or destroy the consumer protections in the bill. These strategies are carried out by lobbyists in the financial services industry, by legislators themselves (in the pay of the big banks), or even, incredibly enough, by appointees of the very administration that supported the bill. The scene is reminiscent of Julius Caesar, who, on his way to the forum, is set upon by friends and enemies alike who stab him to death for a supposedly higher purpose. The result of these attacks on Dodd-Frank is just as bloody and just as harmful to the cause of the people.

By design, very little of this destructive activity ever comes before the public eye. Banking regulations are not easy reading, and they probably require a lawyer’s training to understand them. But the results are already being felt, and they will only increase. If you care about your financial well-being and want to protect your credit, investments, and savings from the Gordon Geckos of the world, learn how to fight back! We’ll deal with that in Part 3 of The Gambler.

What can you do—you are only one person? True, but you are only “six degrees of separation,” on average, from any other person on Earth. You become powerful when you share information with your friends and ask them to share it with their friends—it becomes a global revolution. As Stephen King suggests in The Long Walk, when these “society-supported sociopaths” come, step aside, and find the strength to run…