Tuesday -- August 2, 2005
 THE FAIRTAX BOOK ... ON THE SHELVES TODAY!
Well, it's finally here. The FairTax Book hits the book stores today. For over
20 years I have been studying and talking about replacing our income tax with a
consumption based tax system. My interest was first piqued by a group called
"CATS", Citizens for an Alternative Tax System. I spoke on their behalf, and
participated in the production of information videos and tapes that they used to
introduce the idea of a consumption tax. Later the idea of replacing the income
tax with a national retail sales tax was refined by including all corporate
taxes and personal payroll taxes. Further refinements were made, like the
"prebate" which insures that no individual in this country would ever pay the
national retail sales tax on the basic necessities of life.
The list of people who have praised and endorsed The FairTax and the idea of
replacing our income tax with a consumption tax is growing every day. That list
includes names such as Laurence Kotlikoff, Chair of the economics department of
Boston University; Columnist George Will; former MLB Commissioner Peter
Ueberroth; economist Raymond Keating; Jack Valenti, former president of the
Motion Picture Association; Stephen Slivinski, Director of Budget Studies for
the Cato Institute; Dr. John Berthoud, President of the National Taxpayers
Union; Dr. Daniel Mitchell, McKenna Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the
Heritage Foundation; James Martin, Vice President of the Ironworker
International Union; Lee Brown, Clinton's drug czar and former mayor of Houston,
Texas; Milton Friedman, economist; Wayne Angell, former member of the Federal
Reserve Board of Governors and the chief economist and senior managing director
at Bear Stearns & Co.; and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
John Linder and I worked hard to make
The FairTax Book entertaining and easy to
read. Actually, we didn't have to work ALL that hard. The FairTax is easy to
understand, so our real task was to make a book on tax reform entertaining. I
think we did it.
It's now up to you. Whether you actually go out there and get the book, or just
hear about it on the radio or read about it in newspaper columns ... nothing else
happens from this point forward unless the people of this country make it clear
that they want something to happen. Washington is a city of inertia ... and the
current tax system has just about as much inertia as any other Washington
institution. There is really only one thing that can overcome that inertia ... and
that one thing is the voice of the American people.
Yesterday I visited the offices of Regan Books/Harper Collins in New York City.
There I signed the contract to write "Somebody's Got to Say It." That book will
be out next summer, and that's the book I'm writing for fun. That's the book
where I'll stretch the bounds of insensitivity to say those things that you
would like to say ... but just can't bring yourself to do it. And, truth be told,
that will be the book where I'll try to make a few bucks. This book, The FairTax
Book, was written with an earnest, heartfelt desire that it could actually have
an affect ... that it could actually, in some small way, be a catalyst for change.
The FairTax Bill, HR 25 and S 25, is before the congress. It's also before the
president's Tax Reform Commission. These people are listening. If you don't
speak up ... you'll never be heard.
Neal's Book Tour Schedule
BUSH INSTALLS BOLTON
 Much to the consternation of Teddy Kennedy and George Voinovich,
George Bush
appointed John Bolton to be the ambassador to the UN yesterday. This is provided
for by the Constitution...the president can appoint someone during a
Congressional recess, and that person can serve until the next Congress takes
office in January 2007. So Bolton it is.
So why do Democrats have their panties in a bunch over Bolton's appointment? It
has nothing to do with the reasons they've given. Stories about abusing
subordinates and manipulating intelligence aren't why the left opposes Bolton.
Rather, it's because Bolton is not an internationalist UN-worshiper. He believes
the United States is a sovereign nation and the world's only superpower. This
irritates leftists like Kofi Annan and Teddy Kennedy. They believe the United
Nations should be the world's only superpower, with taxing authority and
military control over its member nations.
The next 19 months will be interesting down at UN...hopefully with Bolton
swinging the bat we can reform that rat hole.
IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME
To listen to the media and the Democrats, you would think that a recess
appointment was a rare abuse of power. It would be easy to infer that such an
outrage hadn't taken place in what...100 years? Nope...quite the contrary. Let's
go to the tape.
Using the four most recent presidents, here are the numbers of recess
appointments made:
--President George W. Bush: 110 recess appointments in 4 1/2 years in office.
--President Bill Clinton: 140 recess appointments in two terms.
--President Bush Senior: 77 recess appointments in his one term.
--President Ronald Reagan: 240 recess appointments in two terms.
So let's see...according to the calculator, that's 567 recess appointments in
the last 25 years, or an average of just over 22 a year. Bush had the power to
put Bolton in the ambassador chair and he did it. Other presidents, both
Democrat and Republican, have done the same thing.
It's nothing new. Ike even used the recess appointment to put 3 Justices on the
Supreme Court. Can you imagine the squeals of the Democrats today if Bush did
the same thing?
THE BRITS GET THE MESSAGE
 A positively outstanding quote out of London today. That city continues to be on
lockdown while the police search for Islamic terrorists and try to stop any
further terrorist bombings. This involves going into the subway (or the
Underground, as it's known over there) and searching people. Don't want to be
searched? Too bad. Welcome to the year 2005. Now hand over the bag.
But there are millions of people in London. How will the police decide to spend
their limited resources? Unless they suddenly develop an overnight ratio of one
bobby per citizen, they have to be selective.
If this were the United States, they would pursue the deadly, idiotic and
politically correct procedure of not-so-random security checks. They would be
told to search every 10th or 20th person, no matter who they were. Little old
lady, old man in a wheelchair...no matter. The TSA would do their duty!
But in Great Britain, they're setting aside political correctness and doing what
needs to be done. It's called racial profiling. That means searching people who
fit the physical description of a terrorist: people of Middle Eastern descent.
