While we wait to see if and when the federal government comes riding to the rescue of Wall Street with an enormous bailout — and wonder what one would do with $700 billion — we thought it appropriate to hand out a few “well dones” for some deserving Bee County citizens.

First, County Clerk Mirella Escamilla Davis, courthouse officials and everyone who had anything to do with the collection drive to assist Hurricane Ike victims in the Houston-Galveston area should be commended.

Mountains of bottled water, canned goods and household items were donated (along with several hundred dollars), packed up in a truck furnished by Bonnie Plant Farm and are being delivered to the people up the coast who have suffered horrible devastation to their homes and disruption to their lives in the last two weeks.

While we’re at it, we need to thank David Morgan, our county’s emergency management coordinator, for the fine job his office did in preparing this community for Ike.

Thankfully, we did not take a direct hit, but hopefully, the lessons learned from this near-miss will prepare us for the next time a large hurricane is headed our way.

Finally, our hats are off to Bee County Chamber of Commerce President Pam Stuart, Public Affairs Council Chair Tom Beasley and other CofC officials for planning to host another candidates forum. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year, you might know that we are deciding who our next president will be in the next 40 days.

In addition to electing a new president, voters will determine many other races, from U.S. congressman to county tax assessor-collector. Most of these local and regional candidates have committed to participate in the forum scheduled for Oct. 9 at the Coastal Bend College Gertrude Jones Auditorium.

We encourage everyone to attend in order to make informed decisions about the candidates and where they stand on the issues. We also encourage informed citizens to go to the polls on Nov. 4, or to utilize the early voting process from Oct. 20 to Oct. 31.

It certainly beats sitting around waiting for the feds to come and bail us out with any problem, real or imagined.