Dear Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, et al.:

I've come to the point now where I'm wondering if you've all just gone stark, raving mad there in Washington, D.C. I just can't come up with any other plausible explanation for a federal government so unaccountably run amok. I mean, I want my government and my country to be successful, so I keep trying to believe the best of you, but you keep doing things that make me believe the worst.

Did some clever and nefarious terrorist - oh, sorry, "man-made disaster" - group conduct their own "overseas contingency operation" and sneak something into the White House and Capitol Hill drinking water? Or is there some odorless and colorless airborne vapor they've found a way to infuse into the already rarefied air in and around both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue?

Something has got to explain (logically and rationally would be nice) how you people think we can keep on spending, spending, spending for every bright and shiny new idea you come up with, with little to no regard for how much debt it all is heaping on this country and its current and future generations.

If any big or small business in this country, or any American family sitting around their kitchen table, tried to run their business or budget for their family like you idiots in Washington are running the federal government, they would be out of business and/or maybe going to jail in no time. I think that's what should happen, starting in 2010 and finishing in 2012 - you all need to be put "out of business" and some of you should probably go to jail as well.

And, of course, no businesses, much less America's families, can just print more money like you can - and have - and are. Have none of you, or your vaunted economic "experts," ever heard of "inflation"?

You have already run deficit spending up into the trillions of dollars over the next ten years, like it's some new national credit card account you just qualified for in the mail. You've passed a huge stimulus plan, which hasn't stimulated much of anything so far, and probably won't until about when the recession would have probably begun recovering on its own. You've passed a huge budget, filled to the brim with pork barrel projects of exactly the kind Obama said he would never tolerate - but did. You've bailed out companies which should have been allowed to fail, while letting others, perhaps deservedly, go down the tubes. You've said those you've saved with billions of our taxpayer dollars were "too big to fail," yet some of them you sought to "save" have failed or are failing anyway. And where's the return on investment for all that? Will the American taxpayer ever see any return, or are all those billions just "sunk costs"?

And what about the billions you can't even account for? Like about 80 billion in TARP funds. Just gone, eh? Poof! "Oh well, too bad, so sad, our bad." Is that it? I'm sorry, but that's at least misfeasance, or gross negligence and/or downright criminal. Somebody should be going to prison. Bernie Maddoff is, so why not someone in the government? After all, $80 billion "unaccounted for" is more than Maddoff ripped off. Do you know what would happen to the "average" person if they worked for an employer who discovered at the end of the day that only $80 was in the till, instead of the $100 which should be there? Yeah, you bet - that employee would at least be fired, if not prosecuted. How are you guys any different? The American people are YOUR employers and we want to know where OUR money went, and is going. 

Your governmental track record on running financial businesses and auto companies in particular has been, well, uh, lackluster at best and outright inept at worst. Tell me again who did or did not know what about the AIG bonuses and when? You know, those bonuses, the amount of which has grown over time from something like $170 million to over $430 million now? Do you people even know what's really going on? Well, that's what we pay you for, you know.

Maybe, instead of trying to run outfits for which you have no expertise and no qualifications, while firing CEOs, talking down Big Business and trying to influence federal bankruptcy judges to favor Big Union over other stakeholders, you should stick to just trying to run the government itself more efficiently.

You set aside billions of taxpayer dollars for something euphemistically called "health care reform," but without any plan for how you're going to actually achieve that health care reform. Cart before the horse comes to mind, just like with closing Guantanamo without any plan for what to do with the detainees. And now it comes out that you're considering inventing and/or increasing taxes on the half of Americans who actually pay all the taxes to provide "universal health care" for 40 million or so who don't have health care coverage, to include taxing the taxpaying public's health care to help pay for it! Are you NUTS?! Or are you just that drunk with the power of being in control of both the White House and Congress?

And you incredulously claim not to understand what the TEA Party protests were about April 15th? Unbelievable. Well, wait until July 4th. Then, it may begin to dawn on even you out-of-touch, so-called Washington elites. Actually, elitists would be more like it.

Despite the denigrating gay jokes many so-called "news" commentators and snarky "celebrities" made about the "teabaggers," TEA stands for "Taxed Enough Already." With estimates ranging from 360,000 to over 750,000, "ordinary Americans" turned out in a truly grassroots demonstration in thousands of communities all across America for the TEA Party protests, and you ain't seen nothin' yet. And if those protesters thought they were "Taxed Enough Already" in mid-April, just consider what they're probably thinking by now. Yet you still persist in dreaming up new things for which to spend and tax more and more? Incredible! It's like adding insult to injury. Either you just aren't listening, or you just don't care. Either way, you're not adequately responding to and representing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans and may sooner-than-later find yourselves looking for other employment, if not worse.

But, I want to give you all the benefit of any doubt, so please just tell me that it actually is something in the drinking water or something in the air which is making all of you act so crazy - irresponsible - unaccountable - detached - disingenuous - corrupt - and maybe even criminal. Any of you? Anyone? You know, sometimes insanity is a valid defense. Not always, but sometimes - even when the inmates are obviously in charge of the asylum.