Does the Original Poster mean to imply that the U.S. Esteemed Imperial Legislature showed respect for democratic process with the "stimulus" bill that they slid through with insignificant time allotted for public debate? Or simply to page through the bastard looking for guaranteed AIG bonuses, for example? No government serves at the consent of the governed. Term limits or pitchforks/torches: take your choice.

Respect. If we think it is bad now, wait until Gen-X wants to retire. We'll suffer the Boomer albatross around our collective neck. They'll be taking up all the seating at the Denny's Early-bird Dinners. Of course, not all Boomers are useless and ego-maniacal: some refused to drink the kool-aid (pun gloriously intended) of the self-serving counter-culture movement. However, these Boomers don't get inches in Newsweek or time with Katie on CBS, so the message is: we invented everything cool, and what we didn't create out of whole cloth wasn't awesome before we did it. I cite the impending stink-pile of "Across the Universe" as QED, and that ends discussion.