They can, however, spend dedicated money someplace else. They can go back on their word. They can collect it for one reason and spend it elsewhere. They can raise taxes for something everyone wants, then use that money somewhere else. They can lie about what they did with earmarked money. They can misappropriate it. That is what's called embezzlement and theft. It's a capitol offense, a crime. Normal people go to jail for stealing funds, especially pension or retirement funds.

When the government screws up, the taxpaying public pays for it. Politicians and bureaucrats don't open their own pocketbooks to pay for mistakes they make. You pay and nobody goes to jail. That's a fact, Jack.

When the Indians were awarded $600,000 in a lawsuit against former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Bruce Babbitt Secretary of The Interior for mishandling trust funds, the pay out came from your taxes in the general fund. You paid their fines.

You cannot both spend and save the same money. You can pretend that you're saving it, but if you've already spent it and it's gone then the savings idea is a charade, a falsehood, a lie. If you spent it as fast as it came in, while pretending to borrow or save it in some sort of trust, then you're a con artist on top of being an embezzler and a thief. If you left markers behind that require the people you conned to pay the same money again, replace the money you stole, then you're guilty of malfeasance and should be severely punished.

When you hand somebody money, it's gone. You no longer own it or have any claim to it unless there's a contract involved, written or implied. And you better be able to prove that you gave the money for a reason, for goods and services that the party you gave it to promises to deliver. That's part of practical business 101, and if you don't know what caveat emptor means then you better look it up. It was once taught in our high schools.

So much for simple truths.

When it comes to your retirement money, extra Social Security payments that you make through payroll taxes, and more than a dozen other entitlements like Medicare, unemployment, highways, and other things that you pay for—the government has the most elaborate cock-and-bull stories ever imagined. They are almost all spin stories to cover the embezzling or theft of your entitlement money. They are pure propaganda.

Intragovernmental holdings, federal debt, trust funds, lock-boxes, on-budget, off-budget, unified budget, general funds, deficits and surpluses, nonmarketable special obligation bonds, paying down debt—these are some of the spin words used to cover up the fact that Congress and the Administration stole your entitlement money and ran.

Whenever you hear any of these words used by politicians and bureaucrats, your mind should immediately go to Def-Con2, citizen's defense alert prior to revolution. You are probably being lied to. You can be almost certain that the person you are listening to or reading is part of the scam or, as our leader says, providing protection and shelter to the evil doers. This can include a lot of people who are just plain dumb and don't know any better.

Most insidious of all is the idea that the crooks just "borrowed" the money. Insidious because it goes beyond simple theft, beyond just taking the money and running. It sets up a scam where taxpayers or their offspring will pay the same money again, pay a second time, plus interest. And taxpayers will do this while continuing to throw more entitlement taxes into the coffer as usual. Even Ponzi couldn't come up with that one. It's double taxation plain and simple, with annual interest tacked on.

Did you get a contract when the government used your Social Security money elsewhere? Did you tell them it was OK? Forget what they used it for, good or bad. Can you hold up some documentation like the investors who honestly loaned the government money for Treasury securities in return for annual cash interest and a payoff at maturity? Where is it? In a trust fund that isn't really a trust fund or the lock-box that all real trust funds are by their very nature? What have you got to show for your surplus payments? Hey, we're talking about $98.7 billion here, and that's just the surplus from Social Security last year. It's not petty cash.

Is your money in a real trust fund the way the politician's and bureaucrat's Thrift Savings Plan is tucked away safely, or is it accounted for in one of those debit black holes that the Secretary of the Treasury tells us hold no viable assets, only debt? One of those funds that Jim DeMint (R-SC) wants to rename "accounting funds" instead of trust funds. Do you smell Enron bookkeeping here?

How come the Social Security Trust Fund accounts for 20.4 percent of the national debt? Why is it listed under "Intragovernmental Holdings" while the Thrift Savings Fund is not?

And even if you had a contract, what good is it? Who's going to honor it and where will the money come from? Remember that the government has no money except what it gets from you.

On December 31, 2001, the Social Security Trust Fund held a total of $1.17 trillion in nonmarketable Treasury bonds that can be redeemed only with your money. And you got this debt by giving the government surplus payroll taxes, extra money that should have been working for you instead of against you.

The Enron scandal is nothing compared to the government's daily rip-off. The only reason the government is investigating Enron may be to see if they can pick up any new scam ideas.