Posted on 09/18/2002 9:35:19 AM PDT by Red Jones
Washington's dead donkeys
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
There's a joke going around ...
It seems a city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day, but when he arrived, he said: "Sorry, the donkey died."
Kenny said, "Well, OK, just give me my money back."
"I can't," said the farmer. "I already spent it."
"OK," said Kenny. "At least give me the donkey."
"What are you going to with it?" asked the farmer.
"I'm going to raffle it off," said Kenny.
"Raffle off a dead donkey?" asked the farmer.
"Sure, I just won't tell anybody he's dead."
A month later the farmer met up with Kenny: "What happened with the dead donkey?"
"I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at $2 apiece and made a profit of $998."
"Didn't anyone complain?" asked the farmer.
"Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back."
Kenny grew up to be the chairman of Enron.
I gotta admit: It's a funny joke.
As an Internet entrepreneur these last few years, I've heard of some business deals that are as strange and fraudulent as the dead-donkey raffle. So, it shouldn't come as any surprise there's a movement afoot in Washington to crack down on "corporate criminals." "CEO," my own title at WorldNetDaily.com, has nearly become a four-letter word. Congressmen who couldn't balance their own checkbooks are trying to impose the most sweeping accounting and securities regulations in 70 years.
In fact, it is over-regulation by the know-nothings in Washington that has created the climate for Enron-style fraud and deceit. A new federal power grab is not the solution – it is a sure recipe for exacerbating the problem.
The demise of Arthur Anderson as one of the Big Five accounting firms, brought on by the self-righteous politicians, leaves us with only four companies that will have a cartel over the auditing industry.
The truth is, as Rep. Ron Paul says, "No corporation on earth comes close to the accounting fraud practiced year after year by the federal government. In fact, there is no real accountability at all for the trillions in tax dollars raised and spent annually by Congress and our entrenched federal agencies. ... Every year Congress creates a meaningless budget, the Fed prints phony money, the budget office issues false revenue forecasts, and the administrative agencies waste billions in the most unproductive ways imaginable."
Why any taxpayer would want Washington to have more power over the marketplace in light of such massive fraud and deceit is beyond me.
Keep in mind, this charade by Washington takes place at the very moment government spending is skyrocketing. The excuse of increasing federal spending this year by 13.9 percent is the war on terror. But, in fact, only a third of additional spending is even tangentially related to military costs or homeland defense.
And this trend is not really new. It's a continuation of one begun in 1996 – the very year Bill Clinton declared, "The era of Big Government is over." Ever since then, spending has been going up dramatically.
This year alone, Washington will spend $91 billion more for non-military, non-defense and programs unrelated in any way, shape or form to the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, $30 billion has been spent on homeland security. About $10 billion was spent on the war in Afghanistan. And some $20 billion went to rebuilding New York City, preventing bio-terrorism, improving transportation security.
"In other words," as Jeffrey Birnbaum of Fortune magazine says, "the war on terror is being used as a ruse to justify all sorts of spending." He points out that 2000-2003 spending – even without considering any defense-related programs – would represent "the largest four-year spending spree in a generation."
President Bush has given lip service to the idea of "fiscal discipline," but, in fact, he has yet to veto a single bill since taking office.
This is accountability? This is the bunch of rascals we're going to entrust to root out corruption in the private sector?
If there ever was a real dead-donkey raffle, the scammer behind it is not in the corporate world. He's in Washington.
As we conservatives have known for decades and as our nation's experience since 1967 shows, this path leads to poverty for our people. Bush' #1 and most important economic policy is to take more and more resources from the private sector and squander it on unproductive government bureaucrats. Only his fans are too stupid to see this.
Inflation for August was measured at 0.3%, the highest monthly level in quite some time.
The biggest problem in our country is that our people do not love truth. A legend (that I'm sure is a true story) about George Washington was that he once told his father that he could not tell a lie. Our people once greatly loved George Washington, he and other factors inspired our people to love truth, to do what was right simply because it was right. But today this type of a mentality is out-of-step with the large bulk of americans. It is not just clinton and the democrats who lie routinely, it is pervasive in our society and it infects the republicans as well as the democrats.
A nation that loves the truth and loves goodness as god enlightened them to see these things and also hates what is bad and hates lies will be given divine providence over time. A people like us today will languish, become poor, downtrodden and ultimately enslaved like most other nations.
How can we say that we love truth when we elected those idiot republicans on the premise that they stand for smaller government as compared to the democrats and then when the republicans do what they've done we don't punish them. Any incumbent, whether he be Republican or Democrat, who failed to vote against Bush' big spending schemes should be voted out of office in November if we have any desire whatsoever for our grandchildren to live in a better happier nation than what we live in today.
How can the politicians learn that big spending increases are a no-no if we do not teach them. This habit we americans have of re-electing 95% of incumbents is a suicidal habit. If we do not start to teach them lessons, then they will continue to enslave us.
As George Washington warned us in his farewell address, 'the spirit of party is evil'. If you love america and you seek truth, then reject party loyalty and do what is right.
It is in no way implausible that spending would be more under control under a Gore administration than it is under Bush, nor that homeland security would be better handled.
I agree and think this is the heart of the matter. Whenever you bring this up with Bushbots, though, they say that being truthful, obeying the Constitution as officeholders swear "so help me God" to do (ironically many Bushbots are serious no-joke Christians), etc, is "not practical". Well that's true if power is your real objective.
thank you for saying that because I believe it is true. I can't vote for Al Gore because he proved himself to be a crook while in office. But I can't vote for Bush either and only in part because he's proven himself to spend taxpayer's money like a drunken sailor would spend his own money.
I used to rail against the Democrats endlessly. But the Republicans are now equally worthy.
I follow George Washington. I don't follow George Bush. Incumbents who mis-behave while in office are bums and need to be thrown out. I don't care what party they're in.
Actually Bush's first discretionary budget -- year 2001 -- went DOWN relative to GNP.
Instead of listening to what the Heritage Institute says, why don't you go find the facts yourself?
On another topic a Bushbot spouted off about a a threatened Bush veto and I asked him to cite me Bush's last veto and he went ballistic on me.
I hope he's readin this thread. ;o)
To me this is a major warning sign. But he has his chance here soon - start vetoing those spending bills. And that goes double if the dems take the house.
We had eight loooooong years of Clinton and his liberal goons and they shredded and mocked everything that was good in America. But hey -- If Algore wins in 2004, you guys can pat yourselves on the back for helping put him in charge of the War on Terror.
That's a great quote, I'm going to remember that one.
Where are you getting that from? I don't believe it. Is that after the GNP revisions? Even if it were true, the four year numbers hold: spending is totally out of control.
I think the demoncrats are disasters. I was fiercely anti-Gore during the last campaign. But I don't see how Bush is doing any better than Gore would have.
Algore would still be sitting in committees with the UN, joining them in critizing the US and apologizing for whatever we did to "deserve" 9-11. It is doubtful he ever would have dropped the first bomb on Afghanistan out of concern for the effect on the environment. By now, Algore would have signed us on to the Kyoto treaty and the UN's International Criminal Court. He would probably be helping the UN's latest effort to tax American citizens (according to the UN, it is the rich countries fault that poor countries are poor, and therefore we should all be taxed in order to "aid" them).
I do, however, agree with you that Bush is not doing a good job of controlling spending -- but you are mistaken if you think a democRAT would be spending less.
You are also correct about the farce of airport security, but never forget that political correctness is the democRAT's brew -- no racial profiling, even when it is necessary for national security!!
So I will continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, and will not throw my vote away in an effort to "teach them a lesson".
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