From This Can’t Be Happening
By Dave Lindorff

The most entertaining thing about this Wall Street crisis and the refusal of the House of Representatives (not failure but refusal) to pass a bailout bill negotiated by the Bush White House and the House leadership is how shocked and upset those leaders and the pundit class have been by the idea that members of Congress would actually heed the wishes of their constituents!

The Founding Fathers always saw the lower house of Congress as voice of the people—the elected body that, because its members had to face the voters every two years, would be most responsive to public sentiment.

Because of the power of money and the role of the corporate media in filtering the information that voters get about what is actually going on, that close connection between public and public servant in the House has long ago broken down. This time, however, because the crisis hit within five weeks of the national election, and because the crisis involved something that everyone cares about—their money—it worked.

The public is paying attention, and most of us got it. It was obvious that Congress and the White House were out to screw us out of our money in order to protect the millionaire and billionaire traders and conmen who have been running the Wall Street casino for the last decade and a half without any adult supervision.

Now that people are paying attention, it will be interesting to see how these corrupt leaders, Democrat and Republican, will fashion that bailout and get it passed. Once aroused from their TV-induced slumber, the American public may not be willing to get rolled. If the anger grows, and the calls and emails to Congress—which brought down the Capitol website Monday and jammed the switchboard for several days beginning last week—continue to flood in threatening an electoral Armageddon for those who back a bailout, Congress may yet be unable to pass a bill.

Read more Surprise!