Once upon a time, as it usually is, there were two early-middle-aged politicians (we’ll call them Bill and Al), who — like many career politicians — had yearned for the presidency since they were in diapers. Bill and Al, like all career politicians, had never held real jobs and had no inkling of what they were doing to real people when they proposed policies, pushed legislation, and published regulations. But, boy, were they “getting things done.”

Bill and Al were of an age when you could get high and later rise to high office. And so they did. (Well, Bill tried to inhale but couldn’t, or “didn’t” as he slickly put it.) Bill was elected dog-catcher and Al was elected deputy dog-catcher.

The small town where they caught dogs — a town called DeeCee — didn’t need dog catchers because all the dogs were well behaved and healthy. But there had been dog catchers in the town since the days when dogs ran wild, and so the townspeople kept electing dog catchers.

Because Bill thought it was important to make a good impression on the citizenry of DeeCee, he began by proposing regulations about how dogs should be fed, how often they should be given their shots, how long they should be walked, and how they should be trained. The voters of DeeCee told Bill where to put his regulations and kept on keeping on with their well-behaved and healthy dogs.

Al had great ideas about how to make the town’s businesses more efficient, and he spent a lot of time pestering business owners with his loony ideas. They nodded politely when he launched into his boring speeches and laughed politely at his lame jokes, then went right back to running their businesses profitably.

Bill and Al grew bored and restless as their jobs proved unnecessary and their meddling in other matters fell flat. Bill began to make up stories about wild dogs so that he could get out of the office to chase young women. Al began dipping into his expense account for trips to luxurious resorts.

One day, Bill’s wife caught him in a compromising situation and shot him dead. Al returned to DeeCee to assume the post of chief dog-catcher, but was convicted of embezzlement as soon as set foot in town.

The moral of the story is this: The best career politician is one who doesn’t do anything, doesn’t say anything, and keeps his hands in his own pockets. If you can’t heed this moral, you shouldn’t run for dog-catcher.

Oh, what would we do without a President to entertain us? Granted that the entertainment is usually grade-B if not triple-X, but it beats re-runs of “Leave It To Beaver.” Presidents nevertheless come and go (often going more quickly than they had planned to) while the body that elects them — known, appropriately enough as the Electoral College — lingers on.

The College, as I shall call it here, has been picked on for generations, like another persistent nuisance: the dandelion. And, like the dandelion, the College has its brief moment of glory and then fades away to be forgotten until the next time it trumpets its existence.

As an institution, the Electoral College is as useful as the British monarchy, but it doesn’t draw tourists. Perhaps we would not scoff at the College if we could turn a profit on it by selling the TV rights to its proceedings.

Let us consider its merits. How could anyone criticize the institution that twice unanimously elected George Washington to the presidency? And what about the foresighted elector who, in 1960, declined to vote for Richard Nixon, as he was supposed to do, and voted instead for Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr.? You would be convinced, were we to end the story here, to kneel nightly in thanks that the College has not been abolished. But there is more to the story.

One of the serious objections to the College is the fact that it thrice — in 1824, 1876, and 1888 — prevented the election of the presidential candidate who captured the greatest number of popular votes. That’s an entirely negative view of the situation. The College has chosen the winner of the most popular votes in 40 of the 43 elections where the popular vote was tallied. That’s an average of .930, which would be tops in any league. Let us scrutinize the three elections in question.

Andy Jackson got 43 percent of the minuscule number of popular votes cast in 1824, and he received a larger number of electoral votes than his chief rival, John Quincy Adams. But, because Jackson lacked a majority of electoral votes, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, which chose Adams. It was a good thing, too. If Old Hickory had been chosen in 1824, he probably would have won in 1828 and 1832 (as he did), which would have meant another four years of muddy boots on White House furnishings, to the dismay of Jackie Kennedy.

On the other hand, a string of three Jackson victories would have meant, as well, that FDR would not have set a precedent in seeking a third term. Thus the anti-Roosevelt amendment limiting Presidents to two terms would not have been adopted and Dwight Eisenhower might well have served as President until his death in 1969. In which case…the nation would have been spared the Viet Nam War, which Eisenhower kept the U.S. out of while he was President.

Preferring an honorable peace to polished furniture, I regret that Andy Jackson was not elected in 1824, as he would have been if the popular vote had prevailed.

The election of 1876 pitted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden won 51 percent of the popular vote, but there were doubts about the returns from several southern States. A special commission was set up to determine how the electoral votes of those States should be cast. By an odd coincidence — there being eight Republicans and seven Democrats on the commission — it voted eight to seven to give the votes to Hayes. And Hayes won the election of 1876 by one electoral vote.

President Hayes and his wife — known as “Lemonade Lucy” — were teetotalers. The air of sobriety emanating from the White House cast a pall over the Washington social scene and give rise to the long-held view of Republicans as party-poopers. Which is probably why the Republican Party was in the minority for so long. With more Republicans in Congress, tax rates would never have risen to the heights that they did under the Democrats, and would be even lower than they are today. Clearly, we would be better off today if the election of 1876 had been decided by the popular vote.

What about the election of 1888? The incumbent, Stephen (“call me Grover”) Cleveland received 90,000 more popular votes than did Benjamin Harrison. The vagaries of the electoral process nevertheless caused Harrison to beat Cleveland by 233 to 168 electoral votes. Not one to cry in his mustache cup, Mr. Cleveland came back to trounce Mr. Harrison in the election of 1892.

Suppose Cleveland had won in 1888, thereby ending Harrison’s political career. Think of the loss to posterity because these two trivia questions could not then be asked:

• What President served two, non-consecutive terms of office? (Cleveland)
• What President was the grandson of a President? (B. Harrison, of W.H. Harrison)

The 1888 case favors the College. Without it our store of trivia would be smaller.

The forgoing analysis argues, nevertheless, for the abolition of the Electoral College. Had the popular vote prevailed in 1824 and 1876, we would have been spared a disastrous war and an outrageous tax burden. The legacy of 1888 — the addition of two trivial facts to our abundant store of trivia — is, well, trivial recompense.

