“ ...we live in a country where our leaders write their own rules, then decide which ones to enforce and who is to be subject to those laws.”

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A Country Out of Control

Considering what has taken place in our country during the past several decades, can anyone have genuine confidence that our country is being governed by leaders with a serious concern for our future? Decisions which determine what happens in government are made by one of two groups, namely, the political parties and the Congress of the United States.

Consider first the evolution of the political parties.

For many years, there was a significant difference between the policies of the two major parties. In recent years, the Democratic Party has been adopting the policies of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party has been adopting the policies of the Democratic Party. It is frequently stated by knowledgeable leaders that “there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major parties.” Few would seriously question the statement that both parties pander to any and all identifiable special interest groups with little or no regard for whether those policies are consistent with party ideology.

While the Democratic Party makes no apology for promoting big government, the Republican Party professes to be for limited government, but will even go so far as to promote policies that expand government that they wouldn't support if proposed by the Democrats.

Even the Republican candidate for president in 1996 made the statement that he had no interest in promoting the program set forth by the party platform committee. In his last campaign for governor of Texas, after 7500 GOP delegates proposed a platform (a virtual carbon copy of the Constitution Party platform) that then Gov. Bush was asked about, he said he runs on his “own agenda.” Since becoming President of the United States, little has taken place to suggest that there is much interest in promoting traditional Republican positions.

Having arrived at this point where there is so little difference between the major parties, these same people have prevented the “third party people” from participating in the significant debates. They therefore control the topics to be presented to the voters. The result is that during the last two presidential campaigns, probably the three most important issues facing our country today were not even discussed. These are 1) immigration, 2) loss of sovereignty, and 3) our out-of-control balance of payments. How can voters make intelligent decisions in the voting booth when denied debate about the serious issues of the day?

A serious analysis of discussions held in the halls of Congress, and other places as well, would suggest that the primary consideration in any issue is how many votes will this effort produce.

When leaders are seriously interested in the “long term health of an organization,” the primary considerations should be...

1. Can we afford it?

2. Who will pay for it?

3. Will it promote the ideals of the organization?

A critical look at the performance of the various federal agencies would suggest that there are few, if any, seriously and intelligently performing the tasks assigned to them.

Department of Education

What is more important than giving our future citizens the skills they need to succeed in life? Prior to the establishment of the federal Department of Education, our public schools showed consistent improvement. Since that time, it has been “down hill” to where our public school students NOW have the lowest academic standing of students IN ANY INDUSTRIALIZED NATION.

Our leaders seem to feel that in order to do a better job of educating our children, we just need to spend more money on education, when study after study have shown that money is not the problem. Has there ever been a study to determine WHY our public schools are failing to teach our children?

Immigration and Naturalization Service

The INS was established to control immigration. Today, there is little control over who enters our country. For those who enter legally, there is little effort to track their movements or even to see that they leave when they should. For those who arrive here illegally, this agency will even contract with employers not to deport these people if the employer will give them jobs. About 25-30 percent of people in federal prisons are illegal immigrants. Why don't we send them home?

A significant number of states are experiencing many serious problems traceable to immigrants. Even many courts have ruled that illegal immigrants are entitled to benefits established for citizens of our country. Where is concern for the hard working citizens who must pay these benefits?

Securities and Exchange Commission

The SEC was established during the FDR Administration to “protect the small investor.” It has evolved to the point where it is staffed by people from the “finance community” who have established policies “rife with conflicts of interest.” Most, if not all, of the current “scandals” are the direct result of falsified financial statements inflating the value of stocks (done within SEC guidelines) making millionaires and billionaires out of senior corporate officials and wiping out the retirement funds and lifetime savings of millions of working class people. This agency gave CEOs and CFOs a two year grace period during which they could CORRECT false financial reports without fear of prosecution. This is nothing less than legalizing outright fraud.

Auditing firms are right in the middle of this scandal. The sole function of an AUDIT is to guarantee the ACCURACY of financial statements. These organizations have evolved to the point where they now have departments that advise their clients how to “legally” falsify their reports to distort the true financial condition of the organization. All these efforts are considered “acceptable accounting standards” as established by the SEC.

Department of Justice

This organization is charged with enforcing the laws written by the Congress. A classic example of its failure is reported in the March 18, 2002 issue of Insight. It states that under Federal Acquisition Regulations, contractors can be barred from conducting business with the U.S. government for fraud, antitrust violations, embezzlement and/or commission of any other offense indicating a lack of business integrity or honesty that seriously and directly affects the contractor's responsibility.

The report includes a graph listing 15 top government contractors involved in 507 cases either settled or pending who have paid criminal and/or civil fines. This law even permits guilty companies to bill the government for legal fees involved in defending themselves in some civil cases. Where is REAL accountability?

Books could be written about the failure of the Justice Department to enforce federal law and/or PUNISH those who violate it, especially people in “high places.”

Internal Revenue Service

What could be more fundamental to operating a department charged with collecting funds to operate government than to have a fair and equitable system? This department has evolved into one where more time and effort is spent providing for special treatment of one group or another than an equitable sharing of the cost of government.

A perfect example of this is a recent effort to “simplify the system” which added another 862 pages to the “code.” Time after time, groups of IRS agents have been given hypothetical cases and rarely, if ever, do they agree with each other on the amount of taxes to be paid by that set of conditions.

There have been repeated times when different government leaders have been accused of using this agency to intimidate certain groups by initiating audits. A review of those so audited and other groups not being audited makes it difficult to reach any other conclusion.

Department of Agriculture

While there is nothing in our Constitution that grants the federal government the authority to establish such an agency, it was formed to “protect the family farm.” Since the establishment of this agency, the number of family farms has steadily decreased to the point where an ever increasing percentage of funds dispensed goes to the large corporate farms. The time when a family could be supported by operating a family farm, except for rare special situations, passed many years ago.

Many programs promoted by this agency have contradictory results. Farmers can be paid for NOT raising crops and then also paid for raising them.

This agency subsidizes tobacco farmers and then will punish those who process the product for public consumption.

Department of State

One of the major functions of this agency is to maintain relations with other governments around the world. Probably TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars have been spent “assisting” other countries in one way or another and in far too many instances, a good percentage of those funds end up in the private bank accounts of the leaders of those countries. Very little effort is expended to see that these funds are used to benefit the intended beneficiaries.

How many countries that we support can be considered true friends? Very few.

This report could go on and on, and some credit can probably be given to most or all agencies for one reason or another. But when viewed in light of the basic reason for the existence of each agency, the amount of money that it spends, and what that agency has accomplished over the years, there is good reason to question whether the best interests of our country have been served by any agency in existence today.

Our Founding Fathers tried very hard to limit the functions of the federal government and few, if any, of these agencies would exist if the courts and the legislatures would interpret our Constitution as it is written.

While books could be written explaining what has taken place, probably the biggest reason this has happened is that it is seldom that anyone responsible for wrongdoing is ever held accountable, even for criminal acts. Until this changes, don't look for much improvement.

Equally or even more responsible is that congressional oversight is virtually non-existent.

To sum up candidly, we live in a country where our leaders write their own rules, then decide which ones to enforce and who is to be subject to those laws.

If this doesn't describe a COUNTRY OUT OF CONTROL, what would you call it?

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