Don't just do something, stand there

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves - Thomas Sowell, economist

    Karl Marx thought that capitalism would collapse eventually because of worker exploitation.  He was wrong.  Our "workers" in Washington are exploiting us, with their lack of vigilance and casual attitudes toward Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Wall Street.
    You are probably as angry as I am.  The stakes have never been higher,

and our elected officials are driving those stakes through the heart of our plans for the future.  Everybody is hurting, especially older Americans.  If you are on the cusp of retirement, for example, your planned move to that home in the south probably looks a lot different than it did a few short months ago.  As the acerbic financial commentator Ben Stein said on television yesterday, "Anyone with a 10-year time horizon [or longer] will be fine."  Thanks, Ben.
    I was glued to my television set yesterday, watching my kids' college funds and my retirement fund evaporate in congress with -- pun intended -- the vote on the bailout bill.  As it became clear the vote was going negative, the market dropped a couple of hundred points in a matter of minutes.  I was apparently the only American who didn't get up from the TV to phone or email my representative to express outrage at the provisions of the proposed package.  I am not smart enough to know whether the bailout plan will save the Republic or cause irreparable harm, and I am not minimizing how difficult it is to make the call on whether to entrust the Department of the Treasury with $700 billion.  Even savvy economists disagree on the merits.  But faced with a choice between self-interest and conscience, many of our elected representatives chose reelection (probably on the convoluted theory that, if they don't get reelected, then they can't vote their conscience).  
    I do know what shameless self-interest and partisan bickering and counter-productive finger pointing look like.  As the great American humorist H.L. Mencken wrote, "Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right."  
    The word "change" is thrown around rather cavalierly during this election season, but there is no better one to describe what needs to be done in Washington.  We all get a chance to cast our votes a month from now for Congress and the Presidency.  In another 34 days, our "workers" in Washington will know if they acted wisely (if at all). 

    We will let them know.