The fair tax is a proposal that needs strong consideration right now.
 My favorite part of this proposal is not that I think it will lower my taxes,
 although it will. It's not because it will lower the taxes of  the bracket I would
like to be in, but it will do that too.  What I like most about it is that it will live up to its name, it will be fair.
In fact it will allow every man, woman and child with enough allowance to buy a candy bar to become a taxpayer.

The current tax plan leaves 40% of Americans without a tax bill on April 15.  Some call that
compassionate, I cal it a gross disservice to the Americans who are paying the freight on this government.
If I had my way, those who do not pay federal xould not vote in federal elections. If you want to vote, you should have, as the modern saying does
"skin in the game".  It has become too easy for those who pay no taxes to support programs that will burden'
the rest of us.  They vote for bigger and better handouts because it is free money to them.  The same way that they use emergency rooms as
their personal HMO's.  The fair tax brings them in to the universe of taxpaying citizens.

If you are not acquainted with the idea of the fair tax, it's really not surprising.   Although the concept has been gaining momentum for several years,
most people know little if anything about it.  It's not a topic that makes it to your network news and the major
newspapers have given it little notice.  The Fair tax proposal would dismantle the IRS.  It would eliminate corporate and income taxes.
The only tax would be a tax on consumption.  A national sales tax if you will.  A tax that everyone who consumes
goods and services within the United States would pay.  Currently we pay income taxes, and we pay the corporate taxes of the companies we support
through the products we buy.  Taxes are a cost of business and all costs are passed on to the consumer through the pricing of the product.  The
fair tax puts all of those taxes into one single tax paid at the cash register.  

Currently estimates for the fair tax rate are at 23%.  But the fact is that much of that rate is already being paid in the prices we pay now.
 As the taxes are taken from the cost and added at the point of sale, the price of the good itself will now reflect it's
actual price and t not the several layers of taxation you have paid along the way.  The current plan also calls for a monthly "prebate" check
to be sent to each household to cover the amount of the tax that would be spent on basic necessities for someone at the poverty level.  This way
if you consume nothing more than the basic necessities, the fair tax costs you nothing more than the current system, and possibly even less.
 the beauty of the fair tax though is that it will finally tax the hardest class to tax in America, the idol rich.  As wealth one holds but has not gained
in a regular income stream is currently nontaxable (trust fund babies, inheritances, etc...) there are many people with vast resources who escape
taxation by merely being non-productive.  The fair tax eliminates that exemption.  What good is being rich if you can't enjoy a few luxuries in life?
When you enjoy them, you join the ranks of the American taxpayer.  Welcome to the crowd, we've missed you.

The fair tax also gives another important advantage to the taxpayers.  If you are unhappy with the action of the government at any given time, you can choose
to deny them revenue by changing your spending habits.  If you choose to fix your old car instead of buy another,
you pay considerable less in taxes.  If you buy any product, that is less "high-end" then what you would have
ordinarily bought, you lower the tax revenue.  When you fix a meal at home instead of eating out... well you get the idea.
The beauty of this is that it will make congress more responsive to the taxpayers.  We would have actual control over the money
they have to work with.

The current congress is loathe to accept such a revolutionary idea in the collection of revenues.  I can't deny that it would
be likely to destroy the political ideology  we know  today.  If you don't understand my claim think about this:   As I said
at the beginining of this blog, currently 40% of all Americans pay no income tax.  If you are not paying taxes, why
would you care how high they go?  And it they were paying taxes, don't you think they might be more interested in how they are
dispensed?

             Is there any other resource that the American family needs to replenish with the frequency that is required of food and fuel? Regardless of what happens in the housing market, the stock market or in the area of increasingly affordable technology products. We all need to make regular trips to both the gas station and the grocery. Not for social purposes, or a need to get out of the house, but for our very survival. People can not live without food and their opportunity to get that food depends on transportation not only to the grocery to get it, but more importantly to employment to be able to afford it.

            So now we are faced with a dilemma, one that seems ridiculous in the complexity many are trying to give it. We have been served with conspiracy theories darker than those imagined by the most paranoid extremists of the cold war. With gasoline over $4.00 a gallon and moving ever higher, some of the most damnably ludicrous arguments have been uttered from the mouths of the people elected to represent us in our government. They have told lies that betray their lack of intelligence, or at least bring their honesty into question. Intentionally misleading statements that are supposed to make us satisfied with this colossal blunder on their part to foresee a crisis. We are supposed to accept the fact that because a faction of the Democrat party that is more concerned with the condition of nature than the condition of mankind itself, it is fair to create a crisis that threatens the economies of almost every family home in America.

