'Reign of the Madmen' must end

“Madness!” began the column about Darrell Issa in the New York Times. “Rep. Issa, a Republican congressman from California [we know him well], stuck to his political playbook like a man covered in Krazy Glue,” wrote columnist Bob Herbert September 30, recounting how extreme ideologues in Congress brought our nation to this economic abyss.

Issa’s unwavering devotion to his ideology found him standing atop Ronald Reagan’s grave with his sword drawn, battling against the real world of suffering Middle America.

What is the holy precept which Issa defends and which has brought our nation to this abyss, lying at the edge of Reagan’s grave? Deregulation. A “free market” without restraint or oversight. After all, the free market is regulated by the moral restraint of failure and does not need government regulation, preach these madmen.

Alas! This failure would doom us all, we quickly discovered. Government had to bail us all out.

Fear and failure are indeed the antidote for greed. But this failure threatens to consume us all in a vast economic depression. The antidote is more deadly than greed itself.

“When Pres. Bush went on television last week to drum up support for the bailout package,” wrote Herbert, “he looked almost dazed, like someone who’d just climbed out of an auto wreck.”

But not Issa, who flailed like one of the madmen described in Herbert’s column “When Madmen Reign.”

It is way past time to fire this man and put Bob Hamilton in Congress to represent Middle America.

Joe Howard Crews