The financial crisis that grips our nation's states and cities has a malicious source, and Governor Tim Pawlenty recently named that source: public school teachers.

"It used to be that public employees were underpaid and over-benefited. Now they are over-benefited and overpaid compared to their private-sector counterparts."

The school teacher, the policeman, the firefighter - these are now the faces of what is wrong with America today. It doesn't matter that studies by the Bureau of Labor Statistics say otherwise, America can no longer afford their overpaid, middle-class salaries.

At least that is what the right-wing media is telling us. Tea party members also want to see a drastic pay cut for the same people who teach their children. A familiar comment on the internet is, "I took a pay cut last year. Why shouldn't they?"

Over a year ago Fed Chief Ben Bernanke made a very clear statement for what needed to be done.

“If actions taken by the administration, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve are successful in restoring some measure of financial stability -- and only if that is the case, in my view - - there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery,” Bernanke said in remarks to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington.

It seemed to make sense. The collapse of the financial system was what caused the Global Recession, so stabilizing the financial system appeared to be a necessary condition to get out of it.

It's sometimes amusing to see how hard the media tries to spin bad news into good news. For instance, this article from ABC today.

(Reuters) - U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings dropped for a second straight month in February, and notched the smallest annual increase in four years as housing-rescue efforts contained activity, a report released on Thursday showed.

It sounds like good news, huh? There's just one problem: the foreclosures report that was released today concerned the whole first quarter, including March numbers.
Since when did the news media start preferring outdated data over recent data?

Fraud traditionally occurs behind closed doors. The larger the fraud, the more chances of its existence leaking out to the public. Only after the scheme has blown up does the news media report it.
Fraud has a short lifespan once it is subject to the harsh rays of sunlight. It is only a matter of time before the lies on which it is built come crumbling down.

Last week a massive case of fraud was exposed to the light, but because it hasn't imploded yet the mainstream news media isn't reporting it. In fact, the media seems to want to ignore the facts.
Why? Not because they question the facts, but simply because of the subject of the fraud - precious metals.

Mark Twain once said, "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
I wonder what Twain would think if he looked around America today?

When unemployment rates hit crisis levels during the early 1930's, the unemployed took to the streets and demanded relief aid from the government.
Today the unemployed are again taking to the streets, but their demands are somewhat different.

At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.