Do you ever get the sinking feeling that the biggest difference between Bernie Madoff and most of the public figures our age is that he admitted he was running "a giant Ponzi scheme?"

Madoffnomics consisted of making conspicuous donations to worthy ethnic causes in order to build a benevolent reputation in order to get an ever increasing amount of money flowing in to pay off those who had gotten on board early, but with no chance of later investors coming out ahead? How different is that from the Bush-Rove program of "compassionate conservativism," as embodied in Bush's jihad against down payments on home mortgages as denying minorities the American Dream?