Get out of my oven!

Yesterday, while making dinner, I was hit by what has to be mommy government. I was roasting some potato planks in the oven when the thing decided that it had passed "normal broiling temperatures," and locked itself shut to cool down - with my potatoes inside and rapidly charring.

We pulled the manual out to look it up and discovered that this is one of those "built in safety features," that nobody really wants or is even aware of. I tried to research this and find out if there was some regulation in place, but one look at the various regs involving electric ovens and my eyes crossed.

Now I have no problem with reasonable safety regulations for the manufacture of an appliance. In fact, I am sure that some of those have prevented fires and serious injury. However, the idea that there is a "normal broiling temperature," which is not specified in the manual, is somewhat goofy.

I am certain that behind this is a set of government regulations and/or nonsense lawsuits. And that is where I draw a line on my kitchen tiles.

It is one thing to require that an installed electric oven have a tip-over preventing bracket. It is totally another to determine what is too hot. And yet another to not give me a way to override it.

I cannot say for certain that there is a government regulation involved, but I look at my charred potatoes as a metaphor for the ever-growing nanny state attitude that big government has. This is not a partisan thing. Looking at regulation dates, both parties have passed lots of silly regulations designed to protect us from ourselves.

Some of these make sense, like auto shut-off for gas appliances when the pilot goes out. Some are just plain invasive and not needed like locking my oven when it thinks it has gotten too hot. It is as if mommy government assumes we are all addled 6 year old children incapable of taking care of ourselves. The same government that cannot balance a budget, meet a deadline or answer a phone call.

The hazard of this nanny state thinking is obvious and scary. On the course we are now following, we will need government approval on the food we eat (salt content, fat content and so on), the TV we watch (V-chip), the clothes we wear (endless regulations), what we drive (CAFE standards), and so on. Mommy government wants to make sure that we cannot harm ourselves by accident and in the process is hobbling our ability to do anything.

The pending financial reform is a prefect example. There is a lot of good in there. Most of it deals with transparency for the investor. That is a good thing. The lack of transparency in derivatives was a part of what caused the "meltdown." However, there is a lot of not so good and some flat out bad.

The worst of it is the bailout fund. This in effect codifies and legitimizes "too big to fail." That is a very bad thing. It ensures that the biggest banks will be able to continue bad business practices and shaky investing with the comfort that mommy government will be there to pick up the pieces without penalty. By legitimizing the Paulson-Geithner-Bernanke lie about too big to fail, mommy government pretty much gives a pass to any large institution. Without the possibility of failure, success is meaningless.

After trillions of our dollars have been poured into this rat hole, Congress wants to set up a permanent payola plan for them. Instead of enforcing the existing laws and regulations, the plan appears to be to create new ones that do nothing different except create a pile of money that can be handed out with no review or authorization.

In the same way that my oven locked itself when it thought the temp was too high, this fund will pay out when some unaccountable administrator thinks the risks are too high for SELECTED companies. Right, selected. So if my company (admittedly tiny) is on the brink of failure, I am left out to dry. But if one of mommy government's selected favorites gets into trouble, they will have this money handed to them rather than pay the price of failure.

In case nobody is a student of history, Andrew Jackson vetoed the charter of the Second National Bank of the United States in 1832 with the following statement:

"Gentlemen, I have been watching you for a long time and I am convinced you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the bread staff of this country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you and when you lost you charged it to the bank."

History does repeat itself, and the bailout fund is just what Jackson railed against - socialization of the losses. In effect, preventing the largest banks from burning themselves, just like my oven.

Well, mommy government - stay out of my oven and get pout of the banking business. Let me burn my potatoes if it suits me and let the big banks fail if it suits them.

Meanwhile, Back at the Banks...

While the politicians and media are all wrapped up with their traditional silliness ranging from the obsession the media has with Tiger Woods (just another pathetic excuse for a human who cheated on his wife) to Jon Kyl's promise to filibuster the non-existent Supreme Court nominee, the banks and Wall Street have been happily continuing to rig the system and prvent an actual investigation of just what happened.

