BALES OF CASH FOR KLEPTOCRATS

It's a good thing the Social Security and military retirement programs
aren't actuarially bankrupt; the armed forces don't need any more money for
live-fire training; Americans have seen their taxes fall till they can pay
the remaining federal levies with pocket change; poverty on the Indian
reservations is a thing of the past; and hospitals and police forces are so
overstaffed they now dispatch whole teams of detectives and RNs in response
to every home burglary, heart attack and stolen-car report.

Because if that weren't the case, one might wonder if our delegates to
Washington had temporarily taken leave of their senses, as the House of
Representatives this week voted to take $15 billion of our tax money,
bundle it up into huge bales, and drop it on harmless peasants overseas.

As part of the $15 billion foreign aid package, Congress intends to send
$676 million to "fight drugs and advance economic and political stability"
in Colombia and its neighboring South American republics ... an enterprise
which has so far proven about as effective as similar efforts in Southeast
Asia 35 years ago.

Where most of this money actually goes, of course, is to prop up the
oversized armies of repulsive military dictatorships intent on putting down
local political insurgencies, in between shooting down and killing Michigan
missionaries and their babies.

Then, as virtual afterthoughts, apparently desperate to shovel out surplus
funds which have piled up hip-deep in the halls of the Capitol, our
delegates tack on $768 million for the surly thugs now in charge of the
former Soviet Union.

Oh, and $2 billion apiece in military aid to Egypt and Israel, apparently
on the theory that already heightened tensions in that region aren't good
for much if we can't get these two countries to go back to war at least
every couple of decades, providing some live test results for our current
weapons systems.

Your U.S. Congress, trying every day in every way to prop up waste, fraud,
and tyranny around the globe.