Forget Enron - Congress is even worse

Nando Times ^ | 7/10/02 | TOM SCHATZ

[onedoug]

Business as usual.

[Maceman]

IMHO, this really is an issue that grass roots activists ought to promote the hell out of. I think this could be a great issue to hammer politicians on in the coming elections.

Add to it the fact that our elected officials routinely pass bills whose contents they have not read, and which often contain stealth legislation inserted by individual congressmen that other senators and represetnatives do't know about at the time of voting.

I think this is an issue whose time has come.

[lepton]

Recall also the 1995 Price Waterhouse audit of the previous Congress's books. They eventually had to give up, because the books were so sloppy that they couldn't even read them.

[NormsRevenge]

BuSine$$ a$ U$ual .. Yup! We need to tent and fumigate Congre$$ .. They have become an abomination unto We the People ..

[mewzilla]

And let's not forget the billions of dollars these geniuses can't even account for, that are just plain missing. Seems to me the members of the House and Senate make guys like Ebbers look like pikers.

[NormsRevenge]

It's all a part of the Dems NEW Deal ;- ..ie. a RAW Deal for America as it has been looted from the inside out by Waste, Fraud,Graft,Greed,Corruption,Avarice,etc ..

Beware of The Enemies Within .. Bringing Socialism and Its Sad Realities Home to You and Your Children ..

Govt UberAlles

[steve50]

Time to throw both parties out of DC, they are both beyond hope.

[weikel]

The loyalist were right one tyrant beats a bunch of them and Democracy leads to socialism. Flame shields up.

[weikel]

It began before the new deal it started with commie Woodrow Wilson's "new freedom".

[mewzilla]

You're right. But aren't the parallels stunning?

Congress has oversight responsibilities. The SEC has oversight responsibilities.

Congress has investigatory powers. The SEC has investigatory powers.

The big difference is that one could argue the SEC has done a $#@# of a lot better job that Congress has. And considering that Congress has oversight over the SEC, if the SEC wasn't up to snuff where the devil was Congress? Trust Congress to deal with this mess? I'd sooner let the PRC deal with it. They're more efficient. And that's not saying much, is it?

[geaux]

Reminds me of that e-mail about Congress that went around a few years ago with the subject "Would you want to work here?"

"It has a little over 500 employees with the following statistics:
29 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have bankrupted at least two businesses
3 have been arrested for assault
71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 are current defendants in lawsuits
In 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving"

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Ping. Don't foget the potential windfalls for the Dems. biggest $$$ donors...the Trail Lawyers, so many companies, so many disgruntled "victims" expecting easy $$$ with no risk.

This is beyond "politics as usual". The Republicans voted for policy that helped us financially in the 90s...they didn't work to undermine our economy simply to hurt Clinton, nor would they. The Democrats with the help of the press are working to destroy our President and our economy during wartime. Benedict Arnold was a Boy Scout by comparison, imho.

[Zon]

Time to throw both parties out of DC, they are both beyond hope.

If the politicians and bureaucrats were held accountable like the private sector is for cooking the books most of our government leaders would already be behind bars.

Also, if a private sector company was run like government -- funding itself with the extortion-barrel of a gun -- the private sector CEOs would all be in jail.  Come to think of it, the government has created so man laws that virtually every citizen is a lawbreaker. Yet despite all those law breakers people and society continue to prosper.

Despite power-usurping politicians and self-serving bureaucrats that create and implement 3,000 new laws each year  -- "must have" laws they and the media tell us that without them people and society would run headlong into destruction -- people and society continue to increase prosperity.

How ever did we all manage to do so well for years and decades without having next year's do-or-die, must-have laws or the laws that will come the year after next and the years to come?

Reality is, politicians and bureaucrats are parasites and the workers of the world are the host. Without our work ethics they would perish, -- without their ethics of parasitism the workers of the world would flourish almost beyond imagination.

John Stossel makes a powerful point.

There was a highly effective life-saving drug that the FDA held off the market despite it being successful used in several European countries. For a year, FDA red tape kept the drug from being available in United States.

Stossel continues, last year seven thousand peopled died from "XX". Doesn't that mean that the FDA killed seven thousand Americans last year?

That one example is a snowball-size tip of the iceberg. Seldom do each year's three thousand new laws protect prosperity yet they often destroy prosperity.

The War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers

[steve50]

There's nothing so wrong with this country that a never ending war on vaguely defined evil doers can't hide while the Central Bankers save their backsides by destroying what little is left of the economy and savings of the average citizen.
Just donate your sons lives and what little freedoms you have left and our elite will manage to maintain their positions thru the dangerous times ahead.
Be sure to demand that congress passes the Homeland Security Act, we wouldn't want to proceed down this road without total control over these traitors claiming Constitutional limits on the power of government.

[Republic]

Today on 'Your World with Neil Cavuto', Fox News Cable, Neil interviewed ol Gephardt himself, and cut the snakey congressman to shreds, imho.

When Geppy tried to explain how Bush's plan did not go far enough (concerning actions regarding corporate fraud) and attempted to talk about how marvelous the dem plan was.....Neil stopped him short.

Neil bluntly asked Geppy if more rules were really the answer, if more bureaucratic crappolla wasn't really only going to make things worse.

Geppy got frustrated and said 'well right now we have the chicken guarding the hen house...er, I mean, the fox guarding the hen house' (lol) and so Neil said...AND I COULD HAVE HUGGED HIM FOR THIS....

" Well HOW is it going to be any better having congress guard the hen house....congress cannot handle its own budgets....mismanaging billions, losing track of the same, throwing money to pork projects etc." Geppy was stunned for a minute...then had to evade the question...very, very obviously. I loved it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[fivetoes]

Did you say iceberg?

[leprechaun9]

CHECK THIS OUT:

Published in Star Ledger, July 7, 2002:

Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom and ... the Feds?
By MILES BENSON
miles.benson@newhouse.com
c.2002 Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON -- When corporate officers cook their books, it's a crime and an outrage. When the U.S. government does it, critics say, it's business as usual.

Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives alike cite routine government behavior that resembles the misbehavior now rocking the business world. Activities described as fraud in the private sector are tolerated as "politics" in the public sector, where misreporting of facts and manipulation of information is a way of life, these critics say.
...............

[Zon]

Excellent! Great work.

[eeriegeno]

And was followed up by Kennedy's 'New Frontier' and, worse yet, Johnson's 'Great Society'. Liberalism at it's best folks.......