The incident with Rep. Etheridge's "beat down" of two student journalists illustrates the desperation of the mainstream politicians. For so long now politicians have been in "caretaker" mode that they cannot respond appropriately to our current economic and political crisis.

Caretakers are given power in an environment where the established order is running in autopilot mode. The caretakers only job is to go with the flow and not screw things up. I experienced this same situation when I worked for a time at a phone company. As a regulated monopoly, they were guaranteed profits. All the executives had to do was continue doing the same things they had been doing for years. But when the environment changed, when true competition entered the telecommunications industry, the caretaker executives didn't have a clue about how to respond.

Our government has been in the same situation for years. Politicians simply had to accept the status quo, maintain the system of entitlements and government growth, and continue with deficit spending to be successful. In other words, be a caretaker of the existing system.

Now that the existing system is breaking apart, the caretaker politicians are adrift. Their quiet panic is revealed in the heavy-handed way Etheridge responded when asked a simple question by the student journalists. Unfortunately, we can expect more of the same in the near future.