I have no argument with the $7.25 billion the unemployed will receive in varying amounts that different states pass out to the unemployed. This extension should have been signed before now.

What I do have a major complaint with is where this money is coming from. This is a subject being completely ignored by almost everyone, particularly the so-called watchdogs of the free press.

The Associated Press says; "Funding for the extension will come from the unemployment trust fund, which has cash reserves of about $24 billion."

Do you hear that loud and clear? "Cash reserves of about $24 billion" held by the trust fund. This is an absolute lie, both preposterous and ridiculous.

To make political hay, Senator Hillary Clinton says "that's what trust funds are for, isn't it?" Obviously, forgetting what her husband said when she was First Lady.

Buried deeply in the Analytical Perspectives section of the fiscal 2000 budget was the following statement; "Trust Fund balances are available to finance future benefits...but only in a bookkeeping sense...they do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes or borrowing." In other words, they are taxes that will have to be paid again, a second time plus interest, and that's double taxation plain and simple.

The truth about these debit black hole accounts that the Beltway Bandits refer to as "trust funds" has been echoed by many authorities other than William Jefferson Clinton, but common sense should make the truth obvious to everyone. The Unemployment Trust Fund, like the Social Security Trust Fund, and seventeen other entitlement accounts are all part of the national debt. All together they currently make up about 42 percent of the national debt listed under "Intragovernmental Holdings" (another fraudulent phrase). Debt is debt folks, it's not a positive asset you can turn to for cash.

There are no "cash reserves." The Unemployment Trust Fund holds nothing but "special obligation nonmarketable bonds" that were left there as UOUs when the government stole the excess money employers contributed during the fat years. Employers gave the government more money than the Labor Department required in order to pay unemployment benefits at the time, receipts were greater than outlays, and the pirates embezzled that money to spend elsewhere. Then to cover their butts, to pretend that they merely "borrowed" the money, they put bogus bonds in the so-called trust.

The Mayberry press has always been mathematically challenged. They go to Floyd's barber shop or Goober's garage to ask politicians about things. It's expected they get numbers all screwed up.

The Unemployment Trust Fund once held more than $90 billion in these bogus bonds. Throughout fiscal 2002, the Labor Department has been drawing down on these bonds until, at the end of November, 2002, there was only $63.5 billion in the account—not "about $24 billion" as the Associated Press suggests.

God only knows where AP got that false $24 billion number, but it will now be spread everywhere since it comes from the nation's major wire service and propaganda machine now that United Press International (UPI) is pretty much out of the picture. They certainly didn't get it from the nation's bank, the U.S. Treasury. The only source you can count on.

When receipts from employers are less than outlays to the unemployed, where does the make-up money come from? Don't ask a politician because you will never get a straight answer. The crooks who have been stealing surplus payments are not about to tell the truth.

Do you think it's coming from the government paying itself back somehow, or some other department paying back the Labor Department as the words "Intragovernmental Holdings" are meant to imply? Do you think the Beltway Bandits are coming up with the cash out of their own pockets?

The money is coming from you the taxpayer.

Cashing-in any entitlement trust fund means that the real money comes from the Treasury's General Fund of current receipts. Such receipts come from current personal and corporate income tax or money borrowed honestly from investors. Of course, it could also come from their scam of robbing other entitlements like Social Security which still managed an $89 billion surplus last year, fiscal 2002.

No matter how you look at it, George W. Bush just signed legislation to take $7.25 billion more of your current sweat equity, the money taxpayers make. Either that or he's putting it on the tab for your children and grandchildren to pay later.

Please note that this is exactly what would happen if there were no trust fund at all, if the pirates had just stolen the money and run.

Instead, they ran a scam with trust funds that aren't really trusts at all, not anything like their own Thrift Savings Plan account that holds real investments of around $44 billion now for federal employees. And they perpetuated that scam by adding annual interest that didn't cost them anything since there's no money involved, they just hand the debit black hole (trust fund) more bogus bonds each year.

The Bush administration has increased the national debt $600 billion ($598.3 billion) in the last fifteen months. The real deficit for fiscal 2002 was an increase to the debt of $421 billion they had to borrow to make ends meet. In the first quarter of fiscal 2003, the last three months, the national debt has gone up $177.5 billion. And last month, December of 2002, the debt went up $62.2 billion.

We are currently borrowing ourselves into oblivion at the rate of about two billion a day, weekends included.

If the government were to suddenly become honest, we could immediately reduce the national debt $2.7 trillion by simply getting rid of the "Intragovernmental Holdings" side of the national debt. Wipe it from the books. It's nothing but fraudulent accounting anyway. Hundreds of times worse than anything Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, or any of the corporate scoundrels have done.

Why do you think Arthur Andersen, the government's own outside analyst, will not sign off on the government's books?

Right now, today, as you read this, eleven different entitlements are drawing down on their fraudulent trust funds, the debit black hole accounts. Thank God, these are not the big ones like Social Security yet.

Is anyone asking where the money is coming from? Do you think you would get a straight answer from any one of the Beltway Bandits or their well fed watchdogs and media allies?

How long are you going to put up with this crap? And what makes you think the situation with Iraq, Korea, or anyone, is anything more than a weapon of mass distraction?