As I sat here listening to the President tonight, I couldn’t help wonder what in the world got us in this mess and where were the people who were supposed to be on watch.

It boils down to one simple point -  greed, greed, greed.  As a nation we had already said that we would not bail out our automotive industry, but now we are going to bail out fat cats on Wall Street.

Once again it is the working men and women bearing the burden of the irresponsibility of government and the greed that permeates this society.

We have developed the mentality that “I got mine and that’s all that is important.”  Six out of every 10 voters are worried about their current financial situation.

Seventy-seven percent believe the country is in a recession and three-quarters of those believe the worst is yet to come.  But, hey, “I got mine.”

Have you paid attention how many scandals this administration has given us related to streets? 

First we had the K Street Project. This was a project by the Republican Party to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials.

It was launched in 1995, by Republican strategist Grover Norquist and House majority leader Tom DeLay. It was another one of those deals where “I got mine” was the mentality of the day.

Now we have this administration bailing out financial institution after financial institution that reside on Wall Street.  Where was the oversight? Where was the regulation? Where, oh where, were the best interests of the American People?

This is far less about blame than it is about responsibility. Less about you and I than it is a massive failure of government and oversight.

First, how many of us trust our Treasury Secretary to adequately oversee this process since he came from it?

I absolutely hate the idea that we are going to be forced to bail these crooks out.

Putting this burden on the American people at this time is one of the most unpatriotic things I have witnessed in my lifetime. They proceeded in this process with an “America be damned” mentality and now they want the American people to pay the $700 billion bill.

Whether you or I like it or not, we have few choices but as I said the blame is less important than the responsibility.

Mr. President, I always knew you were going to rank among the least popular presidents of my lifetime, but I never imaged that you would rank among the least popular of all time.

Whether it is AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Freddie Mac, or Fannie Mae, somebody and probably lots of some bodies were asleep at the wheel and you and I got caught in the train wreck.

If we have to proceed with this bail out, and it certainly sounds like we will, some conditions must be met or the deal should be yanked from the table until they are.

No more blank checks from the American people - no way, no how. Democrats and Republicans, you drop the ball on this mess again and you will spawn the greatest political shift in history from both your political parties to a completely new one that can demonstrate some responsibility.

There must be no golden parachutes for any company’s management we bail out. The irresponsible CEOs should be lucky to get away with their skins, much less some exorbitant amount of compensation. 

An independent bi-partisan commission must be selected to oversee this monster. Not George Bush, Dick Cheney, nor Hank Paulson. 

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama said “In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted and may actually cause the government to revert to an inadequate strategy of ad hoc bailouts.”

In this country where we still have families that have to declare bankruptcy due to health care costs, where we don’t adequately provide for our children, senior citizens, our disabled, or our veterans, where members of our government continually find the ways and means to reward their wealthy buddies with lobbying jobs out the Yazoo, these policies that permeate this disaster must end.

Only a week ago one of the Presidential candidates said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”… what a difference a week makes.

I always like to end my articles with a quote from our nation’s history and at this time, in this place in history, the choice of who I will quote is made incredibly simple:

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” 
– Franklin D. Roosevelt