With only some differences, Washington continues to work as it did under Dubya, Bush I, and Reagan: for the benefit of the wealthy and corporations and their puppets on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

The deliberate illogic and stupidity of these millionaire marionette elected officials controlled by the crooks on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms is ongoing, doing terrible damage to the common good.

There is Obama's Alilce in Wonderland "deficit commission" about which economist Dean Baker writes: "In the middle of the worst downturn since the Great Depression, with unemployment projected to remain at elevated levels for most of the next decade, we have the bizarre spectacle of a presidential commission on the deficit.

"This commission contains more than a bit of the theater of the absurd. At the moment, the only force sustaining the economy and keeping unemployment from rising further is the large deficit being run by the government. If we snapped our fingers and eliminated the deficit tomorrow, we would see the unemployment rate rise well into the double digits. The deficit creates demand in the economy. It is really simple; if the government spends more money, then it will employ more people. If we cut back this support for the economy, fewer people would be employed.

"But Washington politicians have trouble saying what is obviously true. So, instead of talking about putting 15 million people back to work, we are talking about curbing the deficit. This would be like creating a commission on water conservation as we struggle to get enough water to quench a fire threatening the capital. But that's where politics in the United States is right now.

"As the Social Security trustees report shows, Social Security benefits will be fully funded by its designated tax through 2037. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the payroll taxes will be sufficient to pay full benefits through 2044. So, when Simpson and Bowles say that they are anxious to cut workers' Social Security benefits, they are pledging to take away benefits that these workers have already paid for with their taxes. These guys probably rip off employees on their wages too.

"If Simpson and Bowles really gave a damn about the deficit, they would look to where the money is and support a tax on financial speculation...."

Then, as Andrew Cockburn explains at Counterpunch, we have the continuing farce from the White House and Congress labeled financial reform.

"Word from the White House is that Rahm Emanuel is still fishing around for a lucrative berth in the financial industry (“money first, then the deal” he reportedly barked at a recent industry caller discussing business possibilities in the private sector) so we needn’t hold our breath too hard waiting for the administration to bring law enforcement, or even its emasculated sibling “regulation reform,”  to Wall Street anytime soon.  Not that the banks have ever really felt threatened, given the contemptuous ease, which I described here last December,  with which they were able to gut the reform bill spawned last in the House of Representatives.

"The retiring and long since neutered Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has his own meek version of a financial reform program currently  before the Senate, but this came pre-gutted on the issue of a Consumer Finance Protection Agency dedicated to protecting us from banker loan-sharks.  Dodd’s proposed legislation consigns the putative CPFA  to the bowels of the Federal Reserve, with a right of veto over any unappealing consumerist initiatives granted to a “Financial Stability Oversight Council” made up of banker-friendly regulators. 

"Dodd’s bill does at the moment enjoin that OTC (Over the Counter) derivatives trading be forced onto exchanges, where trades and prices will be open for all to see.  But there is little prospect of that happening...

"Just to remind everyone what’s at stake here, Moody’s recently reported that the big derivatives-trading banks would simply not allow their  OTC trades to be forced  onto exchanges, where prices would be public, because that would eat into their profits...

"....Further transmuting tragedy into farce is the spectacle of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, supposedly bent on uncovering the causes of the meltdown.  Once upon a time, investigative hearings were worthwhile spectacles.  The Watergate committee, after all, had its moments, while the Pecora Commission of New Deal days probing Wall Street machinations certainly made a few swindlers squirm.  But the “inquiry commission” holds out no such promise.  (Once they opted for  “crisis” rather than “crimes” we knew it was all over.)"

The Washington scene: busy getting dizzy going through some motions for public consumption that in the end protects the fat cats and themselves while screwing regular Americans (the hell with the common good and general welfare) again, and again, and again.