Is it just me, or is there something quite obscene about the “negotiations” going on right now in which Democrats and Republicans are speaking of how to spend other people’s money and force others to pay for this unnecessary and wretched “bailout”? It is clear that the Democrats now want unlimited financial socialism, but given that the Republicans have played Red State Socialism for more than a decade, they hardly can claim the mantle of free markets now.

True negotiations occur between individuals who are dealing with things that they own. In this current set of “negotiations,” the parties doing the negotiating own nothing which is being “negotiated.” In my thinking, that is theft.