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Moral Babble

by Leonard Manfred

We no longer live in the America I grew up in!  Perhaps most people know this already, and I am just stating the obvious. 

Did you know that bribes and kickbacks are recognized by the IRS as income? 

Don't believe me?  Check out IRS publication 525 on Taxable and Non-Taxable Income http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p525.pdf on page 28 column 3, it states: "If you receive a bribe include it in your income."  And on page 31, column 1: "Illegal income, such as money from dealing illegal drugs must be included in your income...", and on column 3 of the same page regarding kickbacks, it states: "You must include kickbacks, side commissions, push money... in your income."

Certainly in the continent of Africa major U.S. oil companies have been accused of using bribes as a method of corrupting governments and getting their way—Nigeria is a well documented case.  So I guess if bribes are used abroad then why not on the nation’s mainland.  The IRS must know that bribery is extensive, if not, then why make a point of including the classification in its own rules and procedures?

WOW, have I been asleep!

Pick up a newspaper recently?  How can you escape the gossip and slugfest of the Elliot Spitzer scandal—‘the man is human after all’;  ‘Spitzer the hypocrite’, etc., etc. 

Everything in our society, it seems, is seen in quasi-moral terms of moronic nonsense.  Spitzer is called an hypocrite, but the same ‘newspapermen’ that tout the horn of moral purity, hail the ‘greatness’ of the Sopranos television series. 

Give me a break!

Hypocrite is a society that tolerates go-go bars, skin magazines, legalized political prostitution like LOBBYISTS, and then slugs mud at public figures who get caught for the kind of lifestyle that is tolerated and allowed to pervade in the shadows. 

By the way, did you get a gander at the latest Sports Illustrated—Swimsuit Edition? 

Or how about the Dallas Cheerleaders Calendar? 

No?  Well you must have seen MTV’s series 'A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila?

What about SPIKE-TV's show MANSWERS?

Who and what is hypocritical here?

Do you want to clean up society?  Then shutdown the go-go bars, ban guns, closeup shop on the pornography industry, and clean up HOLLYWOOD and the studios that consistently produce violence, and sexual content for the silver screen. 

We live in an upside down country whose 'pilars of the community' incessantly spew forth puritanically tinged ethical babble while indulging in a lifestyle of utter violence, hypocrisy, hedonism, idiocy and filth.   

Leonard Manfred is a columnist of The Citizen for Social Responsibility.

Posted  March 17, 2008

URL:  www.thecitizenfsr.org                     SM 2000-2011 

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