In ancient times humans, before they could talk, communicated by reading each other's minds through their eyes or facial expressions, some believe. Furthermore, they believe that words were invented to facilitate lying. Maybe, maybe not.. It does seem, though, that we have a natural distrust of people who avoid eye contact while speaking to us. Looking people in the eye when you talk to them is a sign that you have nothing to hide. Sadly, however, experienced yarn-spinners who lie for a living can look us right in the eye and tell us whoppers the size of Al Look-at-my-Oscar-not-at-my-carbon-footprint Gore's new $9 million mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Someone suggested that Gore could offset somewhat the negative environmental impact of his opulent lifestyle by installing a portable windmill in front of his podium when he speaks.

In the past year, in two crucial pieces of legislation, Congress has employed an avalanche of words to bury any chance that the average lawmaker, let alone the average citizen, might have of seeing and understanding the meaning beneath the words. Remarkably, the health care reform bill and the financial reform bill both consisted of over 2000 pages, approximately a million words apiece. While promoting the health care bill to the general public, when its passage was still in doubt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that "it's going to be very, very exciting." Excitement building in her voice, she then added, incredibly, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy." Hearing those words caused some to shake their heads in wonderment. Do we look that gullible? Yes. The bill passed, unread by most and understood by few.

Through the never-ending fog, the only thing becoming clear is the bill's vagueness and its ability to open up new avenues of political corruption. But it will be "very, very exciting," indeed, for those who like to watch bureaucracies grow. Critics have been trying to estimate just how many agencies, departments, and bureaucrats will materialize in the effort to implement and manage the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," as the bill is euphemistically titled. They are wasting their time. Counting President Obama's campaign promises would be easier. According to a recent Congressional Service Research (CSR) report, as noted in the Aug. 3 edition of Politico, the size of the new health care bureaucracy is "unknowable." Unfortunately, this is because "the provisions of the law that create the new entities vary dramatically in specificity." The entities which are specifically identified could give birth to "an indeterminate number of new organizations," the CSR reported. For example, the Patient-Centered Research Institute "may appoint permanent or ad hoc expert advisory panels as determined appropriate." Let's see how many unseated congressmen who supported this surprise package will be "determined appropriate" to get seats on these panels, which will also be useful for fundraising; just auction the seats to campaign contributors. Is that why Obama and Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were so excited about getting this bill passed before anybody had time to read it?

While campaigning for his current job, one of President Obama's most oft-repeated promises was that government under his leadership would be open and transparent. "No more secrecy." Undoubtedly those three little words should be chiseled on Mount Liemore along with George Herbert Bush's "Read my lips: No new taxes." On at least eight different occasions, Obama promised that the health care reform negotiations would be televised on CSPAN so "the people can see" who is making arguments for their constituents and who is making arguments for the special-interest groups. Promising proved easier than doing. The deals were done behind closed doors, and all cameras, including CSPAN's, were denied entrance.

As with most inventions, words can be used for good or ill. When deception and confusion is the goal, however, it does seem that more words are used than when the goal is enlightenment and clarity. Do the math. It took a million words to create in secret a one-size-fits-all health care bill that should have been broken into dozens of separate bills in order that each one be understood. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln needed only 266 words to create the Gettysburg Address. One lives in infamy, the other in glory. The income tax code consists of about 5 million words. The Golden Rule,"Love thy neighbor as thyself," needs only five words. One obfuscates, the other illuminates.

God only knows if humans could communicate by reading minds before they could talk, but it looks like a safe bet that they didn't lie until they discovered words.

Before he died at the Alamo, Davy Crockett served a couple of terms as a congressman from Tennessee. One day Congress, after a quantity of pompous speeches, was on the verge of passing a bill to grant $10,000 to the widow of a naval officer. But then it was Crockett's turn to speak. He said they could not appropriate that money without the "grossest corruption" as the Constitution gave them no "semblance of authority" to spend the public's money, much of it obtained from people worse off than the widow, on charity.

"Mr. Speaker," Crockett concluded, "We have the right to spend as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

Nobody took Crockett up on his suggestion that they contribute their own money to the charity that was so easy to support with other people's money. But most of them were sufficiently shamed to withdraw their support from the bill, and it was defeated. Afterwards a reporter, outraged at the bill's defeat, asked Crockett what had possessed him to make that speech.

Crockett explained that he had been enlightened one day by a farmer he encountered while out campaigning for reelection.

"Don't waste your time," the farmer, Horatio Bunce, told Crockett. He said he had voted for Crockett the last time, but would not do so again. Stunned, Crockett asked him what was the matter.

"You gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not the capacity to understand the Constitution or that you are wanting in honesty or firmness to be guided by it," Bunce responded. He was referring to Crockett's support of a bill which gave $20,000 to people whose homes had been damaged by a fire in Georgetown.

"But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve the suffering of women and children," said Crockett in defense of his vote.

"It is not the amount that I complain of," Bunce emphasized. "It is the principle. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was just a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20 million as $20,000 . . . and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity."

Bunce advised Crockett that his vote was a violation of the Constitution "fraught with danger" for the future of the country as it opened the door wide for corruption and favoritism on the one hand, and stealing from the people on the other. Bunce helped Crockett see his mistake, and Crockett was honest enough to then go around the district and admit his mistake to as many of his constituents as he could reach. And he got reelected.

