30 November 2004 @ 4:30PM >> Since posting The IRS Chain Gang, a number of readers have written about the FairTax initiative.

Simply put, FairTax is a consumption tax. That means you are taxed on what you spend, not what you earn. You can think of it as a sales tax. Such a tax would encourage savings and would not penalize productivity and economic output the way the income tax does.

One of the main complaints about consumption taxes is that they hurt poor people disproportionately. The FairTax accounts for this as well; there is no tax on spending up to the poverty level. That’s implemented by a refund check—sent out in advance each month—to every family. So, before anybody would pay any tax, they would have the money in hand to offset the amount of taxes that would be incurred on poverty level spending.

Congressman John Linder of Georgia is the sponsor of FairTax in the House. He gives a brief explanation FairTax on his website. (Note: Video will begin playing automatically when accessing this page.)

25 November 2004 @ 12:41AM >> On OpinionJournal.com, the editorial website of The Wall Street Journal, Bridget Johnson has a piece entitled “Look Who Isn’t Talking: A filmmaker is murdered, and Hollywood loudmouths say nothing” that discusses the film industry’s silence in the wake of the murder of documentarian Theo van Gogh:

One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding à la Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we’ve heard nary a peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears” changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.

I found myself nodding in agreement, and that was before I saw that the article contained a brief mention of Brainwashing 101.

24 November 2004 @ 2:57PM >> If you want to know the demographic changes that worked to President Bush’s advantage in the election, look no further:

In this month’s election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation’s 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them “exurban” communities that are rapidly transforming farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan areas.

Together, these fast-growing communities provided Bush a punishing 1.72 million vote advantage over Democrat John F. Kerry, according to a Times analysis of election results. That was almost half the president’s total margin of victory.

23 November 2004 @ 5:42PM >> Frank Chu’s brand of genius is rare, but it isn’t unparalleled. Meet Gene Ray [4.2MB download, Windows Media file], the gentleman behind Time Cube.

23 November 2004 @ 5:35PM >> British authorities have apparently thwarted a September 11th-style attack against multiple targets in and around London. Just another reminder that the threat still exists.

Update: The Independent (London) is reporting that the claims of a blocked al Qaeda attack have been “discredited.”

23 November 2004 >> What if, instead of paying taxes in money, the government forced you to work on a chain gang in order to pay taxes? If you have to work until 5PM every day, but everyone else gets to go home at noon, would that be fair? More >>

22 November 2004 @ 4:38PM >> The New York Sun reports: “President Clinton’s new $165 million library here was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week.”

Let’s see how long it takes Michael Moore to denounce President Clinton’s ties to the Saudi Royal Family.

21 November 2004 @ 8:01PM >> Although part of me has been relishing the crack-up of the political left, in the long-run, the American eagle can’t fly straight with one ideological wing so badly damaged. A viable opposition is a necessary check against the excesses of the majority.

During the many decades when the Democratic Party controlled the House of Representatives, the party apparatus became increasingly corrupt and out-of-touch with the electorate. Their power was solidified by gerrymandering, a practice that is no less abhorrent now that the Republicans are the ones doing it.

Ultimately, Democratic control of the House was done in by scandals like trading stamps for money at the House Post Office or floating bad checks at the House Bank. Having unchallenged power leads people to do stupid things, and those stupid things led to the sweeping Republican tide in the 1994 elections, a rout so bad that the Speaker of the House couldn’t even win re-election in his home district.

It’s been ten years since the Democrats lost control of the House, and the Republicans should remember what put them in power in the first place. In the New York Post, John Podhoretz raps the Republican leaders in the House and warns them of the dangers of their own arrogance; they would be wise to heed his message.

19 November 2004 @ 4:37PM >> With the world’s media poised to hype every American battlefield misstep at Abu Ghraib proportions, I was relieved to read this rather sensible piece at Slate, which isn’t exactly thought of as a bastion of neoconservatism. It discusses the recent killing—caught on camera—of a wounded insurgent who was playing dead inside a mosque.

Iraqis wearing National Guard uniforms had ambushed [the U.S. Marines], killing one of their own. Another Marine had been killed when an explosive detonated under an insurgent corpse. Several insurgents had continued desperate fights notwithstanding gruesome wounds. Others tried to exploit the civil-military moral gap, acting as soldiers at 500 meters and as civilians when the Marines closed in. The Iraqis in the mosque may have been immobile, but to the Marines, they posed a threat.