A capsule history of politics in the United States, from 1999 to 2021:

1999–Bill Clinton resigns, hoping that he will receive a Nixonesque pardon from President Al Gore. President Gore, now the target of his very own independent counsel, decides to let Clinton dangle in the wind with Hillary Clinton, Bruce Lindsey, Vernon Jordan, Webster Hubbell, Susan McDougal, and their many co-conspirators.

2000–Gore declines to run for re-election, citing the “vicious political climate of Washington.” (Meaning: unlike Clinton, he won’t be able to stiff the taxpayers for a big chunk of his legal bills, so why stick around?) The Democrats and Republicans rush to the center and jointly nominate Edward Dogooder for the presidency. Dogooder manages to squeak through in a tight, three-way race with Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera.

2001–Dogooder asks Congress to replace the Social Security Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Interior, and Veterans Affairs with a Commissariat for Public Welfare. Republicans go along with the gag on the assumption that it will be easier to abolish one agency than six of them (hah!). To ensure the success of their plan, Republicans also support the nomination of Ralph Nader as Commissioner of Public Welfare.

2004–Commissioner Nader receives the results of a three-year study of the causes of death from the Center for Cerebral Calculations, a new Washington think-tank whose board of directors includes former Senator Strom Thurmond and former President Gerald Ford. The study reveals that almost everyone who was ever born had died. The authors of the study recommend the banning of births to put a stop to deaths. Commissioner Nader, armed with powers inherited from the Food and Drug Administration, bans births in the United States and urges the United Nations to pass a resolution in support of a world-wide ban on births.

2009–A further five-year study by the Center for Cerebral Calculations reveals that deaths continue (though Strom Thurmond and Gerald Ford still seem to be breathing). A full-scale investigation shows that all deaths recorded since 2004 were among persons born before the ban on births. The Commissioner orders all persons still living to report to government health and oil-change clinics for genetic treatment to suspend the aging process. He also institutes a five-year plan for the perfection of all citizens: by 2014, every American over the age of two must be a full-time student in a government-approved educational institution run by the American Education Association.

2013–Nearly everyone in the U.S. is enrolled in AEA nursery schools, grade schools, colleges, and graduate schools. Most factories and stores are closed, trucks idled, trains on sidings, and airplanes grounded. Heat is supplied by wood stoves; the only air-conditioning is an occasional breeze. (Environmentalists hail the “return to nature.”) The most active citizens are gangs marauding through streets while police are earning advanced degrees in criminal psychology. (Police have no weapons, anyway, because Commissioner Nader had banned them in 2010. Gang members, unable to read, hadn’t bothered to surrender their weapons.)

2014–Organized crime takes over the street gangs. Mob leader and womens’ libber Bubbles Berlitz, noting that “crime wouldn’t pay if da government ran it,” announces sweeping reforms to make crime more efficient. She adds that “stolen money ain’t woith much any more because dere’s hardly anyt’ing to buy wid it.”

2019–The mob’s five-year plan to make crime pay by restoring the economy is successful. Mob-run hospitals do a booming business in baby delivery, and mob-run enterprises employ most of the nation’s clandestine school dropouts. Former President Dogooder — having appointed himself to the more powerful position of Commissioner of Public Welfare — orders the mob to cease and desist from its unlawful activities. He is found in the Potomac River, wearing concrete swimming trunks.

2020–The mob decides it could make more money if it were to allow its enterprises to compete with one another, on the strange assumption that the bosses of those operations which satisfy consumers’ wants efficiently will reap greater profits. The other bosses must shape up or, in the words of Bubbles Berlitz, “get a free, one-way ride into da countryside.” Having found success without any more violence or coercion than had prevailed in the days of John D. Rockefeller, the mob focuses on random crimes perpetrated by independent operators and resuscitates the criminal justice system to deal with them. Bubbles Berlitz basks in her newly found legitimacy and runs for President.

2021–President Berlitz asks Congress to abolish the Commissariat for Public Welfare, and not to replace it with anything because the nation has become so prosperous under the rejuvenated free-market system. Congress is swayed by Ms. Berlitz’s persuasive charm — and by the photos she has stashed in her safe. Life in Washington, D.C., returns to normal.

Was William Shakespeare a tax-protester? Think about the message hidden in the titles of several of his plays:

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is about a man who hopes soon to repay the money he borrowed to meet his tax bill. “Winter’s Tale” follows him through months of overtime work as he struggles to save money for his old age. In “Love’s Labor’s Lost” he confronts the ugly reality that his savings will go to the IRS. “A Comedy of Errors” depicts his travails with Form 1040 and its many schedules. In “Much Ado About Nothing” he discovers, alas, that he owes the IRS even more than he had feared. :

Stunned by the discovery, he decides in “Twelfth Night” (April 12) not to file a tax return and tears it into tiny pieces. He reconsiders, and “The Tempest” recounts his struggle to complete a new return by April 15. “As You Like It” celebrates his triumphal march to the Post Office on April 15, armed with a return that shows him even with the IRS. “All’s Well That Ends Well” is a fantasy in which the IRS finds no fault with our hero’s return.

Then there is the real text of Hamlet’s soliloquy:

To file or not to file — that is the question;

Whether ‘tis nobler in the pocketbook to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous taxes,

Or to take arms against a sea of instructions,

And by ignoring evade them. To file — to pay —

No more; and by not paying to say we end

The headache and the thousand-dollar debts

That Uncle Same is heir to — ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To run — to hide —

To hide! Perchance in Bimini! Ay there’s the spot;

For in that sunny isle what dreams may come

When we have eluded the revenue agent

Must give us pause; there’s the reality

That makes mockery of such simple plans;

For who would bear the heat and hard bunks of Leavenworth;

The cell-block bully’s fist, the guard’s glare,

The bagginess of prison garb, the sad children’s tears,

The righteousness of neighbors, and the spurns

That the gray-faced ex-con takes

When he himself might his quietus make

With a simple check? Who would these taxes bear,

To grunt and sweat under a glaring desk lamp,

But that the dread of something after April 15,

The uncelebrated penitentiary from whose walls

No inmate leave, without parole,

And makes us rather bear those taxes we must

Than fly to Bimini or other exotic places?

