TIME TO SCRAP THE TAX CODE

By Mark Davis

I love all weekends, but one that empowers me to ignore April 15 is extra special. The annual tax deadline is extended to Tuesday this year because the usual deadline is today, a Sunday.

What better opportunity to review the efforts of those who strive so that we might ignore April 15 every year?

If we ever get around to scrapping the current tax code - and enormous majorities always say they want to - a new battle will ensue: What do we replace it with?

The two main combatants are the sales tax and the flat tax. I am energized by both, but I've always leaned toward the flat-tax option. Maybe it has to do with my tendency to bond with whomever occupies Texas' 26th Congressional District. I spoke with Dick Armey scores of times on this topic during his years in that seat, and incumbent Michael Burgess is a friend dating back to his decision to stop delivering babies and start crafting laws.

Whether it was the "file on an index card" plan favored by Mr. Armey and his ally Steve Forbes or the Freedom Flat Tax introduced this year by Mr. Burgess, the concept is the same: Turn the IRS into little more than a processing center for a fixed rate of taxation to be paid by all Americans.

It has always chapped me that we are punished for our success. Obviously we should pay more tax as we make more money, but not as a function of percentage.

The only truly fair form of income taxation is to figure out the rate needed to run the government if you take it from every wage earner regardless of income. Make twice as much next year? Pay twice as much in taxes, not three times as much, which happens to many Americans as a punitive slap for their industriousness.

But I'm a flat-tax purist: Everybody pays in my world. Most proposals from politicians contain an exemption so that taxpaying doesn't begin until, say, $35,000 for a family of four.

While this protects them from charges of burdening people who are living paycheck to paycheck, it also effectively removes entire communities from the tax rolls. I shudder at the notion of millions of voters not caring one whit on that unavoidable day when someone suggests boosting the flat-tax rates. Taxpaying is a part of civic life, from the pauper to the billionaire.

If that's a little severe for your tastes, the sales tax advocates are here to soothe you with a glorious future of no IRS at all. Taxes would flow to the federal government from a 23 percent tax attached to every transaction for goods and services. And that's in addition to your state's sales tax.

Yes, you'd be shelling out roughly 130 bucks for that $100 item, but you'd be paying for it with something you've likely never seen before: your whole paycheck. Welcome to a land of no withholding - no payroll taxes, no Social Security or Medicare taxes - nothing to interrupt the flow into your pocket of every dime you earn.

The sales tax forces have even absconded with the most treasured adjective in this battle, referring to their proposal as "The Fair Tax."

It is fair, but so is the flat tax. I would take either one in a heartbeat over the insufferable status quo, but I'll lean toward the flat tax because it seems that the flow of taxes from citizens to the government should be stable.

Incomes don't vary much from year to year; consumer spending certainly might. I'd hate to run out of money for border patrol officers because we didn't buy enough refrigerators one year.

Also, bartering might remove billions of dollars from taxability, as Acme Office Supply trades file cabinets for sofas from XYZ Office Furniture rather than each company buying retail.

Tastes will differ. On this April 15, pick your favorite tax reform plan and dream the sweet dreams of a future when taxes are lower, simpler and fairer. Then shake yourself awake to the harsh reality of a federal government that will probably never allow it to happen.

NOW THAT THE DUST HAS SETTLED

OK ... It's been about four days since CBS pulled the plug on Don Imus. We've had a weekend to calm down and think about things. So .... are you sitting around today and wondering just what in the hell happened here? I suspect a lot of people are wondering just how this incident over a bad jock joke became a 24/7 news story that cost an iconic broadcaster his career. Sure ... what Don Imus said was mindless and cruel. He admits it. But it was nothing that heard every day of the week on hundreds of rap stations across America. The big difference here? Al Sharpton stormed into the picture and the media ran with the story ... big time.

This a story about rhetoric ... racial rhetoric. Just where in our culture has the true degeneration of rhetoric occurred? Has the rhetorical rot advanced more from the era of white racists like David Duke to Don Imus, or from the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. to Al Sharpton? Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for a little over 8 minutes during that march on Washington in August of 1963. Al Sharpton was about 9 years old then, and the combined effect of every word that Sharpton has uttered from that date can't add up to King's eight minutes.

