I imagine that George W. Bush must be asking himself this question: Was I better off four years ago?

The answer, of course, is yes, he was better off four years ago. Ah, remember the good old days? Like the R.E.M song says it’s the end of the world as we know it.

Back when,  Bush had all that “political capital” he was planning to spend. And you do remember what he was going to spend it on? That’s  right! He was going to push for the privatization of Social Security. The idea was based on the notion that the individual citizen could best determine his or her future by opening private accounts with their benefits invested in Wall Street.

A lot of people were against it then, and the idea went nowhere. But now it looks positively insane, given the great financial meltdown not seen since the Great Depression.

The irony is amazing. Bush pushed for the so-called “ownership society,” and look what happened. With the $700 billion Wall Street bailout on the table, Bush is pushing for ownership, alright. And it’s the federal government that’s going to be the owner.

Today’s “High Noon” radio topic is the economy, the $700 billion bail out plan and President Bush’s less than inspiring leadership.

My guests will be Prof. Ron Filante of Iona College’s Lubin School of Business and Jerry Gleeson, a business writer for The Journal News. Listen in by tuning into WVOX at 1460 AM or log onto wvox.com

Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.

Here’s another way to think about the pending federal bailout of Wall Street. Imagine that you are wage earner who lived your entire working life is utter distrust of banks and the stock market.

Every time you got a paycheck, you cashed it—and stuffed the bills into a mattress. You never bought a house. You only rented.

You did this for years because you didn’t anyone to meddle with your money. People laughed at you. After all, without bank interest or the return from stocks and bonds, inflation was killing the value of your money. And renting? That was stupid because hey, that meant you could never deduct the taxes and interest on a home mortgage.

You didn’t care. It was your money and no one was going to touch it, except you. Then one day, the Wall Street house of cards collapsed. And the federal government decides it wants to bail out the high-flying investment banks with a blank check to be filled out in the amount of $700 billion or more.

That means they’re going to take your money, without your consent, and invest it in worthless securities on the vague premise that maybe some day, but nobody knows when, the junk securities will be worth more than the paper it’s printed on. In other words, you are an investor, an owner really, of busted brokerage houses—whether you like it or not. This bailout is going to cost the average American family $5,000 and maybe more, according to some estimates I’ve heard.

The greedy executives on Wall Street broke the system, and while they want you to fix it with your tax money, THEY STILL WANT TO RETAIN OWNERSHIP, AND PROFIT FROM OWNERSHIP.

So here’s what Congress should do. If the taxpayers are footing the bill than the people should profit from the investment. Just like there’s no such thing as being slightly pregnant, there’s no such thing as half-way nationalization. If this bailout deal goes through, then the Wall Street firms being saved are no different than national parks, which we, the people, own. All of us.

The Woody Guthrie song applies. This land is your land, this land is my land. Only change the lyrics. This bank is your bank, this bank is my bank…

When I spoke before a gathering of the Northeast Yonkers Republican Club last week I wore a Nixon-Agnew button on my jacket lapel as a little joke.

“If and when the Democrats ever invite me to speak,” I told the group, “I’ll have to wear another button like this one.” With that, I held up a blue and white Andrew Cuomo button that was distributed during his successful race for New York attorney general.

One or two people laughed at my attempt at humor. After all the son of the former governor, who was once a member of the Clinton administration and was even married for a time to a Kennedy, could be thought of as the ultimate Democrat.

That’s why I hooted yesterday while watching John McCain’s interview on “60 Minutes.”

McCain had been widely quoted for saying that once he took office as president he would fire Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Security Exchange Commission, for his alleged negligence leading up to the mother of all financial crises. The candidate admitted he wouldn’t have the power to cashier Cox, but would force his resignation. Then he said he would replace him with Andrew Cuomo.

My guess was that McCain was trying to demonstrate his bipartisanship by throwing out the name of a northeastern liberal as an answer to the country’s economic woes. It seems McCain has been expending a great deal of effort to distance himself from his own party and certainly from the policies of George W. Bush.

But Cuomo? It’s not that there aren’t plenty of people from both parties to point a finger at for the current mess…but Cuomo’s role as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development has certainly come under major scrutiny. And it’s a wonder that McCain didn’t know that before he blurted out his name during his interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley.

