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.

(VOLUNTARY) FLAT TAX NOW

by Deroy Murdock

As kitchen tables nearly buckle this week beneath receipts, pay stubs, and calculators, Americans must be grateful that tax returns are due only annually. April 17, this year’s deadline, reacquaints Americans with our humongous tax-filing burden. It also suggests a voluntary flat tax as the exit from this morass.

The U.S. tax code should join the Panama Canal and the Channel Tunnel as a wonder of the modern world. Though something only an accountant’s mother could love, it is truly stunning -- grotesquely so.

At 67,204 pages, the tax code and its accompanying regulations and Internal Revenue Service rulings stretch just longer than 71 Gideon Bibles stacked side by side. Even a devout atheist would prefer to read the Old Testament -- 71 times. The Washington-based Tax Foundation counts 1,638 different forms on the IRS’ webpage. Among the more novel: “Casualties and Thefts” (Form 4684), “Suspicious Activity Report – Casinos and Card Clubs” (Form 403), and “Tax for Children Under Age 18 with Investment Income of More Than $1,700” (Form 8615).

Form 1040, of course, is the IRS’ greatest hit. A typical taxpayer needs 37.8 hours to finish this basic tax return.

“Pity the self-employed,” David Keating of the National Taxpayers Union wrote last year. “The IRS estimates they have to spend over 80 hours slaving at their computers to do their taxes, enough to rob them of the equivalent of a two-week paid vacation.”

Among 28 federal agencies the White House studied in its “Information Collection Budget of the United States government,” completing IRS paperwork in 2006 took 6.65 billion hours, fully 3.5 times the 1.89 billion hours needed to fill forms for the U.S. Treasury (sans IRS), the other 14 Cabinet departments, and 13 major independent agencies combined -- including the red-tape-spewing Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission. The Tax Foundation calculates that IRS paperwork-compliance cost Americans $265.1 billion in 2005. This was essentially a 22% surcharge atop each tax dollar confiscated.

Even worse, nobody knows what all this means. USA Today recently picked four tax professionals to create returns for the imaginary Bailey family. They generated four different amounts for taxes owed. In 1998, Money magazine asked 46 tax pros to file for another hypothetical household. These experts gave Money 46 different tax-liability figures, varying from $34,240 to $68,912.

As NTU’s Keating concluded: “The Tax Code is so convoluted that no one inside or outside the IRS understands it.”

There is a better way.

Americans deserve a voluntary flat tax. Those Americans who love this gargantuan tax code, its multiple rates, and baroque intricacies, should be free to keep filing form after form, if that makes them happy. Those who prefer a flat rate with few if any deductions, should be free to choose a postcard that would ask one’s name, address, income, and a simple calculation for, say, 17% thereof.

Politically, a voluntary flat tax would let issue-starved Republicans and conservatives avoid a wrestling match with Democrats and liberals over keeping or scrapping the charitable or home-mortgage deductions. Instead, the right can argue for giving Americans the freedom to select between two available systems. The sales slogan is simple: “It’s your tax. It’s your choice.” Let the left argue against granting Americans that option. The right can win that fight.

Next year, Utahns will choose between either a traditional, six-bracket tax (from 2.3% to 6.98%) with exemptions and write-offs, or a simple 5.35% flat tax without deductions.

The Beehive State will join Estonia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, all of whose economies the flat tax has energized. On January 1, 2001, Russia jettisoned its three-bracket system and its 30% top rate on incomes above $5,000. Instead, it embraced a 13% flat-rate tax.

“Before the flat tax, most salaries were paid as cash under the table,” says Yuri Mamchur, director of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute’s Real Russia Project. “That almost has disappeared.”

“The low flat rate contributed to the decline in capital flight [and] improved taxpayer compliance,” according to Hoover Institution economist Alvin Rabushka. Tax evasion has gone the way of the Gulag. Since the flat tax, revenues have swelled 128% after inflation.

If the flat tax is good enough for the former Evil Empire, it’s good enough to offer America’s embattled taxpayers.

WRONG AGAIN...I JUST CAN'T GET ANYTHING RIGHT

Well, another prediction down the tubes. Yesterday I said that CBS would fire Don Imus after his show today. Well, they didn't wait. Couldn't stand up to the pressure. The fired him yesterday afternoon.

