How Much Does it Cost to Buy Reality?

No federal agency or congressional body has taken responsibility for tracking the mortgage foreclosure disaster. This, according to an investigative report by AlterNet, effectively puts the fox in charge of investigating his incursions into the chicken coop. To wit:

The government is instead [of doing its own work] relying on the expensive, potentially biased and seemingly inaccurate information amassed by mortgage bankers, real estate hawks and credit reporting agencies. How this happened is a story of congressional warnings and broken promises, of lack of funding, and ultimately, the increasing dependence on the for-profit sector to quantify and analyze our lives. In this sense, it’s not only a story of the government’s failure, but also of Wall Street’s almost unquestioned power to determine not only value, but reality itself. [Emphasis mine]

I predict that well within 10 years libertarians and rightwing Republicans will make statements to the effect that the economic crisis of 2008 was no big deal and attempts to make reference to it in public policy debates is just hysterical liberal exaggerations and conspiracy theories.

This constitutes the most insidious form of censorship: not gathering the information in the first place.

If the government stopped tracking information about abortion, to paraphrase one of my favorite bloggers, "The hissing and howling from the right would frighten wildlife."