Category Archives: Tax Revolt

The day after…

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UPDATE: Tea Party wins big in Colorado.

Yesterday was Election Day in a number of states. A huge tax increase in neighboring Kansas City—$800M for supposed medical research with no oversight, lost in a 5 to 1 verdict or 84% against. The tax supporters spent over $2M dollars unsuccessfully for another case of corporate and union welfare.

(Update) In Colorado, liberals proposed a massive, $950 million tax hike that was earmarked specifically to increase education spending. It lost by a 66% to 34% margin only receiving half the votes in liberal Denver and Boulder.

Teacher unions spent $4 million promoting the measure, outspending opponents by at least ten-to-one. 

But the model crashed on takeoff tonight. Coloradans didn’t just defeat Amendment 66, they repudiated it by a vote of 66 percent to 34. With almost all the results in, the tax hike was only winning half the votes in liberal Denver and Boulder Counties.

The Centennial State may have tilted left in recent years, but tonight’s results suggest there’s a solid counterrevolution against the liberal direction state government has taken. Two Democratic state senators, including the senate president, were recalled in September after voting for gun restrictions. Now the state’s tax-and-spend constituencies have been given a huge black eye by voters who clearly rejected the idea that education could be improved by pouring more money into the existing system. — The National Review.

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Democrats won the governorships In Virginia and New Jersey,. What? Christie ran as a ‘Pub? So? I stand by my statement. Christie ran up a large margin in the election with the active assistance of the ‘Pub establishment and democrats. Therefore, if it quacks like a democrat, waddles like a democrat, it is a democrat.

In Virginia, McAuliffe won by a squeaker. For him to win, he had help from the GOP establishment in the state—‘Pubs who campaigned for McAuliffe, assistance from Karl Rove and the national ‘Pub establishment, and by democrat collusion with the Libertarian party who ran an Obama supporter and political bundler on the Libertarian ticket to siphon conservative votes away from Cuccinelli. McAuliffe’s double-digit poll margin shrank to less than 3% once the votes were counted.

Cuccinelli had to battle the democrats, democrats running as libertarians and his own party. With all that opposition, he lost by a slim margin. Some pundits declared that if Cuccinelli has a few more days, as the news about Obamacare reached more VA voters, he could have won. McAuliffe ran on his support for Obamacare. Cuccinelli ran against it.

The GOP Declares War On Obamacare Conservatives

By: streiff (Diary)  |  November 5th, 2013 at 10:30 AM

GOP-Tea-PartySince the this summer a low level civil war has been simmering within the GOP between conservatives who have grown tired of the lack of desire on the part of the Establishment to resist the radical statism that has epitomized the regime of Barack Obama and the Establishment that seems more than happy to go along with Obama so long as they are kept in champagne and caviar. Many solid conservatives have insisted that the division is overblown and that a big tent is necessary to win elections.

To anyone remaining that thinks a reasonable accommodation may be made with the GOP Establishment, today’s op-ed by Michael Gerson (The GOP’s new reality) should serve as a wake up call. In fact, it is apparent from Gerson’s op-ed that the Establishment views conservatives, not the Democrats, as the existential threat to their place at the trough.

Following the recent tea party Tet Offensive — tactically disastrous but symbolically important — the Republican establishment has commenced counterinsurgency operations. Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — both facing primary challenges from the right — are responding more forcefully to their populist opponents. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut ties with a Republican advertising firm employed by tea party challengers. “We’re not going to do business,” says a spokesman, “with people who profit off of attacking Republicans. Purity for profit is a disease that threatens the Republican Party.”

This vivid turn of phrase — “purity for profit” — captures the main reason Republican leaders are edging away from a strategy of accommodation. The Obama era has unleashed a great deal of genuine populist and libertarian energy. But a good portion of it is being channeled into business and fundraising models that depend on stoking resentment against the GOP itself (at least as currently constituted).

The result is a paradox. Over the past few decades, Republican members of Congress have become more reliably conservative (as their Democratic colleagues, to a lesser extent, have become more liberal). Liberal Republicanism has essentially ceased to exist. This means that tea party conservatives are revolting against a more uniformly conservative party. The RINOs they hunt are actually an endangered species. So they have transformed tactical disagreements — over, say, a hopeless attempt to defund Obamacare — into defining ideological struggles.

I’m going to pause here to address some of the strawmen Gerson has immolated.

First, the disagreement over the government shutdown was only a disagreement over tactics in the shallowest sense. I wrote about that in The Budget Showdown Was About Ideology Not About Tactics.