Thus conscience does make taxpayers of us all….

Justice is no longer blind; she carries a TV camera and seeks her verdict from the “person in the street.”

What, you ask, isn’t it a violation of some right to deny “the people’s” prurient interest in the blood spatters and sex lives of the rich and infamous? No, it isn’t.

How can justice be served when lawyers and judges are playing to the camera, as in the O.J. case? When a President can marshal his minions to argue that prosperity and popularity are defenses against indictment and impeachment? Justice isn’t entertainment. It belongs in grand-jury rooms and court rooms, where it has worked well enough over the centuries, not on TV where it distorts the search for truth.

Yes, dear networks, you have every right to cover what you’re allowed to cover, to spill leaks all over us, and to foist platoons of pundits upon us night after night. But don’t you have any taste or manners? (Note: I won’t appeal to your sense of justice.) I know, each of you is afraid to take the first step back from the hysteria you’ve created because you’d lose ratings and advertising revenues to the other networks.

So, here’s an anonymous idea from a nameless network gnome: “Hey, kids, let’s put on a TV show and call it ‘Trials of the Centuries’.” Yes, TV has done mock trials and dramatizations featuring such notorious figures as John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, but most of those shows were done before the emergence of star-quality lawyers. (The earnest, if leftish, Arthur Miller pales before Johnnie Cochrane.) With all of these mediagenic lawyers around, we could have a long-running series. And would it ever grab the ratings! Just picture it:

• Jerry Spence gets Socrates off by pleading that his client was entrapped by homophobic polis.

• Marcia Clark, in a role reversal, saves Joan of Arc from the stake by arguing that her client was the product of a sexist society.

• Louis the Whatever escapes the guillotine because his wealth enables him to hire all of the $1,000-an-hour lawyers in the U.S. — a “super dream team.”

• Robert Shapiro (no-mercenary-he) salvages Hitler’s reputation by arguing that Stalin was really behind the Holocaust. (A later episode is devoted to Shapiro’s tearful regrets, but he keeps the fee.)

• Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray are acquitted posthumously when Johnnie Cochrane shows that the arresting officers weren’t perfect human beings.

• Robert Bennett proves that Janet Reno ordered the Watergate break-in and Paula Jones caused the 18-1/2 minute gap.

• Bill Clinton escapes removal from office in his Senate trial when Hillary “stands by her man” and is able pin the blame for everything on Vince Foster and Ken Starr.

Far-fetched? Well, if we deserve the brand of leaders we elect, surely we deserve the brand of justice we tolerate. Anyway, it would sell commercials, and isn’t that what really matters?

The president of an Ivy League university opined several years ago that to secure freedom of speech on his campus it was necessary to resort to censorship. He tried to dignify the policy, of course, by saying that the university

strives to ensure no member of the community is prevented from full participation in [the free exchange of ideas] by intimidating and abusive racial slurs intended only to wound, rather than to enlighten.

In other words, the university in question — like many throughout this “land of the free” — bowed to pressure from vociferous “victims” and began to suppress and punish speech deemed offensive by said “victims.” Thus “academic freedom” became an oxymoron and the end became a justification for the means (hmmm, sounds familiar).

Rightful outrage and courageous resistance to such Orwellian trends has, in some quarters, muffled the jackboots of the academic Gestapo. But the banner of political correctness continues to wave defiantly on many a campus. And contrary to what you might think about life in this post-big-government era (Clinton says it’s so), government has moved to the forefront of the campaign to suppress freedom of speech. (Maybe that’s why it’s called “government.”)

Take the anti-smoking hysteria, puh-leeze. Yes, smoking is a filthy, unhealthy habit, which was well known long before the government made it official. But why punish the makers of cigarettes for the self-destructive acts of smokers? And why punish us all by carving the right to advertise cigarettes out of the First Amendment, as many anti-smoking zealots would do?

How about the recent verdict by a Chicago jury which found a group of abortion opponents guilty of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO (talk about a politically incorrect acronym!). If you can’t get your political opponents for committing a real crime (e.g., assault), get them for committing a phony one (e.g., a “conspiracy” in the form of a concerted exercise of freedom of speech).

Coming to a court near you — and eventually to the Supreme Court — if the campaign-reform zealots have their way: a test of tighter restrictions on campaign spending. If the right to spend money for or against a political candidate or proposition is severed from the First Amendment, the right to publish and broadcast ideas will be next on the chopping block.

God knows what idiocy will flow from the spate of murders committed by schoolboys. The right answers would be (1) to restore justice to the “criminal justice system” and, congruently, (2) to hold parents accountable for the acts of their minor children. The wrong answer, but one that will hold broad appeal — because individual accountability doesn’t “resonate” with Baby Boomers, Gen X-ers, and the politicians who pander to them — would be to ban all movies and TV shows with even a hint of violence. Stay tuned, at least until TV is banned.

This is getting scarier by the day, if not by the minute. I expect some Senator or Representative to suggest repealing the First Amendment so that the government can get on with the job of deciding what’s best for all of us. Maybe that would bring the special-interest zealots to their senses. On second thought…they’d probably embrace the idea.

Remember when we were afraid of “creeping socialism” and “dictatorial communism”? Well, the creepers have a stranglehold on liberty and the dictators are in the wings. But it’s all in a good cause, of course.

“Ingenius Americanus” has devised and perfected the greatest get-rich-quick scheme since the chain letter and multi-level marketing: When something bad happens to you, sue. Sue someone, anyone, even if your misfortune is plain old bad luck or the result of your own stupidity.

There’s nothing new about this game of buck-passing-buck-grabbing. It became a bigtime sport in the 1970s with the advent of product-liability suits. And it hasn’t let up.

