The current financial debacle, and the reality that all taxpayers will saddle the burden of the government's $700 billion+ bailout of financial institutions, has caused the November election to become intensely focused on the economy.

The economy is of paramount importance, but pollsters and politicians are urged not to declare values issues of minor concern in this election, because our financial deficit is a reflection of our moral values deficit. Basic Judeo-Christian moral principles, "Do not steal", "Do not covet", and "Love your neighbor as yourself," were and are being violated, bringing us to our current financial mess.

Do not steal. The wholesale looting of America-allowed by members of Congress, partisan political operatives, and members of the high finance community-should not go unpunished. The likely cost of $700 billion, proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and subject to approval by Congress will bail out the big bankers who were sitting on the housing bubble when it burst.

Congress has been interfering in the housing market since the Carter era, but especially during this longer period of low interest rates, Wall Street and investors have taken in huge commissions on insufficiently backed real estate deals, and sold them off at higher profit while housing prices continued to climb. Despite warnings that this could not go on forever, Democrat Congressmen appointed party loyalists like Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick to run Fannie Mae, lined their own pockets with tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, funneled money back into the political machines of partisan congressional members and President Bush failed to put a stop to it. Under the cover of law, executives in these investment firms like Fannie and Freddie took their huge commissions from their highly risky investments, and left their firms with snowballing, defaulting loans that cripple their abilty to lend capitol to people and business, putting the entire economy at risk. Now, taxpayers are being tapped to keep the markets afloat. These quasi-government financial agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being run like Enron; and it is an outrageous conflict of interest that these federal institutions were allowed to give money to federal candidates.

Do not covet and love your neighbor as yourself. Why have the American people allowed Congress to risk their paychecks and their pensions on such speculative money schemes? Because our leaders know how to manipulate our greed: "It isn't fair that Joe owns a house and I don't," or that "Mike's house is nicer than mine". In 1995, Bill Clinton told Robert Rubin to re-write the rules and pressure institutions to expand mortgage loans among low and middle income comunities and that they should loosen their lending requirements to comply. Then Congress, through its tax plan and new costly federal agencies, took Mike's money to give to Joe and took Joe's money to give to those that didn't have a house. This is social engineering and market intervention - not in line with our republic's free-market economy where everyone is treated equally with the same rules. While the idea to offer more families the opportunity for home ownership is a good idea, ignoring their income, assets and job abilities was a recipe for financial disaster.

The principle of loving or caring about your neighbor encompasses respecting our neighbor's property as if it were our own. If you break into your neighbor's house while he's away, cart off his TV set and computer that he earned, sell them, and use the money to buy something that you "need," that's theft. But we have allowed the government to tax your neighbor and "re-distribute" their money to those who haven't earned it. In addition our Govenrment has passed laws pressuring financial institutions to lend money to essentially unlendable people and the result is not just this proposed bailout, but a seemingly complete meltdown of our economy. In the politically correct world this is not called theft, but rather social justice.

James Madison, known as the "Chief Architect of the Constitution" and original author and promoter of the Bill of rights said, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not on the power of government...[but] upon the capacity of each and every one of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." Will we remember that lesson when we vote in November?

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