Dumb criminals are in jail ...

... but the smart ones are running America. The "Stimulus" Bill is evidentiary proof that the smart criminals have learned to codify their thievery before they steal somebody else's stuff.

Frankly, I'd feel less violated with a gun pointed at my head than I do as my representatives pilfers my paycheck. At least the armed robber doesn't try to convince me that he's merely making sure I pay my "fair share."

A robber only demands the money I have in my wallet. By this legislation, our Government has intercepted our hard-earned dollars long before they will ever reach our wallets. And if you refuse to pay their definition of your "fair share," you can bet a legally-armed federal agent will show up at your front door to help you come to your senses.

Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence said, "I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing by every device the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing."

In the eleventh chapter of his Second Treatise, influential English philosopher John Locke wrote, "For a man's property is not at all secure, though there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it, between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects, have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good."

Where are the Thomas Jeffersons and John Lockes of our day? It is as if our elected representatives have lost their minds, substituting whim for constitutional principles!

The "Stimulus Package" is nothing less than Government-sponsored embezzlement. Strong words? The Founders had a far more visceral response to the comparatively minor British incursion on their property rights. Ultimately, this "taxation without [a corresponding] representation" will be used by our Government, not to benefit their confiscates, but to transfer wealth in a "money for votes" scheme.

As we try to recover from the federally-sponsored fiscal rape that has just been perpetrated on us, we must remember that more money in US Treasury coffers is not the zero-sum game they are playing. Increased power and control are. And they will use our hard-earned dollars to heap new benficiaries to themselves and thus solidify their power and control for years to come.

No longer is organized crime in competition with Government; they are bedfellows! Wake up America!