There were some doozies in the ’70s. Item: A small machine-tool company was sued by a workman who lost three fingers while using (or misusing) its product, even though the machine had been rebuilt at least once and had changed hands four times. Item: Another machinery manufacturer lost a case involving its 33-year-old table saw, although the owner of the machine admitted he knew it was dangerous and wouldn’t have used the guard if it had had one.

Recent years have brought us the judgment in favor of a woman who burned herself with hot coffee (what did she expect it was?) dispensed by a fast-food chain, and the award of millions (millions!) of dollars to the purchaser of a new BMW who discovered that its paint job was not pristine.

Why not buy an unrestored 1930 Ford and try to keep up with traffic on the Washington Beltway? (If you haven’t tried it, don’t — unless you live for masochistic thrills.) Then, when you have suffered a severe dislocation of the cervical vertebrae (at best) because the 30-ton rig behind you had no place to go but up your tail pipe, sue the Ford Motor Company because its product wasn’t up to mission impossible.

And so the absurdities roll on in this new age — this “Cocoon Age” — when almost everyone seems to crave cradle-to-grave protection from the merest change in the weather. Even criminals who have been injured while perpetrating crimes have had the gall to sue police departments and victims.

If such nonsense continues its cancerous spread through our legal system, a court somewhere in this land will someday entertain a suit against the Almighty. The complaint? He permitted the serpent to tempt our first ancestors, thus depriving us of the benefits of life in Eden. Worse, through careful judge-shopping, there will be a summary judgment for the plaintiff because the Defendant did not deign to respond. That’ll be the end of that nonsense.

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Government has never been economically neutral. The faces of those in power — and of those whom they favor — change over the years, but the rules of the game remain fixed: Tax, legislate, regulate, and spend; spend, regulate, legislate, and elect. Outsiders clamor to get inside, promising that they will change the rules, but if they stay inside for very long they, too, become players in the game called “pork.”

(Pork, for recent returnees from Paraguay, is the annual ritual of sending money to every congressional district in order to pass appropriations bills. This guarantees jobs for the otherwise unemployable and higher taxes for the hard-working.)

Why should we fear and loathe pork when the politically “sophisticated” label it a societal health food? One James Q. Wilson (a professor of management and public policy at UCLA), for instance, writing last summer in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) avers that

Pork is the price a society pays to ensure that each representative of [its many different interests] will have a place at the table.

Professor Wilson’s authority for this irrelevancy is the ghost of James Madison (of all people), who (with Wilson as ventriloquist) says

the Constitution provides that “the private interest of every individual, may be a sentinel over the public rights.” To achieve this it assigned “opposite and rival interests” to each branch of government so that power is given to “so many separate descriptions, as will render unjust combinations of a majority of the whole, very improbable.”

By Orwellian logic most perverse Professor Wilson thus twists Madison’s checks and balances — intended to thwart tyranny by the majority — into a justification for tyranny by collaborative minority interests. Pork, that is.

The superior wisdom of this latter-day Candide confirms our view that the cure for pork is not to be found inside the Beltway. Rather, the very existence of the federal government ensures that pork will always be with us. If you think that the next crop of outsiders will make a difference, you might as well order your Lamborghini Diablo just because you’ve entered the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.

Where does hope lie for those who wish to shelter their earnings from the pork-loving denizens of Washington? (DISCLAIMER: What follows is descriptive, not prescriptive.)

Hope for the hard-working lies in the infamous BLACK MARKET, that is, in voluntary transactions between consenting adults which escape the maws of taxation, legislation, and regulation. Black markets have a bad name, of course, but their main problem is that they’re thought to be BAD. (Horrors, there are people out there exchanging things of value to make themselves better off! In the upside-down world of Twentieth Century politics and economics, that’s BAD.)

A black market is really bad to a politician or bureaucrat who’d like to tax or regulate its transactions, or to a latter-day Carrie Nation who finds its stock-in-trade immoral. That’s precisely the beauty of a black market: it escapes the dead hand of government and the strictures of moral dictatorship. Black is beautiful!

Can large segments of the economy go underground and flourish? Of course they can. In spite of sometimes earnest efforts contrariwise, booze flowed freely during Prohibition and drugs have been more or less blatantly inhaled, ingested, and injected for decades. (Aside: It isn’t the black market that makes drugs BAD, it’s the BAD-ness of drugs that has driven them into the black market.)

Less epic examples abound: handypersons and house-cleaners working for cash, barter among small businesses that somehow doesn’t get reported as income, gambling in its many forms, and on into the night. It will only get easier as we advance into the age of cyberspace.

In other words, even if you don’t like their stocks-in-trade, you have to admit that black markets get the job done in spite of the law — and better than the law would allow. Sure the T-men, G-men, revenuers, and the rest of those white-shirt guys occasionally pick off a black-marketeer. But like the highway patrol occasionally picking off someone who goes 80 in a 65-m.p.h. zone, it’s a relatively rare event, and it doesn’t stop the majority of drivers from going 74.

They can’t throw everyone in jail, can they?

You probably remember these whoppers from your teen-age years: “I promise I’ll cut the grass tomorrow if you’ll give me an advance on my allowance”; “We’re just going to the movies, and there’ll be lots of other kids there”; “I’ll always love you.”

Our wanna-be Presidents offer similar morsels:

1. It’s our turn to run the country.
2. We’ll cut the deficit/streamline the government/make the government more responsive to the people [pick any number].
3. It’s time to get this country moving again.

The only thing worse than failing to deliver on such promises would be to deliver on them. Let’s take them in turn.

1. Running the country. Who wants a bunch of Harvard history professors or Yale lawyers running the country? These are the people who brought us Vietnam, from which disaster the country still reels. And after barely averting the debacle of Hillary-Care, it seems that the Washington Wizards (that’s Congress, not the NBA team) may opt for creeping socialized medicine instead of swallowing it in one dose. Keep it up, guys and gals, and only the truly rich will be able to afford high-quality health care — by buying it on the black market.

