You always get the government you ask for. Our great nation’s populace has turned into a collection of "Sheeple." We follow any elected official blindly without realizing that he or she is more responsible for the current financial and political calamities that we now face.

 The people in charge of administering the tax-payer’s monies are quite simply, economic buffoons — blindly throwing billions of dollars at failing institutions in hopes of a new resurrection of these entities. The only answer here is to allow these companies to fail, and then let the free-market system allow their replacements to appear. It will happen, but because of our new found need of instant gratification we have become unwilling to allow market forces the time necessary to correct the current situation.

 The elected representatives and their allies in the media constantly whine about companies moving their operations offshore yet constantly grind out a more and more suffocating tax code to try to force businesses back to local operations. The government has created a business stifling environment and cries all day long about the results of their idiocy.

 This country became the greatest nation on earth, not because of these fools we keep electing into government, but despite them. The God given rights of freedom and the pursuit of happiness have done more to spur the entrepreneurial spirit in this country than any government entitlement or representative.

 We have been taught to hate the very institutions that have made this the greatest nation in the history of mankind. We are told to hate "Big Oil," (although they are the ones taking the enormous risk of oil exploration and recovery). We are told to hate "Big Pharmacy" because of unbelievably steep drug prices, (which are driven skyward everyday by frivolous law suits and litigation practices). We are told to hate Wal-Mart, the most successful capital venture in my lifetime, because it "destroys" the Mom-and-Pop stores we all loved in our youth, but is that Wal-Mart’s fault or the fault of the Mom-and-Pops not reacting to an ever-changing market environment. We are now told that we should hate the mortgage companies because of the sub-prime mess. Well, I can tell you that when I bought my house in 1977, you sure couldn’t get a mortgage with zero down. You had to have a down payment of 20 percent. Is it any wonder that these sub-prime companies failed? They have been forced to write loans to people that had absolutely no means to pay them back. And the very people who forced them into these sub-prime practices are the very ones conducting the hearings in Washington looking for someone else to blame. We have been taught to hate the auto makers because they close plants and eliminate jobs, but they do this because of the strangling tax code and never ending government regulations imposed upon them. Never a mention about what the UAW has done to complicate matters. Personally, I am sick of laid-off auto workers crying and whining. All of the years on the assembly line, what did you do to help guarantee your financial situations. Did you save any money on your own or did you rely on a promise of a pension? Did you go to school in your free time to improve your value to your employer, or, (as is more likely), did you sit on your duff day after day expecting never to have to face an economic challenge where you would have to make a decision and live with the consequences.

 We have at least four years of coming economic hardship due to the current policies in place and the new administration’s proposed policies. I just pray that as a nation we will be able to weather the coming storm.

 Lack of individual responsibility is the root cause of this great nation’s ills. We always expect someone else to pay for our bad decisions and indiscretions. We demand that government punish someone other than accept the responsibility ourselves when we have made bad decisions. Well I am sick of it. I don’t ask others to do this for me, nor should anyone else. If you feed at the government trough then you need to get off your lazy backside and be an American.