Over the last few months, the US Government has poured out hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out large corporations.  Now they are considering bills to bail out US auto makers to the tune of nearly 20 billion dollars.  Where's my piece of the pie?

I've been a small business owner for 7 years now and I'm feeling the effects of the economy as well.  Where's my government check to keep my business churning?

Granted, I don't have 10,000+ employees working for me, but I also haven't driven my company into the ground while taking a 10 million dollar salary.

This government involvement needs to STOP!  We're supposed to be a free market economy.  Let the banks and automakers that couldn't run their businesses properly sink.  Of course it's going to cause quite a bit of immediate turmoil, but the market will balance, the smaller banks that didn't make poor decisions will grow to replace those that died, and unions will scale back their greedyness so US automakers can compete again imports.

Here's a novel idea, how about taking the 700 billion dollars that the government is giving to the banks and give it back to the taxpayers.  That's over $5000 per taxpayer in the US.  Imagine what would happen to the economy with every taxpayer having an extra $5000 to spend.  That would help those defaulting on their mortgages to get back into the game thus saving the banks, PLUS injecting a huge amount of capital into the economy possibly helping us out of the recession a bit sooner.  What are these politicians thinking?

Well at least we as taxpayers either already own or will be owning stakes in failing corporations.  That sure seems like money well spent.

Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich was finally arrested today for trying to 'sell' the Senate seat left vacant from President Elect Barack Obama.  For those of us Illinoisans this is no surprise, but rather a sigh of relief after years of corruption and government mis-handling.  For me the last straw was when Blogojevich decided a good place to get state funds was to close a handfull of state parks.  What is it with Illinois?  This is two in a row that are going to jail.  It will be interesting to see how the next year plays out with someone new in power.  Maybe they can defluff our inflated budget.... yeah right!