As former managing director and member of the board of directors of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Company, and Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush, Catherine Austin Fitts has impeccable blue chip establishment credentials and pedigree. This makes her courageous whistle blowing on these corporatist saboteurs all the more credible.

She is also an MBA graduate of Wharton. In spite of this, the attacks on her have only focused on the fact that she signed a 9/11 truth petition.

To give a short and zippy summary, when Fitz visited with her medical practitioner, it was described to her how a tapeworm attacks its host, the human body, and how it survives. Hence she calls our economy a ‘tapeworm economy’ because we’re the host and we’re feeding the tapeworm. The more we feed the tapeworm, the more powerful it gets. The majority are ruled by the minority, and the small number of insiders constantly drain subsidy from the outsiders in a way that preserves their wealth while they suck all of wealth from the shackled middle class. Essentially, she notes how Wall Street finagled money from Washington (taxpayers) to finance a leveraged buyout of the country. This sits very nicely with my long-held notion that Wall Street Banksterism exists for the purpose of separating you from your money. As Catherine notes, the government has created, via force (Central Banking), the ability to print the paper while the military makes sure everyone takes it. Meanwhile, the US extracts natural resources on the cheap.

She also discusses the government move to centrally plan the food supply, agriculture, nutrition, and health, with national health care being a massive coup for the people who own us. She talks about how societies have moved from eating healthy food on a self-sufficient basis to a dependent role where people have become entirely dependent on corporations for food that is not healthy – she calls this “planetary slavery” of the most evil sort. Government policy, as she notes, is enabling corporations to have patents on life by creating terminator seed and controlling seed and food supply, as that supply is being genetically manipulated.

On that same topic, she discusses how the pharmaceutical companies have a negative economic return. By this she means that the health of Americans continues to deteriorate while they continue to make more money. Big Pharma goes to Washington to liquidate the wealth of the people and prop up the corporations. They force profits into the pharmaceutical cartel of the tapeworm. And government steers the profits their way. This is a non-alignment between the interests of the people and the interests of the corporate state.

She also talks about a lawsuit against RJR Nabisco for money laundering all over the world when the company was owned by KKR, one of the most prestigious private equity and leveraged buyout firms in the world. And while Henry Kravis was on the cover of magazines being held up as the next Warren Buffett by the American media, Catherine notes, “No he’s not; he’s the next mafioso.” But those people are honored because there is no transparency in the economy.

I like her take on how the “official story,” as passed off by the government and its minions, has nothing to do with the real story. The real deal eventually starts to sneak into the public mind, and when that happens the “attack poodles,” as she calls them, come out and try to kill any story that is told outside of the official story. And thanks to the Internet, those attack poodles are losing power and being killed off. After all, the numbers (and countless media bankruptcies and closed media outlets) are showing that big media is dying while people are gravitating to the real stories.

Catherine’s story is the real story.

Under the new rules, employees of chain tax-preparation firms including H&R Block Inc. and Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. will be required to pay a registration fee to the IRS, pass a “competency” exam and have 15 hours of education a year. Previously these employees weren’t required to meet federal standards.

The requirements also will apply to hundreds of thousands of independent preparers and mom-and-pop storefronts that offer tax preparation as one of several services. About 60% of U.S. taxpayers use tax preparers, according to the IRS. That number includes certified public accountants, or CPAs, who are already subject to professional standards and aren’t covered by the new rules.

…starting in 2011, all paid tax preparers will have to register with the IRS and include a unique identification number on any returns they prepare. Preparers will be given three years to pass a competency exam in either individual or small-business taxation.

Kathryn Fulton, a senior vice president for government relations at H&R Block, said “we welcome the move.” Of course they do. H&R can afford to cover the costs and/or pass them on to customers. Additionally, a loophole for H&R may be available because its paid preparers work under supervisors, and thus those preparers may not be subject to the regulation. So that could be a major price advantage for them, driving up their competitors’ costs/prices relative to their own. I’m sure H&R’s ‘VP for government relations’ is hard at work on making a slick deal for the big tax firm. This reminds me of executives at the quasi-governmental corporate state giant, General Electric, who said about Sarbanes-Oxley: “We welcome the move.” Indeed, because they knew Sarbanes-Oxley would hinder and cripple smaller firms much more so than ginormous firms like GE.

Intuit, the maker of Turbo Tax, also lobbied hard for the regulations so the company can drive business its way. I have a little tidbit for readers: Mark Ernst resigned as CEO of H&R Block in 2007, and where did he land? He is a Deputy Commissioner at the IRS.