Before I get there, I have to comment on the 2 distractions above. The media obsession with this sad excuse for a man, this adultering pig is simply nauseating. And the delicacy with which it is handled is baffling. The same media that will call folks racists and fascists without a flinch seem unable to call Woods what he is. An adulterer. Plain and simple. He cheated on his wife. Why this is somehow the lead story everywhere is bad enough, but the fact that the cowardly media (all sides) prefers terms like 'womanizer,' 'philanderer,' and the ever ludicrous 'sex addict,' to the more accurate adulterer eludes me. Call things what they are and stop the excuse factory. I will happily say it - Tiger Woods is a disgusting pig that cheated on his wife repeatedly. A serial adulterer. All this clown is addicted to is the adulation of his fans.

As to Kyl's promise of a filibuster, this is perhaps the final proof that the Senate is now officially pointless. There is no vacancy on the court and no nominee to discuss. So why would Kyl make such a stupid and empty threat? Because he has no interest in governing and lots of interest in pulling in campaign cash. Democrats should not be happy or feel somehow vindicated. Democrats invented the concept of skewering Supreme Court nominees with Bork and Thomas. All Kyl is doing is elevating the art of silliness that seems to pervade the Congress these days. Threatening to stop a nomination that has yet to be made for a vacancy that has yet to exist? Excellent job Senator! You have managed to turn nothing into something just to avoid the simple fact that this Congress is a failed body and a corrupt one. Kudos to to the man with the giant pile of poop.

And while these distractions dominate, the folks on Wall Street and at the big banks continue to lie and threaten. Earlier this week, Wall Street's new fair haired wonder boy, Jamie Dimon (who was gifted Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual) stated that any new regulation might cause credit to become unavailable. In case Dimon has not noticed, credit is still hard to get and getting more difficult. What Dimon meant was that regulation would hamper his ability to continue to lie to shareholders and the public.

What he really meant was that he and his cohorts had invested a lot in corrupting and baffling the existing regulators and they did not want to have to actually follow the rules. If they followed the rules, why the fear of a consumer protection agency for financial institutions. As we all know, the law abiding need not fear the police.

And today, the liars from Citi stepped up and apologized for what happened there, while claiming to not know about it. Well, Mr. Prnice and Mr. Rubin, how could you not know there were tens of billions of dollars in risky assets on the books? Because someone said so? Aren't you supposed to know this stuff? Aren't you supposed to have independent auditors look at it? Or are you simply lying some more to avoid admitting that you made a walloping huge paycheck out of trashing an entire economy.

What Prince and Rubin really mean is "We knew, but we were making a lot of money and really didn't care all that much about anything else." What they are really saying is "We are so sorry we got caught."

And therein lies the real problem. Nobody has been caught. No investigation. No forensic examination of who did what. As long as people like Ken Lewis, John Thain, Lloyd Blankfein, Alan Schwartz and Bill Fuld are able to simply lie and not get called out, the system will continue to fail the investors and depositors. These guys lied endlessly. And boldly. And, apparently, without penalty.

As long as Geithner and Bernanke are running the regulatory scheme, there is no regulation. These are the same 2 that let it run wild in the first place. The same guys that were in on every Sunday decision. Every decision to send my money to the crooks on Wall Street to cover their bad bets. Somehow and for some inexplicable reason, Obama left these 2 in charge after they proved their incompetence.

And still no real investigation. No independent look at what, how, where and why. We already know who. Geithner and Bernanke fear an actual independent investigation. They know that it will inevitably point out their failure. The bankers fear an investigation. They know it will inevitably point out their lies.

And the administration and Congress? They just hope it will go away. They fear the bankers. They don't fear us, though. And come November, we need to remember that they work for us and fire them. All of them.

Meanwhile, at the Banks

While everyone was watching the artificially hurried and rigged vote on Health Care, the issue of financial regulation slid under the radar. The importance of this cannot be minimized of exaggerated. When this president took office, we were in one of the worst recessions in history. We pretty much still are. A recession triggered, in large part, by misbehaving banks, disingenuous investment firms and lazy, incompetent (and possibly corrupt) regulators.

Once the cause of Health Care took center stage, that freed up the Senator from banking land - the ever untrustworthy Chris Dodd - to quietly push his bogus financial reform package. And it freed up his Republican counterpart - the earmark loving Shelby - as well.

The financial press took their eye off this as well in their haste to cover Health Care. This freed up everyone to have some fun at our expense. Blankfein, Dimon, Pandit and the rest took the opportunity to manipulate the process to ensure that any new regulation would actually be the same as the old ones.

