Lou Piniella, yesterday, announced he is planning to retire at the end of the year. Sweet Lou is 67. Don't worry about him, he has plenty of money and something most of us will never see - Social Security and Medicare.

It has been 25 years, since I have cared about the Cubs. I only have the same kind of "rubber necking" instinct, to watch them figure out new ways to screw things up, as I do watching the workings of the federal government. I have long since stop counting on both organizations to provide me anything, but simple "clown-like" entertainment.

When I thought, things could not be more screwed up, than being owned by a newspaper, the Cubs new owner has done the impossible. He has managed to oversee - in his first year mind you - the least amount of wins per $ of payroll in baseball, and turned an "investment" in new urinals into the least amount of attendance in 20 years. Now that takes some doing. I can't wait for next year. If the new owner can make the Cubs even more messed up in his first year, than I thought possible, I can't wait to see his next "act" in 2011. 

The Banking Reform Bill has 2,319 pages. That is compared to 66 pages for Sarbanes-Oxley. And if pages of a bill are correlated to regulatory bureaucracy, the demand for attorney fees is going sky high. How did government get this screwed up? The same way, the Cubs have screwed things up, the wrong management system.

Forget about Jimmy Stewart and "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington". Instead of politicians, treating the job like a service to their country, today's politician thinks it is a career. And a way to hire his or her friends. If you want to run for politics you need the backing of powerful lobbyists. More importantly to be re-elected you have to run a fine line between corporate money and citizens outrage.

That is why the Banking Reform Bill has 2,319 pages. Take the members of the House and Senate and multiply them by about 4 key influencer's per head and presto you get that amount of pages.

Perhaps not in my life time, but at some point, the Cubs and Washington must face a day of reckoning and hit the reset button. In both cases the root causes of failure must be understood.

For the Cubs fans, it is easy, shake them and say "what do the Cubs have to do with feeding your family?". "It is virtual reality, stupid".

In the case of the federal government it is no joke. The root cause is career politicians and not implementing term limits and real campaign reform.

We can all keep taking pain medication and hope our teeth will get better in the morning. But someday, we will all have to go the dentist, and have a root canal.

The only alternative, is to be like Cub fans, and continually wait until "next year"; finally dying when the infection has killed our brains.

- John Jazwiec