I've got about ten different posts swirling in my head, and some are more pressing than others. The most fundamental one deals with the systemic problems of our two party set up. And as much as I think we need to discuss the fundamentals, the issue of the banking system feels like it needs to be addressed quickly, so I'll start there.

This may be old news...I am not here as often as I would like (although more frequently this past week...amazing how much more time you have when there aren't little ones hanging on your ankles!) and may have missed it if it was already covered. BUT, if I missed it, there may be others, as well, and it really is good enough for an encore performance.

On January 8th, 2010, Bill Moyers interviewed David Corn and Kevin Drum about the article Kevin wrote in the February issue of Mother Jones regarding the banking industry and the ongoing problems, the government's failure to address the issues, and what we need to do to fix the mess. If you follow the link to the interview, it directs you to a transcript as well, if you are unable to download video.

It is an amazing interview, and if you haven't seen it, it is a MUST SEE. I would like to strap down every American, make them watch it, then force them to watch it over and over until they get 100% on a test reviewing the information.

Bill Moyers begins:

The ancient Romans had a proverb: "Money is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become." That adage finds particular meaning today on Wall Street, which began this New Year riding a tidal wave of bonuses in a surging ocean of greed.

Thanks to taxpayers like you who generously bailed banking from the financial shipwreck it created for itself and for us, by the end of 2009 the industry's compensation pool reached nearly $200 billion. And despite windfall profits, the banks will claim almost $80 billion in tax deductions. And nearly $20 billion of those deductions will go to just three institutions -- Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs.

Ah, yes -- Goldman Sachs, that paragon of profit and probity -- which bet big on the housing bubble and when it popped -- presto! -- converted itself from an investment firm into a bank so it could get your bailout money. Now consider this: in 2008, Goldman Sachs paid an effective tax rate of just one percent. I'm not making that up -- one percent! -- while their CEO Lloyd Blankfein pulled down over $40 million. That's God's work, if you can get it. And, believe me, Wall Street bankers know how to get it.

What's their secret? How do the bankers pick our pockets so thoroughly with barely a pang of guilt or punishment? You will find some answers in this current edition of "Mother Jones" magazine, one of the best sources of investigative journalism around today. Most of this issue is devoted to what the editors call "Wall Street's accountability deficit."

In it, the Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz writes of the "moral bankruptcy" by which bankers knowingly trashed our economy and tore up the social contract.

The magazine's David Corn examines why there's no mass movement demanding fundamental change.

And blogger Kevin Drum tours Washington's heart of darkness from down Pennsylvania Avenue, over to K Street where the lobbyists cluster like vultures, then past the local branch of Goldman Sachs -- also known as the U.S. Treasury -- and up to Capitol Hill, where key members kneel in supplication to receive their morning tithes from the holy church of the almighty dollar. As Kevin Drum writes, a year after the biggest bailouts in U.S. History, Wall Street owns Washington lock, stock and debit card.

Kevin Drum, formerly with "Washington Monthly," is now the political blogger at "Mother Jones." He's here to talk about his report, along with David Corn, who's been covering Washington for 23 years and is now "Mother Jones'" Washington Bureau Chief. Welcome to you both.

They go on to have a terrific discussion about Stockholm Syndrome, derivatives, the housing bubble, the President's efforts to get a banking bill passed, the relationship between lobbyists money and the congress...It is a fast moving, extremely interesting interview.Please make the time to watch it if you haven't already!

Toward the end, they talk about the President needing to come out swinging on the issue, and they felt like his strong intervention might be the ONLY thing that will get any real reform going...

...And lo and behold, this morning's radio address by the President. It is as if he read the article or heard the interview.

Now time will tell if anything gets accomplished, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.