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Here's a little preview of the B.S. we can expect FreedomWorks' Dick Armey to be spouting on Meet the Press this weekend. He faced off against Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch on The PBS Newshour Thursday night. Armey uses people buying into his disinformation campaign as proof that there must be something wrong with the health care bills making their way through Congress. I agree there are problems, but for the opposite reason Dick Armey does, and somehow pursuit of the truth doesn't look like it's at the top of his organization's agenda. Protecting the insurance and health care industries' profits are.

JUDY WOODRUFF: As the fight over reforming health care spreads from here in Washington, D.C., across the rest of the nation, we hear now from advocates on both sides of the issue.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is chair of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has rallied protestors at health care town hall meetings.

And Richard Kirsch is the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group which has urged its supporters to turn out at the meetings.

Thank you both for being here. We thank you for being part of this discussion.

And, Dick Armey, I'm going to come straight to you on the basics. You believe that there should be some form of reform of health care, health insurance, but a more limited form than what the president favors.

DICK ARMEY, FreedomWorks: Yes, I do. And we go back to things I've argued for, tort reform is -- estimates now as much as $100 billion of just sheer abject waste, which, by the way, is a hardship...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tort reform, for those people who don't know the legal term, means...

DICK ARMEY: Well, lawyers suing doctors and that which causes doctors to order up extra procedures on behalf of patients that are not needed medically, but they need them in case they end up in a courtroom.

I watch this process. The thing that breaks your heart about that is, especially with older folks, to be subjected to extra procedures that are not medically necessary is a very difficult burden for them to carry when they're already oftentimes quite fragile and the procedures themselves can be quite a stressful experience for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So tort reform would be an important change for the system?

DICK ARMEY: That would be a good place to start.

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When AIG attempted to rationalize the bonuses given as the only way for them to retain "the best and the brightest" in the workforce, it was all I could do not to lose my lunch. Those guys--who drove the corporation into the ground are the best and the brightest? Mais non.

Meet the real best and the brightest: Michael Steinman's Advanced Placement English class at Village Academy High School in Pomona, California. These are the real faces of how this economic crisis has hit America.

Steinman led his students in a discussion of the American Dream following the novel The Great Gatsby. Steinman discovered that his students' idea of the American Dream was far more utilitarian than the acquisitive Buchanans or Jay Gatsby: a refrigerator with food inside; no fear of homelessness; employment for their parents. When he discovered that every student in his class was touched deeply by the economic crisis, he encouraged them to put their stories on video. The video, entitled "Is Anybody Listening?", was sent to then presidential candidates Obama and McCain as well as uploaded to YouTube. In the video, students talk about how economic realities have infringed on their hopes and aspirations for the future.

"We're all businessmen and doctors and lawyers and all this great stuff, and we have all this potential, but the way things are going, we're not going to be able to do that," said Yvonne Bojorquez, 16.

The video reflects life in a community where unemployment is at 12% and half the adults did not finish high school.

Village Academy is housed in a former department store, in an abandoned mall that now contains an indoor swap meet and a beauty school. More than 89% of the school's 521 students receive free or reduced-price lunches, an indicator of poverty. One-third are learning English as a second language. Yet the school consistently beats state and federal goals, and last year was named one of the nation's 500 best high schools.

The student video, as well as the coverage both on Newshour above and ABC's 20/20 last night are heartbreaking and put real faces (as I've tried to do on this post as well) as to who exactly are the victims of the de-regulated marketplace, where hedge fund managers and CDS traders still feel they're entitled to seven figure bonuses despite the bailout. This should once and for all quell the attempts to minimize the importance of those bonuses. It's not about the percentage of the overall bailout that matters...it's that these people's actions have taken food out of these children's mouths and roofs from over their heads.

As it turns out, someone was listening to the students of VAHS. President Obama, during his tour of LA this week, took time out to visit the students that inspired his speech on education, timed fortuitously with legislation that will help these kids and their future:

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From the Newshour with Jim Lehrer:

Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on how the U.S. dollar's fluctuations impact global trade.

A video follow up to Susie's post Unsold Goods Piling Up As U.S. Spending Contracts.