Can we get real here for a minute?

This so-called bailout is just another heaping helping of the burnt baloney that got us into this mess - the idea that a nation can base its economy on smoke and mirrors.

What right-wing ideologues call "The New Economy" is built around the idea that an economy doesn't really have to make anything, that we can just figure out clever ways to re-package and market and leverage what other people make (people who work for much less money), dress it up with advertising and high tech - and make a killing off of it. Whether it's shoes, computers, complicated financial instruments or even war, we don't make the stuff - we make the stuff that sells the stuff.

Now it turns out that the stuff that sells the stuff was nothing but hot air.

So what do we do?

Look for another source of hot air.

The government.

Can't you see that this can never work? That it's just the desperate gambit of an addict who's supply of good stuff has finally dried up?

You can't base an economy on government handing out money for people to pay each other, any more than you can base an economy on pyramid schemes that assume the price of houses will go up forever. To even attempt such a thing is to molest the very concept of what an economy is.

Now all of a sudden we say we want to "create" jobs.

After 30 years of shipping every job we could get our hands on overseas.

You want to know what happened to our economy?

Mexico happened to our economy.

China happened to our economy.

That's the root of the problem: we loaded our economy on a boat and shipped it overseas.

No, wait a minute. That's not the root of the problem.

That's the trunk of the problem.

The root of the problem is that have a political system based on money.

Thus, the hot air solutions.

What are the chances that our public officials, who owe their very existence to the interests who bankroll them, are going to attack the root of the problems we face?

Approximately...nil. Unless we find a way to force them.

There are going to be no bills proposing new tariffs on products made in China. There are going to be no bills that make it illegal for an American corporation to park its assets in the Cayman Islands. There are going to be no bills that contain minimum environmental or labor standards for imports. No relief for people in hock to credit card companies. Nothing that would threaten the stranglehold of insurance companies on the healthcare system. Nothing but a wag of the finger and a dog-and-pony show in front of an "outraged" Congress for the banking industry.

You can go down the whole list of entrenched interests, the "shareholders" who own our "economy," who happily pay-to-play in our current pay-to-play system. They will all be protected for the simple reason that they have paid, and will continue to pay, protection money.

But what about the unprecedented grassroots fund-raising machine that elected Barack Obama? That money came overwhelmingly from small donors with no special interest except the demand for change. What about their interests?

Yeah. What about their interests?

For some reason, they don't seem to command the same respect as, say, that of manufacturers of children's toys.

I have no clever, one sentence answer for that one.

How come the interest group that paid the most has the least clout?

Maybe in order to have clout, you gotta use clout.

And so far, our guy hasn't shown the inclination to use clout. For a guy from Chicago, he seems strangely dainty. He talks about bipartisanship. We didn't pay Barack Obama to be bipartisan!

We paid him to change things.

We gave Barack Obama, in denominations of $5, $10, $100, the clout to fundamentally change things. We gave Barack Obama 65 million votes. We gave Barack Obama a 75% approval rating. We gave Barack Obama over $745 million. Surely we should get something for our $745 million - besides the president's "appreciation," as Blago would say.

For $745 million, we oughta be f*cking golden.

There's a famous Claes Oldenburg sculpture in front of the Social Security Building on West Madison Street in Chicago. It's a 100-foot tall baseball bat made of polished stainless steel. It's time for the slugger from Chicago to pick up the goddam bat - and swing it!

That's what we paid Barack Obama for.