The disagreement was between those of us who see really clearly that the objective of Obamacare is the implementation of a single payer healthcare system after trashing one-sixth of the US economy and those who agree with what Obama is trying to do but prefer to do it more efficiently and maintain the artifice of a market based economy. Remember, it was the Establishment making the rounds of Sunday shows deriding those who were fighting as “whacko birds” and doubting whether they were Republicans. They were too busy to fight Obama but they had plenty of time to fight conservatives. They had plenty of time to send out fundraising letters based on the three dozen or so staged Potemkin votes they’d made to repeal Obamacare, but when push came to shove, when it became, as we Southerners call it, nut cutting time, they were nowhere to be seen.

The column continues and you can read it here. The column ends with these last two paragraphs.

There is exactly zero evidence today that the GOP exists to win elections.

To the contrary all the evidence indicates that it exists to perpetuate the perks and power of the party leadership and to provide sinecures for a coterie of pathetic losers like former NRSC director Rob Jesmer. They aren’t trying to win elections, they are selecting their buddies to become members of their country club and if their buddy loses the primary they are more than willing to help the Democrats win the general election. As Erick posted in The Hungry and the Well Fed,  they play us for chumps asking for money and assuring us that they will fight like the very devil himself… after the next election… and provided the right guy wins.

That last paragraph says it all.

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Trends and Portents

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Mark Levin’s book, The Liberty Amendments, has triggered a lot of discussion on the state of the nation, the Constitution and the constant violation of the Constitution by the federal government. Just scanning national opinion pieces this morning led to these headlines. One is a piece on the state of the government, another is on national trends and polls, still another proposes the country is in a pre-revolutionary state.

What Has Mark Levin Wrought?

By James V Capua, August 18, 2013

In The Liberty Amendments Mark Levin has delivered more than advertised. He promises a credible agenda for reinvigorating constitutional government based on an approach to the amendment process which avoids the liabilities of better known options.

Continued here…

Obama Flouts the Law

By Clarice Feldman, August 18, 2013

From his first presidential campaign to the present, the president, his party and his administration have openly flouted existing laws, and it doesn’t seem there is any legal means of stopping him short of impeachment.

Continued here…

America’s Tyranny Threshold

By Eileen F. Toplansky, August 19, 2013

As he finishes up his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, Barack Obama would be well-served to recall the fiery words of Jonathan Mayhew, who is famous for his sermons “espousing American rights — the cause of liberty, and the right and duty to resist tyranny.”

Continued here…

And finally, this one. Its subject is one few want to discuss all the while its one that is being discussed more every day.  Is a second American Revolution on the horizon?

Time for a New American Revolution?

By Richard Winchester, August 19, 2013

The United States of America was born in revolution. The Declaration of Independence asserted that people have a right of revolution. According to The Declaration, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [such as “life,” “liberty,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and “the consent of the governed”], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The Declaration acknowledged that people should not, and will not, seek to overturn “long-established” governments “for light and transient reasons.” After “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” however, which are clearly aimed at establishing “absolute Despotism,” people have not only the “right,” but the “duty,” to “throw off such Government, and provide new guards for their future security.”

The U.S. has not experienced a successful revolution since the one between 1775 and 1783, despite Thomas Jefferson’s hope that “[t]he tree of liberty should be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Some think it’s time for a new American revolution. Moreover, many of the preconditions for a revolt exist.

Continued here…

One of Levin’s common quotes is that we are living in a post-Constitutional era. In other words, government, at least at the federal level, Congressmen and the Supreme Court no longer follow the constraints of the Constitution. The Obamacare decision forced by Chief Justice Roberts is a prime example of that latter segment of government. There was NO Constitutional basis for his decision. But, with his vote, he joined the liberal Justices and overrode the strenuous objections of the remaining Justices. Roberts followed the liberal diktat that the Constitution is whatever the Court says it is.

That is a lie. Few, however, were reluctant to stand up and say so.

Perhaps one of the best statements of the condition of our government and the accelerating discussion of revolution, is this article by In her article she cites the acts of Obama and the democrats in government that supports Levin’s premise that we no longer have a governing Constitution.

Today’s post as turned into a long one. I’ll close with this from Betsy McCaughey.

King Obama vs. Rule of Law

By on 8.14.13 @ 6:08AM

Have we ever seen such presidential contempt for constitutional principles and our nation’s history?