            The food and fuel crises are not separate crises; in fact the fuel crisis is the catalyst for the food crisis. As corn is leaving the realm of food for that of energy, the resulting shortage creates pressure on every product that is related. Those who defend the ethanol requirements are quick to note that corn consumed by humans is not the type used, they do not, however, complete the information for you that the corn they use is the corn which was used to feed livestock. The lack of availability of feed corn increases the cost not only of pork, beef , chicken and other farm raised meats, but their products such as eggs, milk, and cheese. Then in turn they raise the costs of the products that use these items in their make up such as baked goods, ice cream, pastas, etc.

            If ethanol production were a cost effective manner of creating energy, it might make this whole boondoggle easier to swallow, but it is not, in fact it takes many times more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol itself will produce. In other words, if we drop the requirements for ethanol production, the cost of gasoline would immediately fall to reflect that. It wouldn’t get it back to $1.75 a gallon, but it could make it cost considerably less than it does now.

            Energy from ethanol as a concept in itself is not a bad idea. Obviously, fossil fuels will eventually be used up and other forms of energy must be developed in time for the transition and a renewable resource as ethanol is an intelligent choice. Corn however 

is an incredibly inefficient method to get it. South American ethanol production has centered on the use of sugar cane for conversion to ethanol. It produces much more energy at a greatly lower price than corn does. Other technologies using cellulose are giving us very promising results. But as great as the promise ethanol gives for our future, it is the now that we live in, and now with India and China developing their economies at a breakneck pace, Oil is in greater demand than it was a few years ago. 

            Every middle school child in America should know the basic rule of economics, supply and demand. When there is a finite amount of something on the market, the price will rise in the competition to own it. To bring down the price you have few reasonable options. The most reasonable is to find a way to increase the supply.

            Experts tell us that some of the largest reserves in existence today are under our very feet. Between ANWR, the OCS and the shale oil under the Rocky Mountains, some have speculated that we have over 100 years worth of supply domestically that we can’t get to. Why?   The Democratic Party coalition will not survive the loss of the environmental lobby. The Democratic Party has long ago moved from being a mainstream political entity to a coalition of special interests. They have to support gay marriage to keep the homosexual lobby, they fight enforcement of immigration policies because they covet the Hispanic vote, they oppose any limitations on abortion due to the National Abortion Rights League.   Affirmative action is the payback for the NAACP and the ACLU gets the fight against the civil rights of the majority against the privileges they offer the perverted minorities. The trial lawyers get the blocking of tort reform, desperately needed to reign in outrageous and unfair awards. Any one of these lobbies can remove the votes needed to be competitive in national elections.

            Barak Obama has taken a stand against any more production of domestic origin. His arrogant assertion that we can save the oil we need by inflating our tires properly and getting tune ups. Responsible car owners do this as a part of the regular maintenance of what is usually a family’s second largest expense. What Obama has been trying to do is get Americans to like or at least be ambivalent to outrageously high gas prices. He seems to be making the point that it is better to make the nation more comfortable with high fuel bills than to take the obvious step of increasing the supply and decreasing the pressure on the demand.

            The task then for the Republican party is clear, it has to embrace it’s position as the party for mainstream America, not a liberal or centrist mainstream, but to represent a mainstream that stands for self reliance, domestic strength and a basic fairness to those who keep this nation working. Most people want crime punished, enemies vanquished and goodwill restored. They want to see a fair shot at success for themselves and their own. They want to know that we remain a superpower and if possible, the only superpower. They know that we are the world’s police, not because we wanted the job, but that all the other countries abdicated it to us. How often have we heard that other nations are not willing to get involved in some of the most terrible and barbaric situations imaginable until they know what the U.S. is going to do about it. Need proof? Then why hasn’t Europe straightened out Darfur, or maybe Zimbabwe, that was a member of the British Empire at one time. Why hasn’t Belgium settled things in the Congo? Why do they depend on us in Iraq and our relations with Saudi Arabia to keep their gas from being even more expensive than it is?  

            It’s time our leadership, decided to lead. They need to charge hard and make the effort necessary to win. It’s time we quit letting the Democrats lie about us without responding with the truth about them. We need to quit letting them feel safe from reprisal from a public that has been lied to time and again. It’s time to destroy the fragile alliance of special interests that comprise the Democrat coalition as it stands. The green lobby may have delivered the means to destroy an alliance that has done great harm to our nation for decades, if the Republicans can capitalize on it.

