"Last week I wrote about Karen Ignagni, CEO of America's Health insurance Plans (the industry trade group known as AHIP) who was called on and recognized by President Barack Obama during his White House Summit on Healthcare Reform in late February and who was also the only "stakeholder" seated in the front of the room later for a briefing by the staff of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (the committee chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy). Clearly, Ignagni has been afforded a sort of access and status in this debate and in the reform effort that many others have not.

"The fox isn't just in the hen house.. The fox is building it.

"I've got to hand it to Congress right now. Most members of Congress are making sure they remember 'on which side of the toast you find the butter' in terms of making the for-profit health insurance industry comfortable in their deeply entrenched roles not only in our broken healthcare system but also in the deep-pocket funding of many Congressional campaigns. The insurance industry's influence is purchased with millions and millions in campaign contributions and with the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens every year. That is fact.

"So why does it even warrant mention that the hearing this week to discuss health insurance reform has a witness list populated with industry-friendly voices, including Ignagni? I write this because it is so deeply dishonest and offensive to me that we are told we have an allegedly open and inclusive process to explore what's best for the nation's healthcare reform while the drafting and crafting thunders forward with very closed very elitist and very non-human rights oriented effort."

William Greider writes in The Washington Post that while Obama told us to speak out, is he listening?

"Something fundamental has been altered in American politics. Encouraged by Obama's message of hope, agitated by darkening economic prospects, many people have thrown off sullen passivity and are trying to reclaim their role as citizens. This disturbs the routines of Washington but has great potential for restoring a functioning democracy. Timely intervention by the people could save the country from some truly bad ideas now circulating in Washington and on Wall Street. Ideas that could lead to the creation of a corporate state, legitimized by government and financed by everyone else. Once people understand the concept, expect a lot more outrage.

"Public anger is likely to be a recurring episode, because the president has budgeted another $750 billion to rescue the financial system from its troubles. If Congress gives him the money, people will be watching where it goes. Obama is vulnerable to the blowback. In his address to Congress last month, he promised, "This is not about helping banks, it's about helping people." The first half of his statement is demonstrably not true, as people see for themselves and as bankers parade their arrogant excess. The second half is merely wishful.

"Barack Obama can resist all this, if he chooses, but he seems conflicted. Obama's approach so far is devoted to restoring Wall Street's famous names, and his economic advisers tell him this is the "responsible" imperative, no matter that it might offend the unwashed public. Obama evidently agrees. He does not seem to grasp that the tone-deaf technocrats are leading him into a dead-end.

"The president needs to hear a second opinion -- millions of them.

"People are angry, but they want this president to succeed. Mobilized citizens can help him to prevail. If he goes with the other side, they will bring him down."

Matt Taibbi writes at Rolling Stone that the Wall Street caused economic catastrophe is all about power.

"The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

"The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

"The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

" 'But wait a minute,' you say to them. 'No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?'

"But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

"Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season."