The ant works very hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and 

laying up supplies for the winter.  The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and 

dances and plays the summer away.  Come winter the ant is warm and well fed.  The 

grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold. 

The New Version... 

It starts out the same but when winter comes the shivering grasshopper calls a press 

conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well 

fed while others are cold and starving.  CBS, NBC, CNN and ABC show up and transmit 

pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable home 

with a table filled with food.  America is stunned by the sharp contrast.  How can it 

be, in a country of such wealth that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?  

Then a representative of the NAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up 

on NightLine and charges the ant with "Green Bias" and makes the case that the 

grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism.  

Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when he 

sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."  Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest 

appearance on the CBS evening news and tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will 

do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he 

deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the summer, or as Bill refers to it, 

the "Temperatures Of The 80's".  

Finally the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act" RETROACTIVE to 

the beginning of the summer.  The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate 

number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home 

is confiscated by the government.  The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing 

up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in which just 

happens to be the ant's old house.... crumbles around him since he doesn't know how/ 

or care to maintain it.  The ant has disappeared in the snow. 

On the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, Bill Clinton 

is standing before a wildly applauding group announcing that a new era of "Fairness" 

has dawned in America. 

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.  You cannot 

strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.  You cannot help the wage earner 

by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by 

encouraging class hatred.  You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You 

cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and 

independence.  You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they 

could and should do for themselves." 

     --Abraham Lincoln