Uncle Billy Laughs at John Stewart

Bureaucrat Can’t Understand Fraud

In an exchange between Jon Stewart and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks on the defense budget audit, Ms. Hicks is asked about the missing hundreds of billions of dollars that are unaccounted for in the recent audit of the Defense Department Budget. She apparently has no idea what an audit is or what one is for, and she laughs at John as if he is the one who doesn’t understand. Her laughter is infuriating because she is basically admitting that her Department has committed a near Trillion Dollar Theft Crime against the American People and is laughing in our collective face about it as if it is nothing at all.

Let me see if I can give an example of an audit and what should happen if you don’t pass said audit. Remember It’s a Wonderful Life? Uncle Billy wasn’t careful with the $10,000 he took to the bank and accidentally left it with the evil Mr. Potter who decided to hide the fact that he had the money. Jimmy Stewart, playing George Bailey, is responsible for all the money and where every penny goes that is in his trust as an agent of the Bailey Savings and Loan.

Bank auditors are coming that very day and George knows if he and Uncle Billy can’t find that $10,000 dollars someone is going to jail. Why would they be going to jail? Kathleen Hicks, if she ever watched Capra’s classic film, must have been baffled as to why George or Uncle Billy would be in any trouble at all. “It’s just an audit,” we can hear her talking to her family as she ponders this plot point, “it isn’t like an audit is in anyway tied to the possibility of fraud, waste, or abuse.”

Now, Ms. Hicks has been in government too long, perhaps. We need to try to calmly explain to her that the ENTIRE REASON AN AUDIT IS PERFORMED is to make certain that all the money entrusted to their care CAN be accounted for, and, if it cannot be accounted for, the legal presumption is that fraud, abuse, and corruption has occurred.

George Bailey will go to jail. He knows it. Uncle Billy knows it. Mr. Potter knows it, which is why the evil cuss keeps the money. But Kathleen Hicks is full of assumptions that demonstrate an even greater degree of evil than Mr. Potter. Mr. Potter at least is a criminal in a world where corruption is tied in people’s minds to criminal behavior and the consequences of jail for committing corruption. Not so, Ms. Hicks. She lives in the world of politics and bureaucratic malfeasance so extensive and pervasive that she sees no ethical connection between the missing $800 billion her Department cannot account for and the righteous anger that the American People would feel as we unanimously declare, “She stole $800 billion dollars from us, and she and her entire department belong behind bars for the rest of their lives.”

This obtuse and oblivious attitude about corruption goes a long way in explaining the activities of our Congress, Presidents, Intelligence Agencies, and the pundits of the Mainstream Media who never understand the American People because they don’t live in the real world and their consciences, if they ever had any, have so long ago been beaten out of them by the bludgeoning bafflement of bureaucratic skullduggery that they do not understand basic ethics.

Suffice it to say, Ms. Hicks, you and your entire Department should be in jail for the remainder of your lives unless you can tell us honestly where our trillion dollars went.