Tuesday as I drove to work, I listened on CNN as a White House spokesman asked "who will the American people blame?" I switched to Fox and heard that "after the beating Republicans took last December, they have to be asking themselves who will the American people blame." Who they will blame for what? As I write this our leaders in Washington - whose incompetence is exceeded only by their lust for power-are deciding how to con the American people, yet again.

This is a rerun of the "extending payroll tax cuts" con job from last December. Unless the cuts are extended, millions of American families will get a tax hike next month. That would be a disaster because this is, oh yes, an election year. My friends, one half of our life is an election year. During election years common sense, sound economic policy, indeed, the survival of the Republic all fade into meaninglessness before the mantra, REELECT ME.

Let's blow away the smoke. We begin our story about seventy years ago with the biggest Ponzi Scheme in history, Social Security. The con job then was that the government would take your money and put it in a Trust Fund (the lockbox) where it could grow. Then it would be given back to you in your retirement years. The plot thickened when about forty years ago the lockbox became an off-line Reelect Me Slush Fund. "You mean we can give people stuff without raising taxes"? Our leaders' collective noses grew over the last twenty years as we heard over and over, "Social Security is solvent". Then last summer Obama let the cat out of the bag. Remember him telling us that if Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling by Friday, Social Security checks wouldn't go out on Monday? Social Security not only is insolvent, the only way we will ever get our money back if for the government to borrow money, tomorrow, the next day, and the next, forever, because our money is long gone, spent to get the goofballs reelected.

So that brings us to the payroll tax cuts. A year and a half ago, Republicans merrily danced to Obama's tune that the best way to get the economy back on track (aka get reelected) was to give every American family about $1,000. They couldn't just mail out checks because folks might see that for what it clearly is, a bribe. So instead, our leaders lowered the percentage of wages taken from Americans to put in the non-existent Social Security lockbox, but just for a year. Voila, families have a $1,000 bucks to spend. However, it trickles in over twelve months. The reality is it made little or no difference to the economy, as we have clearly seen. Meanwhile, the money going into the already bankrupt Trust Fund was reduced by over $100 billion. "But guys", now say Obama, Reid, McConnell (no relation), Pelosi and Boehner, if we don't extend it none of us will get reelected. So next week one of the dumbest things our leaders have done in my memory will be extended, at least until after the election. Who will the American people blame?

I have just finished reading Atlas Shrugged for the third time, and it gets better every time. Turn off the airheads and read it. Go to the library and start with Chapter VI. It will hook you. Ayn Rand wrote almost sixty years ago about the bridge collapses, power outages and rampant crime we see today. She wrote about the failure of European socialism. She wrote about moochers and maggots destroying America. Our leaders today are literally giving speeches she wrote in 1957. The lights went out in the America she wrote about, and they are slowly going out in America today. Who will the American people blame? Look in the mirror. We, the People, have a lot of work to do.

Keep the faith,

Bob McConnell

beawatchman@aol.com