Right out of the starting gate today are two news reports that highlight the greed and crime of corporate America, aided and abetted by the government, with horrendous consequences for regular Americans.

Both administrations have heaped the results of the '08 Crash caused by the financial industry on the backs of struggling "have less or have not" Americans and protected their haves and have more cronies.

While these are indictments of the corrupt Bush administration and its support of the oil industry and bailout of Wall Street, the Obama administration also has much to answer for since it followed in Bushite footsteps and is DINO corporatist to its core.

From McClatchy Newspapers:  "A decade ago, U.S. government regulators warned that a major deepwater oil spill could start with a fire on a drilling rig, prove hard to stop and cause extensive damage to fish eggs and wetlands because there were few good ways to capture oil underwater.

"The disaster scenario — contained in a May 2000 offshore drilling plan for the Shell oil company that McClatchy has obtained — is now a grim reality in the Gulf of Mexico. Less predictably, perhaps, the author of the document was the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, the regulatory agency that's come under withering criticism in the wake of the BP spill for being too cozy with industries it was supposed to be regulating.

"The 2000 warning, however, indicates that some federal regulators were well aware of the potential hazards of deepwater oil production in its early years, experts and former MMS officials told McClatchy.

"Yet over the past decade, the risks faded into the background as America thirsted for new oil sources, the energy industry mastered new drilling technologies and the number of deepwater wells in the Gulf swelled into the thousands. Then-President George W. Bush ushered in the new era with an executive order on May 18, 2001, that pushed his new administration to speed up the search for oil

"McClatchy reported last week that the MMS under the Obama administration had approved dozens of deepwater exploration plans that downplayed the threat of blowouts to marine life and fisheries. After McClatchy's inquiries, the administration ordered oil companies to resubmit the plans with additional safety information before they'd be allowed to drill new wells."
Also from McClatchy Newspapers: "At the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and top Federal Reserve officials told the nation that there was an urgent need for the government to lend $85 billion to the American International Group so the giant insurer's temporary cash squeeze wouldn't trigger global financial chaos.

"Nearly two years later, taxpayers are on the hook for twice that amount, and it now appears that Paulson and senior Federal Reserve officials either plunged ahead without understanding AIG's financial situation and the risks it posed to taxpayers — or were less than candid about one of the largest corporate bailouts in U.S. history.

"AIG reported combined total losses of $110 billion in 2008 and 2009, erasing any doubt that the government stepped into a colossal mess.

"AIG was at the epicenter of all the government bailouts of financial institutions in 2008, a company through which more than $90 billion in federal money flowed out the back door to some of the same Wall Street banks whose risky behavior fueled the crisis. Among the leading beneficiaries of the AIG bailout was investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, which Paulson headed until June 2006.

"Explanations of the bailout from current and former top government officials have never fully jibed, fueling allegations that most of the money was always intended for Wall Street rather than Main Street.

"Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel that's tracking the use of bailout money, said at a hearing in late May that the government "broke all the rules" with its rescue of AIG, which she labeled a "corporate Frankenstein" that defied regulatory oversight.

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who headed the New York Fed in the fall of 2008, told Congress in late January that the central bank had the authority "to protect the financial system from broad-based runs," but could lend only to "firms that were solvent," able to pay their debts.

"He made no mention of AIG's questionable solvency.

"Unlike President Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression era, neither Bush nor Obama stood up to the major financial institutions by refusing to bail out those with "bad assets," said Michael Aguirre, a San Diego lawyer who's fighting in an appeals court for the right to sue AIG for allegedly defrauding policyholders."

However, these are only the latest in a plethora of factual stories about the venality and corruption of the wealthy elite that, with government complicity, should continue to arouse the anger of the public to throw all elected crooks out of Washington and end the incestuous, destructive relationship between Washington and its corporate controllers.

A pox on all their houses.  Many of these people should be in the slammer