Never underestimate the power of stupidity and dogma. Wow, you neocon repugnicans have sure found your red meat again haven't you? Whatsamatter, Dubya hide it from you the last 12 months?

The Conservative mind's ability to rewrite history is truly staggering, second only to it's ability to ignore facts and generally make stuff up. You jokers must've been sleeping thru your American history classes or simply didn't pay attention. What exactly is it you stand for other than guns, no taxes and some form or another of anarchy? Reagan was no more a genius or statesman than my grandpa and frankly, my grand dad knew more about the average Joe than the Gipper could ever hope and could kick his ass to boot! Why don't you drooling idealogues take a nap and let the adults run things for a change? Clearly your "free market" ideas mean nothing more than everything is free until you get caught. Small government to you apparently means creating simultaneously the single largest government agency (Homeland Security) and the single largest entitlement program (drug benefit) and violating as many Constitutional rights as is possible in 8 short years. And since you seem to have forgotten, Reagan's deregulation polices saw the savings and loan industry all but collapse (requiring gov't bailout) , the airline industry fell apart and has been on the dole ever since and ultimately it was deregulation that created the monster we're now wrestling to control glibly referred to as Wall Street.

One more thing. Before you get sanctimonious, remember it was Reagan's foreign policy, aided by Bush Sr.'s CIA that funded and largely trained the rebels in Afghanistan and Pakistan that now comprise what we know as Al Qaida. Good work fellas. Of course if your goal is a "permanent Republican majority" and you wrap yourself in the flag with every chance you get, creating an enemy then purporting to fight that same enemy is a pretty cynical act.

Mr. Reich, once again you hit the nail on the head.

I fit neatly into your article in that I am a recently laid off salesman from a large telecom who lives in California. So in a very short period of time, I went from a well-paid, taxpaying contributor to the economy to a virtual economic non-entity, another statistic. I am fortunate enough to have been careful with my money and I am collecting my unemployment insurance but it's a far cry from what I used to earn and from what I've paid into the "system" in taxes over the years. So now "the Governator" brokered a deal that raises my taxes in the form of a 1% sales tax increase AND my vehicle registration taxes and a host of other marginal and/or hidden taxes. Thanks! Now it will even harder to hang on to all that I've worked very hard to earn.

So while all this happens I find it increasingly difficult to choke back the anger I feel at all the "financial wizards" on Wall Street and a host of other boardrooms who created and facilitated this massive fraud. Where are the indictments?! Where are the perp walks?! As it turns out, these sociopaths were taking huge risks and gambling with, as it turns out, OUR tax dollars! Nice. So why are we bailing these criminals out? How is it we allowed these institutions to become "too big to fail"? I am all for paying my fair share of taxes to help our society to take care of those far less fortunate than me. BUT I'd like to know the system isn't rigged against me and that mythical "upper 1%" aren't gaming the system ... as it appears they are. We're not helping the less fortunate amongst us but perversely the most fortunate. We face an unprecedented moral hazard. Bail these frauds out and we enable the very behavior that created this mess. But to let them fail, as they deserve, then we supposedly risk an ever larger systemic crash. So now our hard earned taxes are not only being spent to likely enable this to happen again, but they're not going to help those most in need. Worse still, our taxes are increasing. If this isn't the stuff of revolution I don't know what is.

The good people of turn of the century France got one look at Versailles and how the upper crust were living while they were starving and dying and they correctly chose to revolt and take a few heads, literally. Perhaps something along those lines is called for again ... not literally but figuratively.