             Is there any other resource that the American family needs to replenish with the frequency that is required of food and fuel? Regardless of what happens in the housing market, the stock market or in the area of increasingly affordable technology products. We all need to make regular trips to both the gas station and the grocery. Not for social purposes, or a need to get out of the house, but for our very survival. People can not live without food and their opportunity to get that food depends on transportation not only to the grocery to get it, but more importantly to employment to be able to afford it.

            So now we are faced with a dilemma, one that seems ridiculous in the complexity many are trying to give it. We have been served with conspiracy theories darker than those imagined by the most paranoid extremists of the cold war. With gasoline over $4.00 a gallon and moving ever higher, some of the most damnably ludicrous arguments have been uttered from the mouths of the people elected to represent us in our government. They have told lies that betray their lack of intelligence, or at least bring their honesty into question. Intentionally misleading statements that are supposed to make us satisfied with this colossal blunder on their part to foresee a crisis. We are supposed to accept the fact that because a faction of the Democrat party that is more concerned with the condition of nature than the condition of mankind itself, it is fair to create a crisis that threatens the economies of almost every family home in America.

            The food and fuel crises are not separate crises; in fact the fuel crisis is the catalyst for the food crisis. As corn is leaving the realm of food for that of energy, the resulting shortage creates pressure on every product that is related. Those who defend the ethanol requirements are quick to note that corn consumed by humans is not the type used, they do not, however, complete the information for you that the corn they use is the corn which was used to feed livestock. The lack of availability of feed corn increases the cost not only of pork, beef , chicken and other farm raised meats, but their products such as eggs, milk, and cheese. Then in turn they raise the costs of the products that use these items in their make up such as baked goods, ice cream, pastas, etc.

            If ethanol production were a cost effective manner of creating energy, it might make this whole boondoggle easier to swallow, but it is not, in fact it takes many times more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol itself will produce. In other words, if we drop the requirements for ethanol production, the cost of gasoline would immediately fall to reflect that. It wouldn’t get it back to $1.75 a gallon, but it could make it cost considerably less than it does now.

            Energy from ethanol as a concept in itself is not a bad idea. Obviously, fossil fuels will eventually be used up and other forms of energy must be developed in time for the transition and a renewable resource as ethanol is an intelligent choice. Corn however 

is an incredibly inefficient method to get it. South American ethanol production has centered on the use of sugar cane for conversion to ethanol. It produces much more energy at a greatly lower price than corn does. Other technologies using cellulose are giving us very promising results. But as great as the promise ethanol gives for our future, it is the now that we live in, and now with India and China developing their economies at a breakneck pace, Oil is in greater demand than it was a few years ago. 

            Every middle school child in America should know the basic rule of economics, supply and demand. When there is a finite amount of something on the market, the price will rise in the competition to own it. To bring down the price you have few reasonable options. The most reasonable is to find a way to increase the supply.

            Experts tell us that some of the largest reserves in existence today are under our very feet. Between ANWR, the OCS and the shale oil under the Rocky Mountains, some have speculated that we have over 100 years worth of supply domestically that we can’t get to. Why?   The Democratic Party coalition will not survive the loss of the environmental lobby. The Democratic Party has long ago moved from being a mainstream political entity to a coalition of special interests. They have to support gay marriage to keep the homosexual lobby, they fight enforcement of immigration policies because they covet the Hispanic vote, they oppose any limitations on abortion due to the National Abortion Rights League.   Affirmative action is the payback for the NAACP and the ACLU gets the fight against the civil rights of the majority against the privileges they offer the perverted minorities. The trial lawyers get the blocking of tort reform, desperately needed to reign in outrageous and unfair awards. Any one of these lobbies can remove the votes needed to be competitive in national elections.

            Barak Obama has taken a stand against any more production of domestic origin. His arrogant assertion that we can save the oil we need by inflating our tires properly and getting tune ups. Responsible car owners do this as a part of the regular maintenance of what is usually a family’s second largest expense. What Obama has been trying to do is get Americans to like or at least be ambivalent to outrageously high gas prices. He seems to be making the point that it is better to make the nation more comfortable with high fuel bills than to take the obvious step of increasing the supply and decreasing the pressure on the demand.

