Bailout or surrender?

The Treasury Secretary's proposal to stave off the eminent collapse of our financial system represents a unique opportunity to begin a restructuring that will lessen the power of the international corporations and ultra-rich, reestablishing principles that have guided this country's best days since the Pilgrims tripped over the rocks at Plymouth. It is nothing less than a test of Lincoln's maxim that the U.S. should be a government "of the people" - of all the people, not just the obscenely wealthy and well-connected ones.

You can look at it from a conservative, liberal, libertarian, main street view - the plan as presently stated reeks, rewarding not just derelict behavior but the financial equivalent of mass murder and terrorism. Lacking even the simplest guarantees and oversights, it is little better than legalized robbery of common taxpayers, future as well as present.

And with the lobbyists working overtime, maybe there's no hope.