March 18, 2004

How can you trust a government that violates the very idea of trust with its use and manipulation of phony trust funds? How can you trust a body of lawmakers who are supposed to establish and uphold the rules when that same body flaunts their own laws? Why bother voting if it just encourages and supports fraud?

Where do the new candidates for office stand? The outsiders or uninitiated whom we assume are not yet guilty of ripping us off? The people like Governor Howard Dean, Ralph Nader, General Clark, Jim Oberweis running for a vacant Illinois Senate seat, and all the others who talk glibly about reform but don't even mention the greatest economic crime of all time?

Do you want to know how phony federal trust funds are? It's no secret. Of 159 trusts managed by the government, only 16 are real. All the rest make up the Intragovernmental Holdings portion of the national debt. They hold nothing but debt markers. What kind of trust fund manages nothing but debt?

The scam has been exposed and confessed to by authorities who thought they were safely retired, out of the game, clearing their consciences or confessing in obscure circumstances few would notice.

Where are the watchdogs, the think tanks, the pundits and commentators who claim to be researching and dealing in things that matter? Why do they ignore the subject or every time it raises its ugly head quickly replace it with subjects like pedophile priests, gay marriages, celebrity crimes, car chases and even wars? How many times can they bury or sidestep a subject that it so obvious?

For Example:

How in the world did the Social Security trust funds (Federal Old Age & Survivors Insurance and the Federal Disability Insurance trust funds) become 22 percent of the national debt? Can you answer that? Can your representatives in Washington answer that honestly? Have you asked them? Does anyone ask them? Do any of the candidates for office even approach that question?

What about the other entitlement trust funds like the Unemployment Trust Fund that are being used right now, today, to double tax us plus interest—the sole purpose of these so-called trusts? There are at least 24 of these entitlement trust funds that make up the bulk of the Intragovernmental Holdings (almost $3 trillion) portion of the national debt—Social Security just happens to be the largest.

Where is the money coming from as these trust funds are being drawn down today? What is happening with your gas taxes that established the Highway Trust Fund, your Airport and Airline taxes that built the Airports & Airways Trust Fund? What about all of the others, including the Military Retirement trust fund? These are perfect examples of what's going to happen if the Social Security Administration is ever short of funds and must turn to its so-called trust.

Specifically, the taxpaying public is today being double billed for unemployment taxes that were previously paid by employers but stolen by the federal government and spent elsewhere. We are today, month after month, paying those taxes again, a second time, plus interest because the money to pay benefits and extended benefits must either be borrowed honestly from investors or come out of today's taxes. It's a perfect example of what is in store for us if and when Social Security needs money at some mysterious and possibly never-to-happen future date.

The Bush administration ran up the national debt last year by $555 billion and this year, fiscal 2004, we are headed for the $700 billion mark, plus the need to raise the debt ceiling every year and just before November's elections.

Even the IMF and the World Bank, headquartered in the District of Corruption, are warning the Bush administration about its disappearing tax base, falling value of the dollar, record trade deficit, and accumulating debt.

How we got into this mess:

Basically, we got into this situation by not paying attention to what the slip-and-slide crafty, greedy, and cowardly politicians and bureaucrats in Washington were doing by pretending to "borrow" surplus tax contributions that we made to entitlements.

Rather than take on the formidable task of raising taxes honestly, the Beltway Bandits found it easier to steal dedicated tax payments. There's no other word for it, and the federal government's theft of these funds makes Enron and other private sector crooks look like angels.

Yes, there are still surpluses, no matter what the spin doctors want you to believe. Last year alone, Social Security produced an $82 billion profit/surplus even with high unemployment, fewer workers contributing. None of the other entitlements are producing as well either. Not as well as they did in better economic times.

Once the "borrowing" lie is told, it picks up momentum and snowballs into greater and greater untruths.

Borrowed money must be paid back. And it can only be paid back with taxpayer money. There is no other source. But to obscure the crime, our crafty government invented the "Intragovernmental Holdings" section of the national debt, what was once called "Federal Debt." The idea was to make the public believe the impossibility of the government owing itself, one governmental department owing another, and the fantastically implausible idea that this debt would be redeemed with some magic other than taxpayer money.

When questioned about it, Alan Greenscam, Chairman of the private Federal Reserve said; "The only thing that matters is that they (the phony holdings) are enforceable." And the penetrating inquirers backed-off by accepting that answer as they do so often with Mr. Greenspeak's holy pronouncements.

Probably the most heinous part of this scam is that the Beltway Bandits add annual interest to these phony accounts by simply handing all of these so-called trusts more bogus bonds with no money whatsoever involved, but increasing our indebtedness. The national debt rises for no reason other than to continue the "borrowing" lie.

Is this fraud ever going to stop?

Obviously not.

An entitlement is something you've paid for and you are entitled to receive the goods or services for which you plunked down your money. The money is not supposed to be spent elsewhere and the Beltway Bandits know this. That's why they invented the "borrowing" scam, the fraudulent trust funds, and the bogus nonmarketable bonds with no intrinsic value to anyone but themselves. Bonds that could be eliminated tomorrow with no ill effect on anyone but the pirates themselves—forty-two percent of the national debt that taxpaying citizens of this country or their children and grandchildren owe and will eventually pay again just as we are starting to repay today.

Did you know that four out of five of the last months this year the Federal Disability Insurance program, part of the Social Security trust, has been drawn down a total of $782 million? This went on your federal credit card even though the Federal Old Age & Survivors Insurance portion has produced a $21 billion surplus so far this year even with increasing unemployment and "outsourcing" of American jobs.

In short, we are buying debt just as surely as if we walked into the U.S. Treasury, plunked down bags full of billions in our own sweat equity, and said; "Here, give me some debt." It's precisely that ludicrous. And you put up with it.

And then, the federal government borrows money honestly from investors, both foreign and domestic, when it becomes necessary to cash-in some of these bogus holdings. That honest borrowing simply moves the debt from one side of the national debt to the other "washing" their crime by taxing us a second time, plus interest.

When are you going to do something about it?

Visit Ed Henry's own web site!

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