CAN GOVERNMENT BE STOPPED FROM LYING?

The U.S. government's lies are coming home to roost. A lot of people
wonder why others won't fill out census forms and/or won't register to
vote. The government says census information is confidential and it
won't share the information with law enforcement, immigration or IRS
authorities. I theorize that people have good reasons for not
believing the federal government.

I don't think enough people recognize that our government lies about
the rate of inflation, but they know their income is not keeping up
with the rising cost of living.

The understatement of inflation is just the opposite of the
overstatement of the Vietnam enemy body count. Wouldn't it be nice if
those responsible for the false over count explained how they kept it
hidden from congressional investigators who knew they were being lied
to but couldn't find the truth?

Most Vietnam veterans know the government lied to them about taking
care of their medical needs and the medical needs of their families if
they served 20 or more years. Veterans also are aware of the lies
about the safety of Agent Orange.

Ask Native Americans about our government's lies. There wouldn't be
enough room in the newspaper to list them all.

I am sure everyone who can read the paper and is old enough to vote
can remember seeing television pictures of our Patriot missiles
shooting down scud missiles, but how many people know that National
Public Radio reported that not one Patriot missile shot down a scud
missile?

Sen. Jesse Helms tried to get Noam Chomsky, author of the report,
arrested for treason for "giving away our national secrets," but Mr.
Chomsky proved he figured out the deception from publicly available
sources. The appearance of missile strikes on television was created
by our military, knowing the scud would blow off its nose cone as it
re-entered the atmosphere at a certain altitude. At the time, the lie
helped our side's war morale, but in the long run aren't we worse off
for the lie? The truth won't hurt us. What does hurt are the lies or
myths we believe to be true but are not.

Look at the war on drugs, which we are told justifies spending
hundreds of billions of dollars to fight. We are losing both the money
and the war, which could be won at a net gain to the economy by
legalizing drugs.

Most people who don't lie to themselves, and that leaves out a
significant part of the population, recognize that the U.S. government
would rather tell a lie than the truth. I hope some political
scientist can suggest a workable way we can get our government to stop
lying to us.

E. VICTOR MERESKI