I don’t know about you, but Washington ticks me off. This is normal, of course, but their comments about the AIG bailout plan (which we’re now supposed to call a “rescue plan”) clearly reveal that they think we’re all a bunch of really stupid kids who can be distracted by candy bars while they steal our bikes. Some examples:

Bush: “We are in a serious economic crisis in the country if we don’t pass” the financial rescue legislation.” Well, guess what? We’re in a serious crisis if they do pass it.

Dodd: We’ve reached fundamental agreement on a set of principles [including] protection for taxpayers, effective oversight, help for homeowners facing foreclosure and limits on the compensation of executives whose firms take bailout money. Yum, yum, candy bars! Wait a minute – where’s my bike?

Frank: lawmakers “are responding, I think, to the central thrust” of the administration’s $700 billion bailout request “but adding collectively a number of things that will make people legitimately feel better about the overall vote.” Well, as long as we feel better, of course you can steal $700 billion.

Shelby: He proposed Thursday adding funds to the Federal Reserve and Treasury to allow them to lend more to financial institutions. Obviously, adding more fake money to the mix will solve everything.

And then there’s Ron Paul. Yes, there are some other voices of dissent, but Ron Paul has been saying the same things for decades and has been ignored. I encourage you to go read his full response to Bush’s plan. Here are some excerpts.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy – all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment – and prevent the market’s attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

The president assures us that his administration “is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets.” Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you’re supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

Call your reps in Washington. Tell them they will lose your vote if they steal from Main St. to bail out Wall St. That’s the only language they understand.