Al Sharpton, the man who once referred to "Greek homos", "White interlopers", and "diamond merchants" (as a euphemism for Jews), was the man who sat in judgment of Imus. Imus, though edgy and often crude, is a man with a giving spirit. Someone please tell me just where Sharpton's home for children with cancer is. If you can't give me that information, perhaps you can tell me when Sharpton had his last radio fundraiser for charity. Sharpton does have a radio show, you know. Last week while Sharpton was stirring the racial brew Imus was busy raising over a million dollars for charity. Sharpton the good guy, Imus the bad.

Al Sharpton holds his National Action Conference convention this week. Virtually every single Democrat presidential candidate will show up. Every single appearance at this convention by a Democrat candidate serves to further legitimize Al Sharpton and to excuse the bigoted and hateful statements he has made in the past. During the past few days we've heard media and political figures say how bad they felt about appearing on Imus' show -- with his objectionable rhetoric now in the limelight. These same people have no problem showing up at Sharpton's conference. Al Sharpton --- a man with the blood of innocents on his hands --- beckons and the Democrats come running. Imus lays out his retirement plans.

KILLING THE GOOSE

Rising tax burden threatens revenues

Democratic politicians have been complaining all century about the Bush tax cuts. So why does the tax man seem to bite harder this year? Well, it's not you who is confused.

While President Bush was reducing taxes in 2001 and 2003 for the poor, middle class and rich alike, a rising toll from state and local governments was making up much of the difference.

Indeed, the tax burden from state and local governments this year has hit a 25-year high, consuming an average 11 percent of income, according to a new report by the Tax Foundation. Californians pay 11.5 percent, a load that has increased steadily since 1979, when state and local levies skimmed 9.2 percent.

Combined with federal taxes, various governments take a staggering 34.3 percent of Americans' incomes.

And yet, this raid on our pockets is just getting started. Lawmakers are busy cooking up the largest tax increases in U.S. history.

In Washington, the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill has unveiled 5-year budget plans that would repeal the Bush tax cuts. What's more, congressional leaders have imposed “pay-as-you-go” budget rules that exclude the existing entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, which dominate federal spending. So “paygo” is really just political cover for new taxes to support new spending.

Meanwhile, cash has been pouring into the treasury. The Bush tax cuts, together with Federal Reserve policy, stimulated the economy into six years of impressive growth. By far, the wealthy gave the most; their job-creating investment binge has triggered a historic surge in government revenues.

So Washington has plenty of our cash. This year federal tax revenues will come in at 18.6 percent of the total U.S. economy, above the 40-year historical average of 18.3 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Yet Democrats say they will let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. Revenues could actually decline, because higher taxes are likely to damage the economy.

In California, a similarly reckless culture of tax-and-spend is gaining steam. Despite pledges against new levies, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a government health insurance plan that would impose new taxes on employers and health care providers. More fundamentally, lawmakers have badly out-spent revenues, despite record gains from property, sales and income taxes.

Now, as the economy slows, state budget deficits are poised to widen. With Democrats refusing to cut spending, the looming fiscal crisis will test Republican promises to resist tax hikes.

Then there's San Diego, which is drowning in pension debt, losing police officers and neglecting its infrastructure. Mayor Jerry Sanders, who inherited the mess, rightly refuses to ask voters for a tax increase until the city streamlines operations and solves its pension crisis. But the union-backed City Council is less austere.

At every level, politicians have squandered the Bush economic boom. As they turn to higher taxes, and thus discourage work and investment, they jeopardize the fiscal engine of their ambitions.

SACTOR HIGHLIGHTS----AND THE REAL AL SHARPTON

By Michelle Malkin

Video from last night's show here.