2. Cutting the deficit, streamlining government, and making government more responsive to the people. Lord, save us from the unholy trinity of political panaceas. Right now, with an economy that’s healthy, no thanks to Bubba Bill and the Washington Wizards, the deficit is on the run. But you know what’s next: Let’s spend a little more here and there for the happiness of all of our favorite special-interest groups. Comes the inevitable economic slow-down and guess what will happen? Oops, we’ve made all of these commitments and can’t renege on them; guess we’ll have to raise taxes to fight the creeping deficit.

Of course, it takes more bureaucrats to collect higher taxes and to spend more money. So, forget streamlining because Washington without bureaucrats is like a hamburger without grease.

As for making government more responsive to the people: Why do you think we have deficits and bureaucratic bloat? Making government responsive to people, in practice, means satisfying special-interest groups at everyone’s expense.

3. Getting the country moving again. I guess you didn’t notice this on your way to the White House, Mr. President Du Jour, but the country moves better without your help, thank you. In fact, the administration of Herbert Hoover, abetted by Congress, caused the Great Depression; the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, again abetted by Congress, caused the Depression within the Great Depression. (You can look it up.)

Getting the country moving again really means moving the true believers in big government to Washington — and moving our money there, too, as quickly as possible.

* * *

Let’s get real, folks. Did you believe the whoppers you told as a teen-ager? Okay, you didn’t tell whoppers: Do you still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus? Well, then, why do you still believe they’re alive and well in Washington?

The branches of the federal government have, since the end of World War II, abetted and contributed directly to the debasement of standards of conduct — legal, civil, and ethical. The results are evident everywhere, including the “hard-headed” world of business. Here is a brief guide to business-speak; each word or phrase is followed by yesteryear’s fitting word or phrase:

-abled, -challenged…crippled (before handicapped)

analysis…guesswork

associate…employee

business-process or re-engineering consultant…hatchet man

(to) communicate, (to) share…(to) tell

concern (of employee)…gripe

(to) counsel…(to) warn

empowerment…responsibility

(to) give developmental feedback…(to) appraise; as in:

• walks on water…only Jesus could

• superior…good

• excellent…fair

• good…poor

• fair…one more chance

• poor…out the door

expectations…standards

feedback (sometimes “input”)…criticism

holiday party…Christmas party

Human Resources…Personnel

input (alternate meaning)…idea

networking…glad-handing; as in:

• “Let’s do lunch (not!).”…”(Not) good to meet you.”

management guru…b___ s___ artist

MBWA (management by walking around)…goofing off

mentoring…OJT (on-the-job training)

organizational dynamics…back-biting, back-stabbing

output…work

paradigm…theory

position…job; as in:

• assistant…clerk (also “gofer” and “flunky”)

• administrative assistant…senior clerk

• executive assistant…secretary

• team leader…supervisor

• manager…boss

• executive…manager

• chief operating officer…general manager

• chief executive officer…president

• chairman…Mao

stakeholder…employee or shareholder (but not “customer” or “public-at-large”)

teaming area…conference room, coffee bar, vacant office

teaming, teamwork…cooperation

terminated…fired; as in:

• de-selected…fired

• down-sized…fired

• out-placed…fired

• laid-off…fired (unless you worked in a union shop)

work space, work station…office, desk, counter

Calvin Coolidge — the Ronald Reagan of the 1920s — said “The business of America is business.” Clearly Mr. Coolidge was a man in tune with his times. Therefore, if he were alive today he’d be 125 years old and he’d say “The business of business is America.”

What do I mean by that? The law-makers, social consciences, and management gurus of the New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society, ad nauseum, have decided that the business of business is no longer business.

Business is now an instrument of racial, ethnic, sexual, chronological, and you-name-it equality. Not equality of opportunity — which would require that those equally qualified for a job have an equal chance of getting it — but equality of outcome. The outcome had better be that you hire or promote or keep me regardless of my qualifications or performance or I will have you mired in a “guilty until proven innocent” legal process. Thus forced to act irrationally by the government, many businesses seem to have lost their bearings entirely.

Now we have management gurus and CEOs who want employees to be a “family” — and a happy one at that. Forget that people who gripe do it because they like to gripe (it makes them happy), not because they have a reason to gripe. And another family is the last thing most people want — one is enough.

Management gurus and CEOs who talk about “feelings” and “families” remind me of grandparents, aunts, and uncles who spoil the brats for a day and then go home, leaving the parents to do the hard work of raising their children.

“Empowerment” is another hot one (or it was in the fleeting half-life of these fads). Who knows or cares what it means? It sounds good. Sometimes it seems to mean the freedom to gripe regardless of one’s competence in the matter about which one is griping. “Well, management did it again, they picked a new word-processing system and didn’t ask us what we wanted.” Well, we would have asked you but you were still trying, unsuccessfully, to learn the old system, but we didn’t fire you because we were afraid we’d wind up in court.

Enough of internal matters. Let us also consider business as an agent of “the community.” It’s the “in thing” you know. Many businesses now routinely devote a portion of their profits (which come from what they charge their customers) to the social, cultural, and educational affairs of their communities. This isn’t government taxation I’m talking about. It’s a self-imposed tax inflicted by do-gooding boards and CEOs who want to be “with it” in the eyes of their constituencies.

Who are those constituencies? Not the employees in the “family” whose numbers will be fewer and whose pay will be lower because of the good deeds their bosses pursue. Not the customers of the businesses the bosses supposedly run — the customers who pay more than they would if the bosses would stick to business. Here’s who:

• Other bosses (“My social conscience is bigger than your social conscience.”)

• Political connections (“Look at me, I’m the kind of guy or gal you want to be your next Assistant Deputy Assistant Assistant Secretary of Good Works and Happy Feelings.”)

• Their own egos (“I was just a poor boy and I never had anything, but now I can snap my fingers and make people happy. I’m a big deal.”)

