The fiscal 2003 budget approved earlier this month, what the government calls its "spending bill," originally called for $3.5 billion for local counterterrorism programs, but what Congress approved was only $1.3 billion. And this was from a Congress where both the House and the Senate are republican controlled.

Personally, I hope they never get the money to enact the sort of police state represented locally by the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security functions, but that isn't the question here.

Are they really trying to tell us that an administration that borrowed $638.7 billion in the last sixteen months cannot come up with a measly three and a half billion? That's just a little preposterous, don't you think? There has to be some other reason for cutting the original amount or deciding to spend the saved money elsewhere.

Try this on for size. Despite the booga-booga stories the government puts out and the "orange" and "yellow" levels of alert from Homeland Security, suppose the politicians and bureaucrats know that there's little need for protection at the local level. Suppose they know that terrorists are unlikely to attack the general public on subways, in office buildings, on airplanes, at sports events, or to take out our symbols of prosperity.

Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda may be evildoers, but they are not stupid. They know who the enemy is, and it's the government and the New World Order that they're after. They know who gives the orders to overrun and exploit their homelands. And the twin towers of the World Trade Center were the heart of international banking while banking is a key element of the New World Order. It's what locks and enslaves other nations. Likewise we have the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve—all headquartered in the District of Corruption and New York City. All very real targets of terrorism.

So why spend good money protecting something that doesn't need to be protected? This could also be the reason why we haven't closed our borders. Spend money to turn the Beltway into a moat and forget the rest of the country.

Let's look at something else.

The same New York Times article reports that the total amount in this "Spending Bill" is $397.4 billion in "discretionary" spending. That's what is left of the nearly two trillion budget after deducting Defense and Mandatory spending for Interest on the Debt, Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement obligations.

Now you can see why the government will never give up the $150 billion they stole from entitlements like Social Security last year. "Off budget" revenue that makes up more than a third of the money Congress and the administration can decide how to spend.

While President Bush piddles around with a "stimulus package" that cuts dividend taxes in hopes the wealthy will spend some of that money saved by investing inside this country, the real "double taxation" goes on and on with Social Security surplus-overcharges and the same with 18 other entitlements, some of which are drawing on their phony trust funds right now.

The federal government will never give up the booty involved in this Enron style rip-off, even though cutting payroll taxes would put immediate dollars back in every worker's pocket and do more to stimulate the economy than anything else possible. The rip-off is the most nonpartisan thing Washington does—too bad it’s criminal.

Instead, Bush will continue borrowing us into oblivion just as soon as he gets the national debt limit raised for the umpteenth time or eliminated entirely. The only reason the "debt limit" was established in 1968 was a half-hearted attempt to make Congress and the administration live within their income, to balance the budget. Since that has never worked, why bother with rules we are not going to abide by, the debt limit ought to be thrown out with the rest of the garbage.

Just last January, the taxpayers of this nation paid $4.1 billion in double taxation plus interest when some of the Unemployment trust fund's bogus holdings were called out for payment to the unemployed because current receipts from employers were not enough to cover payments and extended payments. The money had to be taken from current individual and corporate income taxes or money borrowed. Either way, taxpayers replaced money paid previously in unemployment taxes but stolen by the government.

And this has happened 22 months out of the last 29 months in varying amounts. And unemployment is just one of the 11 entitlements drawing on its Mafia-style markers.

And none of the media or think-tank watchdogs are reporting this crime. Neither is the Securities and Exchange Commission doing anything about it.

Yet, the Beltway Bandits want us to believe them when it comes to whether Saddam Hussein is a threat.

How can you believe someone who robs you?