“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money. For money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence.”—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

As surely as summer brings heat and humidity, you can always know when a long holiday weekend is coming. When our normally time-conscious, long-vacation-taking politicians in Washington stay at work until 5:30 on a Friday morning, it can only mean one thing: they’ll soon have another regulation-heavy, government-empowering piece of mega-legislation for the dictator-in-chief to sign. Legislation that the thieves in DC have neither read, nor would they understand it if they did. Remember, it’s all about change—fast and furious change, without knowing what we’re changing to.

In fact, as the 2,000 page financial overhaul bill makes its way through congress, we get more of the same old thing from these people, who are supposed to work for us. Just as Nancy Pelosi gave us this gem about the health care bill: “We have to pass it so that we can know what is in it”, we get this from one of the financial bill’s central architects, Senator Chris Dodd: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”

So, the message we get time and time again is, “Just trust us. We have no idea what we’re doing, but it won’t matter to us since it won’t affect us anyway, and by the time you realize how it affects you, you will already have re-elected us.”

Make no mistake, this financial overhaul will affect pretty much all of us, as even Senator Dodd admits: “This is about as important as it gets, because it deals with every single aspect of our lives.” If you believe this has anything to do with “getting even” with Wall Street or punishing big banks on behalf of all the little people for the financial meltdown a couple of years ago, you still have your head in the sand.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this legislation “would redraw how money flows through the U.S. economy, from the way people borrow money to the way banks structure complicated products like derivatives. It could touch every person who has a bank account or uses a credit card.” It also goes on to say that government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two Government Sponsored Enterprises that contributed to the financial meltdown, will remain untouched by the new regulations, so will remain a “multibillion dollar drain on the U.S. Treasury.”

Public opinion, shaped largely from the mainstream media, seems to still favor the idea that big banks, George W. Bush and Wall Street are solely to blame for our nation’s financial problems. The facts don’t bear that out. While there’s no shortage of blame to go around, regulators in the Bush administration warned years ago that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were headed for a collapse that would have a devastating effect on our economy. Watch a timeline of those events here to see who was involved in claiming that Fannie and Freddie were financially sound—nothing to see here, folks!

With the death of Senator Robert Byrd this week, who would have voted for the financial bill, the fate of it in the Senate is uncertain. Never under-estimate the will of Harry Reid, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. These 3 power-hungry senators (at least two of whom should probably be behind bars), will no doubt find the votes they need, either from weak-willed Democrats or progressive Republicans who want to have nice things said about them on the nightly news programs.

…and it will all happen behind closed doors, probably late at night, maybe on a weekend. It may not be ready for the president’s signature by July 4th, as they had hoped. But it will be ready. All it takes is a little arm twisting here, a big payoff there.

Anyone who votes this November for an incumbent with a D behind their name, or an R that might as well be a D, will have no reason to complain when their taxes go up, their energy prices increase, their free checking account is no longer free, or they lose their health care plans. Because they, like those they keep in power, are part of the problem.