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Matthews: 'Fair is fair'

Let me finish tonight with a simple political question.Why on God's earth should we reward the people who got us into this mess?

Let me finish tonight with a simple political question.

Why on God's earth should we reward the people who got us into this mess? You can't sell a house because you can't get a decent price for it. You can't buy a house because people can't believe what you're offering for it.

Who created this political dung hill?  Who created this financial horror show that has older people dying over their miniature 401(k)s, young people hopelessly out of work, certainly out of good work?  It all started in a splurge of greed and deception and "grab what you can before the building falls down" that George W. Bush begat us late in the year 2007. 

That's what we're living now. Okay, Obama hasn't been able to get us out of it yet - no doubt on that front - but that's what we're suffering from and there's no sense blaming one party or the other, but there's a helluva lot of sense in keeping your eye on the people who did it - who made millions on all kinds of off-the-wall investment "products" and then dumped them out there to people who didn't know what they were getting.

All I ask is why anyone, regardless of political philosophy, would want to be out there barking for better tax breaks for these people - why they could be so shameless as to tell us it's better to screw the old people out of their Medicare so we can keep the tax breaks Bush jammed through heading out the door, even if we have to deliver them in hot checks courtesy of the latest borrowing from abroad?   Why?  Ask somebody why reward the big shots who shot this economy dead with more millions in tax breaks - a running bonanza of generosity from you and the people who got screwed by the very people now with their hands out for more?

It's a no-brainer. For the average tax payer, it's simple.  If there has to be pain to keep this country solvent - so we don't go the way of Greece - where do we come up with the deal?  Do we sock it to the people who are old and sick or to the people making the big bucks who never really - come on! - really felt the hell they brought down on this country in the first place, the hell they left in town behind them.

Fair is fair. 

Please repeat: fair is fair.  This isn't just about ability to pay - it's about who - given how we got here - "oughta" pay.