Synopsis "busted! the big con"
BUSTED! exposes how out of mutual self-interest, the media, politicians, and Wall Street have sold America a bill of goods. They are playing a game of charades. Wall Street creates asset bubbles and takes high risk bets with depositor's money that cost people their life savings and their jobs. Politicians serve their campaign-donor masters while people die on oil rigs and in coal mines. The media tells us what is good for their ratings not what we need to know. Mutual self-interest, I won't expose your charade, you don't expose mine. The book shows how these charades are causing us to lose our standing in the global economy and military balance of power. The effects of our downslide in the face of China, Brazil, Russia, and India's rise as competitors will have a significant impact upon the quality of our life. If we are to remain a player in a global marketplace, charades do not work. Only substantive government actions, economic policy, and media reporting will allow us to win the economic and perhaps even military competitions looming just over the horizon. BUSTED! exposes a variety of charades by showing: **COLLEGE SPORTS: HOW THE CHARADE OF "STUDENT ATHLETE" HAS PRODUCED NOTHING BUT SCANDALS AND THE PENN STATE CULTURE OF SILENCE. WHY A MINOR LEAGUE FOR FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL JUST AS FOR BASEBALL WOULD SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS. **How Wall Street made themselves billions by betting against what they were telling Main Street to buy and destroyed our economy in the process. **How the media, CNBC in particular, colludes with Wall Street to keep us buying stocks and believing talking heads who are promoting their own agendas so we buy so they can sell. **How the health care debate was only about shifting who pays the bills, not how to cut costs to lower the bills and what can be done to really solve the problem. **Alcohol the most dangerous drug in America, murder, rape, social and medical mayhem, yet legal, celebrated, and advertised; marijuana benign in comparison yet illegal, what does that say? **Politicians tell us the U.S. is #1, but in health care and education we spend twice as much per person but are not even in the top ten in results amongst developed countries. **Insider trading against the law for everyone but Congressman, after all what do they know other than new regulations, FDA approvals, and fraud investigations, and they do buy and sell based on this secret knowledge. **The charade of the war on drugs costs billions and many dead but accomplishes nothing. **Washington's regulatory charade that still kills workers in coal mines and on oil rigs while at the same time holds back industry. **Bribery, graft, and corruption are so much a part of our government it even has a name, lobbying and campaign contributions. **Winners of the Academy Awards of Charades such as Representative Joe Walsh during the debt ceiling debate, "I won't place one more dollar of debt on the backs of my kids." Eight months earlier his ex-wife had filed suit against him for $117, 347 in back child support. **The media's if it bleeds it leads brings us phony unintended accelerations, and vaccines causing autism-NOT!