Nearly 200 years later, it does not take a magnifying glass to see that the integrity of Bunce and Crockett did not prevail for long. The door to corruption and favoritism has been kicked off its hinges and through it has been flowing a torrent of congressional sleaze that is today choking our liberty and drowning us in debt.

According to a report released last November by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), 237 congressmen are millionaires; about one percent of Americans are millionaires compared to 44 percent of their representatives in Washington. In some cases, according to CRP spokesman Dave Levinthal, their wealth "is derived from the very companies that in many cases benefit from the taxpayers." He added that many of the companies in which congressmen invest, such as Bank of America and Goldman-Sachs, "received billions and billions of dollars from you and me."

Wouldn't it have been inspiring, for instance, to see Nancy Pelosi, among the 25 richest in Congress, offering to donate some of her own money, and inviting her colleagues to do the same, to start a trust fund to help poor people get medical care? No doubt thousands, if not millions, of Americans would follow such a shining example and add their own voluntary contributions to said fund. But for Congress, giving their own money to a cause is a not as easy as giving ours.

As Davy Crockett put it, "There are in the House some very wealthy men . . . Yet not one of them responded to my proposition" to give their own money to help the widow. "Money with them," he continued "is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to get it."

But if we look closely enough, we can always find reason for optimism. Through the sleaze, some flowers have blossomed. Since the bank bailouts began, America has sprouted an impressive array of Horatio Bunces. Now if we can just get some Davy Crocketts elected to Congress.

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 Before he died at the Alamo, Davy Crockett served a couple of terms as a congressman from Tennessee. One day Congress, after a quantity of pompous speeches, was on the verge of passing a bill to grant $10,000 to the widow of a naval officer. But then it was Crockett's turn to speak. He said they could not appropriate that money without the "grossest corruption" as the Constitution gave them no "semblance of authority" to spend the public's money, much of it obtained from people worse off than the widow, on charity.

In trying to teach their kids financial responsibility, parents used to say, "Money doesn't grow on trees." In other words, money had to be earned; nobody was going to just give it to you. But paper does come from trees, and the Federal Reserve chairman has vowed to print as much paper money as necessary to stimulate the economy.  If our government-sanctioned Federal Reserve can just print money to give to banks to loan out at interest, why can't Congress just instruct the Federal Reserve to print enough money to make every American wealthy? A pre-1921 silver dollar and once ounce of silver bullion will be awarded by JP's Coins & Collectibles to the author of the best essay answering that question. Send your essays of 500 words or less to Essay Contest, JP's Coins & Collectibles, 420 S. Burdick St., Kalamazoo, MI 49007. Deadline for entries is the 4th of July.

In pondering the current financial-congressional scandal, the following quotes from some of America's early leaders might help shed light:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." -- Thomas Jefferson

"If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash." -- George Washington

"I am firmly of the opinion that there never was a paper pound, a paper dollar, or a paper promise of any kind, that ever yet obtained a general currency but by force or fraud, generally by both." -- John Adams

"Of all the contrivances devised for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes him with paper money." -- Daniel Webster

Those are some of the reasons they put this in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution: "No state shall make anything but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts." That clause was negated in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act, which was most likely passed by congressmen, like congressmen today, who received large donations from bankers. When this Act passed, Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., father of the famous pilot, said, "When the President signs this Act, the invisible government by the money power will be legalized."

As Andy Naylor put it in an article titled "Federal Reserve Fraud," when Woodrow Wilson signed the Act into law, he gave our country's money system "to a group of private bankers and allowed them to create money by making bookkeeping entries, loan it at interest, and take title to real property as collateral. Because of this, the citizens of the United States have lost control over their money system and their government."

Over the years, critics of this new system were increasingly villified, marginalized, lunafied, and silenced. Of all the Republicans and Democrats who ran for President this year, only one, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, understood the relationship between our Federal Reserve ("Fedzilla," as some call it) money system and America's financial crisis. He was derided by the establishment media and other powerbrokers, which reminds me of something Gustave Le Bon said in his study, "The Crowd:"

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

But the truth is a stubborn thing, and the current financial crisis is helping to reveal it.

Most of us who opposed his candidacy are now praying that God will bless Barrack Obama with good health and sound judgement. And, as we look towards Washington with our hands outstretched and hope in our hearts, let's pray also that the new administration, in redistributing the wealth of rich Americans to improve life for the rest of us, will make distinctions between those who earned their wealth honestly and those who didn't.

I can see the common good of confiscating the wealth of rich crooks, which would include many congressmen as well as some of their cronies in high finance. However, redistributing the wealth of those who earned it fair and square through hard work in school and on the job could have unintended negative consequences. For example, it might encourage some of our nation's top producers and job providers to flee to countries which reward success rather than penalizing it -- a flight of the golden geese, so to speak. This could result in a loss of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity for those left behind.

As we pray for our new leaders, let us pray also that we don't go so far down the road to Socialism that we can't turn back. The road is paved with golden promises, but it ends in dependency and mediocrity. God bless Barrack Obama, and God bless America.