Trickle, trickle - Too little, too late!

What do the stimulus and bailout packages mean to us at the lowest level of the food chain in our economy?

I ask myself this question a lot lately, and I don't like any of the conclusions that the facts drive me towards. These programs have the look of a pea shell game with little or no benefit for the small businesses, their employees or the unemployed.

The federal and state governments need to stay out of religion and business, yet here they are doing bailouts and stimulating both. In not a single class in either government or financing do I recall ever teaching that the U.S. government was in the business of bailouts. Until now, it was actually the opposite, with strictly a hands-off policy.

The small-business man will continue to struggle for survival and face a new nemesis on the side of big business, his own government.

The big companies will survive and small businesses will fail in record numbers with analysts spouting dire messages as to why the numbers are high for these small and new businesses failing.

They will theorize mightily, write their papers and thump their chests, but will they recognize the fact that these bailout dollars never reach the core of the business community in America.

Sadly these new programs are simply creating a welfare system for large companies.

Welfare systems have a preponderance for creating a greater and greater dependency on the government for survival, first by individuals and now by entire companies.

History shows that when there is a movement to cease a subsidy the industry flails about yelling that it can not survive without the subsidies. Now financial and manufacturing concerns are about to become wards of the federal government, probably for their remaining lifetimes.

Like the Welfare to Work Program, I think any type of business bailout or stimulus package should have incentives and penalties to actually do what the bills were originated for, to create jobs and boost our economy.

Success will have its own rewards. Failure should have automatic jail terms for the executives of the company.

However, these programs have all the characteristics of a slippery slope scenario. The more government gets involved, the less free enterprise will exist.

The federal government is going to help the financial industry pull out of this negative business performance. This builds confidence how?

Let's hope it isn't the same way they have managed the national debt.

Why do we need these programs for companies in the U.S. to survive? Where were the government and industry watchdogs while this auto, financial and other large businesses careened their way to the edge of extinction? That might be a good place to find some funding, fire all those people and use that money to stimulate the economy.

Who in god's name is running these companies? How can you let a company get hundreds of millions in the red and then expect the government to bail you out?

I think we should start with the small businesses first, give them all the money they will need to survive for the next few years and work our way up, when we reach the top they can have what is left or resurrect Franklin Delano Roosevelt's CCC program; people work, they get paid, things get well built. It's not welfare and it stimulates the local level.

It has to be better than giving more money to large businesses to lose.