But, Pat, I thought that the federal excise tax on telephone service was being used for it's original purpose -- to pay for expenses related to the Spanish-American War. After all, Puerto Rico is kind of high maintenance.
Michael Chance
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, but the Spanish-American War also included Cuba, did it not? And Guantanomo is a very high maintainence cost for the government these days. I mean, consider all the costs to the government as it fights with that 'run away, vast liberal conspiracy known as the Supreme Court which is always telling us that the prisoners being tortured there have certain legal rights also, human rights and all that rot. And when our brave and courageous president fights the court for the right to continue practicing -- err, oops, I mean 'authorizing' -- he would not get his own hands dirty -- the degrading practices employed on the prisoners there daily, including but by no means limited to throwing the Koran in the buckets used as toilets by prisoners; practicing humiliation and sexual sadism on the inmates, making large numbers of them stay totally naked for days at a time, etc, well that costs a lot of money. It always costs a lot of money when 'good Christians' like our president tries to protect us from 'terrorism'. Ooops, did I label this one 'Last Laugh' by accident?Thank God on his European trip now in progress, *most* but not all of the people over there have not fallen for his latest pleas for cooperation. Have you read the 115-page 300 plus-paragraph report of the British guys who were held incommunicado in Guantanamo for two years? See if you can get through it without losing your breakfast or dinner:
This is one, or maybe the first, *non USA government produced* reports on the truth about what prisoners of war there are going through. Three independent witnesses, prisoners there with a report so detailed and so comprehensive, they simply could not have just made it up to 'make trouble for Bush' as some fundamentalist Christians I know have claimed.
No siree, running an operation like Guantanamo costs our country a lot of money, so be sure to pay your Spanish American War luxury tax on your phones. PAT]