Everyone describes the recent financial bail-out as “unprecedented.” Is it? Not really. Indeed, the power-grab that Treasury Czar — ooops, Secretary — Henry Paulson has perpetrated has echoes in none other than the recent Real ID Act. Just like the bail out gives Paulson nearly unlimited powers to takeover financial institutions, Real ID gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff king-like powers to take away private homes in Texas and elsewhere to build a Berlin Wall on the Rio Grande. (What does Chertoff call homeowners who don’t think their property should be confiscated to keep out the swarthy hordes who want to pick their apples and build their homes? “Unpatriortic,” of course.) The financial bail-out might be massive, ugly, nasty, stupid, unworkable — but unprecedented it is not, Becky Akers, a free lance writer in New York, explains in her column for the Foundation of Economic Education:: http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=2405