2011, a year of me-first politics and taxpayers getting swindled

2011 was a year in which the wretched and hideous state of American politics became crystal clear.  

Banks love being too big to fail and have aggressively lobbied the government to stay that way.

Fannie and Freddie continue to suck money from taxpayers like giant leeches: since 2008, about $73 million in taxpayer money has been used to pay the legal bills of former executives who are fighting fraud suits.

MF Global, a derivatives firm run by former NJ senator Jon Corzine, allowed hundreds of millions of consumer dollars to simply vanish.

Minorities and low-income borrowers (those who were supposed to benefit from the federal "housing strategy") became the biggest victims of the foreclosure crisis. In a suit filed in December, the Justice Department alleged that Countrywide--once the country's largest mortgage lender--steered more than 10,000 low-income minorities into risky subprime mortgages.

The cowardly postponement of the Keystone XL pipeline prevented tens of thousands of working-class Americans from getting new jobs.

The deficit problem and the payroll-tax holiday were simply kicked down the road.

Hopefully 2012 will be better. But it might not.