Most of us would consider an annual income of $2.4 million to be a windfall, but it didn't take Paulson a full 12 months of work to pocket his windfall - or one month, a week, or even a day. That's how much he made an hour.

The president is thinking about issuing an executive order that would mitigate some of the damage done to our democracy by the Supreme Court's dastardly Citizens United edict, which unleashes unlimited amounts of secret corporate cash to pervert America's elections.

But what if the stalker is the coal industry, dressed in an academic outfit in a gambit to brainwash fourth-grade school kids? Unbeknownst to most Americans, grade-schoolers are being targeted by the American Coal Foundation with a propaganda package stealthily titled, The United States Of Energy.

Do you know Alec? You probably do, even though you never heard of it. Yes, 'it.' Not a person, ALEC is the acronym for a secretive, corporate-funded, state policy front group: American Legislative Exchange Council.

From Enron to Wall Street, a big cause of America's major financial collapses in the past decade has been simple deceit. Finaglers used secret offshore accounts and dummy subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere to avoid regulatory scrutiny and to make investors think the businesses were sounder than they really were.

One politician bluntly said of Washington's annual tax giveaway to massively profitable oil corporations, 'We don't need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives.' That was no lefty talking - it was George W. Bush.

How quaint. Today, the riches are massive, but the embarrassment gene seems to have been completely bred out of corporate chieftains. They have no shame at producing negative results and offing thousands of underlings, then wheeling in a front-end loader to haul their own pay to the bank.

Next comes 10.7. That's the $10.7 billion in profits this oil giant has soaked up in just the first three months of this year - a new record, not achieved by any managerial genius, increased productivity, or improvement in consumer service, but solely by the jack-up in gas prices.

Entergy Corporation, an electric utility giant based in New Orleans, owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which is nearing the end of its 40-year license to operate. No problem, here's a 20-year extension of your license, said the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (a notorious industry lapdog).

A recent email to me pretty well sums up the big budget hullaballoo being pushed by tea party Republicans.