Neff Zone Column

Print Edition: July 2, 2005

WE’RE BEING SNOOKERED

My grandfather was a professional pool player back in the 1930s and one of his favorite versions of pocket billiards was the game of snooker, played with 15 red balls and 6 balls of other colors. One of the main objectives was to put your opponent in a position whereby he was blocked off from making a successful shot. No matter what he did he was trapped in a situation where all his options were bad ones – he’d been "snookered."

From that game the term "snookered" evolved to mean being fooled, duped or conned. Typically, the "snookerer" knows full well that they’re doing something underhanded, but they’re banking on the fact that the "snookeree" won’t be smart enough to notice or that once the snook-deed is done it will be too late to do anything about it.

Which brings us to three recent instances of political chicanery that have snookered us all.

The Department of Defense revealed just last week that it has been collecting an extensive database of 30 million 16 to 25 year-olds, a project that has been going on in secret for three years. The data collected by a private contractor hired by the DOD includes: name, address, birthday, height, weight, social security number, e-mail address, grade point average, ethnic category, and much more.

Supposedly the information will be an avenue with which to contact young people about opportunities in the military. However, the conservative CATO Institute has questioned the listing of ethnicity as a possible means to target certain minorities for recruitment. James A Harper, a privacy expert for the Institute said, "This database could definitely be reused for a draft."

What makes this project so insidious is that it’s in clear violation of the federal Privacy Act which requires that government agencies accept public comment before new records systems are created. The Act also requires the government to first contact an individual to gather information before trying to obtain it from elsewhere. The DOD had to know this, which is why they outsourced the project to a private contractor because the private sector has no such restrictions. Then, three years after the fact, the DOD tried to technically comply with the law by slipping a notice into the Federal Register, read by hardly anyone, and admitting it was tardy in doing so.

So here we are, in an age where identity theft and computer fraud is rampant, a private company, under Department of Defense direction, has been secretly collecting information about your children. If it was on the up-and-up they would have complied with the letter of the law and informed America’s parents about what they were doing. They didn’t; draw your own conclusions. Could it be we’ve all been snookered?

Immigration policy is in the news, but did you know that eight states, Michigan included, are actually going to lose Congressional representation because they don’t have enough illegal immigrants? The 14^th Amendment of the Constitution says that representation in Congress should be apportioned on the basis of all "persons," not just all "citizens." So, the illegals that pour across the borders of states like Arizona, New Mexico, California, Texas, and New York get counted in those states’ census totals and hence those states stand to gain seats in the U.S House. In the meantime, Michigan will likely lose a seat.

The bottom line is that states with large illegal immigrant populations will get additional seats in Congress and the inevitable dollars that come with those seats, while Michigan populated mainly with plain old legal American taxpayers will get the short end of the representational and financial stick.

To her credit, Michigan U.S. Representative Candice Miller has introduced legislation to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow only U.S. citizens to be counted for the purposes of political representation. Given that California, Florida and New York (states that stand to benefit from high illegal immigrant numbers) control one-third of the House seats, Miller’s chances of getting this legislation passed are slim. But I say, "Go get ‘em Candice – don’t let them snooker us."

Finally, last week the General Accounting Office found that 33,000 contractors to various federal agencies owe more than $3.3 billion in unpaid federal taxes. What’s worse, not only do these firms cheat on their taxes, scam government agencies, steal employees’ payroll taxes and ship the money offshore, and purchase fleets of luxury vehicles and yachts, the federal government keeps paying them on time for the contracts and in some cases hires them for additional contracts.

Can’t someone just look up the taxpayer identification numbers and cross check them with companies who owe back taxes? Geez, the IRS seems to know when I spend 97-cents on a loaf of bread and the check-out clerk misfigures my sales tax, how can they not know when some company owes them several million? Methinks there is snookering afoot in the land.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com . Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews .