Would anyone work to support themselves or their families — and
then turn over a chunk of that hard-earned money to somebody else,
just because of the words used by that somebody else?
A few people may be taken in by the words of con men, here and
there, but the larger tragedy is that millions more are taken in by
the words of politicians, the top-of-the-line con men.
How do politicians con people out of their money? One example
can be found in a recent article titled “The
Autism-Welfare Nexus” by Paul Sperry in Investor’s Business
Daily.
Genuine autism is a truly tragic condition, both for those
afflicted by it and for their parents. Few people would have any
problem with the idea that both voluntary donations and government
expenditures are well spent to help those suffering from
autism.
“Autism,” however, has been sweepingly redefined over the years.
What was discovered and defined as autism back in 1943 is just one
of a number of conditions now included as being part of “the autism
spectrum.” Many, if not most, of these conditions are nowhere near
as severe as autism, or even as clearly defined.
The growing number of children encompassed by a wider and looser
definition of autism has been trumpeted across the land through the
media as an “epidemic” of increasing numbers of cases of autism.
Before 1990, 1 child out of 2,500 was said to be autistic. This
year, it is said to be 1 out of 88.
As Paul Sperry points out in IBD, “the number of
language disorder cases have fallen as autism cases have risen,
suggesting one disorder has simply been substituted for
another.”
Having heard, over the years, from many parents of late-talking
children that they have been urged to let their children be
diagnosed as autistic, in order to get either government money or
insurance money to pay for language problems, I am not the least
bit surprised by Sperry’s findings.
Every dollar spent on children falsely labelled autistic is a
dollar lost — and urgently needed — in dealing with the severe
problems of genuinely autistic children. But money added to the
federal budget for autism is money that can be given to people, in
the expectation of getting their vote at election time.
Another example of words substituting for realities was a front
page story in the May 24th issue of USA Today, showing
that the official statistics on the national debt only count about
one-fourth of what the federal government actually owes. Even the
staggering official national debt is literally not half the
story.
Under ordinary accounting rules and laws, the money promised to
people as pensions when they retire has to be counted as part of
the debts of a business or other organization. But, since Congress
makes the laws, the trillions of dollars owed to people who have
paid into Social Security do not have to be counted as part of the
federal government’s debts.
When you or I owe money, we are in debt — and face consequences
if we don’t pay up. But we are not the federal government and
cannot write our own accounting laws.
Perhaps the biggest frauds committed by redefining words are the
many fraudulent uses of the word “poor.”
For most of the history of the human race, there was no problem
in defining who were “the poor.” They were people without enough to
eat, often without adequate clothing to protect them from the
elements, and usually people who lived packed in like sardines in
living quarters without adequate ventilation in the summer or
adequate heat in the winter, and perhaps also lacking in such
things as electricity or adequate sewage disposal.
Today, most of the officially defined “poor” have none of these
problems, and most today have amenities such as air conditioning, a
car or truck, a microwave oven and many other things that once
defined a middle class lifestyle. Americans in poverty today have
more living space than the average European.
Why are they called “poor” then?
For the same reason that autism, the national debt and many
other things are redefined in completely misleading ways — namely,
to justify draining more money from the public in taxes, expanding
the government, and allowing politicians to give handouts to people
who are expected to vote for their reelection.
If we keep buying it, politicians will keep selling it.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
