As for our current Bush-league president, I sincerely hope he rises to the occasion. Truman didn't show much promise before he became president and grew into the job magnificently. For all our sakes, I'm hoping the job is a profound growth experience for George Dubya.

Oh, and by the way, you spelled "congratulate" wrong.

Laying blame and bailing out
I have two comments.

First, as I recall, Mr. Clinton was the president in 1994, and had been for over a year. How does that make it the "Bush recession of 1994?" If you assign today's slowdown to Bush, having been in office barely three months, you ought to be more consistent.

Second, regarding CA energy, since when is it the Federal Government's task to bail out a state for poor decisions? Our country is a union of states (hence United States), which means that states must act responsibly, and the Federal government isn't their babysitter.

Although I'm sure there is precedent (S&L bailouts), it still doesn't mean that it was right for the Feds to do it.

Any Fed money spent is taken from me and you and everybody else. We don't even get the benefit of paying it directly. It is automatically deducted for most of us, so we don't get the tangible impression of how much is actually taken. Do you actually enjoy that the Fed takes 25% of your earnings from you?

To make it personal, it is not my responsibility to bail out my neighbor when he makes a poor decision. Pain and consequences are very effective teachers. Bailouts only enable similar poor behavior to continue. Do you think it right for a third party to take our money and give it to someone else to prevent the pain from poor decision making? Or would you delay the payment by the third party, pending more responsible behavior on the other party's part first? Better yet, wouldn't you like to eliminate the third party entirely for this transaction, allowing you to make your own decision on how to use your own property, your money?

Seth Smith

Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds
Seth, there's no question we had a recession as Bush left office and Clinton came in. Was it to Clinton's credit that the recession of the early 90s ended on his watch? Honestly, I don't think it is possible to tell. But that's not the issue, and I'm honestly hoping as this Bush comes into office that we can avoid a full-out recession. I wish only the best for the incoming team, and I hope they turn out to be exceptional.

As for California, this issue is much more complex. If your neighbor's failure could take you down, you might have to help out. If the California economy tanks and tanks hard, everything's going to feel it and feel it hard. In this case, despite California's own mismanagement (and it appears to have been such), the Feds are going to have to help out in some way if California can't make it work. This country can ill afford to have that state fall into an ocean of powerlessness.

It's certainly not right that our taxes may need to be used to fix the problem. And it's certainly not right that our taxes might make some PG&E joker richer. But at the same time, we have a complex, interconnected economy, and when the state with the largest economy is threatened, we can't sit back here in NJ and assume it won't hurt us. It will. And it already is.