Brief reflections on the subprime bailout and politics

I'm wondering what other people think about the proposed subprime bailout. I guess I will do some reading later today, but let me give you my initial thoughts, which I had even before reading this piece in Forbes. It seems to me that all we are doing here is rewarding bad past behavior and encouraging future bad behavior. Yes, go ahead and be stupid, Uncle Sam will fix everything for you! What the heck ever happened to taking personal responsibility for your actions? And why are we letting everybody off the hook so seemingly easily? Am I missing something here? Yes, I understand the potential need to intervene into the market from time to time to prevent a disaster, but there has to be a limit. Isn't there a better way?

When I was a kid I always thought I would be a public official. Technically I am since I am proud to serve as a trustee of my local library. But then I became jaded by the necessity of full-time fundraising and the transformation of politics from statesmanship to partisanship. But reading stuff like this makes me wonder whether we need to find people willing to be a Cincinnatus, or at least people willing to put partisanship aside for the better good (and without worrying about lining one's pockets to boot).