Wall Street lobbies for more of the same

Some people never learn.

The current financial crisis is at least partly the result of deregulation over the past few decades.

It seems like Washington trusted the bankers to regulate themselves to do what's best for everyone. They apparently didn't consider that greed isn't so easy to self-regulate.

And so here we are.

And there is President Obama, calling for new regulations to prevent this kind of crisis from happening again.

And there are the bankers, ferociously lobbying to undermine Obama's attempts to implement new and revised regulations.

Even after the banks went belly-up, and even after we bailed them out with our tax dollars, they still want to have free reign. They proved that they could not be trusted before, but they want us to trust them now. It reminds me of the old "Peanuts" cartoons, where Lucy would pull the football away just as Charlie Brown was about to kick it. He kept on giving her more chances, and each time she sabotaged the play as always.

So do we have a Congress full of Charlie Browns who will trust banker Lucy one more time?

Time will tell, but recent history suggests that our elected representatives are much too easily bought and sold -- and not by the taxpayers. And, sadly, most of the true fighters in Congress are not sitting on the Democratic side of the aisle.