Neal Boortz
Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Well, Gary Condit certainly learned well by watching Bill and Hitlary. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek is reporting that D.C. police asked Condit if he had been "intimate" with Chandra Levy the last time he saw her. His response? "I can't recall."

Yeah, sure.

Put Him In Jail? What Does That Accomplish?

Some of you folks are upset that the judge out there in California didn't send Robert Downey Jr. off to jail for his latest transgression with drugs. I heard pundits of various stripes bemoaning the fact that Downey wasn't on his way to the slammer for a long, long time. Instead, he gets probation and treatment.

OK … who did he hurt, other than himself? Whose rights did he violate? Where's the victim? What's to be served by sending him to a prison cell? Do you think that it would be better for taxpayers to fund a prison stay for Downey than for him to foot the bill for rehab treatment?

Get with the program, folks. Every day more and more people are coming to the realization that our absurd war on drugs is unwinnable and far too costly. Are you going to be the last one left standing demanding punishment and jail time for people who are only hurting themselves?

How Long Before You Get Your Money Back?

I found this little gem hidden in a Bruce Bartlett column. Do you wonder how long it is going to take for you to get your payroll taxes back?

OK, let's back up. By "payroll taxes" I mean those taxes you pay for Social Security and Medicare. You see the amounts on every paycheck. Well, actually, that's not quite true. You do see the entire amount you pay in Medicare taxes, but you only see one-half the amount you pay in Social Security taxes. The other half is hidden from you in the form of a "matching contribution" from your employer. Hopefully you see past this fraud.

Anyway, according to the Congressional Research Service it would have taken you 2.8 years of Social Security and Medicare benefits after age 65 to recover all of the payroll taxes you paid, plus interest – in 1980. That means that you would have recouped your money by the time you were 68 years old. OK, that was 21 years ago. What about now? Well, if you turn 65 this year you will have to live and collect benefits until you are 82 years old to get your money back. That's 16.8 years. Maybe you're only, say, 36 years old. You'll be 65 in 2030. How long will you have to work then to get your payroll taxes back? How about until you're 89 years old! And that's if you start collecting full benefits at 65 – which isn't going to happen because Congress is going to extend your Social Security eligibility age.

Oh – and if you don't draw breath long enough to get your money back? You lose, and so does your family. It's gone.

Quite a deal, huh? But that's OK, isn't it? After all, at least the government is running things. God forbid you should have to be responsible for this retirement planning yourself.

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Attorney General

Yup. That's right. It seems that an official ethics complaint has been filed against Attorney General John Ashcroft. By whom? By Sarah Brady, that's who. Sarah, as you know, has undertaken the task of ensuring that the criminals and governments own handguns.

So, why the ethics complaint? Well, it seems that Ashcroft's alleged unethical act is expressing an opinion that the Second Amendment to our Constitution actually guarantees and protects the individual right to own firearms. And just how is this unethical? Well, Sarah and her anti-Second Amendment organization says that since the United States is arguing in a court case that the Second Amendment applies only to state militias, it is unethical for Ashcroft to express an opposing viewpoint.

Just remember; those who support the "militia" view of the Second Amendment would have you believe that out of our entire Bill of Rights this one amendment was written to confer rights on government rather than individuals. That, my friends, is quite a stretch.

No Whites Allowed

Ever heard of Dorothy Tillman? She's an alderman on the Chicago City Council. She's also one of the nation's leading supporters of reparations for blacks who are descended from slaves. Tillman and her fellow aldermen have been stirring things up lately.

First, there's the story of Thomas Murphy. He's an alderman of the 18th Ward of Chicago. His constituency is now 85 percent black. So, wanting to better represent his constituents, Murphy wanted to join the City Council's Black Caucus.

There's just one problem. Thomas Murphy is a white Irishman.

So the Black Caucus refused to give Murphy a full membership. Instead, they agreed to send a "representative team" to meet with him – but only to discuss one issue. That issue is the redistricting of Chicago's 50 wards.

Evidently the Black Caucus isn't all that committed to representing Chicago's black population. It's just a club for black politicians. Whites need not apply, even if their electorate is 85 percent black.

Then there's the reception Dorothy Tillman hosted last October at the Palmer House Hilton in downtown Chicago. About half an hour before the event began, a Tillman staffer pulled the hotel supervisor aside. The staffer told the supervisor that the group wanted only minority (you can read that to mean black, if you wish) waiters serving the party. He then asked that two white waiters and a Hispanic carver be replaced with blacks.

