This guy gets it!! Mr. Obama's state of the union address was this, it was that, it was another thing, he should have said this, he didn't say that, this was true, untrue, twisted, spun, deceptive, hope-filled, dope-filled, accurate, fair and balanced, blah blah blah. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Page Nine special guest columnist Craig Cantoni is the only one who got it right: It's embarrassing to admit this, but the reason I haven't watched a State of the Union (SOTU) address in 20 years is that I'm a slow learner. If I had been a fast learner, I would have had my epiphany and stopped watching long before 20 years ago. The delayed epiphany was this: that the SOTU is a charade put on by both political parties and the players in the audience, including members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the head of the Federal Reserve, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the "news" media. All of them know that the SOTU and other solemn performances throughout the year are designed to distract citizens from the ugly truth. The ugly truth is that the federal government is insolvent, meaning that it can't pay all of its debts, obligations, and promises. And it is insolvent because it is deceitful, dishonest, and corrupt. Everyone in the SOTU audience is guilty of a massive fraud. Instead of wearing expensive suits in a marble room, they should be wearing striped uniforms in a federal cell of bare concrete. Their crimes are many. Let's look at the four most serious ones. First, the official accounting books of the United States are cooked. The government's own auditor, the General Accounting Administration, has said so, but in nicer words. Among other cooking, the books don't account for all of the government's liabilities. A full accounting would show that the government's true indebtedness is nearly $100 trillion. Second, the miscreants know that there is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund. They have been robbing the fund to pay for their salaries, their marble offices, their large staffs, and their jaunts around the world on military airplanes. Third, they know that the Capitol Mall is a Potemkin village of monuments, museums, reflecting pools, and other tourist attractions. Behind the facades are huge, out-of-control, unaccountable bureaucracies, staffed with minions who, on average, are paid twice as much as the average American worker in a real job in the private sector. If Americans wanted a real education about the workings of their government, they wouldn't come to Washington and visit the Smithsonian. They'd demand a tour of the Department of Agriculture, which is housed in a granite building just a rotten tomato's throw from the Mall. Three stories high, two blocks wide, and three blocks long, it is the most visible example of all that is wrong in Washington. Does anyone really believe that farmers wouldn't grow crops, food companies wouldn't process the crops, and supermarkets wouldn't sell groceries if the building were to be razed and the employees had to find real work? Fourth, the biggest crime of all takes place at the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve. In a complicated shell game that the average citizen doesn't understand and the media doesn't illuminate, money is created out of thin air in these houses of ill-repute. Or to be more accurate, the fiat money of the national government is debauched in a sordid menage a trois for the benefit of the johns in the White House and Congress and their banker friends. In a very real sense, the johns are covering up their corruption with Monopoly money. Since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by over 95 percent. When FDR abandoned the gold standard, the debauchment turned into a screw-the-public orgy that would make Tiger Woods envious. Later, all remaining spending restraint was removed when Nixon closed the gold window to foreign governments. Unless the four crimes are soon stopped and punished, the U.S. will end up as just another country in a long line of countries that spent themselves to death with phony money. I didn't watch the SOTU charade last night, but I know that President Obama didn't talk about any of these crimes. That's because he is a criminal like everyone else who was there. Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