            The task then for the Republican party is clear, it has to embrace it’s position as the party for mainstream America, not a liberal or centrist mainstream, but to represent a mainstream that stands for self reliance, domestic strength and a basic fairness to those who keep this nation working. Most people want crime punished, enemies vanquished and goodwill restored. They want to see a fair shot at success for themselves and their own. They want to know that we remain a superpower and if possible, the only superpower. They know that we are the world’s police, not because we wanted the job, but that all the other countries abdicated it to us. How often have we heard that other nations are not willing to get involved in some of the most terrible and barbaric situations imaginable until they know what the U.S. is going to do about it. Need proof? Then why hasn’t Europe straightened out Darfur, or maybe Zimbabwe, that was a member of the British Empire at one time. Why hasn’t Belgium settled things in the Congo? Why do they depend on us in Iraq and our relations with Saudi Arabia to keep their gas from being even more expensive than it is?  

            It’s time our leadership, decided to lead. They need to charge hard and make the effort necessary to win. It’s time we quit letting the Democrats lie about us without responding with the truth about them. We need to quit letting them feel safe from reprisal from a public that has been lied to time and again. It’s time to destroy the fragile alliance of special interests that comprise the Democrat coalition as it stands. The green lobby may have delivered the means to destroy an alliance that has done great harm to our nation for decades, if the Republicans can capitalize on it.

    As we approach the convention season and the general election, those of us on the right have much more to be optimistic about than we did even a short week ago.  John McCain's decision to support offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf and to reconsider his stance on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the one issue, besides the war, that really demonstrates a difference between the two candidates.
    Few people seem to remember several years ago when Al Gore expressed his wish for high gas prices, fewer still note that Obama seems content with fuel prices in the neighborhood they are in when he suggested the problem with the prices is he would like a more gradual rise.
    The energy crisis is not merely a crisis of energy but it is a crisis of food as well.  As ethanol production gets first priority of the feed corn crop, animal feed has skyrocketed, driving up the prices of the products of animals who feed on corn.  Not just pork, beef and chicken, but eggs, milk and cheese prices are forced into the stratosphere.  Corn for human consumption has been grown less to use the land for the more lucrative corn used for ethanol.  This has not only increased the cost of corn here domestically, but made it nearly impossible to export the grain as we have in the past, not only to foreign markets, but in assistance to starving peoples.
    Obama seems to misunderstand even the most basic, elementary school civics lessons about economics, specifically the law of supply and demand.  Put simply, the less availability there is of a product in demand, the higher the price will be.  Newt Gingrich is absolutely correct "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.
    When I started driving nearly 35 years ago, gas was around 30 cents per gallon.  When the first embargo hit under president Nixon it hovered somewhere around 50 cents.  It was only after Carter destroyed our relationship with Iran, that we saw the price of gas head north of $1.00 a gallon and indeed approached $1.75.  A large part of this was due to Jimmuh's ill conceived windfall profits tax, which the oil companies dutifully passed on in their pump prices as a business expense to be recouped.  It wasn't until Reagan deregulated the Oil industry that a more rational price of gasoline was obtained.  Now Obama wants to add another windfall profits tax to the oil industry.  What was that saying about someone who does the same thing expecting different results?
    Obama is quick to accuse John McCain of running for GWB's third term.  That's much more preferable to Obama running for Jimmy Carter's second.  Obama has already exhibited the same naive arrogance in his evaluation of foreign affairs, the failed Carter energy policy would be worse than the lack of energy policy that we have now.
hen

    We have been told ad nauseum that Senator Barak Obama is a new kind of politician, one who transcends race, party and all other traditions of politics.  We had Senator Joe Biden's patronizing remarks about Barak being clean, intelligent and articulate. We've heard about "The Audacity of Hope, and heard the great media power Oprah Winfrey proclaim the senator as the only politician she could consider working to elect.
    The truth, however, is much more elusive.  How many people remember the despicable and nearly criminal activities that helped him win a seat that he originally was viewed as having no chance of winning.  Mr. Obama was the beneficiary of one of the dirtiest tricks in the history of American politics when the Chicago-Herald Tribune went to court to open up the sealed divorce documents of Obama's Republican rival Jack Ryan.  Originally some of the documents the paper wanted were kept sealed due to the damage their release could be do to the Ryan children.  The paper, though, undaunted in its verve as a surrogate for Mr. Obama, judge-shopped until they were able to find a partisan judge who would grant them the records that were legitimately denied them previously.  The documents, which dealt with the sexual habits of Mr. Ryan were used to force him out of the race.  As the primary had already ocurred, the Republican Party was left without a candidate and Mr, Alan Keyes, from Maryland was recruited to carry the GOP banner.  Keyes slogged through the campaign labeled as a carpet bagger and lost to Obama by a substantial margin.
    While Obama was elected with a wide margin, the question still persists, can the beneficiary of the old Chicago democrat political machine win in a fair fight?  Any criticism is met with charges of "playing the race card" while the gaffes of the young senator are coming more and more frequently.  Obama's minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, confirmed what many feared about an institutional racism against whites.  Obama's refusal to dissociate himself from the pastor or the theology that guided him gives many legitimate pause to wonder if this "new kind of politician" has any thing to offer but besides tired, old recycled ideas of failures past.  What kind of Federal and Supreme Court justices is such a person likely to name?
    If we think of Obama as anything but the old style political hack, we do so at our own peril.  Yes, he is a much more presentable and articulate hack,but a hack just the same.  The candidates "bitter" remarks and his devotion to a theology and a pastor that are passionately hateful toward the majority of the citizens of this country should make us all consider whether this is someone who can govern judiciously over all of the people who live in this great country.  I think we would also be wise to question just how far is a man with such a world view and philosophy of our history willing to go to protect us and our allies in an ever more dangerous world.

