With a helping handout from taxpayers, multinational bankers like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have given themselves record bonuses – billions of dollars – in 2009. What? You didn't get your record, subsidized bonus in 2009?

Despite those giddy Wall Street windfalls and federal stimulus package, the Florida employed rate topped 10.6% in June – 970,000 Floridians "officially" jobless. How many of your family, friends, and neighbors have yet to be lifted out of the economic black hole that seems to be consuming more and more of us?

In the Tampa-St. Petersburg region, we need our own stimulus package – for us.

This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2009.