When the history of this whole affair is written we'll see that the biggest mistake Imus made, other than uttering his ridiculous comment in the first place, was to add to Al Sharpton's aura of legitimacy by groveling before him on his radio show. Sharpton is a race hustler. That's it. One issue ... race .. and exploiting the sense of black victimization for his personal aggrandizement. I absolutely believe that Al Sharpton is a man with blood on his hands. His role in instigating racial violence in the Freddie's Fashion Mart incident and the Crown Heights riots has been largely ignored by the media. So here we have the spectacle of the management of CBS falling to their knees to lick the books of a man who's words very well may have helped to send innocent men to their graves. You're really looking good, CBS.

This is only the beginning. Sure, Imus is a liberal. You can measure the depth of his vapidity through his endorsement of John Kerry for president. Some of you have asked how in the world I can say that this is the beginning of an all-out push to damage or destroy conservative talk radio when it was a liberal who bit the dust. Simple. Imus was sacrificed. A "proof of concept" exercise, if you will. Now the left knows that race hustler Al Sharpton can move large corporate mountains with his racially charged dialogue ... so it's time to use him to go after the real nemesis -- talk radio.

Sharpton is feeling very impressed with himself, I'm sure. Yesterday he told an anxiously awaiting media that; "It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves."

Yup .. you heard him. "What is permitted in terms of the airwaves." Big Al is just the man to decide. Somewhere soon Sharpton will sit down with some cronies to review the talk radio landscape to figure out who needs to be the next to go. In the meantime he'll give some lip service to the cause of cleaning up rap lyrics, but know this ... talk radio is the target. Conservative talk radio. Liberals can't succeed at the medium ... so it must be destroyed.

Silver lining? I think there well might be. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of people -- maybe much more -- are going to be tuning in to their local talk stations to see if the situation is really as hideous as Sharpton and his sycophants allege. Leftist websites are going to drive even more people our way. What will these people hear? They'll hear logical and fact-based arguments against the anti-individual, anti-liberty cult of liberalism. They'll hear ideas and concepts presented that they haven't previously been exposed. They'll hear information about Democrat schemes and dreams in Washington that will make their blood curdle.

Here's just one example: Read the mainstream newspapers and listen to liberal talking heads on television and you'll soon generate a burning hatred of those evil people who constitute the mysterious "richest Americans." Listen to talk radio and you'll soon learn that a huge percentage of these people vilified for their income levels are actually the small businessmen and women of America .. and that they are considered to be rich because all of their business as well as personal income is reported on their personal income tax returns. You'll learn that these people -- the people targeted for huge tax increases by the left -- actually provide between 70% and 80% of all jobs in America ... perhaps your job. And then you're going to start wondering what a tax increase might do to them ... and to the people who work for them.

This, of course, is not healthy for liberals. There recourse is to shut down these channels of dangerous information. Sharpton is showing them the way.

Just a few more thoughts .... I want to make sure to give Sharpton and his goons as much to go over as possible.

You would have thought that "Rev." Sharpton and Imus would have gotten along famously! After all, they have the same hairdresser. (Ohhhhh. That's not a racist statement, is it? I mean ... after all ... one of them is black and one of them is white.)

I see that Obama had to chime in and call for Imus to be fired. A little late to the party, weren't you Barack? I guess he just couldn't sit back and watch that fool Sharpton suck all of the oxygen out Barackobamamania.

Rutgers Coach Vivian Stringer says it's time to "go forward and let the healing process begin." Healing process? What healing process? I'm not buying any of this nonsense that the Rutgers woman's basketball team was egregiously hurt by Imus' comments. Tennessee wins the championship and Rutgers gets all the publicity. It wasn't the Tennessee girl that were allowed to sit before the national TV cameras a few days ago. And how many of you can name the Tennessee coach? Let's face it .. the only people really, genuinely hurt in this episode are those connected with the Imus show who are now going to lose their jobs. Maybe those were the people Stringer was talking about with here silly "let the healing begin" comment. (Uh oh. Stringer is black ... I think ... and I just called her comment "silly." Do you think I should resign?)