Posted on 07/30/2002 11:52:31 AM PDT by vannrox
As a former US congressman myself, I suggest that the current collective anti-offshore, anti-business insanity gripping Capitol Hill goes well beyond 'breathtaking hypocrisy' -- it's so much bovine fecal matter. And the unprincipled politicians of both parties who shovel it feverishly as fall elections near, know their cheap shots are at the expense of truth.
Spurred by myriad accounting and business scandals, frightened congressmen are outbidding each other in indiscriminate attacks on CEOs, business or any other random target these pols think will make them look good with voters they can fool by the Nov. 5th election.
Here are a few of last week's grandstanding ploys America's elected 'representatives' have managed to perpetrate without laughing:
* A Democrat amendment forbids the newly created Homeland Security Dept. from contracting with companies that move to offshore headquarters to avoid US taxes. The restriction sailed by 318 to 110. Democrats are working to extend the contract ban to the entire federal government. We are supposed to ignore the fact that it is the Congress that wrote the tax law that made such offshore moves totally within the law.
* Not to be outflanked by the Left, so-called conservative US House Republican leaders introduced civil forfeiture legislation 'to seize the mansions and yachts of corrupt corporate executives.' This from the party that two years ago voted to curb rampant government forfeiture abuse that has confiscated over $8 billion in the last 20 years.
* And in Kooky Kalifornia, the left-wing state treasurer used his power to create his very own blacklist of US corporations that have moved offshore, banning billions in state pension and other investments in the companies that he will decide must be shunned.
I would not usually quote my former House colleague, US Rep. David Obey (D-Wis), but this time dyspeptic Dave hit the nails squarely on their empty heads: 'Nothing is more pitiful or more funny than a flock of repentant politicians in full flight,' he said.
He was referring to asinine Republican plans to confiscate mansions, but he could just as well have been describing his fellow Democrats' frenzied demagoguery aimed at fully legal offshore re-incorporation.
Now we know why some sage once advised that two processes, the viewing of which should be avoided at all costs, are sausage making and law making. Fortunately, we can choose not to consume sausage, but we all have to live with 'laws' that are enough to make you vomit.
That's the way that it looks from here.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor
We trade our LIVES each day for our wages.
Politicians who seek an ever increasing share of our earnings are thus ENSLAVERS.
Worse than power elites seeking the enslavement of America, these socialist bastards will destroy the source of revenue their power mad greed drives them to seek to steal.
Because slaves are never remotely as productive as the free.
Why is such inescapable, obvious fact so far beyond the reach of the democrats?
Of course the democrats always were pro slavery.
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