The Iowa Senate on Wednesday voted 38-12 for a gambling bill that calls for a report on Internet poker and lifts the requirement that Iowa casinos face a vote of the people every eight years.

"There are good parts of this bill and other parts that give me grave concern," said Senator Brad Zaun (R-Urbandale). "The seven years I've been down here, we've talked about the referendums, horse racing, but never could any of these bills survive and stand on its own two feet."

Senate File 526 would have the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission produce a report that would look further into the issue of Internet poker. The bill originally would have legalized Internet poker, but Zaun credited the change to an Iowa poll that showed 73 percent of Iowans are opposed to legalizing Internet gambling.

Anheuser-Busch has reportedly hired more than a dozen Statehouse lobbyists this spring to protect its interests in a long-running battle to control how it distributes its brews in Illinois.

The St. Louis-based company has, in the past, owned a beer distributorship in Illinois. It sought to buy another one in Chicago but was blocked by the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. So the company sued in federal court.

In the process, Anheuser-Busch discovered that two relatively small Illinois "craft brewers" were allowed to distribute their own beer in Illinois, but out-of-state craft brewers weren't given the same privilege. The brewer's suit tried to use that contradiction to its advantage.

What are you willing to do to stop Congress permitting the largest energy companies, such as Exxon and BP, from purchasing excessive numbers of oil-drilling leases from the federal Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management in areas designated for oil extraction? The oil giants then allow the leases to remain dormant for the entire length of the contracts. Why? Because these drilling leases are bought specifically to prevent medium-to-small drillers from competitively extracting the oil, thereby shrinking the oil supply, especially domestically.

Controlling the leases but letting them sit idle gives the oil giants even greater monopolistic control of the supply of oil, guaranteeing maximum profits while eliminating thousands of American jobs. Congress and the Bureau of Land Management are perpetuating America dependence on, and further enriching, foreign countries, as well as protecting big oil's own considerable investments in drilling sites abroad.

To top off this perfectly loathsome economic policy, these same big-oil giants receive huge annual taxpayer subsidies in the billions of dollars, even though they enjoy obscene profits but pay less than 5 percent in taxes - and, more often than not, no taxes at all!

"It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin

"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never, ever, ever be fixed," said comedian/social commentator George Carlin in 2005. That's because, according to Carlin, "the owners of this country don't want that." And by owners, he's referring to the wealthy who "own everything." Warming to his rant on the American Dream, Carlin continued:

"They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying - lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

If things keep progressing as they have been, however, there won't be much left for the rest of us in terms of wealth, power, or resources. As it now stands, the upper 1 percent of Americans already control 40 percent of the nation's wealth and take in nearly a quarter of the nation's income. Included among these very rich and powerful are mega-corporations such as General Electric that manage to rake in obscene profits while paying little to nothing in taxes. For instance, despite pulling in more than $14 billion in 2010, GE not only paid no taxes, but it also managed to claim more than $3 billion in government tax credits. All the while, more and more Americans are struggling to find jobs, keep jobs, and stop the banks from foreclosing on their homes.