At an August 9 press conference, President Barack Obama said that when Congress won’t agree to what he wants, he will act alone. That statement, which he has made before, should send shivers through freedom-loving Americans.

The President was asked where he gets the authority to delay the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, even though the law states that the mandate “shall” go into effect January 1, 2014. The Obama administration had announced the delay on July 3, without seeking Congress’s help in changing the law.

In response, Obama said that “in a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law… so let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do.” 

But Obama explained that he took a different route because Republicans control the House of Representatives and ardently oppose Obamacare.

Obama’s statement reveals how disconnected this president is from this nation’s history and constitutional principles. Divided government is the norm in the United States. Most modern presidents have had to govern with an uncooperative Congress or at least one house of Congress controlled by the other major party. With the exception of Richard Nixon, these presidents — from Eisenhower, to Reagan, to Clinton, and both Bushes — have not tried to exempt themselves from the Constitution.

Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution commands the president to faithfully execute the law.

Courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. President Obama can’t pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. 
 

The framers duplicated the safeguards their English ancestors had fought hard to win against tyrannical monarchs. Most important, the English Bill of Rights of 1689 barred an executive from suspending the law. 

The tug and pull between the president and an uncooperative Congress is what the framers intended. It’s checks and balances in action. Obama has no patience for this constitutional system. In June 2012, the President announced that he would stop enforcing parts of the nation’s immigration laws, because “We can’t wait” for Congress to offer relief to young illegal immigrants brought into the country by their parents.

Now the President is rewriting the Affordable Care Act. Delaying the employer mandate is not a mere “tweak.” Because individuals will be required to have insurance as of January 1, 2014 or pay a penalty, some ten million currently uninsured or underinsured workers who would have gotten coverage at work under the employer mandate will now have to pay the penalty or go to the exchanges. That means more people enrolling on the exchanges, more dependence on government and a bigger bill for taxpayers. It’s not the law that Congress enacted.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has urged Congress to vote against any continuing resolution to fund the federal government after September 30, as long as it funds this distorted version of Obamacare.

“Laws are supposed to be made by Congress, not… (by) the president,” Lee explained. If the administration is not prepared to fully enforce Obamacare as enacted, including the employer mandate, it should agree to delay the entire law and remove its funding from the budget.

Sadly most members of Congress are too busy looking out for themselves to stop the president from chipping away at the Constitution. Last week Republicans and Democrats conspired with the president to weasel out of Sect. 1312 of Obamacare, which requires members of Congress to get health coverage on the newly created exchanges. Congress was happy to let the President unconstitutionally give them a special taxpayer funded subsidy that no one else in America earning $174,000 would get.

Such self-dealing brings to mind what Benjamin Franklin warned about, as he and his fellow framers finished writing the Constitution. It’s a republic, said Franklin, “if you can keep it.”

If Congress refuses to use its power to restrain the Executive branch, we then reside in a dictatorship. No one with the ability to enforce constraints is willing to do so and thus participate in the dictatorship.

 

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Call-in Campaign to Override Nixon’s Vetos

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This post is a continuation from yesterday and last week. It should rightly be titled, Lead by the Unwilling and the Fearful, Part II.

After yesterday’s post, I continued to have an exchange with a Jeff City staffer. He provided some additional information why Tim Jones, Speaker of the Missouri House, is unlikely to bring the tax cut veto override to the floor—the pols in Jeff City claim they are receiving no or very few calls in support of the veto override!

Him: Mike, if you ever go hunting, you know there are two basic rules on target selection:

1.) Make sure you have a clean line of sight;
2.) Don’t hunt what you can’t kill–make sure you have enough ammo to take down your target.

Right now, there isn’t enough ammo. And the bad part is (and I speak from experience because I work in the Capitol) is that 95% of the offices are getting ZERO calls from constituents and only a few emails on the subject. The reps aren’t changing their positions because they’re not getting any contact telling them to.

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Right now, the only voices on the issue are the people who want to keep the status quo. I can tell you for a fact that Jones wants to get this done, but he also knows that he needs the members onboard. If he pushes the vote, he makes reps take a vote that is potentially dangerous in a political sense, and he knows that it will fail. That doesn’t help out the conservative agenda in any way–it’s seppuku without any reason. Do you think it helps out the conservative agenda to have that vote fail AND have it be partially or fully responsible for Democrats regaining 5 or 10 seats?

I can understand his and his boss’s position, although I vehemently oppose it. He’s a staffer for a Rep on the eastern side of the state. That eastern district abounds democrat controlled districts and his district is likely to have the conservative majorities we on the western side of Missouri possess.