I started with Calvin Coolidge and I’ll end with Adam Smith, who touted the “invisible hand” of free markets. Productive as American business is — and it’s plenty productive — it cannot thrive and do right by its workers and shareholders if it continues to be freighted by the legal, social, pseudo-scientific, and ego-centric baggage that it has accrued over the past several decades.

• Gore characterizes Clinton’s record of rape and serial infidelity as “mistakes.” Just what you’d expect from someone who couldn’t resist illegal campaign contributions.

• Through the liberal looking-glass with Clinton: Washington knows best, so it’s going to tax us in order to send us cops and teachers we could have paid for through local taxes if we had needed them.

• A textbookexample of hypocrisy: having callously bombed Serbian civilians, the Clinton administration deplores Russia’s bombing of Chechnyan civilians.

• Gore calls Bradley a big spender. Next thing you know, Clinton will be calling Trump a womanizer.

• Note to BJ Clinton: Isn’t it a conflict of interest to obtain a mortgage from a federally regulated bank?

• Clinton, Kennedy and their ilk oppose the Republican tax-cut plan because it would “favor” the people who are taxed the most heavily. Get over it, guys, it’s not your damned money. Keep your hands out of my pocket, even if you can’t keep your hands off women who aren’t your wives.

• The Arkansas fellow-traveler and defiler of women just exudes “chutzpah” when he excoriates the evil Slobo. Takes one to know one?

• If the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States won’t admit that he is the chief law enforcement officer why should we admit that he is President?

• Marx was right about one thing when he said that history repeated is farce. The trial of Andrew Johnson was history; the trial of Bill Clinton was a farce. Never has so many Senators looks facts in the eye and blinked.

• If there’s a God, She must be laughing her head off at the thought of Bill Clinton as a protector of women’s rights — as he was portrayed by defense counsel Cheryl Mills. But Juanita Broaddrick wasn’t laughing.

• Your civil liberties are safe while Bubba’s in the White House — or so said one of his defense lawyers. Just hope your civil liberties don’t hinge on Clinton’s version of the truth.

• It wasn’t the sex, it was the stupidity.

• Evidently the “women’s movement” has the President of its desires.

• In l’affaire Lewinsky, never were so many lies been deployed in the defense of the indefensible.

• Clinton’s ultimate line of defense (if it had been necessary): I was just exercising my right to pursue happiness. Isn’t that what the Revolution was about?

• The vehemence with which welfare-state “liberals” supported Clinton shows how desparate they are to preserve big government, and the moral price they’re willing to pay for it.

• Having survived the impeachment trial, Clinton should have pardoned everyone convicted of perjury or obstruction of justice. Fair’s fair.

• Clinton and his defenders wanted us to forget his crimes and focus on the “real problems” of education, health care, Social Security, etc. Why would they settle for the mere subversion of justice when there’s so much else to subvert?

• Kindred professions: priest of the occult, courtier to a “divine” king, and zealous defender of a demonstrably corrupt President.

• Now I get it: Clinton didn’t commit perjury and obstruct justice, he merely used his office to establish new legal defenses for suspects in criminal cases: “Miranda 1999” if you will.

• And another thing: Clinton’s high job-approval ratings must refer to the job he did of evading justice.

• Did we need to see the videotape of Clinton’s performance before the grand jury? Yes, for yet another look at how easily the man lies and shifts blame. What a sociopathic performance. If he hadn’t become a serial liar and adulterer he might well have become a serial killer — an uncaught one, at that.

• The laundry lobby should have given Clinton a special award for having aired the dirtiest presidential linen. The cigar lobby was right to let the affair pass without further ado.

• The “people” steadfastly gave Clinton high marks for job performance and didn’t want his resignation or removal from office. So much for the image of Americans as logical, literate, and lawful. (We knew what to expect, of course, from foreign “sophisticates” who viewed the Lewinsky matter through the prism of sex; they’re the same bunch who thought Nixon was unfairly railroaded out of Washington.)

• Clinton’s defenders noted that FDR (maybe), JFK, and LBJ had sexual liaisons while in office and weren’t hounded by the press for their sexual behavior. Of course, FDR, JFK, and LBJ didn’t lie under oath or obstruct justice as defendants in legal proceedings or subjects of criminal investigations. When it comes to provable crimes, Clinton is to FDR, JFK, and LBJ as John Gotti is to the Fonz.

• Perhaps the Clinton Administration will propose new sentencing guidelines:

• Misdemeanor — Say “sorry” 10 times and fake a good act of contrition.
• Felony — Say “sorry” 20 times, fake a good act of contrition, and make a campaign contribution to the Democratic party.
• Impeachable offense — Say “sorry” 100 times, fake a good act of contrition every time the TV cameras are on, and use the campaign contribution to pay your legal bills.

• Clinton kept saying “sorry.” He’s “sorry” all right — a sorry specimen of mankind. Yeah, he’s sorry: sorry that he got caught, sorry that he ran up huge legal bills, and sorry that Hillary has shut off his supply of interns.

• Clinton’s salami strategy:

• First he said “I didn’t do it.”
• Then he said “Okay, I lied, but only to protect my family and save myself from embarrassment, and I didn’t do anything illegal.”
• The he said “Well, it doesn’t matter that I did anything illegal because it was about my private life and not about my conduct as President.”
• Then his supporters and defenders said for him “You aren’t going to use that oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” against me are you?”
• If push had come to shove he would have said “Hey, if you remove me from office you’ll be stuck with Al Gore, and I can tell you a thing or two about his campaign-finance activities.”
• And if that had failed: “Pardon me, Al…I wouldn’t have to step on your feet if they’d given us a bigger cell.”

• In the midst of it all, Hillary let it be known that she is “committed” to her marriage, as is Bill. Of course; a divorce would have meant that each of them could be compelled to testify against the other one. Now that it’s over, keep your cell phone handy, Monica.

