Where is my tax-funded bail out? Small businesses can make sure financial crisis never happens again.

• Author: Costabilo, Frank P., Jr.
• Position: PERFECTLY FRANK

It is hard to overlook today's bleak headlines. One financial institution after another is going bankrupt, a victim of the government's unwillingness to regulate the natural avarice and greed of both banks and mortgage brokers. And, let us not forget, the public's willingness to turn their real estate holdings, small and large, into a convenient and too often relied upon personal ATM.

The gravy train has finally flown off the tracks.

Curiously, our response, as a society of purported capitalists living in what we piously believe is a free-market democracy, is to offer a good, old-fashioned bailout to the crusty old men that run these flawed institutions. Naturally this financial rescue comes with absolutely no accountability whatsoever for the decision to offer home ownership to a wide swath of people lacking the financial ability to properly pay for these properties.

Where is my tax-funded bailout? And yours as well?

We do not qualify for a tax-funded bailout because we lack the support of well-paid lobbyists whose profession it is to make the absurd and ridiculous sound reasonable. Knowing that most lobbyists have a handful (or more) of elected officials on their payroll just makes the outcome of legislative consideration a no-brainer.

Fortunately, knock on wood, my business does not need a bailout. It scares me to think what would happen if it did. I am writing this column for the millions of small-business owners who cannot afford to pay for the influence a Washington lobbyist, let alone live with the long-term tax consequences of these publicly funded bailouts. All of this bailout money has to come from somewhere, and I believe it never comes from businesses represented by lobbyists.

Business entrepreneurs need to react intelligently to this crisis.

Here is what I suggest you do:

1. Vote for politicians who have the courage to saddle the cost of these bailouts exclusively on the privately held companies that are responsible for this mess.

2. Demand the...