I found this quote quite remarkable, coming from an enrolled agent who sees “unregulated” tax preparers as being bad for his business (because they offer competition at lower prices): “We want to make this into a profession, not just a part-time thing you set up on the kitchen table for six weeks during the tax season.” Let’s see, the tax season is about three months long, and that means? Most paid preparers are part-time for that very reason. Many are homemakers who only want to work for part of the year, and many, like some of my non-CPA, business colleagues, do tax work to supplement their income. Many of these folks will be driven from their part-time jobs.

I’ll leave you with a comment from a WSJ reader: “How about fixing the tax code so we don’t need tax preparers?” Easy answer. Because government works to empower large, wealthy special interest groups and enables them to profit handsomely from its massive web of taxes, codes, and regulations that enslave powerless American citizens within the omnipotent corporatist state.

Set to emerge from bankruptcy within weeks, GM declined to disclose the factors it weighed in picking Orion, but said the process was free of political meddling. “It’s in the best interest of all involved to not discuss the selection criteria for the small-car plant,” said GM spokeswoman Sherrie Childers Arb. “All three plants have individual merits, but when all told, the Orion plant scenario provided the best business case.”

The federal government’s outsize role in the new GM has already raised concerns about the mixing of politics and commerce. Lawmakers, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, have squeezed GM to reject plant closures in their districts. Obama administration officials have prodded the car giant to develop smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

Governments are not in the business of profit-and-loss; they are in the business of steal-and-spend. So there’s no profit motive with the New GM. Political players such as Obama, Barney Frank, and others will rape this company dry as long as they can keep pumping taxpayer money into the company to fund their self-serving causes. Their pet causes include rebuilding and renovating the tattered unions, making them a potent political force once again;  pushing an EnviroCommunist, redistributionist agenda onto middle-class America; and empowering high-ranking, democratic congressional members so that they may direct the booty toward their home districts. A liquidated GM (and Chrysler) would have meant the end of the UAW, the Democrat Party’s largest and most consistent allies, and the loss of zillions of jobs for the democratic constituency.

The new GM has a bottomless pit from which to keep sucking up cash, unlike Circuit City or Linens ‘n Things, two companies that had to liquidate without government assistance. Imagine how blessed a New Circuit City or New Linens ‘n Things would have been with the same favoritism? What each of these companies lacked – that GM offered - was a powerful union, a defined and generous Democratic support base, and most importantly, the ability to fulfill very specific functions for the new regime’s environmental agenda that will rein in American lifestyles and grant favors and profits to corporate state giants who help to shape and manufacture the government’s centrally-planned visions.

How did this come about? Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who said, “I am proud that a Connecticut company will be a leader in flu vaccine innovation and production.” There’s also a contract extension available that would value the contract at $147 million.

If anyone wants to do the research to look at campaign contributions on the part of Protein Sciences and its executives to Chris Dodd (and others), as well as the ties between company’s management and government (the revolving door), I’d be delighted to see it.

The pharmaceutical industry pledge includes $30 billion “that could be used” to provide discounts for medicines, said Reid H. Cherlin, a White House spokesman. That will help narrow a gap in Medicare drug coverage known as the doughnut hole. The allowances will encourage patients to remain on expensive brand- name medicines even when cheaper generic copies are available, Tim Anderson, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, said in a note to clients yesterday.

“Filling the doughnut hole should help seniors stay on their branded therapies and lessen the tendency for seniors to switch from brands to generics once they hit the donut hole,” Anderson said. “This is critical because once patients convert to generics, they seldom revert back to the brand and are essentially lost to cheaper generics forever.”

This entire deal is nothing more than corporate state-special interest politicking on the part of Big Pharma, Big Government, and enriched special interests, with all players openly admitting their very specific goals. As the article clearly states, Big Pharma is willing to cut slightly into its profit margins in exchange for turning people – especially the elderly – into lifetime customers. Perpetual drug zombies buying their patent-protected, overpriced drugs. Another part of the deal is that government has promised it will “inoculate” Big Pharma from proposed regulations that would cost it some more dough.

And yet, this scam is being sold by Obama & Friends as beneficial to the American middle class. It’s nothing more than another corporate state crime of rob-and-redistribution. Wealth will be redistributed from the wage-earning middle class to the welfare state poor and the corporate state rich, all in plain view and plain language, for all to bear witness.