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Since the dark days of Clintonian diddling in the Oval Office, American citizens have done naught but despair at the state of democracy. From townships to state government and in our nation's capital, people were far more willing to trust stock brokers and mortgage lenders than to put even an ounce of faith in government's ability to do right by them. And who can blame them? From Jack Abramoff to Larry Craig, politicians firmly cemented a reputation for being all too willing to throughly sodomize anyone and everyone to get what they wanted. More Americans approved of being showered with raw sewage while being serenaded by Sandra Bernhard than of Congress.

Who knew all it would take is $787 billion to flip that equation around? According to a CNN poll, only 30 percent of Americans have any faith in business to get the economy back on track while three-quarters of the country maintains their conviction that Pres. Obama can drag the country forth from the recession by sheer Messianic force of will. It's truly a sign of the end times when more Republicans have faith in Obama than they do Wall Street.

And why not? Despite the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Washington, there's a great deal getting done. The White House is actively working to head off the worst of the recession by addressing fundamental weaknesses in banking, the automotive industry and other sectors. Initiatives like the automotive advisory board, the U.S. Treasury bailout package and others, while wrong-headed on any number of levels, show voters that their government is working to turn the economy around by taking action no matter what the political cost may be -- thereby making the public feel at least slightly more comfortable traipsing to Best Buy for a copy of Street Fighter IV or the GM dealership for a sweet new van with which to cruise Lake Calhoun and possibly score one of those hot rollerblading chicks. Happily, government agencies in our beloved Minnesota have been stricken with this bizarre malady commonly known as productivity as well.

Yes, even as our legislature banters and bickers over such trivial issues as health care and taxes whilst the majority party looks to limit dissention through ill-advised parliamentary procedure, agencies within Minnesota's executive branch are actually getting work done. In fact, Mn/DOT is already bidding out $263.5 million worth of construction projects ranging from a four-lane freeway in Maple Grove to the replacement of three bridges in Mower County. Other agencies like the Health Department, the Courts, and any number of others are doing their due-diligence as well, despite our governor's marked distaste for the "meandering spending buffet" that is the stimulus package. And given the legendary Minnesotan love for buffets, it's not surprising that's what it took to restore faith in our governments.