Through January, Lehman’s bankruptcy estate had paid out $642 million to 28 law firms, advisers and consultants, according to a filing with the SEC last month.

Stephen Lubben, a law professor at Seton Hall University’s law school in Newark, N.J., said the estate could end up spending $900 million or more on professional fees by the time its case wraps up.

Note the embedded video in the story: there’s the lying piece-of-shit prick Hank Paulson, chief architect of the Wall Street bailout, talking about “his concerns” of “catastrophic failure.” He states that the bailouts were “for the American people.” As stupid as the masses are, and have been, not even those holding up the shitty end of the bell curve are buying that spin. Paulson has written a new book called “On the Brink,” which is surely an atrocious piece of propaganda that makes excuses for the bailout/enrichment of his pals on Wall Street. Here’s Paulson’s “author notes” for the book:

I believe the most important part of this story is the way Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and I worked as a team through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There can’t be many other examples of economic leaders managing a crisis who had as much trust in one another as we did. Our partnership proved to be an enormous asset during an incredibly difficult period. But at the same time, this is my story, and as hard as I have tried to reflect the contributions made by everyone involved, it is primarily about my work and that of my talented and dedicated team at Treasury.

Of course, he’s talking about his “talented and dedicated team” of ex-Goldman Sachs executives who passed through the revolving doors from Wall Street to the back door of Pennsylvania Avenue via the Treasury Department, so they could grab enough power to centrally plan the economy and engineer the bailout of failed and corrupt financial giants to keep their pals in power and in control of the financial system that does the BOHICA Dance (Bend Over, Here It Comes Again) on the backs of the middle class.

And the FBI’s visit? They had a photo of me and him, along with a column that I wrote for LewRockwell.com. My “crime,” I suppose, is being active in libertarian/gun rights/anti-state/antiwar circles, thereby making me a dissident of the omnipotent state. The assorted agents of the state have contempt for people like me who spread truth, stand by their principles, and openly dissent against the elite powers that crush the helpless middle class. People like me – that is, peaceful people who just want to be left alone to make their own decisions about their own lives.

He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence. Here’s a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

It turns out he couldn’t even pass an English proficiency exam required to graduate from college. Here’s another one of his emails:

Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row’s, and who is the watch dog?

He graduated from a Detroit high school with “a 1.8 grade-point average but was previously reported as a .98 average.” He used to be a substitute teacher. He calls himself a role model. But, in his defense …..

Dare I defend him, but anyone who works in a large corporate environment such as I do sees emails far worse than those above on a daily/hourly basis. Horrifying, incomprehensible emails all day long – even from managers, senior directors, and the like. For years this has baffled me. And before that I tutored college students (most of them from grad programs) in Business Communications. That was a major eye opener for me. For example, I was tutoring senior managers from Chrysler, GM, Ford, etc. who were in business school to get their grad degrees (mostly MBAs) for job advancement.

So the only difference is that Mr. Mathis actually leads those who teach at the lowest performing public schools in the nation.

Are those halogen headlights on his ballistic shield? Indeed.

When the House of Representatives debated the bill in July, PCRM, along with many other health and public interest groups, supported the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment, which was offered by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). This amendment would have limited government subsidies of unhealthy foods, cut subsidies to millionaire farmers, and provided more money for nutrition and food assistance programs for Americans and impoverished children overseas.

Unfortunately, politics doomed the reform effort. At the eleventh hour, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) feared that freshman representatives who voted to cut subsidies might risk losing their seats in farm states in the 2008 elections, endangering the Democratic majority. The reform amendment was defeated 117 to 309.

Farm and food subsidies are becoming one of the most single important ways in which government can control the populace and feed its own growth and power. If you can keep people sick, fat, needy, hooked on pharmaceuticals, and desiring government programs to solve their problems brought on by government policy, the vicious circle will feed off of itself and grow the powers of the state to “solve” one massive “health crisis” after another.

Congressional friends of corporate interests have one foot in the subsidy trough, propping up their constituency that consists of agriculture and powerful (processed) food interests, and on the other hand they purport to want to save you through their nationalized health care, “war” on obesity, and jihad against any alternative forms of health solutions and maintenance. Government is in the business of making special interests wealthy, and in the process, it knowingly creates problems that can feed its own growth so it has the manpower to “resolve” the problems. Many years and many $$$$$ later, the problems are far more widespread and catastrophic. Yet every dupe in the media and medical establishment acts as if they have no idea how Americans came to be saddled with this exploding epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

The automaker said the vehicles are still safe to drive and never lose their steering, but it may be harder to steer them when traveling under 15 mph.

The recall affects 2005 to 2010 Chevrolet Cobalts, 2007 to 2010 Pontiac G5s, 2005 and 2006 Pontiac Pursuits sold in Canada and 2005 and 2006 Pontiac G4s sold in Mexico.

General Motors Co. said Monday it will recall 1.3 million Chevrolet and Pontiac compact cars sold in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to fix power steering motors that can fail.

Where’s the congressional interrogation of GM, and when is Ed Whitacre going to apologize for manufacturing unsafe vehicles?

Has anyone ever told her that her plastic surgeon pulls her face too tight?

But Starbucks, the largest chain targeted, has refused to take the bait, saying in a statement this month that it follows state and local laws and has its own safety measures in its stores.

Hooray for Starbucks! They know who and what is good for business, and it surely isn’t the small bands of crybaby protesters who occasionally gather at a Starbucks to discuss the glories of wealth redistribution and the greatness of government. Then there’s this loon:

Ralph Fascitelli of Washington Ceasefire, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gun violence, said allowing guns in coffeehouses robs residents of “societal sanctuaries.”

“People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace,” Fascitelli said. “But people walk in with open-carry guns and it destroys the tranquility.”

Societal sanctuaries? Tranquility? And a sidearm on some peaceful person’s hip destroys his day, his world?