    Let me look at the list right now.  I 'cling' to my religion.  I don't have a gun but want the right to own one if I choose.  I am against illegal immigration, although I think legal immigration is great. I don't necessarily have any antipathy towards people who aren't like me, in fact I believe that I have friends who are different in many ways.  I don't see it, but I guess that makes me bitter.
    Well, it may not be politically correct to do this, but the time has come when we have to really take a strong look at this Obama juggernaut that is engaging the imagination of the whole nation at this time.
    First, I think we have to get over the idea that noticing Obama is at least part African-American is not in itself a racist deed.  God made us with the gift of sight and discernment of color, so to notice the obvious should not be equated with a mortal sin.  In my opinion, the argument of whether he was authentically black, was one of the most preposterous issues of public discourse ever uttered by the likes of Al Sharpton.  Consider that Obama's African-American credentials, the son of an African father and an American mother, seem to be the best technical version of an African-American.  The fact that he was not raised in poverty and segregation does not change his lineage of DNA, although it may lead to some of his obvious misconceptions about the rest of the people in the nation he hopes to be the CEO of.
    A number of people have been criticized for making the statement that Barak Obama is getting the opportunity he has been afforded because he is black.  Receiving the modern day version of being ridden out of town on rail aside, it would seem that there is some amount of truth to the observation.  If we were to be honest with ourselves, we would realize that Obama has been absolved from the natural consequences of his political foibles in a way that others have been unable to avoid.  Sergernt Shriver never recovered from his blundered photo op in a Boston bar.  It was intended that he would 'have a beer with the boys', but when someone asked to buy him a drink he ordered "Cavasia with a splash", forever losing his connection with the common man..  Edmund Muskie lost his patience with the Machester Union-Leader newspaper and literally ended his career in tears on the papers' steps.  Michaels Dukakis never looked the same after wearing the tankers helmet while standing in the hatch of an Army tank.  Jimmy Carter never recovered from blaming the inept manner of the way he handled the office in his four years as president and blaming it on the 'malaise' of the American People.  The temptation among many liberals has been to set themselves apart from the mainstream, the bourgeois working class who serve only to provide the comforts that the elite class need in order to pontificate from on high.   
    If Obama were not black, do you think he would maintain his campaign through all of the "little" problems created by himself and those around him.  His wife who until now has never been proud to be an American, his pastor of two decades who preaches hatred of whites, his own view of his 'racist' grandmother who was uncomfortable with being approached by an unknown "black man" who expected money from her at a bus stop.  Wouldn't there be some concern that he had lied to cover up the liberal views he held in the Illinois state senate.  And what about his current formation of an advising group on religious issues that he promises will not change his mind of the ultimate moral issue of our age, partial birth abortion.  As the first 'serious' African-American candidate for the presidency, he has survived many crises that would have crippled if not ended the candidacy of previous candidates in the 232 year history of the republic.
    Now ,though, we have another matter to consider, the supposedly 'private' thought expressed by the candidate openly among those gathered in San Francisco to attend a fund raiser for the Obama campaign.  Barak's comments had the condescending tone of of a classic elitist dismissing the value of those who do not offer their full support and loyalty.  The preference for another candidate  requires that they are "bitter" nad clinging to our religion, our constitutional rights, and our desire for secure borders as the consequence of being frustrated that we are not well endowed as the elitists who largely fund his campaign.
    The elections of 2000 and 2004 were elected by the smallest of margins, and all the signs show that the same is likely to happen in 2008.  This means that roughly half of the citizens of this country will oppose the person who wins the election.  I would be lying if I said that the election of a condescending, urbanite, liberal did not scare me.  As president of all of the United States, even the red ones, can we really expect that he won't govern in a way that affirms his own deep seated prejudices.