That's right! Those on the inside of the world's power structures have become enemies to those on the outside. Why? Because the strong, powerful, well-financed insiders abuse their power, corrupt our hierarchies, cheat the system, live above the law, and manipulate everything for their own purposes and gain. The outsiders—those who are relatively weaker, less powerful, and under-financed—are left to fend for themselves as economic slaves to debt, jobs, corporations, institutions, and a corrupt system. The outsiders have been duped, exploited, and oppressed by the insiders. It's time to change things.

Over the next 52 weeks, I will post chapters of my new book, The Insiders, right here on this blog. One, sometimes two, chapter(s) will be posted each week.  If you don't believe what I'm saying now, you will by the end of the year.

What do we do when corruption has become institutionalized? When it is so pervasive that we don't even recognize or question it? When we don't even know that we've become slaves to it? What the hell do we do? Can we change it? According to our soon-to-be new President Barack Obama, "Yes We Can." Thank God for new beginnings.

A few years ago, Charles P. Kindleberger, emeritus Ford professor of international economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote the following in a New York Times article:

By the 19th century, business corruption was so much a fact of life that it became a prominent theme for European novelists. Among them were Honoré de Balzac in ''The Human Comedy''; Charles Dickens, ''Little Dorrit''; William Makepeace Thackeray, ''The Newcomes''; Anthony Trollope, ''The Way We Live Now''; Gustav Freytag, ''Soll und Haben''; Alexandre Dumas, ''Black Tulip''; and Emile Zola, ''L'Argent.''

So, we've learned to live with it, it's normal, what's new? What's new is that such corruption now pervades every institution on the face of the planet because we've gotten used to it and learned to put up with it. And it's so much worse than we imagine.

For more on Kindleberger's article, go to: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E6DB163DF935A25751C1A9649C8B63

The Insiders Video—-Parts I, II, and III—-are now on the website and YouTube for viewing. Take a look, you may find something that strikes a nerve, raises some anger or, better, causes you to begin rethinking how we do things in this land of the free. Part I is The Insiders, A New Brand of Thriller, Part II is The Insiders, Caught and Exposed, and Part III is The Insiders, Social Injustice. Begin preparing yourself to look at the world in a whole new way. Click on "home page" on this blog which will take you to The Insiders website, then click on "videos."

We're going to see more television series and movies such as the recently premiered LEVERAGE and last year's MICHAEL CLAYTON, because things have gotten out of hand. The amount of corruption in business, politics, and government has become too overt and too unbearable. We're finally uncovering and confronting the concealed corruption that has been plaguing us for decades.

TNT has just launched the "thrilling, action-packed drama series LEVERAGE, starring Oscar® winner Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, Nero Wolfe) and executive-produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day, TNT’s The Librarian) and John Rogers (Cosby). The series follows a team of thieves, hackers and grifters who act as modern-day Robin Hoods, taking revenge against those who use power and wealth to victimize others. TNT has ordered 13 episodes of LEVERAGE, which comes to the network from Devlin’s Electric Entertainment. Devlin makes his directorial debut on the pilot, which was written by Rogers (Transformers) and Chris Downey (The King of Queens)." LEVERAGE premiered on Sunday, December 7, 2008

"In LEVERAGE, Hutton plays former insurance investigator Nate Ford, a once-loyal corporate employee who had recovered millions of dollars in stolen goods for his employer. But when that employer denied his son’s insurance claims and allowed the boy to die, he realized he could no longer work for such an entity." Nate Ford becomes a modern day Robin Hood. But make no mistake, LEVERAGE is not about redistribution of wealth, it's about redressing ill-gotten gain and corrupt wealth. There's a big difference. Whether you condone Nate Ford's motivation or not, this sort of subject matter is only going to get hotter given our economy.

For more information, go to:  www.tnt.tv/series/leverage/
 

Most people know about corruption in high places. In fact, most people have experienced it first hand on many occasions. In a recent survey of Management Malpractice, over 95 percent of those surveyed said they had been mismanaged, manipulated, and/or abused in the workplace by those in authority over them. Abuse of power is rampant in our institutions and organizations and governments. Social injustice, plain and simple. So how do we change things?

President-elect Barack Obama won election to the highest office in the land last month, in part, because he promised to change things, lots of things. And most people, including those who didn't vote from him, sincerely hope that his administration will be able to accelerate our emergence from the current recession while making the world a safer, better place. But make no mistake, four years from now, Barack Obama's reelection will depend on only one thing: did he provide the necessary leadership to change the short-term circumstances and long-term prospects of the people in this country. But will his leadership be enough? Probably not, even if he surpasses our expectations. So what more must we do?

For today's blog, let's focus on the artists and writers and musicians and filmmakers among us. According to four British journalists from The Observer, politicians and national governments will always play a crucial role in the forging of social change, but "heartfelt pleas for social justice are better received through novels, movies, and music. Artists can excite, anger, and mobilize as they articulate what it is to be poor, landless, and victimized." Phillip French, Kitty Empire, Jonathan Heawood, and Stephen Bayley show us how the arts have "energized campaigns and pioneered change," in the past. I consider their article a useful contribution to this dialogue, go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/21/humanrights.popandrock

As this topic of Social Change and The Arts is revisited in future blogs, I hope you will send in your comments. Social change is inexorable, thank God.

The financial rewards of living above the law, cheating the system, and exploiting the weak are enormous, until you get caught, exposed, and punished. 

But we still have a serious problem—those who’ve been caught, exposed, and punished are only the TIP OF THE ICEBERG.

Our democratic government can do the right thing when enough exposure is brought to bear. "Under pressure from Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, the American International Group (AIG) said Tuesday that it would pay its chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, only $1 a year and that it was freezing the salaries and eliminating bonuses for its seven other top executives." But is it enough? Should AIG do more? What about the lavish retreats? Cancelled? And how much have these executives been making while they drove the company into bailout mode? Mr. Cuomo, maybe it's time to ask for more. For more on this story go to The New York Times online:

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/after-criticism-from-cuomo-aig-cuts-executive-pay/index.html?ref=business

The consequences of having corrupt insiders in control of our private and public hierarchies are staggering. Here are just a few of the resulting abuses:

As you may have suspected, the world's most powerful CEOs have access to an exclusive insiders club, based on a concealed network of insider trading, lobbying, and corporate espionage. From killings in the stock market and private government deals to limitless legal protection and unimaginable personal wealth—-whatever they want, they get.