Here's a letter to the editor of USA TODAY that is spot-on as far as I'm concerned. The link is http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...ers16_ST_N.htm but I've also cut and pasted it below...

Who created politicians who created debt? Voters did.

"The USA TODAY cover story "A soaring debt, and painful choices" was very informative and well-written (News, Tuesday). Politicians are monstrous liars. Worse yet are the voters who create them. We vote for people who promise to lower taxes and increase social services. We re-elect them if they succeed in accomplishing those two tasks, and then we ignore the debt they create.

We sweep the debt under the rug as if our unrealistic expectations had nothing to do with it. So, here we are, voters and politicians skipping and holding hands while staring into one another's eyes, not noticing the cliff we're about to fall off. We might be too obsessed with each other to be stopped.

Even on the way down, we're unlikely to vote for someone who is fiscally responsible. When we hit bottom, we'll simply vote for the next liar who tells us what we want to hear, assuming we survive the fall.

Roger Sargent; Albion, PA"

I might add to the writer's thought that we skip along with the politicians who are looking for only one thing--election or re-election--reciting the phrases and metaphors that are created by their campaign staff and fed to us repeatedly with advertising paid for by special interests and in soundbites from the Capitol steps. They range from "Change We Can Believe In" to mindless statements from Joe The Plumber to those short, planned to be memorable but completely vacuous soundbites from our Congressional "leaders".

It won't make any difference who wins the elections in the fall or in 2012. Unless the people who vote--US!--make an effort to understand the issues and decide if anyone really has good ideas on how to fix the troubles that confront us. I mean specific, well-thought out and understandable ideas not just half-baked ideas, like "less government will fix everything" or "more federal programs, departments and regulations are needed", then we're all going to deserve what we get. That'll be many more years of what we've had for the last decade or so.

In the end--think Greece.