This crisis is neither the result of a normal turn of the business cycle nor an accident of history. We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington, D.C. – Barack Obama, Feb. 26, 2009

I think he’s right. The irresponsible protection racket has got to stop.

To avoid competing in the marketplace, business executives from “our largest companies” have bought special political considerations in the form of regulatory concessions, tax breaks, creating barriers for their competition, or simply transferring their downside risk to taxpayers. Never mind that so much of their resources (and the country’s) are squandered in this dead-weight-loss proposition. When businesses assess their “external environment” and discover political power is the only way they can compete with other companies, how can they be faulted?

As such, the “responsibility” rests entirely with the “seats of power in Washington DC,” and is, of course, delegated to them by the taxpayers. Why continue the charade that we operate within the constraints of a constitution? Now, instead of correcting the root of the problem and reducing the size, power and reach of the federal government, the democrats aim to make themselves all powerful.

It reminds me of Jafar in the Disney film Alladin, who, in his quest to be most all-powerful Leviathan, overlooked the tiny detail that his powers were ultimately authorized by the owner of the lamp. The democrats seem to have overreached so far and so quickly that the owners of the lamp could put them back in for a long while.

We can only hope.