Working People in the Coyote's Den

Bill Moyer, president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, and who is a founding member of the social activist group known as the Movement for a New Society, is currently on an eight day speaking trip in California. Tom Paine has released the text of his prepared speech entitled, Restoring The Public Trust, which deals with the issue of money and politics.

It is a Dick Cheney world out there – a world where politicians and lobbyists hunt together, dine together, drink together, play together, pray together and prey together, all the while carving up the world according to their own interests.

This is all about power and the ever-widening gap between our law-makers and the common people here in this country. It's about how the two worlds of the affluent and the working people could hardly be any farther separated than they currently are. It's about a privileged few who consistently have the public official's entire attention while the working people are treated as no more than the buzz of a pesky insect around their ears. It's about a colony of mice living within the confines of a coyote's den.