The two white waiters have filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Hilton. Tillman isn't named as a defendant, but the suit makes a point that no one disputes: Dorothy Tillman wanted more black waiters at the banquet.

Tillman defended her actions to the Chicago Sun-Times. It's a matter of principle, she says. She adds, "We'll go to banquet after banquet after banquet, and we won't be served by our people. We shouldn't eat where we can't work. It's not personal against anybody, I'm just pro my people."

Yeah, let some white politician say that he's just 'pro his people.' See how long that lasts.

Dorothy Tillman's real motivations are clear. She's not against all discrimination. She's just against discrimination against "her people." Discriminating against whites is justice. She's righting the injustices against her ancestors. To her, reparations are a big part of making things right. Evidently she sees herself as some great civil rights leader – the kind who thinks everyone else is to blame for the black community's problems.

We'd better keep an eye on Dorothy Tillman. Especially if the reparations debate heats up.

'Unpatriotic and Seditious'

City governments in southern Utah have been in the news quite a bit lately. The city of Virgin passed an ordinance requiring most heads of households to own a gun. La Verkin just passed an anti-United Nations ordinance.

Now, nearby Escalante is getting in on the act. Its city council is considering an ordinance requiring heads of households to own firearms to protect citizens' rights. The proposed ordinance says "special interest groups are misusing federal, state and various laws and regulations to further their own agendas and restrict the use of private and public rights."

Apparently there's been a dispute between local environmentalists and the city government. It has to do with restricting access to public lands. I'd guess the environmentalists want humans out of public lands, and the city leaders want to maintain public access and enjoyment of these areas.

So Tori Woodard of the Escalante Wilderness Project called the proposed gun ordinance "unpatriotic and seditious." She says the ordinance suggests that city leaders may be contemplating violence against groups with which they disagree – namely, the environmentalists.

"Unpatriotic and seditious"? Since when has it been unpatriotic and seditious to uphold the rights of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms in defense of lives and property?

Just look at Kennesaw, Georgia. When this community passed its ordinance requiring guns in every home the left sneered and made jokes. While the liberals were making their jokes, the crime rate plummeted in Kennesaw. Burglaries went from 54 in 1981 (the year before the gun ordinance) to 36 in 1999. This is even more remarkable when you consider that Kennesaw's population has exploded from 5,242 to more than 19,000 in that period of time. And violent crime is practically nonexistent in residential areas. The crime rate in Kennesaw is about four times LOWER than state and national averages!

To the best of my knowledge, since Kennesaw passed its gun ownership law in 1981 there has only been one homicide, and that was a shooting that occurred in a motel involving transients.

The bottom line is that criminals will avoid areas where citizens own and carry guns. They don't want to risk getting shot while committing their crimes. They'll choose areas that are safer for them – areas where few people own guns and are less likely to fight back.

More of Bill Clinton's Lingering Legacy

Remember the class-action suit black farmers filed against the federal government some years back? It's the suit the government settled in January 1999. The government admitted it had discriminated against black farmers by passing them over for federal loans. Under the terms of the settlement, the government would pay $50,000 to any black farmer.

As of 2001, about 40,000 people have applied for their share of the settlement. There is a bit of a problem here. You see, the Census Bureau says that there are only 18,000 black farmers in the country. So, where did these 40,000 farmers come from?

Tom Kalil is a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan official. He's also a member of ECHO – Executives Committed to an Honorable Organization. Kalil and his ECHO colleagues think they know where the extra 28,000 farmers came from. They came from a grand Democratic Party vote-buying scheme. They are your proof that the settlement was just a vote-buying scheme set up by the Clinton administration.

You see, to get your $50,000 you didn't actually have to BE a black farmer. You had two criteria to meet: (a) You had to be black, and (b) you had to have "tried" farming between 1981 and 1996.

So, how do you prove to the government that you "tried" to farm between 1981 and 1996? Well, I guess you just sign a statement saying it's so! You see, the USDA doesn't have any records of loan applications during that period, so there's no way to tell which black farmers actually applied for loans and were turned down … and which weren't farmers at all!

Kalil says "somebody from here in the Washington area could have been passing through a rural community and decided that they would have liked to farm and put in an application."

Would Bill Clinton and his agriculture secretary have tried to buy votes like this? Hell, yes. Money is power. Your taxpayer money can be used to buy a lot of votes – including the votes of those who've never farmed a day in their lives.

Neal Boortz is the hugely popular nationally syndicated raadio host.