Paying for their mistakes

Can someone explain to me why I'm having to foot the financial bill for the mistakes of other people? I'm doing the best I can to keep my own financial house in order and I'm supposed to live on less to pay for these financial blunders made in my behalf?

• $700 BILLION to save the hides of sophisticated investors who bought the understandably risky mortages of people who couldn't afford the homes they 'bought'. Why did they decide red-lining was a bad idea? Why did they decide that ARM's were the way to go? Why did they decide that the American dream was a home of 'your own' instead of financial independence? Why did no one have the guts to tell these folks---"You can't afford this McMansion. Go back to renting until you can." Or "Here's a decent 3 bd/1 bath rancher in your price range." The only thing those Wall Street Wizards were good at was lining their own pockets apparently. They get Golden Parachutes and we get the shaft. We've erred too heavily on the George Baily warm and fuzzy side of the ledger when we needed a bit more of Mr. Potter's skepticism about their ability to carry their notes.
  
• A series of hurricanes, floods and fires that destroyed the property of too many people who knew they were at risk for each of those natural disasters have also 'required' taxpayer funds. Why am I paying to rescue them from their own bad decisions to live in those disaster prone areas and/or not evacuate when common sense says "GET OUT OF THERE!" and "That's no place to live." Why am I paying to transport these folks and house them in our area over and over and over again? Why am I viewing video of a Katrina victim who didn't learn a thing the last time and is now angry that Houston didn't rescue her from Hurricane Ike?
  
• We have a City Council and mayor that are bound and determined to thwart the will of the people and in doing so are going to cost us some $350,000 dollars to hold a special election because they foolishly thought that Councilman Eric Crafton would just give up when they and their political system said his English First initiative missed the deadline by three days. Crafton's been around a while, folks. He doesn't give up. How is it they haven't picked up on that yet? They doubled down and we lose big time.
  
• That same Council who thought that they were above Federal law and could deny a non-profit legitimate use of their own property to actually help the citizens of our area get clean and sober results in another $1,000,000.00 out of our pockets. Though, I have no doubt Teen Challenge will put all that cash to good use I'd prefer individuals who support their work send them money instead of taxpayers being forced to.
• And yes, I'm still peeved about Governor Bredesen's $13 million dollar party bunker.
  

At what point will taxpayers actually get relief? At what point will our representatives start realizing that we've only got so much money and their bad decisions are wasteful and abusive.