I think I was about to hurl when Geraldo called Al Sharpton a "great man" and one of the nation's top "civil rights" leaders. You can hear me mutter "whose civil rights?" Certainly not the rights of innocent prosecutor Steve Pagones, who was truly scarred for life by the lying, conniving Sharpton machine. Jeff Jacoby summarizes Sharpton's "great" record:

1987: Sharpton spreads the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting heatedly that a 15-year-old black girl was abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singles out Steve Pagones, a young prosecutor. Pagones is wholly innocent -- the crime never occurred -- but Sharpton taunts him: "If we're lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it." Pagones does sue, and eventually wins a $345,000 verdict for defamation. To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.

1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.

1995: When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. "We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.

If Sharpton were a white skinhead, he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe. But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler.

Israpundit has more.

There is, contrary to Geraldo's assertion, a world of difference between Imus's career of dumb remarks and Sharpton's career of malicious racial demagoguery.

There is no ideological difference between the hate-mongering likes of Malik Shabazz and Al Sharpton.

Sharpton, with the help of willing media, is exploiting the Imus matter to further rehabilitate his image without having to renounce any of his past poisonous behavior. Now, he's playing martyr with the latest reports of death threats against him.

If the media--broadcast, cable, print, and radio--really wanted to do something to "heal" race relations, they'd keep this charlatan (and all his mini-mes like Shabazz) off the airwaves and off their news pages. The only place they deserve to be is under the headline "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day."

***

Get rid of Sharpton. Meet Jason Whitlock. Here's his Real Talk archive.

***

Here is an interesting self-examination from ABC News about the media's decisions to inflate the Race Charlatans' role in the Imus story.

IMMIGRATION ANARCHY

by Bill O'Reilly

My friend Geraldo Rivera and I had quite the verbal shootout the other day over the needless deaths of Allison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, in Virginia. Twenty-two-year-old Alfredo Ramos, an illegal alien from Mexico, killed the girls when he slammed into their car while drunk.

Ramos had three previous alcohol-related convictions and an identity theft beef as well. Despite all the criminal activity, the feds had no idea Ramos was even in the country because Virginia Beach is a "Sanctuary City" and its police chief, Alfred Jacocks, had ordered his officers not to ask about immigration status when dealing with most criminals.

Judge Colon Whitehurst didn't care that Ramos was illegal, either. He released him with only a $250 fine after Ramos pleaded guilty to a DUI, his fourth conviction. In some cities you pay that much if your car is towed. Oh, yeah, Judge Whitehurst also suspended Ramos' driver's license even though he didn't have one.

The result of this incredibly irresponsible behavior on the part of Judge Whitehurst and the Virginia Beach authorities is that Allison and Tessa are dead.

My argument is that coddling criminal illegal aliens is unconscionable. Geraldo disagreed, saying the story was about drunk driving, not illegal immigration. I parried with a simple question: Is it OK with you that an illegal alien remains in the United States with four criminal convictions?

Geraldo did not answer that question.

There is no question in my mind that we now have anarchy regarding illegal immigration in this country. Our four most populous cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, all have "Sanctuary" policies in place, as do scores of other places. Thus, criminal aliens can avoid detection by Homeland Security in many parts of the nation.

This, of course, is insane. Think about it, the open border and blanket amnesty crowd are actually promoting a society where not only do we have to deal with American criminals; we have to accept the criminal behavior of foreign nationals as well.

A sane immigration policy would deport any illegal immigrant who committed any crime while in the USA. I understand that most undocumented workers are good people, and I believe in a fair guest worker program. I would even allow millions of illegal aliens to stay in this country while authorities investigated their situations. Pathway to citizenship? Sure, if undocumented workers are productive and law abiding, and prove that over a number of years. But there should be zero tolerance for criminal illegal aliens. They have to go.

However, some Americans oppose that. Writing in the Denver Post, TV critic Joanne Ostrow accused me of using the deaths of Allison and Tessa to "spew racist bile."

This is the tactic that has many politicians cowering. If you oppose immigration chaos, you are a racist.

I wonder what the families of the two Denver police officers shot last year by a scofflaw illegal alien think about Ostrow's analysis? One of those policemen, Donald Young, died from his wounds.

