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Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Herman Cain :: Townhall.com Columnist
April's Fools: One Born Every Minute
by Herman Cain
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


Consider Lewis' statement in context of the liberal majority's overall agenda. Their agenda and accompanying rhetoric include nothing about increasing economic freedom and protecting the homeland from Islamic terrorists. Instead, they want to manipulate the tax code to shake down law-abiding Americans for every last penny. They want U.S. troops to fail in their missions across the globe. That's all.

Have you heard one mention of restructuring or reforming Social Security and Medicare or ensuring the continued economic prosperity the majority of Americans currently enjoy? You have not and you will not. The liberal mission is just the opposite, as judged by their words and their votes. It is not an exaggeration to argue that they only want to raise taxes, lose the war and distract the White House with never ending investigations.

If all the liberals wanted from us was more taxpayer money to spend on pork projects and entitlement programs, history shows that the best way to raise federal revenue is to cut or eliminate the taxes we pay. Surely there are some smart liberals in Congress who know that federal coffers swell when tax rates are lowered. But the liberals are not interested in just taking our money.

They want to mug us first and then break our kneecaps for good measure. The problem is that these pirates of Pennsylvania Avenue want both our money and our economic freedom. Their political ideology cannot survive in power for the long term if the American people have resources to challenge their tyrannical grip on our lives.

Some of us devote a lot of time pointing out the lies and deception, and explaining the foolishness of liberal policies. But too many people don't get it or even want to get it, and that's just fine with the leaders of liberal destruction.

That way, there are more April fools all year long.

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About The Author

Herman Cain is the National Chairman of the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute. He is the former president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc., and currently is CEO and president of T.H.E. New Voice, Inc., a business and leadership consulting company.

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The Fair Tax changes glad to happy
I am a supporter of the Fair Tax and signed up early. But I’m also a realist and this is merely changing the word glad to happy. Actually our problem isn’t so much how we raise taxes, but rather how much we spend and what we spend it on. I suspect that we’d accomplish far more by demanding an 80% cost reduction in giver-ment to Constitutional levels. If your taxes fell 80% you’d probably not be as concerned about how it is raised.

The good news is that the Fair Tax would provide possibly three years of no filing for at least a third of income earners. However, it will not solve the stated objective because it avoids the problem, to much spending and the need for DC crooks to give tax favors to contributors and targeted voters.

Once we ignore principle that the man who makes his money should not be enslaved by another to spend it, any tax code is doomed. Unfortunately the Fair Tax continues this practice with the monthly rebate check. Therefore the code remains a major tool that gives power to our DC masters. For example Pelosi recently giving $25M to a spinach farmer in her district as part of the bill to finance the Iraq war. Without that power, Pelosi will not get huge campaign contributions from the spinach farmer. Reminds me of the WSJ front page article in the 80’s about a widow farmer who gave $60K annually to Senator Ethanol (Bob Dole). When asked why she did this she jokingly replied, I thought it was required to be a farmer. I remember back in the late 60’s when Ross Perot had a similar provision on a bill that oddly gave him $25M. I guess $25M is still the going rate in DC.

So why won’t the Fair Tax permanently change our tax structure, well because it doesn’t change our form of political power vested in the tax code.

So what will happen. Well the Fair Tax starts out with the the filing by one half the earners to get a monthly check back for their sales tax payments. Of course the real problem is not that they need a sales tax credit, the problem is that the sales tax is too high and needs to be reduced. So another Fair Tax problem is that these rebated filers will continue their perverse incentive to vote for bigger sales taxes and more entitlements. Better they pay their full share and vote to get their pain reduced by lowering the sales tax for everyone.

Also, won’t Pelosi want campaign funds from the spinach guy for her next election? Most certainly, so he will also be allowed to file a return for a credit. And won’t Senator Ethanol’s (Bob Dole now retired) constituents still want their tax entitlements. Most certainly so they will have to file. And won’t your local politician want campaign funds for his campaign, naturally so he will have a provision so his supporters can file and get their monthly check. And won’t homeowners, folks with children, the blind, the handicapped, on and on want their special considerations, why of course so they will also file for their monthly exemption check. And within 3 years or so the sales tax will be 38-45% and everybody will be filing taxes again to get their exemptions and the code will be trillions of pages and DC will have its power fully vested again via the new tax code, except now it is done via monthly exemption checks rather than an annual tax refund check.

As Planting Ground quoted Jefferson, the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, and that sadly has always been the solution since the beginning of mankind and will always be the solution. In short you can't negotiate with a criminal not to legally steal your money. As Bastiat said, foreign giver-ments our not our greatest threat but rather our own giver-ment. Jefferson and the founders, giving us the second amendment, understood this issue. Jefferson was asked how long before the tree of liberty would need to be watered and he speculated 25 years. Well it went about 100 years, and the liberty fighters unfortunately lost the civil war, so here we are, all now enslaved and our only relief being that our masters may let us change the word glad to happy.

Crash, Revolution and Tax Replacement
Wow! All these posts were so good I probably don't need to put in my two cents, but I just had to express my concurrence with several of the viewpoints.

Economic crash - we are definitely on the verge. When I watch the "economic" reports on Fox News I wonder how these "economists" ever got their degrees. Most of them live in some netherworld far removed from my day-to-day existence. Things are going great because so many people bought big-screen TVs to watch the Super Bowl. How vapid is that. It wasn't like they all went out and paid cash on the barrelhead for them, or that they will even keep or get to keep them once the game is over. If this is what our economists base our booming economy on, I'm in real fear for my livelihood and my bank account.

Revolution - Yes, it is time again for a revolutionary war. It won't be a civil war because it will be the population versus the government. If something isn't done in a hurry, we will be socialist and, if we know what's good for us and our families, we will love every minute of it.

All we can hope is that the Democrats, who assume they have a "mandate" from the American people and are vociferous in pursuing what they think that mandate is, will end up shooting themselves in the foot and lose the next round of elections handily. But then are the Republicans any better at the moment? Most of them, not that I can see. Big question: How do we know who to vote for these days?

And then there are the people I speak with who don't want to discuss anything political. I don't do politics, they tell me. I tell them they better start because a lot is happening they need to get involved in. They say they don't want to become angry like me. They tell me they have too much on their plates to add another thing. A friend of mine is a single mother. She works three part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. With that and trying to be a mother to her children, she hasn't any time left for civic involvement. I'm looking out for her.

FairTax - Yes! Yes! Yes! My husband and I have been members of FairTax for many years now and I volunteered in their Houston offices before they changed locations. I discovered them one year after being totally frustrated with my taxes (which take me hours to do and I can't afford to pay anyone else to do them). I felt there had to be a better way and did an internet search for tax reform. They popped up, we joined.

While I've been hearing a lot of good things that are happening on the FairTax side, articles such as this one (there are many more out there) leave me very discouraged and fearful. It seems the "teeth" are back in the IRS and no one is safe.

We own two small businesses. It seems we are more than ever in the crosshairs of the IRS just because we choose to make it on our own. We already are "downsizing" even though we never got a chance to upsize. Due to our current tax system, we cannot afford to hire employees and do everything that needs doing ourselves. It's not a life, it's an existence - and all the fault of our current method of collecting federal revenue. Going after the little guy, who does not have the big bucks to defend himself in a court of law, sounds a lot to me like a Hitler-Stalin-Lenin-Mussolini-Castro-Chavez, etc., etc., etc., tactic. This was never meant to happen in America. THIS IS JUST WRONG!!!!
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