Infinite politics

These two kids barely got a peaceful night's sleep following the inauguration when politicians announced they were already throwing their sacred hats into the ring for the next election which is still a year and a half hence.

One heavyweight politician announced he would delay his act since he thought people were sick and tired of politics and politicians; we doubt he realized what he was saying but kudos to one politician for stating a fact, he is so right. We understand that in Britain political campaigning is limited to six weeks before the election; we certainly support freedom of expression, but surely we could conduct our election process without being inundated with all of that political hot air.

We recently discovered there are two sets of rules in dealing with the Internal Revenue Service, one for the politicians and one for us working stiffs. When a politician gets caught with failure to pay income tax, it's called an "honest mistake."

When we lowbrows get caught we pay the tax, penalty and interest or go to jail. A man who worked for me fell short by $300 paying his income tax. He was promptly notified by the IRS if he didn't pay up by a stated date, they would confiscate property; of course he paid up. So much for "all men are created equal."

We could not believe that the Congress approved more than $800 billion for bailout without including an oversight on how the money is to be used. Anyone with an IQ of five would have known that the already overpaid CEOs would grab their bonuses and whatever other perks they claimed.

One needs to keep in mind that it is our money (taxpayers) that is footing the bill.

Surely no one will deny that our economy is in trouble; free enterprise is the bedrock of our economy. For more than two hundred years, private ownership of our production has served us well; but now greed, poor management, an unjustified war and shipment of our jobs offshore has reduced our wealth to dangerous levels. The federal government is buying up mortgages and loans and bailing out all who are in danger of going belly-up. To us, this smacks of socialism.

The federal government is something like $11 trillion in debt; nevertheless, the administration and Congress are preparing to appropriate whatever money it takes to bail out anyone in danger of failing. After all of the bailout money is gone, then what? We repeat, are we bordering on socialism?

A spendthrift partisan Congress and administration not withstanding, we will probably muddle through somehow, we always have. Perhaps we can take heart by what Sir Winston Churchill said, referring to the British government, "Ours is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Carl and Darlene Schlegel

2703 Hillcrest Drive