"I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me."

...You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there... just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.

Military intelligence. Political integrity. Carlin the Great saw it all.

So does Glenn Greenwald:

...the rugged individualist Harold Ford -- who inherited his father's Congressional seat at the age of 26 -- is a self-proclaimed "capitalist" who believes that people "should lose" if they don't do well: unless, that is, the people who "don't do well" are his funders and controllers on Wall Street, in which case they should be propped up by the U.S. Government with bailouts and loans and Federal Reserve tricks until such time that they can pay themselves tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, at which point they should be left alone in the name of "free market capitalism" and keeping the Government out of the affairs of industry and away from their "rewards." What Ford is advocating, of course, is the exact opposite of free market capitalism: it's risk-free crony "capitalism," warped corporatism, the essence of decaying emerging-market nations in crisis, in which the coercive power of the Government is harnessed by a corrupt financial elite for its own benefit and at everyone else's expense, to ensure that people like Harold Ford can maintain their chauffeurs and weekly pedicures and helicopter rides he strangely boasted of enjoying.

...Americans have been taught for so long that the Joys of Capitalism are unchallengeable even when they result in great disparities, and that those who enjoy its fruits do so because they deserve it. As Ford said: "I believe that people take risk, and there are rewards if they do well." That would be all well and good if that were actually what was happening. But it isn't. The people who own the Government operate without risk and with the full protection of the coercive political power they have come to own. The rules are rigged completely in their favor, and (with some rare exceptions) the obscene rewards of today are anything but well-earned, anything but the by-product of "risky" entrepreneurialism. It's obviously possible to sell some pretty blatant lies to an apathetic and passive public, but the one that Ford and his funders are peddling here -- these huge Wall Street bonuses are the joyous by-product of fair and rugged "capitalism" -- seems a bit too blatant to be sustained.

...most national politicians are so desperate for the petty perks of power that they're willing to publicly humiliate themselves by making it clear that they believe in nothing and are willing to recite whatever will please those around them and those funding them. It's creepy and ugly and explains a lot about our political class...

Just remember: they lie, or they wouldn't be able to govern you.