"Bailout Ballpark" sure to anger taxpayers

I seriously wonder how much more ridiculous all of the "bailout madness" can get. Rarely does a day go by that I don't hear of some other facet of this money grab (financed by the little guys) that makes me livid. The latest is Citigroup's $400 million contract to name the New York Mets stadium.

I understand the concept behind naming rights. The company pays a bunch of money to put their name on the new stadium, and then they get constant advertising. I have nothing against the concept of Citigroup paying to name the new home of the Mets Citi Field. It sounds nice. It'll probably look nice too.

But when a company like Citigroup needs a $345 billion handout from people like me, it's a bit infuriating to see them spend $400 million like this. Of course, the company says that the bailout money isn't being used to pay for the naming rights. Uh huh. Well we can play any kind of shell game we want to with this situation, but money spent is money spent. Either Citigroup needed taxpayer money, or it did not. And frankly, with $400 million available to spend this way, it looks like they didn't need it.

It's too hard to police what the banks are doing with taxpayer money, which is why they shouldn't have gotten the money to start with. There were not enough strings attached to the money, and it's clear that there is little to no real oversight of these banks. Yet instead of stopping the foolishness now before even more taxpayer money is spent frivolously, it seems our government is intent on handing out even more money to anyone who asks. When does it stop?