Before long, the American people believed that Iraq and the al-Qaeda were practically one and the same. Many even believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in September eleventh.

This isn't the first time innuendo has been used to create guilt by association when it isn't true.

Baby-Boomers

When President Clinton dropped the bomb about "76 million baby-boomers" looming on the horizon and about to wreck havoc on Social Security he was using innuendo to plant another untruth.

Clinton never said that these were 76 million births above normal between 1946 and 1965 or even mentioned what the normal number of births within that period was expected to be, he simply used the number to make people believe that Social Security was in trouble and that we should "fix the roof while the sun is shining."

I went to a great deal of trouble to research the U.S. Census Bureau figures and prove that the "76 million baby-boomer" story was really a hoax. The true number of births above normal caused by 16 million lusty servicemen and women returning from the theaters of World War II was really closer to seven or eight million, something that the Social Security Administration could handle easily with minor adjustment.

With the Paula Jones trial and the Monica Lewinsky situation on his mind, I even suggested that Clinton might have missed the decimal point that speech writers had inserted and that the true figure was 7.6 million baby-boomers or births above normal between 1946 and 1965, not worth the worry being generated.

Then a friend wrote to tell me that by using Census figures that do not cover deaths within any period I was really comparing apples and oranges. It was mathematically possible that there really were 76 million births during that period that would not be obvious in the Census Bureau's population increase.

For instance, if you had a barrel that once contained 60 apples and now holds 94 apples, the Census figures would show only an increase of 34 apples. But it is also possible that 50 of the original apples were rotten and had to be thrown out (deaths) leaving only ten apples. In that case, 84 apples were new to the barrel. And supposing eight of these did not recently come off trees but were older healthy apples that came from other barrels (the difference between immigration and emigration) we would then be left with 76 new apples (births).

This made sense and sent me on a long and tedious compilation of births vs. death rates taken from historical insurance data and worked into the Census data, all to come to the same conclusion. There truly are only 7 or 8 million births above normal to be concerned about in the baby-boomer period.

Without going into detail, let me try to explain this another way.

We all work roughly 40 years of our lives paying payroll taxes all the way. Of course, there are differences depending on how long we stay in school, part time jobs, early retirement, some who still work after reaching retirement age, and so forth, but you can figure prime earning periods somewhere around 40 years as an average. And Social Security depends upon a constantly increasing work force always outnumbering the living retired drawing benefits.

Like any insurance, the actuaries of the Social Security Administration work hard to know how many contributors they have, how long people live, how many die accidentally or in wars, and so forth, all to determine how much your insurance must cost. You can get lost in this actuarial data.

However, we have a current work force of about 147 million with, unfortunately, about 8 million currently unemployed. We have been very fortunate not to have had a war on our home shores since the Civil War where we lost people on both sides and the number of youngsters lost in wars abroad is really not as significant as you might imagine. Also, the number of people living longer is a slow increase not nearly as significant as the spin stories might lead you to believe.

The point is that every 20 years you can count on just about half of the work force retiring. In other words, with a work force of 147 million, there is nothing unusual about more than 70 million people retiring every 20 years. Put that against the "76 million baby-boomer" myth, and what do you get?

Here's another table. This one is taken from the Department of Labor historical data:

People born in 1946 would have begun entering the work force in the mid-Sixties. Do you see any significant jump due to a huge number of baby-boomers? If the "76 million baby-boomers" were truly births above normal there would be a huge peak occurring around 1963 to 1973 wouldn't there?

The most interesting thing about this historical employment graph are the periods of recession causing unemployment, one of which we are in right now.

Let's turn to what President Clinton really said in 1998.

In his January, 1998, State of the Union address to Congress and the American people one of the very first actions he proposed was Social Security reform:

"Tonight I propose that we reserve 100 percent of the surplus, that is every penny of any surplus, until we have taken all the necessary measures to strengthen the Social Security system for the 21st century. Let us say, let us say to all Americans watching tonight, whether you are 70 or 50 or whether you just started paying into the system, Social Security will be there when you need it. Let us make this commitment: Social Security first. Let's do that together."

On April 7, 1998, about three months later, at the first National Forum on Social Security taking place at Penn Valley Community College, Kansas City, Missouri, the President said: "this sunlit moment is not a time to rest. Instead, it is a rare opportunity to prepare our nation for the challenges and the opportunities of the 21st century - or in the words of the old saying, to fix the roof while the sun is shining...Today the system is sound, but the demographic crisis looming is clear. The baby boomers - 76 million of us - are now looking ahead to their retirement."

The press picked up on the 76 million baby-boomers and began broadcasting it everywhere, interspersing and relating all sorts of phenomena with this number or something close to it (see samples).

But the more important idea was to "reserve 100 percent of the surplus, that is every penny of any surplus" to strengthen Social Security. Nobody picked up on that.

In 1998, Social Security produced $49.3 billion in surplus payroll tax overcharges and all entitlements together, the "every penny of any surplus," totaled $92.7 billion. None of this money was saved or went towards strengthening Social Security.

All Clinton had to do was to put this "surplus" in a real trust fund similar to the government's own employee Thrift Savings Plan, but he didn't even suggest it. Instead, the government spent Social Security's overcharge elsewhere and left us debt markers in a phony "trust" that is amplified by annual interest at no expense to the government.

It even looks like the year of town hall meetings was nothing but a test to see if the government could continus to get away with this scam. If the subject didn't come up, the pirates were safe.

By fiscal 2000, the year of the nation's greatest surpluses, entitlements produced a surplus of $149.8 billion with Social Security leading the way with a $95.4 billion surplus. We also had an income tax surplus of $87 billion, which Bush has since given back to taxpayers, for a total surplus of $237 billion.

None of this fiscal 2000 surplus money went towards strengthening Social Security either. Instead, $230 billion was applied to the national debt in a laundering operation that would make Marc Rich proud. And the national debt still increased by $18 billion.

Now, we have a president that is cutting taxes everywhere except from the mother lode—payroll taxes.

In his first year, President Bush subscribed to the same Clintonesque debt laundering policy and threw $66 billion against the national debt. Unfortunately, stealing entitlement money and adding annual interest caused the other side of the debt to go up $199.3 billion and we were left with an overall national debt increase of $133 billion.

Since then, the Bush administration has been on a borrowing binge that is sending the national debt "to the moon, Alice" with no signs of relief.

Since taking office in January, 2001, George W. Bush has increased the national debt more than $900 billion, recently increased the debt limit by almost one trillion ($984 billion), and will increase the national debt that much by August of next year.

This is not fiscal irresponsibility—it's criminal manipulation of taxpayer money and credit in the attempt to build an empire.

Following the money exposes lies by innuendo.