I was reminded of Cuomo’s HUD performance by Wayen Barrett, who wrote a long piece, titled “Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie,” about the attorney general’s tenure under President Bill Clinton. The article appeared in The Village Voice last month.

Writes Barrett:

“Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded “kickbacks” to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why. ”

Barrett goes on at length about how Cuomo has tried to paint himself as a white knight in the subprime meltdown, but then, try to find anyone who’s pure.

McCain, who is nearly every day surprising us with his views of the nation’s financial troubles, said Cuomo would restore “credibility” to the marketplace.

That’s the topic on “High Noon” today…the volatile world of finance and what it means to you. My guest will be Journal News business writer Allan Drury.

Listen to the show on WVOX, 1460-AM or log onto wvox.com. Calls, as always, will be taken at 914-636-0110.

First there was the satirical “wish you here” postcard from Alaska sent to voters in the mail.

Now Liz Feld’s aggressive campaign to paint incumbent state Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Mamaroneck, as a disengaged politician who doesn’t care about property tax relief has gone to TV with a new 30-second attack ad.

The campaign commercial, entitled “Vacation,” charges that Oppenheimer was “3,000 miles away” on a trip to Alaska when the Senate convened to vote on the state’s tax-cap plan and that her absence was indicative of her lack of concern for the average taxpayer and she has grown lethargic on the job. The ad begins with a man pounding a “For Sale” sign in front of a house, and superimposes Oppenheimer’s photo over a cruise ship sailing into the horizon.

For her part, Oppenheimer has said that the Alaska vacation had been planned for over a year, and that even had she been present for the Albany session she would have voted against a tax cap because such measures don’t work. She said she favored other ways to bring tax relief.

Feld, who is a Republican mayor from Larchmont, has hammered away on the tax issue…and if there’s anything obviously lethargic about Oppenheimer it is that her campaign seems to be unable, or unwilling, to answer the challenger’s attack that she is an absentee legislator.  This kind of complacency could be fatal, even in the 37th Senate District where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans.

Not long ago when I spoke to the 12-time incumbent, she was totally unaware, for example that the state Republican Party had set up a Web site, nyinjeopardy.com to attack her and the records of other incumbent Democrats.

Today’s “High Noon” radio topic is Sarah Palin. (Do you have Palin fatigue yet?) And my guest is County Legislator Jim Maisano, R-New Rochelle, who is going to tell me why I’m wrong about the Republican choice for vice president.

You can join in the conversation, too, by calling 914-636-0110. The show airs at noon on WVOX radio, 1460 AM.  You can listen by logging onto wvox.com

Not long ago, I heard this rumor that the wheel-spinners on  the Waste-chester County Board of Legislators  wanted to push through a law that would prohibit motorists from smoking in cars with children passengers. Or maybe the idea was being floated by County Excessitive Andy Spano.

Doesn’t matter where it came from, or who thought it up.

It seemed like the perfect legislative act, though, for a county whose legislators apparently have nothing better to do than dream up new and condescending ways to rule and regulate our work-a-day lives. Well, the smoking law hasn’t happened…not yet, anyway.

But the Nanny State did come up with another one. The new law the board passed the other night prohibits motorists from text-messaging. Now, let’s be clear: Anybody bopping down, say, the Hutchinson River Parkway with one hand on the wheel while  the  other hand  taps out coded conversations, deserves a smack in the head.

But I fail to see how the cops are going to enforce this. And get this, text messagers, the law won’t even take effect for another six months. Go nuts…LOL.

My guest on “High Noon” today will be Mike Kaplowitz, the vice chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators who will explain his “Real Reform” plan to win back the public trust in county overnment.

Kaplowitz’s agenda includes cutting the legislative staff,  eliminating certain perks such as a car supplied to the board chairman and the establishment of an inspector general’s office to root out corruption in county government. None of these goals will be easy to push through the Democratic-controlled board headed up by Bill “Boss” Ryan.

Kaplowitz will come on the air at 12 noon on WVOX, 1460 AM. You can also listen by logging onto wvox.com. Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.