From: bd@fluent@dartmouth.EDU (Brice Dowaliby)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.perot,rec.humor,talk.bizarre,talk.politics.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Bush Campaign TV Ad
Date: 11 Sep 92 11:58:50 GMT
Reply-To: bd%fluent@dartmouth.EDU
Distribution: na
Organization: Fluent Inc., Lebanon NH


StarWatcher@uiuc.edu (StarWatcher) writes:

>gstory@netcom.com (Glenn Story) writes:
>: forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:
>
>: >If the thought he [Bush] was above the law, he'd have said "Piss on this
>: >stupid law --- cut the whole fucking forest down!"  (IE: he puts 
>: >himself above the law by ignoring it as he pleases [like most of
>: >the democratic Congress does] NOT by submitting himself to the 
>: >results of due process.)
>: 
>: Could you give an example of the Congress putting itself above the law?
>
>Um, aren't there laws in most states making it a felony to knowingly
>write bad checks?

Point 1
-------

There is a lot of misunderstanding in the poublic mind about the
house banking scandal.  In this post I do not mean to defend
the actions of the House (which I think are reprehensible) but
merely to try to inject some facts into the discussion.

No-one in the House bank wrote "bad checks".  Members of the House
pooled their funds, in an attempt to make life a little easier for
new House members who have high expenses when they first come in
to Washington, and who may not be used to monthly paychecks (some
getting paid weekly or bi-weekly in their previous, private sector
lives).

In other words, it was a collective account set up for the very purpose
of letting junior House members write checks for more money than they had
until they got their finanical house in order and could live on their
monthly paychecks.

No question this was abused, but it is _not_ illegal, any more than it 
would be illegal for me and my wife to set up a joint account and for me
to write checks on "her" funds.

Point 2
-------

There has been a lot of talk about how much money certain Congress 
Critters owe the joint account (Rush Limbaugh, for one, loves to trot
out numbers like "Critter X owes the House bank $56,000 - how's
he ever going to pay that back on his salary, and what did he use the
money for in the first place?"

The fact is, we don't have a clue how much money any of those
people owe.  We know how much the checks they wrote were for, but
we don't know how much money they had in their accounts, so we
don't know how much the were overdrawn.

For instance, if over the course of a year I wrote ten checks, each
for ten thousand dollars, and each of which bounced, it would appear that
I owed the bank $100,000.  But, if each time I wrote the checks I had
$9,999.99 in the bank, then I would actually owe the bank a dime, not
$100,000!

Hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.
-- 
   Brice Dowaliby, Fluent Inc., 10 Cavendish Court, Lebanon, NH  03766
                         bd%fluent@dartmouth.edu        
             I don't speak for them, they don't speak for me
                              DoD # 0698
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.democrats.d