"Something Must Be Done"

[A]lthough most Americans are skeptical the "stimulus" will work, there is still a widely held fear that doing nothing is a greater danger. And in the mainstream media, with few exceptions, discussion of how government might have helped bring on the problem in the first place is pushed aside as irrelevant.

Does this sound familiar? It is in many ways similar to the political atmosphere following 9/11.

The Bush administration used the terrorist threat to America as a pretext to expand government at home and abroad at a staggering pace. Within a couple months of 9/11, the U.S. had begun an open-ended war and occupation in Afghanistan. The Patriot Act was passed by Congress and the Fourth Amendment gutted with no time for real debate. Immigrants and citizens were arrested without due process, prisoners of war began arriving at Guantánamo, the White House adopted frightening doctrines on executive power and the stampede to war with Iraq was underway.

The current economic mess was caused by the Fed with the compliance of Congress. They have, with the supplicant mainstream media, successfully shifted the blame to Wall Street, bankers, CEO's, capitalism, free markets, the rich, the greedy and the parsimonious, penny-pinching shoppers who won't buy all those pretty geegaws in the store windows.