May 18, 2006

        As many of you know, I have a very high opinion of Jim DeMint. He's a guy like me: not all that good looking, got some miles on him, but his brain is in excellent working condition.

        Now, once again, he's done a couple of things that, if the house will agree, can help most of the people now residing in the country. I promise I will make this as painless as possible.

        First of all, he voted for the Sessions Amendment to build some real fence between the US and Mexico. Walt Whitman once said that "good fences make good neighbors." Of course, Patton said that "fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity," but he was talking about our enemies. Mexico isn't our enemy. Yet. So a fence is a good thing between neighbors.

        The second thing Jim did this week was that he co-authored and introduced "the Competitive and Open Markets Protecting and Enhancing Treatment of Entrepreneurs (COMPETE) Act."

        No! This is NOT boring. It's important.

        Simply put, the Sarbanes Oxley Act, which protects banks who invest in small businesses, sucks. What it really does is penalize small and medium businesses. It said, among other things, that companies conducting an internal audit couldn't receive technical advice from their external auditors. It said that small companies had to take on all the red tape and balogna large corporations do in order to help investors.

        Is this stupid or what?

        COMPETE makes it a lot easier for small and medium size businesses when it comes to accounting.

        Will any of this pass? Who knows? With the attitude of difference between the Senate and the House, it's become impossible to say that anything will pass, ever. But this is, at least, an attempt, and I'm really happy with Jim because of it. You should be, too.

Dick Anderson