Let me be very clear on one point. With a few exceptions (Ken Lewis comes to mind) most of the banks and investment firms acted barely within the law in their endless gaming of the system to make sure that they profited from our losses. And today brings more proof that the Congress in their haste to send a trillion of our dollars to Wall Street did so with no regard for the taxpayer.

Today we read that Dimon's firm - JP Morgan - having been gifted Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns by the troika of Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke can now get a massive tax refund thanks to some little known and rarely mentioned provisions in Obama's so-called stimulus package. The package that was supposed to get our economy up off the mat. The other trillion taxpayer dollars flung down the corrupt rabbit hole maintained by the Pelosi-Boehner gang.

It seems that a minor little tiny piece of that legislation allowed the banks to move their losses around to cover profitable years, thus reducing their tax burden. Something that nobody commented on at the time. Something that the deficit hawk Republicans failed to point out as a cost of the legislation. Something that the tax-happy Democrats failed to mention. Nothing from CBO either.

To be fair, the law was written by Congress and the real pirates of this time - Dimon and friends - followed it. One can only assume that they paid their pet Congress Critters to write it in there, but it passed and was signed without a single mention in the press. No objection from the White House. Not a peep from Barney Frank or the ever untrustworthy Dodd. Not even a flinch from the false queen Nancy the last.

In fact, I think I can easily say that the only time those clowns are bipartisan is when they are acting in secret to help their lords and masters on Wall Street.

You can be sure that Dodd's proposed new regulatory scheme will be the next fast track piece of nonsense coming off Capitol Hill. And this one will be high grade nonsense.

The minute the Lehman report came out, all such legislation should have been stopped. Frozen. Put on hold. After all, it only makes sense. Here we have proof of how the system was being gamed. It would make sense outside Washington to investigate those abuses and see who else is playing the game. Take a serious look at what is really needed.

The first course should have been to call Geithner down to the hill for a public hearing on just what he was doing while he was failing in his job as New York Fed CEO and principal regulator of the Wall Street banks. Then Bernanke to demand he reveal just how much money he handed out and to whom while he was failing in his job as Fed Chairman. Then Paulson to ask the same questions.

None of this happened. In fact, both parties in Congress have done everything they can to ignore it. Rather than actually find the facts and act on them, Congress persists in acting to please pollsters and pundits while actually satisfying the special interests that fund them.

This is sure to become the next partisan football kicked around. Democrats will clamor for more regulation and new agencies while Republicans will cry about too much regulation and too much government. And this once, both will be right and both will be wrong.

We already have reams of regulation but no regulators willing to enforce them. Witness the always untrustworthy Mary Schapiro, now head of the SEC. She had the raw nerve to complain that regulators did not do their jobs. Yet, she was one of them as FINRA head. Her agency ignored things like Madoff and allowed the endless trading of credit default swaps and exotic derivatives.

Yet, there she is, now head of the SEC. Somehow, this administration took her failure, Geithner's failure and Bernanke's failure and accepted them. Even promoted them. And this sham of a Senate confirmed them into their jobs. That should tell all of us what the Senate cares about. Nothing. Except themselves.

There are no less than 7 agencies currently charged with enforcing tens of thousands of regulations. Most likely a hundred thousand federal employees or more. Add in the states and their laws. We have plenty of law, regulation and enforcers at all levels. Just none of them are any good.

Now ask, do we need more law or clearer law? Do we need more enforcers or active, effective enforcers? Does the Fed really work anymore? Who supervises them? Who are these bond rating firms? Are they ever reviewed? By who? And a lot more really obvious questions like that. The ones neither Democrats or Republicans ever seem to ask. I don't care how much profit Wall Street makes. I care that they do so within the rules.

I challenge this president to appoint a non-political commission to openly investigate the banks. None of the circle currently dining at the White House. No power brokers or lobbyists. No cronies or hacks.

I say we give it over to Elizabeth Warren and Eric Bolling. They understand how Wall Street works and how the laws work. Take it away from the partisan grindhouse and have an actual open, transparent investigation. Force the Fed to keep Bernanke's false promise of transparency. Force Geithner to keep Obama' promise of the same.

One thing I am confident of with both Dr. Elizabeth Warren and Eric Bolling is that they will keep the best interests of the people in mind. These are 2 ethical, honest Americans, who care because they love this nation. Neither of them aspires to power. And both know a lie when they hear one.

When their Commission issues its report, then Congress can look at regulation. If any of them are not being investigated themselves.