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Some religious right activists and far-right lawmakers, led in large part by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), are outraged that the visitor center is largely secular. For example, near the center's entrance, there's an engraving: "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." The quote comes from Rufus Choate, who served in the House and Senate in the 1830s, and DeMint described the quote as "offensive."

This week, Roll Call reported that some GOP lawmakers are pushing a bill that would spend $150,000 in taxpayer money to etch a reference to "In God We Trust" as the national motto into stone, and placed prominently in the Capitol Visitor Center.

"There are number of references or appropriate religious references in the Capitol Visitor Center, but this is something I think is important," said Rep. Dan Lungren (Calif.), the bill's lead sponsor and the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. "We do have 'In God We Trust' over the rostrum in the House ... [and] it has a relationship to the Founding Fathers' documents."

Actually, Lungren's wrong; "In God We Trust" doesn't appear in any of the "Founding Fathers' documents." Literally, not one. In fact, the nation's founders chose "e pluribus unum" as a national motto -- a reference to the nation's unique diversity -- and Lungren, the Heritage Foundation, and other conservatives want references to it replaced.

Lungren's bill, submitted last Wednesday, currently has four co-sponsors in the House. Expect that number to grow.

The instances of folly and criminality bearing the label "made in Washington" may not rank up there with the Armenian genocide, the Bolshevik Revolution, the appeasement of Adolf Hitler, or the Holocaust, but they sure don't qualify as small change. To give them their due is necessarily to render the standard account of the American Century untenable.

Here are several examples, each one familiar, even if its implications for the problems we face today are studiously ignored:

Cuba. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain for the proclaimed purpose of liberating the so-called Pearl of the Antilles. When that brief war ended, Washington reneged on its promise. If there actually has been an American Century, it begins here, with the U.S. government breaking a solemn commitment, while baldly insisting otherwise. By converting Cuba into a protectorate, the United States set in motion a long train of events leading eventually to the rise of Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even today's Guantánamo Bay prison camp. The line connecting these various developments may not be a straight one, given the many twists and turns along the way, but the dots do connect.

in trying to cloak himself as "The People's Champion" while remaining faithful to the plutocratic powers. These days, there's a whole flock of politicos and pundits doing this--from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich to Glenn Beck.

They are abetted by a media establishment that carelessly (and lazily) misapplies the populist label to anyone who claims to be a maverick and tends to bark a lot. Although the targets they're usually barking at are poor people, teachers, minorities, unions, liberals, protestors, environmentalists, gays, immigrants, or other demonized groups that generally reside far outside the center of the power structure--the barkers are indiscriminately tagged as populist voices.

Fully embracing the egalitarian ideals and rebellious spirit of the American Revolution, populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which seeks to live in harmony with concentrated corporate power by trying to regulate its excesses.

We're seeing liberalism at work today in Washington's Wall Street bailout. Both parties tell us that AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, and the rest are "too big to fail," so taxpayers simply "must" rescue the management, stockholders, and bondholders of the financial giants in order to save the system. Populists, on the other hand, note that it is this very system that has caused the failure-so structural reform is required. Let's reorganize the clumsy, inept, ungovernable, and corrupt financial system by ousting those who wrecked it, splitting up its component parts (banking, investment, and insurance), and establishing decentralized, manageable-sized financial institutions operating on the locallycontrolled models of credit unions, co-ops, and community banks.

The true portrait of populism is rarely on public display. History teachers usually hustle students right past this unique moment in the evolution of our democracy. You never see a movie or a television presentation about the movement's innovative thinkers, powerful orators, and dramatic events. National museums offer no exhibits of its stunning inventions and accomplishments. And there is no "populist trail of history" winding through the various states in which farmers and workers created the People's Party (also known as the Populist Party), reshaped the national political debate, forced progressive reforms, delivered a million votes (and four states) to the party's 1892 presidential candidate, and elected 10 populist governors, six U.S. senators, and three dozen House members.

This was a serious, thoughtful, determined effort by hundreds of thousands of common folks to do something uncommon: organize themselves so--collectively and cooperatively--they could remake both commerce and government to serve the common good rather than the selfish interests of the barons of industry and finance.

For example, the banking industry recently paid Rahm Emanuel $16 million for about two years of work. That investment was recently paid back when, as President Obama's chief of staff, Emanuel led the January campaign to release another $350 billion in bank bailout funds. Turning a $16 million down payment into a $350 billion payout -- that's huge!

Likewise, Goldman Sachs hired former Senate aide Mark Patterson as one of its lobbyists -- an investment that proved a huge winner when Patterson became the Treasury Department's chief of staff and the agency subsequently killed proposals to limit executive compensation at bailed-out banks. Cha-ching!

And the hedge fund industry paid economist Larry Summers $5.2 million in 2008 for part-time work -- an investment that hit pay dirt when Summers became Obama's top economic aide and the administration resisted tough international hedge fund regulations that some G-20 countries wanted. Show me the money!

That's right, the surest way to make big cash is not to invest in people with proven business experience or in valuable entrepreneurial ventures, but in blue-chip members of Permanent Washington -- career politicos and bureaucrats who inevitably get back into positions of power and payback!

More freshmen today say they frequently discuss politics than at any time since Lyndon Johnson announced that he wouldn't run for re-election. Just since 2000, that slice of young people -- 35.6 percent -- has more than doubled, and it even exceeds by a couple of points the previous high-water mark, when Richard Nixon was elected president. When you add in the number of today's freshmen who say they occasionally discuss politics, you're talking about nearly 86 percent of them, another record.

Today, the proportion of freshmen calling themselves liberal has hit 31 percent, the highest it's been in 35 years. At the same time, the number of students calling their political views middle-of-the-road has hit an all-time low, just over 43 percent, territory it hasn't been in since 1970. Only one out of five students today describes him or herself as conservative, an erosion of more than two points since the year before.

