WHERE'S THE RAGE ?

If someone took the money you sent him for super-bowl tickets and spent it on something else, then told you that you would have to send him the same amount again if you want to "save" your seat, you would be mad as hell. You would be yelling and screaming, outraged and talking about lawsuits or even worse threats. You certainly wouldn't let him get away with it year after year.

If this same guy did it to everyone, you would be getting together with your neighbors and talking about mob action, about class-action lawsuits or something much worse. You certainly wouldn't be silent about it.

Yet, when the federal government does exactly the same thing, you don't even make a peep.

When the federal government just as flagrantly rips-off $739 billion of your hard earned sweat equity, you don't seem to care. You just sit back and take it.

When the very same person who arranged this ticket-sale con game in the first place, Alan Greenspan, gets on television and tells you that, in the future, tickets are liable to cost as much as 2-to-5 percent more, you seem willing to accept that. Hey, everything goes up, right?

I can understand the con man. He's out for everything he can steal. What I cannot understand is the pathology of the victim. Why do you take it???

Is it because you see so many other people at the super-bowl? Is it because you know somebody is getting tickets, so there must be some chance that you will get there too? Did the con man fail to tell you that you must be disabled or retired in order to claim your seat?

Year after year, ever since the 1983 Greenspan Commission recommended taking Social Security off the pay-as-you-go system, the federal government has collected more and more money than was needed annually to operate Social Security. This extra or "excess" money that the government collects over and above expenses and pay-out, what you or I would call profit, goes into a "trust fund."

The managers of this trust fund (trustees like Robert Rubin, Donna Shalala, and four others) know that money should not just sit around idle, losing value to things like inflation, so they "invest" it for you. They "invest" it in what everyone will agree is the safest place in the world - Treasury bonds. Bonds "guaranteed" by the U.S. Government.

In one swift monthly maneuver, your excess money is translated into Treasury bonds -- bonds that are promissory notes where you, the citizens of this country, are both beneficiary and guarantor. The real cash goes into the Treasury's general fund where Congress and the Administration spend it on things of their choosing.

Everybody inside the beltway knows that there's nothing in the trust funds but promissory notes or what they like to call IOUs. They all know that the real cash went to Congress as "off budget" revenue. They usually claim to have "borrowed" this money.

At the same time, all of these super bowl players know that the government itself has no way to pay back this money, to redeem these IOUs, once the trust fund assets are needed. The federal government has only two major forms of income, taxes and borrowing. They borrow by selling Treasury securities on the open market or, as we've seen, by taking cash from more than 50 trust funds, Social Security being the largest.

The only thing that truly make Treasury securities "the safest" investment in the world is the bald faced fact that they are backed by every man, woman, and child in the country. These bonds make you the responsible party and are recorded by the Bureau of Public Debt. Many, and especially government workers, tend to conveniently forget or ignore this.

As a result, you the people who paid this excess money into trust in the first place, are now the only people who can pay it back. You not only put this excess money into the trusts in the first place, received promissory notes in lieu of cash, but are now the only source for paying it back. It's double taxation plain and simple.

In the most ludicrous, outlandish, brazen rip-off ever perpetrated upon citizens by their government, you are conned into buying back your own money. What's in trust at present are not IOUs - they're UOUs.

As of October 1, 1998, the 53 different trust funds hold a total of $1.787 trillion of these phony UOUs. By 2012, the total will be more than $4.5 trillion.

What Clinton today calls a "surplus" or a projected surplus, is nothing more than the money stolen from trust funds. During fiscal 1998, $75 billion was stolen from trust funds with Social Security alone accounting for $55 billion of this figure.

It's exactly the same as robbing your kid's piggy bank. Because you might have wanted to play lotto, go to the racetrack or casino, had someone at the door with a bill, or needed groceries, more bullets, or whatever, you took money out of your child's savings, cramming a note through the slot. This note says that your kid will have to start over or replace the money himself. What sort of reaction would you expect?

Do you think your child is going to buy the idea that you did it for his own good, or the good of the family? Do you think he'll be any happier when you tell him that you will help him replace this money by taking portions of it out of his allowance or from the money you pay him to do chores like cutting the grass or shoveling the walk?

Maybe you can tell him that "the boomers are coming" and we all need to make adjustments in order to "fix the roof while the sun is shining." You need some sort of fantastic fairy tale if you stole $55 billion of the kid's profits for one year.

You should do exactly what you would do to the super bowl ticket salesman we talked about at the beginning of this article. Raise hell. Yell and scream, particularly to your representatives in Washington. Let them know that you're wise to their tricks - that the game is up and you're not going to take it any more. If that doesn't get results, you will need more drastic action.

Tell them that you want trust funds, all of the trust funds, put in the hands of people in the private sector. Tell them you want this yearly excess money taken out of the hands of government, put beyond their thieving grasp, and in the hands of private investors who can invest your money in something besides UOUs. People you can hire and fire if they don't do their job. Investors similar to those now working for TIAA-CREF, SURS, or other real trusts.

While you're at it, tell them that from now on you want the government to pay the annual interest due trusts in real cash. No more crazy piling-on of more free Treasury UOUs that don't cost the government a cent. Interest payments that only commit you to a greater debt.

Make a peep.