Further, the Marines were fighting in an enemy city with little uncontested territory. There were no “friendly lines” behind which they could rest. The Marine in question had been wounded already. He was no doubt exhausted by five days of continuous fighting by the time he risked his life and burst into the mosque on Saturday. A well-rested man would have faced a dilemma inside, filled with shades of gray. A sleep-deprived man weary from days of combat saw only a binary choice: shoot or don’t shoot, life or death.

[...]

So context is crucial when judging actions under fire. The very job of a rifleman is to close with and destroy his enemy—in essence, to kill the bad guy before he can kill you. But what separates the Marines from the rabble is their professional discipline—what a Harvard political scientist called the “management of violence” in describing the U.S. military. And so, this incident stands out for two reasons. First, it shows a breach of discipline, albeit under very stressful circumstances. But it also shows the extent to which the U.S. military will throw the book at one of its own. Already, the entire 1st Marine Division staff is involved with the case, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that “[I]t’s being investigated, and justice will be done.”

On the same day as this story, the tragic news broke that CARE International worker Margaret Hassan had been executed by her captors in Iraq. Already, there have been cries of moral equivalence. One Iraqi told the Los Angeles Times: “It goes to show that [Marines] are not any better than the so-called terrorists.” Al Jazeera fanned these flames of anti-American sentiment by broadcasting the shooting incident in full while censoring Hassan’s execution snuff tape. (U.S. networks refused to air actual footage of both killings.) There is a simplistic appeal to such arguments because both events involve the killing of a human being and, more specifically, the apparent execution of a noncombatant in the context of war.

[...]

By contrast, the Marines entered a building in Fallujah and found several men who, until moments before, had been enemy insurgents engaged in mortal combat. A hidden grenade would have changed everything, and the Marine would have been lauded. As it turned out, the Iraqi was entitled to mercy, but Hassan was truly innocent. There is no legitimate moral equivalence between a soldier asking for quarter and a noncombatant like Hassan.

There is another key difference that reveals a great moral divide between the Marines and insurgents they fought this week in Fallujah. The insurgents choose the killing of innocents as their modus operandi and glorify these killings with videos distributed via the Internet and Al Jazeera. They recognize no civilized norms of conduct, let alone the rules of warfare. The Marines, on the other hand, distinguish themselves by killing innocents so rarely and only by exception or mistake.

If people can’t recognize the difference between us and the Islamo-fascists who take perverse pleasure in severing the heads of live humans, then we might as well just lay down our arms now, hand over the reins of our government to al Qaeda, and throw open our borders the way Europe has. If it’s all the same, then why bother fighting at all? Why should we defend Western society against those who’d like to destroy it altogether? There’s no difference, right?

18 November 2004 @ 10:24PM >> I will be on the Michael Medved radio show tomorrow afternoon (Friday, 19 November) at between 4PM and 5PM eastern time. We will be discussing Brainwashing 101 and political correctness in higher education.

Although the show is carried from coast to coast, Michael Medved’s website unfortunately does not list the affiliates. I do not know which stations carry the show, but you can listen in online, via KRLA in Los Angeles.

12 November 2004 @ 3:55PM >> Every so often, I receive the following e-mail, which explains quite vividly the mechanics of tax cuts. Class warriors often complain that across-the-board tax cuts benefit the wealthy disproportionately, but the complainers obviously don’t understand how percentages work:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they pay their bill the way we currently pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
• The fifth would pay $1.
• The sixth would pay $3.
• The seventh: $7.
• The eighth: $12.
• The ninth: $18.
• The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20.”

So, now dinner for ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we currently pay our taxes.

So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share”?

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to eat their meal.

So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

• The fifth man, like the first four now paid nothing (100% savings).
• The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
• The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
• The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
• The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
• The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.

10 November 2004 @ 6:44PM >> A debate is raging in the conservative community about Arlen Specter, the liberal Republican senator from Pennsylvania who is slated by seniority rules to become the next Senate Judiciary Chairman.

Some people worry that Senator Specter would block President Bush’s court nominees that take a strict constructionist view of the Constitution. If that’s the case, then having Specter be the committee’s gatekeeper would be little better than having a liberal Democrat. Recently, I received this e-mail from Douglas Urbanski, who told of a meeting he once had with the senator:

Arlen Specter personally told me that the number one thing he regretted was his questioning of Anita Hill and his vigorous support of Clarence Thomas. Let me repeat: Specter made it clear that he did not think much of Thomas, and, in our chat Specter did his best to distance himself from these events. For what it is worth, Specter also elaborated that he thought President Reagan was too fanatically conservative and regretted much of his support for President Reagan.

Specter thinks Ronald Reagan is a fanatical conservative? Draw your own conclusions.