• Bill “George Washington” Clinton’s physical and psychological similarities to our first President:

• from a southern State
• height about 6′ 2-1/2″
• weight about 225 pounds
• broad butt (George’s from straddling horses, Bill’s from straddling fences)
• prominent nose (George’s like an eagle’s, Bill’s like Pinocchio’s)
• first in the hearts of his country(wo)men
• cannot (not) not tell a lie.

• The Clintons adopted the O.J. line: “They’re picking on me because I’m [fill in the blank].” O.J. said it was because he was black. The Clintons said it was because they’re Democrats from Arkansas. But that’s not true. It’s because they’re lawyers who happen to be Democrats from Arkansas. After all, it was lawyers who got O.J. off the hook for murder, and someone has to pay for it.

• The Bible says “the truth shall set you free,” to which Clinton would add “but not if you’re in my shoes.”

• Clinton successfully impeded a criminal investigation of his personal conduct by asserting bogus privileges related to his public office. Didn’t the Founders reject a monarchical presidency?

• Clinton morality: Extra-marital sex is okay — and it’s okay to lie about it under oath — just don’t smoke a cigarette after the act. Well, it’s okay if you don’t inhale.

• If a man is known by the company he keeps, what do we make of Clinton’s company: bimbos, Chinese murderers, Hollywood liberals, and lawyers who can’t be compelled to testify against him? The man is a walking advertisement for the corruption of power. Luckily, he doesn’t hold absolute power.

• When Clinton took his oath of office, did he cross his fingers when he came to the part about faithfully executing the laws? Check the video tape.

• What will Clinton do after he leaves the Presidency? Tougher question: What will all those reporters, pundits, and lawyers do when Clinton leaves the Presidency.?

• Nixon gave us crooks, lies, and audio tape. Clinton gives us sex, lies, and video tape. Not much progess in 25 years.

• Do the Amerian people have the President they deserve? That’s what the polls kept telling us.

• Criminal and constitutional justice by public opinion is like music by monkeys.

• Q. How many lawyers would it take to remove a President from office? A. Only two — Bill and Hillary — all the others are just collecting fees for talking about it on television.

• What did the producers of “Wag the Dog” know, and when did they know it?

• Does POTUS (President of the United States) + FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) = PFLOTUS (Principal Felons and Liars of the United States)?

• That Clinton’s approval ratings rose and remained high in the aftermath of l’affaire Lewinsky validates the Framers’ desire to thwart tyranny by the majority.

• In swearing that he would “faithfully execute the Office of President,” Clinton obliged himself to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” — not excepting the laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice. Even lacking evidence of indictable violations of those laws, there is ample evidence of indifference to them, and that alone should have been grounds for removing Clinton from office.

Perhaps the Republic will be saved as the very ooze that emanates from Washington inundates those who exude it. But let us not hope for too much; rather, let us enable the citizenry to detect and deflect bull-bleep, and to deflate bull-bleepers. Thus the following lexicography of political parlance, dedicated to the suffering citizenry which pays — and pays! — to be mocked and deceived.

Anti-
Derogatory label. Anyone who is anti-something (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-war) is against “good” and for “evil.” Clever politicians are for things (e.g., pro-life, pro-peace).

Armed forces
Something for which politician Clinton had little use until he saw “Wag the Dog.”

Balanced budget
Everyone in Washington is now for a balanced budget, especially big-government liberals whose version of a balanced budget requires higher taxes.

Censure
Washington-style wrist-slapping, censure carries less opprobrium than the routinely ignored parking ticket.

Christian conservative
Politician or political activist who wants government out of our wallets and in our bedrooms.

Citizen
Person forgotten by politicians, who pay attention only to “voters” and “public opinion” (not necessarily in that order).

Civil liberties
People’s rights, stolen by the government bit by by bit to “protect” the people.

Comity
State of congressional harmony in which open hostility is replaced by back-stabbing.

Communism
Defunct, foreign, political movement founded on the principle of “to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.” Its principles thrive in the United States, thanks to “progressive” taxation and “protective” regulation.

Comparative politics
A liberal wants to keep government out of your bedroom but let it into your wallet in the name of compassion. A conservative wants to keep government out of your wallet but let it into your bedroom in the name of God. A communist will tax your wallet at 100 percent and occupy your bedroom in the name of the people. An anarchist will steal your wallet and bomb your bedroom just because he feels like it.

Congress
See “Zoo.”

Conservative
Dismissive adjective, applied to persons who adhere to a broad range of ideologies from neo-Ku Klux Klan to libertarian and share only one view: the government shouldn’t be doing most of what it is doing now.

Constitution
Archaic document viewed by politicians on the left as an impediment to progress by Executive fiat and by politicians on the right as subversive in its insistence on civil liberties.

Crime
The “Red Scare” of the 1980s and 1990s. Something about which the federal government has (or should have) little to say, but upon which almost every candidate for federal office feels compelled to pronounce.

Education
Like crime, something about which the federal government has (or should have) little to say. A politician who admits to such a view might as well admit to pedophilia.

Enemy
There are no enemies in Congress, merely esteemed colleagues whom one loathes.

Entitlement
Legislative word for handout.

Executive Branch
One of three co-equal branches of the federal government, according to the Constitution, but not according to the media. In their view, Congress — a co-equal branch — is supposed to enact laws proposed by the Executive Branch. Otherwise, Congress is in gridlock and not attending to the people’s business.

Fascism
Form of government in which a dictator or oligarchy makes up the rules at whim, untrammelled by a constitution or laws. Hmmm…hits close to home, doesn’t it?

Filibuster
Parliamentary device useful for stalling “progress” in the Senate. Should be adopted by the House.

Finding of Fact
Oxymoronical term for a way out of the impeachment morass. Enables Senators who refuse to face facts to pretend they’ve done something noble and decisive.

Friend
Anyone a politician has met or heard of. Not to be confused with “personal friend” (formerly known as “friend”).

Gentleman, gentlelady, or gentleperson
Insincere (facetious?) reference to another Member of Congress. See “Enemy.”

Gridlock
Something we could use less of on streets and more of in Washington.