But, even if we do lose five to ten house seats, we’ll still have a majority. Our majority in the House is more than a handful of seats. Of course, his boss is concerned about losing HIS seat. That can be a motivator but it does speak volumes about his political courage. His override vote could be turned around to get support from voters, not lose support.

But again, I say they are taking counsel of their fears. Instead of being afraid of democrats, they should be in fear of their ‘Pub constituents.

According to the staffer above, he made the rounds of some ‘Pub Reps and they say they’ve received few calls, 5 at most, In support of the veto overrides. Many have received no override calls through the summer. You can bet your house they are getting calls and visits from the dems, union reps, and teacher’s union official AGAINST the override.

If you, like me, want Nixon’s vetos overridden, call your Representative and Senator. If you can, visit them in support of the veto overrides. In addition, attend the rallies planned for 9:00AM and 12:00 noon on September 11, 2013 in Jeff City. The first rally is to support the override of HB436, The 2nd Amendment Preservation Act. That rally is followed at noon by the rally to override Nixon’s veto of the tax cut bill.

If you can’t attend because it is a work day and you can’t get off, CALL your representatives! Write them in support of the veto overrides—snail mail. E-mails seem to be ignored so personal communications is extremely important.

If you don’t know the phone number of your Representative, here is a link to the House website that contains the Representative’s contact numbers.

http://www.house.mo.gov/member.aspx

Call! Now! Be counted and force those cowardly Reps to be YOUR representatives. Make them understand their longevity in Jeff City is dependent on them obeying YOU, not the dems and their union sycophants.

And when you have finished calling, hangup and hand the phone to your spouse and have them call. Include your voting age children—have them call as well. The more calls, the greater the pressure on those waffling ‘Pubs to do the right thing.

It’s up to us.

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Refugees

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When the going gets rough, those who can, vote with their feet.  There have been two such instances in the new this week. French actor Gerard Dépardieu has taken residence just across the French border in Belgium. The French Prime Minister is upset.

France’s Jean-Marc Ayrault slams flight of the ‘greedy rich’

France’s prime minister has slammed wealthy citizens fleeing the country’s punitive tax on high incomes as greedy profiteers seeking to “become even richer”.

By Henry Samuel, Paris, 7:08PM GMT 11 Dec 2012

Jean-Marc Ayrault’s outburst came after France’s best-known actor, Gerard Dépardieu, took up legal residence in a small village just over the border in Belgium, alongside hundreds of other wealthy French nationals seeking lower taxes.

“Those who are seeking exile abroad are not those who are scared of becoming poor,” the prime minister declared after unveiling sweeping anti-poverty measures to help those hit by the economic crisis.

They are also leaving the UK whose government has been steady raising taxes over several years. The UK, until recently, had one of the highest overall tax rates in the EU.

Singer James Blunt plans to become Swiss

By Allan Hall, PUBLISHED: 08:42 EST, 11 December 2012 | UPDATED: 10:57 EST, 11 December 2012

British singer James Blunt has said he wants to become a Swiss citizen after living in the tax-friendly country for the past five years.

‘As soon as the authorities will let me, because I don’t know if I’ve been here a sufficiently long time, I would like to become Swiss,’ he told a Swiss newspaper at the weekend.

‘Verbier is my home,’ said the 38-year-old multi-millionaire, who bought a chalet in the ski resort in 2005.

It makes you wonder how soon we will see Americans adopting this practice to escape taxes in the US? There aren’t all that many places non-Billionaires can go. Switzerland has strict requirements for citizenship. Belgium isn’t all that much better than the rest of the EU, if at all. Americans really only have other states—like Texas or perhaps Arizona as a refuge.

We have all read about the money flight from Maryland and New York. Is California next? Where would these California entrepreneurs go? Perhaps Michigan, now that the state has joined the other 23 states with Right-to-Work. The unions, as expected after Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed the legislation, acted like thugs and rioted; assaulting counter-protesters and the media who filmed the attacks.

The public unions have helped destroy Detroit. The city looks like East Berlin a few years after the end of World War Two. The UAW destroyed the auto industry (except Ford who DIDN’T accept Obama’s bailout,) taking control of GM and driving that company further into the dirt. Chrysler, as an American company no longer exists. Obama and the unions forced its sale to Fiat and now is selling Italian clown cars at many of its dealerships.

If Michigan can get the state’s spending and other taxes under control, perhaps they, too, can become an oasis for entrepreneurs like Texas and the other Right-to-Work states?