10 November 2004 @ 3:39PM >> This video is sure to make some people mad. Others, it will make laugh. Which category will you fall into?

7 November 2004 @ 10:10PM >> Despite the wake-up call of September 11th, there are many Americans and Europeans who delude themselves into believing that the threat posed by radical Islam is fleeting, and that normalcy is just around the corner. If we can only sit down with terrorists, the placaters believe, they will see that we are good people and they will leave us alone. How many more wake-up calls does the West need?

The Dutch government yesterday vowed tough measures against what a leading politician called “the arrival of jihad in the Netherlands” after a death threat to a Dutch lawmaker was found spiked with a knife to the body of a slain filmmaker by his radical Muslim attacker.

6 November 2004 @ 6:37AM >>

1. Not understanding the significance of September 11th.
2. Parading around like unhinged lunatics doesn’t exactly attract people to your cause.
3. “But when Kerry surrounded himself with Whoopi Goldberg and Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen and Michael Moore, many voters concluded ‘well, this guy must be a real liberal.‘”

5 November 2004 @ 9:58PM >> This post previously reported a 5% difference between President Bush and John Kerry in the popular vote totals. That was when 91% of the voting precincts were in.

Now, Yahoo has updated its totals to reflect 99% of the precincts, and the margin has returned to 51% versus 48%.

Meanwhile, New Mexico and Iowa have finally been called for Bush; the ending electoral vote count is 286 to 252.

5 November 2004 @ 7:37PM >> This is the eventual result of weakness in the face of a relentless enemy:

Two leading Dutch politicians known for their critical views of Islam have been taken to safe houses by police after death threats were made against them following the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Van Gogh, the great-great grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh, was shot and stabbed in a “ritual killing” in broad daylight in an Amsterdam street on Tuesday, with his throat slit with a butchers knife, and a five-page letter stabbed to his chest with another knife.

It was the second murder of a public figure critical of Islam in the Netherlands, two-years after the anti-immigration populist Pym Fortuyn was shot by a left-wing activist.

We have a choice: we can continue our own assault against radical Islam, or we can bow down before the public opinion of certain European nations. If we ever choose the latter, our weakness will be seized upon as an opportunity by those who wish to exploit it.

America chose wisely in this election. Let’s hope we continue to do so in the future.

4 November 2004 @ 2:46PM >> For a real eye-opener about the political makeup of the United States, check out this county-by-county vote map published by USA Today.

Although a few counties remain to be counted (only those counties where 100% of the precincts have reported totals were included in the map), counties won by President Bush currently comprise 3.28 million square miles of land. Kerry’s counties constitute 741,000 square miles.

In other words, measuring by land, President Bush carried 82% of the country, while John Kerry took 18%.

4 November 2004 @ 3:05AM >> Now that it’s clear President Bush will serve another four years, I hope he can manage to do something that eluded President Reagan. I’m looking for real, systemic tax reform: something along the lines of a flat tax, a national sales tax, or a VAT tax to replace the current income tax. If President Bush fails to significantly overhaul the existing tax code—including abolishing the Internal Revenue Service—it will represent one of the greatest missed opportunities of his presidency. Reagan had an unsympathetic legislature; Bush does not. I hope he won’t be afraid to be bold on taxes. Let’s get the discussion started.

3 November 2004 @ 1:04AM >> Blogging from the CN8 Green Room in Philadelphia: it looks like I’ll be on a panel sometime around 9:45PM and then once more before 11:00PM. There are a lot of panelists, so I don’t think any one of us will get much airtime. Still quite fun, though, to be sitting around with so many other political junkies in the studio.

2 November 2004 @ 3:40PM >> While I was waiting on line to vote this morning, there was a great commotion, and I turned around to notice dozens of news cameras, several police, and a horde of people surrounding a man wearing sunglasses. It turns out that P. Diddy a.k.a. Puff Daddy a.k.a. Sean “Puffy” Combs votes at the same polling place that I do.

2 November 2004 @ 3:30AM >> If you have Comcast cable and you live in the northeast, you’ll be able to see me on CN8 (Comcast News, Channel 8) tomorrow night as one of analysts discussing the election.

To clarify my earlier post, Lynn Doyle will be hosting the election coverage, but the show It’s Your Call with Lynn Doyle will be pre-empted by that coverage.

I’ll be on an in-studio panel, and there will also be a number of reporters in the field and in other studios contributing from around the country. My panel will cut in periodically; our first appearance will occur sometime after 8PM, and possibly not until around 9:30PM. I’m not exactly sure how late our panel will be there, but—regardless of the results—I think we will be done by 11PM, midnight at the latest.