Government
In the United States a creation of the sovereign people, now mistakenly thought of as the sovereign.

Honor
Something which may abound among thieves but which has little to do with politics.

Honorable
Title assumed by and conferred upon self-important personages in Washington (e.g., Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Something-or-Other) in spite of the constitutional ban on titles of nobility.

Humanitarian action
Vietnam reprised: We must kill the (Iraqis, Serbians, Sudanese, Afghanis, etc., etc.) in order to (save them from tyranny/protect American lives, etc., etc.).

Impeachment
Constitutionally authorized act of Congress, the performance of which, not surprisingly, seems to frighten the very groups who view the Constitution as a historical curiosity.

Interest group
Coalition bent on extracting tribute from the public treasury.

Justice
Formerly personnified by a blind-folded woman weighing evidence in the pursuit of truth. Now personnified by a high-priced lawyer weighing gold — and to hell with truth.

Labor union
Instrument for enabling organized gangs to rob business owners of profits and property. Legalized by Congress and the Supreme Court on what may have been those institutions’ worst days. Cost to American workers — yes, workers — is untold, but few politicians dare speak the truth. Premier example of the law of unintended consequences in action (see below).

Law
An inconvenience to be suffered by zealots of the left and right, and by office-holders generally.

Law of unintended consequences
Laws and regulations intended to “fix” specific problems invariably cause other problems — often worse than the original problems — because legislatures and regulators cannot possibly anticipate the complexities of social and economic intercourse. Corollary: legislators and regulators focus on the supposed failings of the market economy and neglect the vast benefits that it confers.

Leak
Usual method of communicating with others or testing half-baked ideas. Instead of point, counterpoint, it’s leak, counterleak.

Liberal
Someone who wants the best of everything for everyone, at the expense of those who have achieved more than mediocrity.

Liberty
A word that is imprinted on U.S. currency and coins out of habit. Analagous to attendance at church on Christmas or Easter.

Nay-sayer
Someone who doesn’t reflexively fall for the latest scheme to give away money or liberty.

Opinion
Something that never ceases to flow from the lips of pundits who have no experience whereof they speak.

Partisanship
That which the majority party is always guilty of, as in the partisanship of Republicans who voted to impeach Clinton. The minority party cannot be partisan; thus Democrats could claim to be non-partisan in their obdurate ignorance of Clinton’s crimes.

People’s business
Something which, it seems, cannot be conducted without imposing more taxes and regulations upon the people.

Policy
Grandiose statement of principle ungrounded in fact and intended to make the public swallow whole a prescription for bankruptcy or disaster.

Poll
The late-Twentieth Century version of crystal-ball gazing, with politicians as the entranced victims of the con, hoping to be told what they want to hear and believing whatever they’re told.

Pork
“Public works” projects doled out by Members of Congress to curry the favor of their constituents. Pork is the modern version of loaves and fishes, except that those who feed on pork also pay for it.

President
Head of the Executive Branch of the government of the United States. Principal duties are to enforce the laws of the United States, and to conduct foreign diplomacy and serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces in accordance with the laws of the United States. Contrary to rampant desires and misconceptions, the President is not a wise sovereign, the head of state, a moral exemplar, or Santa Claus.

Pro-
Laudatory label. Anyone who is pro-something (e.g., pro-life, pro-defense) is for “good” and against “evil.” Inept politicians are against things (e.g., anti-choice, anti-Santa).

Public opinion
Mystical emanation of pollsters, sought avidly by timid politicians. Thought to be more important than the Constitution or the principles of duly elected legislators.

Quagmire
Archaic appellation for the Vietnam war (a.k.a. the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time). Could be applied to the fixation on Clinton’s sex life when his betrayal of his oath of office should be the issue.

Regulations
Adjunct laws written by miserable bureaucrats, with little heed to actual laws, to make the rest of us miserable — and to make us pay for the privilege.

Reinventing government
Public-relations gimmick, invented by proponents of big government on the theory that it is more endurable if can be depicted as “efficient.”

Rights
Whatever any interest group seeks, at the expense of everyone else, by mustering enough votes and/or money.

Right-winger
Derogatory label applied wrongly (on purpose) to libertarians committed to the Constitution and the rule of law.

Socialism
Triumphal political movement in the United States, practiced by many politicians who avow “self reliance” and “rugged independence.” (See “Communism.”)

Social Security
Welfare program disguised as pension plan. It robs otherwise hard-working individuals of the incentive and ability to invest wisely toward retirement.

Supreme Court
Highest court of the third, co-equal branch of the federal government: the Judicial Branch. Its power to interpret the Constitution effectively makes it the most powerful — and dangerous — of the three branches. Report card for its first 210 years of existence: “A” for stateliness of building, “C” for quality of writing, “F” for failure to stem the tide of federal statism. (Note to Supremes: Quit following election returns and start studying the Constitution.)

Tax
Fee extracted from the people in the name of the people for unnecessary, inefficient services.

Terrorism
Latest “Red Scare.” Acts against U.S. citizens and property will be used to justify more involvement in overseas affairs that are none of our business, which will result in more acts against U.S. citizens and property, ad infinitum. Likely to become a new, deadly quagmire for the U.S.

Truth
Foundation of our system of justice. Badly eroded by defense lawyers who put acquittal above truth, and by government officials who put self above sworn duty.

Unfinished business
Whatever it is that Congress hasn’t done lately to impede the economy and trammel liberty.

Voter
Politician’s evident view: a mindless couch-potato, spellbound by glib speeches and 10-second sound bites signifying nothing.

Welfare
Handouts for services not performed. Usually thought of in association with jobless persons, but — as evidenced by the multi-billion dollar lobbying industry — much more prevalent among corporations, business coalitions, and white-collar interest groups.

Youth
Segment of the populace in bad odor (often literally) during the 1960s and early 1970s. Female portion recently popular, in certain circles, as the source of nubile interns.

Zoo
Place where visitors are entertained by the bizarre actions and outcries of ill-mannered beasts.