Like maybe Missouri now that we have a veto proof state legislature? Let’s make Missouri the 25th state to pass Right-to-Work and escape the restraints of union controlled labor.  Let’s make Missouri a refugee haven and grow our economy like Texas and the other 24 union free states. It a concept whose time has come.

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Tuesday’s Thoughts

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VEEP Joe Biden was in town yesterday for a fundraiser for Claire “Mommy-mouth” McCaskill.  Only the party elites were invited. It was a closed, private session. No one from the public was wanted.  Why, they may ask some embarrassing questions like, “If you are against Obamacare as you now claim, why did you vote for it?”  Can’t have that!

The only public notice so far is the disruption of traffic as Biden’s entourage wanders around town. It must keep the KCPD on their toes blocking traffic everytime Biden turns left when he should have turned right.

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Like New York, Illinois and California, Maryland increased taxes on the “rich.” Guess what?  Maryland lost population since those tax increases were enacted and actually lost revenue.

Published: Monday, 9 Jul 2012 | 11:52 AM ET

A new report says wealthy Maryland residents may be moving out due to recent tax hikes – a finding that is sure to escalate the battle over taxing the American rich.The study, by the anti-tax group Change Maryland, says that a net 31,000 residents left the state between 2007 and 2010, the tenure of a “millionaire’s tax” pushed through by Gov. Martin O’Malley. The tax, which expired in 2010, in imposed a rate of 6.25 percent on incomes of more than $1 million a year.

The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues.  A county-by-county analysis by Change Maryland also found that the state’s wealthiest counties also had some of the largest population outflows.

In total, Maryland has added 24 new taxes or fees in recent years, Change Maryland says. Florida, which has no income-tax, has been a large recipient of Maryland’s exiled wealthy.

That’s known as voting with their feet. It takes a particular style of stupidity to believe folks will just stand there and accept more taxes when they can do something about it.

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I saw a column today that rang bells in my mind.  I just don’t believe the story as written. Something has been misreported, misunderstood or somebody’s lying.

The story goes like this. A woman approached an off-duty police office from the rear, hugged him and “the gun just went off all by itself!”  The woman was shot through the lung and heart and died at a local hospital.

Let me list the things in this story that I question.

  1. Guns just don’t fire all by themselves.  The trigger must be pulled. Question #1 is how did the trigger get pulled?
  2. According the to story, the pistol was in a holster. Modern holsters are designed to cover the trigger and trigger guard to prevent the trigger from being pulled or from being snagged — while in the holster. Since the woman hugged the cop’s back, the muzzle of the pistol had to be horizontal and to the rear. That implies the pistol was in a shoulder holster. Every shoulder holster I’ve seen covers the trigger. Question #2 is how did the trigger get pulled?
  3. The wound included the lung and heart. If you look at an anatomical chart of the human body you’ll notice that to shoot someone in the lung and heart, the bullet must pass through the body from an angle or from the side. It unlikely a bullet passing from front to the rear would hit both the heart and lung. If the woman hugged the cop’s back and the gun went off, the bullet should have grazed her ribs.  Or, she hugged him from the side. Again, the story has some holes.

Of course we must remember, this happened in Detroit.

There are so many facts in this story that just doesn’t ring true. I suspect someone was playing with the gun — fast draw maybe — and the trigger was pulled.That happened here in KC, in the KCPD police locker room some years ago.  No one was hit in that instance as I remember.

Here is the story as it was reported by the AP.

Police: Hug triggers officer’s gun, kills woman

Jul 8, 11:28 PM (ET)

DETROIT (AP) – A woman celebrating the weekend before her 25th birthday was fatally shot Sunday when she hugged an off-duty police officer while dancing at a party, causing the officer’s service weapon to fire, according to police and her mother.

Adaisha Miller would have turned 25 on Monday, according to her mother, Yolanda McNair.

The shooting happened at an outdoor social gathering about 12:30 a.m., said police Sgt. Eren Stephens. It happened on the city’s west side.

According to Stephens, the woman “embraced the officer from behind, causing the holstered weapon to accidently discharge.” The bullet punctured Miller’s lung and hit her heart, and she died at a hospital.

Stephens said the Detroit officer will remain on administrative duties while authorities investigate the shooting and report their findings to the Wayne County prosecutor. The officer’s name was not released.

It appears to me this story was written to enhance the myth that guns, all weapons for that matter, are sentient and evil. Guns just wait for an opportunity to go off “all by themselves” and kill someone.

