Priorities!

So we learn this week that the national government is capable of acting to solve domestic problems, after all. Legislation of enormous scope, complexity, and cost is said to be imminent -- going from conception to execution in a mere week. (One hates to imagine what boondoggles lobbyists are going to include in this behemoth. After all, the only people who really understand highly complex financial markets are those who are paid to do so -- and they don't work for the American taxpayer.)

Despite our massive deficits, the government can come up with hundreds of billions of dollars (even $1 trillion is easily possible) to bail out Wall Street. And yet it can't provide a few billion dollars for catastrophic health insurance for the underinsured bankrupted by medical bills. More expansive national health care legislation is similarly perceived as impossibly complex, destined to be mired in gridlock -- even though literally NO major initiative has ever entailed a health care plan as expensive over a 10 year time frame as what Congress is prepared to lay on the line for Wall Street immediately on a mere day's notice.