One difference between today's freshmen and the ones buying the Beatles' new "Sgt. Pepper" album -- the difference that makes sense -- is a drop in the number saying that it's very important or essential to find a meaningful philosophy of life. It was 86 percent in 1967. By 2004, that had fallen to a record low of less than 40 percent. Though it stands now at 51.4 percent, that's still a huge drop since 1967. At the same time, the percent saying that being well-off financially is essential or very important has risen from 43.5 percent in 1967 -- half the number looking for a philosophy of life -- to nearly 77 percent today.

Who can blame them? The years between the 1960-61 recession and the 1973 oil crisis saw economic growth, which made it an opportune time to worry more about the meaning of life than about financial security. But with the pall now cast over the economy, it's a wonder that only three out of four freshmen are worried about making ends meet.

To me, the real conundrum in the attitudes of today's freshmen has to do with news. In the late 1960s, keeping up with politics was an essential or very important goal to 60.3 percent of freshmen. By 2000, the number had fallen to less than half of that, a record low. It rose after Sept. 11, but today the figure is still south of 40 percent. How can it be that almost nine out of 10 freshman say they talk about politics, but six out of 10 don't think it's important to keep up with politics?

Nida, who joined the board in 2003, is the official with the most extensive financial links to schools he regulates. Since he went to work for United Bank, it has lent more than $55 million to charter schools, their developers or their landlords, records and interviews show. As a public official, Nida has voted repeatedly to increase student enrollment -- and thus taxpayer funding -- for charter schools that borrow money from his bank, records show.

Nida recused himself from a handful of votes affecting charter schools or developers doing business with his bank but participated in dozens of other votes and actions involving bank customers, records show.

Since 1996, the District has spent more than $2 billion in local and federal funds to build and operate charter schools. Much of that public money has gone to buy, lease and renovate school buildings that are now in private hands. Charter schools typically finance their property purchases or renovations with multimillion-dollar loans from banks and other lenders. They repay those loans using their guaranteed funding from the city. In addition to funding charters' educational operations, the District is one of the few jurisdictions in the country to provide charters with a per-child cash "facilities allotment."

The system has provided some charter students with new buildings that are among the best-equipped in the city. It also has benefited charter schools' landlords, developers, bankers and investors while taxpayers fund two separate school infrastructures.

"They are using public money to finance private real estate development," said Anne Dougherty, a community activist who opposed locating a charter school in a neighborhood where two traditional public schools were closing.

Nida is not the only member of those bodies whose private business interests intersected with a public role, The Post's review found.

Barbara "Bobbie" Hart, who chairs the credit enhancement committee, which has awarded $47 million in taxpayer financing in the past seven years to private ventures involving charters, is also a vice president at Adams National Bank and markets loans to charter schools. Since she was appointed to the committee in 2006, it has repeatedly awarded funding to Hart's loan customers, records show. Hart has recused herself from all but two votes involving applicants that had given her loan business or were about to, records show. Hart declined to comment.

Another public official whose private business overlapped his public position was Karl Jentoft, a developer who has served on both the credit enhancement committee with Hart and on the public charter board with Nida. Jentoft became a charter school developer seven years ago with the help of a bank loan he secured through Nida.

Jentoft joined the credit committee in 2006, and last year moved to Nida's charter board. In that capacity, he reviewed and recommended a lease benefiting a controversial charter school project opposed by residents in the Brady Hall neighborhood, not far from Catholic University. Within weeks, the developer hired Jentoft as a consultant on that and another charter project and began paying him $14,000 a month.

Once hired, Jentoft tried to assuage the concerns of residents who feared that moving two charter schools to a single building in their neighborhood would lead to a big increase in traffic and noise. He logged on to a local Internet discussion group last March and introduced himself as the "owners' representative" on the project. "We are working to resolve some of the obvious traffic flow issues," Jentoft wrote.

A stunned homeowner, Steve Lowe, shot back questions: Was he the same Karl Jentoft who sat on the charter board? If so, "why did you fail to mention this?"

"I did not include this or additional hobbies/projects because I do not think they are relevant to the current project," Jentoft responded. "I am not acting in my capacity as a Public Charter School board" member on this project.

Nida also had ties to the Brady Hall project. He was an unpaid board member for the developer, the Charter Schools Development Corp. His bank, United Bank, also was financing the project with loans that eventually totaled $9.2 million.

The charter board green-lighted the Brady Hall project in May, with Jentoft and Nida recusing themselves.

For all their educational goals, D.C. charter schools are businesses navigating market realities. For each child it enrolls, a charter school receives a minimum of $11,879 annually in tax money. The need to borrow large sums to buy or renovate real estate drives many charter operators to expand as quickly as possible to maximize taxpayer funding: more kids, more cash.

The growth of charter schools coincided with a decline in the number of school-age children in the District. Competition from charters accelerated the exodus from the traditional public school system and left school buildings with acres of empty classrooms.

Some District school officials have been resistant to sharing space with charters, and some charter operators preferred to find their own buildings to avoid the city bureaucracy. As a result, only about 25 percent of charter school campuses lease space in public schools or other government buildings. Most of the rest bought their own buildings or lease from private landlords.

Some charter school critics have complained that the system allows taxpayer funds to be used for private gain. The D.C. Council responded two years ago with a requirement that if a charter closes down, its net assets, including real estate, must be turned over to the city. However, the law contains so many loopholes that District taxpayers are unlikely to recoup their expenditures. It also does not prevent a charter from selling its building, keeping the proceeds and moving somewhere else.

The law also protects banks and other creditors, mandating that outstanding loans be repaid before any assets are returned to taxpayers.