Yep, that sounds like the AP. Perpetuating the myth.

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Muse Fugit

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I’m museless this morning. I’ve scanned all my usual sources for topics and have come home empty.  Yes, I could write about Obama by-passing Congress and enact the dem’s “Dream Act” by fiat.  We know that McConnell and Boehner will sit on their thumbs lest some democrat is offended.

Or I could expand on Obama’s claim that the private sector is doing fine while continuing to blame Bush for his failings.  But, Glenn McCoy beat me to that one.

Or, I could write about Holder’s stonewalling Issa’s Committee and the possible contempt citation, but Lisa Benson beat me to that one too.

I suppose I could discuss the leaks of classified information apparently from the White House. Unfortunately, Bob Gorrell was there ahead of me.

Then there’s Taxageddon that is approaching in 2013. But I was scanning my comics and found that Dick Locher had that topic covered.

Everywhere I look it seems someone had thought of the topic before me. Nothing stuck my fancy today.  Maybe by Monday my muse will return. I’m going back to bed.

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Tax Reform—at last!

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Until Herman Cain brought forth his 9-9-9 plan, a 9% personal income tax, 9% corporate income tax, 9% national sales tax, no one in the GOP herd had the guts to bring forth this topic for national debate.  All that has apparently ended and it’s a good thing, too.

The State Media immediately attacked it.  The Atlantic called it three VAT taxes in one.  Clearly they’d never bothered to actually read the proposal but relied on what other libs said about it. 

ABC news said, “However, a much longer list of economists say Cain’s plan would be a tax hike for the lower middle class and a tax windfall for the wealthy.” In short, they’re against those who have never paid any income taxes, paying some and they’re also against the abolition of punishing taxes against those who are successful.

In that same vein, the Chicago Tribune went to more libs for their opinion. You shouldn’t be surprised, their opinion was negative.

But Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush who studied Cain’s plan and wrote an analysis Tuesday for the New York Times, said Cain “offers no evidence for this assertion; it is simply put forward as self-evident.”

Bartlett called the plan “a distributional monstrosity.”

“The poor would pay more while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that economic growth will increase and a good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase,” Bartlett wrote.

That’s because two of Cain’s three 9s – the income tax and the national sales tax — would disproportionately impact the 47% of tax filers who don’t pay any federal income tax under the current system – many of whom are elderly or poor.

Yes, those people who have never had skin in the tax game, suddenly would!  What’s fair for some, is fair for all.  If you had an income, you should pay tax on it.  That’s the spirit of the 16th Amendment that authorized the income tax in 1913.

The issue, as it seems to me, is that the proposal would have taxes applied equally to all. The existing code benefits 47% of the population that pays no income tax at all. The dems and libs think that, is fair.

I don’t.

But to continue,  the discussion about tax reform is continuing.  Rick Perry is about to introduce his version of tax reform—a flat tax.  The Christian Science Monitor has this short piece.

Rick Perry flat tax plan: Don’t expect a 9-9-9 retread

Rick Perry says his flat tax plan is a major part of his broad prescription to revive the economy and create jobs – a move he hopes will also revive his campaign.

By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / October 19, 2011
Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, runs prior to delivering a keynote address during the Western Republican Leadership Conference, Wednesday, Oct. 19, in Las Vegas. Perry said he’ll be announcing details of a flat tax plan next week.
Isaac Brekken/AP

Enlarge

“It starts with … scrapping the three million words of the current tax code, starting over with something simple: a flat tax,” the Texas governor told GOP activists at the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas Wednesday.
Like businessman Herman Cain, whose 9-9-9 plan came under fire at Tuesday’s debate, Mr. Perry wants to do away with the current tax system. Although Perry won’t reveal the details until a speech scheduled for next week in South Carolina, the similarities likely end there.
Personally, I have some concerns about Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. It includes a new tax, a tax we’ve never had before, a national sales tax.  There is great danger there and the potential of the dem/lib party raising that 9% sales tax in some future year to an intolerable level.
Don’t get me wrong, I like what I’ve seen and heard so far about Herman Cain. I’m just not sold on the totality of his plan.

On the other hand, I’ve become disillusioned with Rick Perry.  He had a good start, good credentials and a reasonably good record in Texas.  He also had some serious weaknesses in his stance on immigration and education. I’m open on his flat-tax plan. I’m a bit impatient to discover more.

Regardless, the topic of tax reform, is out of the closet and out in public view.  It’s about time.