Finally, I respect that Geraldo Rivera wants to protect people who are basically defenseless. But anarchy leads to death. The nearly 500 illegal aliens who died trying to cross American deserts last year were not done any favors by the "compassionate" crowd that looks the other way on immigration chaos.

America needs strong leadership to protect Allison, Tessa, the Denver cops, and those poor people dying in the desert. And we are not getting it.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE ACTIVISTS WHO CALLED FOR DON IMUS'S HEAD?

Two words: Fairness Doctrine

By Byron York

In October 2004, Media Matters for America, the liberal watchdog group run by former American Spectator writer David Brock, announced a campaign to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine, the government regulation that, before it was repealed in 1987, required broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on controversial public issues. “Tired of imbalanced political discourse on our airwaves?” Brock asked readers in a petition appeal. “Media Matters for America has joined with Democracy Radio and the Media Access Project in calling on Congress to restore the Fairness Doctrine.”

At the time, Brock was supporting a bill by Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter that would have created a new Fairness Doctrine. “By restoring a diversity of fact and opinion to programming,” Brock continued, “Fairness Doctrine legislation restores a concept that has been lost since the 1980s — that because the public owns the airwaves, the public is entitled to be adequately informed by the broadcasters of news and opinion.”

In recent days Brock, who once described Clarence Thomas accuser Anita Hill as “a bit slutty,” has been one of the leading voices condemning radio host Don Imus for his description of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Now that Imus has been fired from his radio and television programs, Brock is calling for similar campaigns against a number of conservatives in talk radio and television, including Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Boortz, and Glenn Beck. “It is our hope that [the Imus matter] will begin a broader conversation about the responsibility that news corporations, journalists, and media figures have to the American public,” Brock wrote Thursday. “This is an opportunity for the media to truly raise the bar to a higher standard and return to the fundamentals of journalism.”

For Brock and others, that “opportunity” could involve new government regulation. After the Imus affair, former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton said on CNN, “The question becomes whether or not we are going to have a regulatory policy that goes based on how contrite someone behaves or whether or not they step over the line. Are we going to have policy, or are we going to say, ‘If you say you’re sorry or even convince us you are sorry, policy’s out the window?’”

Without changes in the government regulatory structure, Sharpton argued, “The next guy can do the same thing and use the precedent of Don Imus to say, ‘I can’t be punished.’”

Restoring the Fairness Doctrine has long been a hope of the Left. Rep. Slaughter has been a consistent champion of the initiative, and in recent years her campaign has drawn the support of the liberal bloggers who have become a major part of Democratic politics. “Requiring public airwaves to present all sides of an issue would end the stranglehold of one-dimensional talk radio,” wrote the influential Democratic blogger/strategist/fundraiser Chris Bowers on the site mydd.com in 2005. “This is an important battle we could win. Even if the bill isn’t passed, its overwhelming popularity and reformist appeal gives us a huge issue for 2006 and beyond.”

Of course, a revived Fairness Doctrine might spell the end of liberal talk radio. But Brock and other liberal activists aren’t complaining; trading the bankrupt and small-audience Air America for the hugely popular Limbaugh would be fine with them.

One seldom-remarked irony of the current controversy is that in the 1980s debate over the Fairness Doctrine, some of the Doctrine’s loudest defenders were conservative activists. The late Reed Irvine, who founded the group Accuracy In Media, argued that repeal would make the problem of liberal bias in the media even worse. “Many [broadcasters] have done no more than pay lip service to fairness even when it was required by law,” Irvine wrote in a letter to the New York Times in 1987. “It is foolish to think that they would suddenly become addicted to fairness if all legal restraints on their uninhibited exercise of power were removed.” In addition, some conservatives used the Doctrine to file suits against media organizations — among other cases, the Doctrine was part of Gen. William Westmoreland’s action against CBS News. After repeal of the Doctrine and the growth of conservative talk radio, those activists abandoned their opposition.

Now it is the liberal watchdogs who want new regulation. And after the Imus affair, they sense new energy for their cause.