Check out the following quote from
a story in the London Evening Standard:
British Transport Police Chief Constable Ian Johnston said that his officers
would not "waste time searching old white ladies."
Amen. Now if we could just get that through the thick skulls of the politicians
running things in Washington, we'd all be just a little bit safer.
HEATHER'S CORNER!
Here are some musings from our intern, Heather Jackson. Now ... let's make it
clear here, I don't particularly agree with what she's written. The idea that we
shouldn't expand stem cell research to using embryonic stem cells because that
research hasn't yet produced any results is, to me, just a wee bit absurd. Hey,
you have a choice here. Throw those embryos away, or use them for research. To
me, the choice is clear. Heather thinks otherwise. So .... Let's set her up on a
pedestal here and see what happens!
Vein-ly Induced Life
Stem cell
research began back in the sixties, since then it has never 'cured' any disease.
Canadian scientists Ernest McCullock and James Till, trained in hematology and
biophysics, discovered that stem cells help to regenerate damaged tissues and
organs. Together they discovered that if they injected mice with bone marrow
cells that a nodule that was produced in their spleen came about as a direct
reaction to the marrow growing a stem cell, or that which was proportionate to
the amount injected. These men moved on to researching cures for cancer specific
to leukemia and variations of it. Chemotherapy treatment for cancer will kill
off the stem cells needed to help produce the red and white blood cells.
The debate over stem cells is not that the study should stop, but a debate over
the sources for the extraction. There are three types of stem cells, but I am
choosing to focus on the source of them and how the life is affected by their
removal with adult and embryonic stem cells. Adult cells can come from bone
marrow, cadavers and umbilical cords. Embryonic stem cells come from fertilized
human eggs at a stage where they consist of 50-150 cells. Adult stem cells do
not hinder growth if removed, whereas embryonic stem cells will kill the embryo
that it is being taken from. Since there is debate over when life actually
begins, I am convinced that a seed from a tree is also alive the second it
starts to grow within its seed coat.
Cord blood has been extracted since 1988, from
umbilical cords. Even though it is from a newborn baby, the cells are matured
and called adult stem cells. These are being used in treatment of Gunther's
disease, hinter syndrome, Hurler syndrome, acute lymphocytic leukemia and many
other problems with children. In 2004, South Korea credited them with helping a
woman with a spinal injury to walk again, but I only found a couple one-sided
sources to verify this.
These stem cells can be extracted from a living
person as well as a dead one. Studies have shown the highest concentration of
matured stem cells come from cadavers. Other studies have used stem cells
extracted from umbilical cords. Like blood, we each have our own variety; like
DNA, common cells between people are rare unless from the same blood line.
Therefore the cells from your own umbilical cord are a direct match for your own
stem cells. It's too bad that we have not been saving umbilical cord blood for
more than
17 years. If you are reading this, we can assume that your parents
did not have the option to save yours, however now
you can request it be saved for your own children, at a substantial
cost.
In 2001, President
Bush assigned
around 30 million tax payer dollars to embryonic specific stem cell research.
Our hard earned money was being used by the government to purchase and dissect
fertilized eggs (blastocyst) from fertility clinics that no longer need to store
them. Three years later Bush ended the funding when
he realized that it wasn't a lack of funding or availability that prevented
finding a use for stem cells, rather the fact that they were useless in curing
any potentially fatal disease. This did not, nor does it currently,
restrict private funding if someone feels the need to donate or contribute to
it.
Limits are pushed on issues everyday and
eventually things that were taboo will be commonplace. In my own (and vastly
supported) ideas, once we allow any type of embryonic stem cell research, they
will have to wait for more and more mature embryos. In fact, they will one day
be so mature that there will be no denying on any side whether or not it was an
aborted fetus. Of course, that is assuming they aren't already being bought for
adult stem cell research. Allowing federal funding means that one day we will be
paying abortion clinics for the later and later developed fetuses. This will
make the abortion taboo less of a reason to avoid it as long as the baby is used
for science. It would be a 'gift' of life, rather than an abortion, right? No
one should be able shirk responsibility and have the easy out of scientific use.
And don't write to me about the people who are victims of rape and incest,
they only make up less than 1% of abortions.
Neither side is going to change their stance on
abortion. You either feel strongly on one side or the other. Sometimes arguing
with someone about the value of life is like "trying to teach a pig to
sing....it's a waste of your time and it annoys the pig." My biggest problem is
those people who support this are trying to make me pay for it. In 1997
Clinton banned cloning in saying that "any effort in humans to transfer a
somatic cell nucleus into an enucleatered egg involves the creation of an
embryo, with the apparent potential to be implanted in utero and developed to
term." About eight months after Bush came into office he put a ban on 'future'
stem cell research, being stem cell sources that came about after his policy
came into effect. Then in 2004, President Bush signed a law into place that
prevents tax payer's mandatory support of such studies . But
Proposition
71, passed this last November in California, went against the federal
law that Bush had signed now stating that California tax payers money would
contribute to 3 billion dollars over the next 10 years, not to mention the
interest on that which nearly doubles it. Yes, you Californians get to pay for
something
you may not support while the rest of us don't. Thank a
rino.
Stem cell research has recently come back into
the spot light since another politician has apparently become a flip-flopper,
meet Sen. Bill Frist. Just before the elections he was debating with Sen. John
Edwards against Edwards' support of embryonic research claiming
false
hope. All of the sudden "it
isn't just a
matter of faith, it's a matter of science." Make up your mind
Senator. Didn't you learn anything from Kerry's flip flopping loss?
Heather's Movie Review:
I am a self-proclaimed 'movie narcoleptic:'
likely to fall asleep during any and all movies. So it was quite a feat that I
actually made it to one yesterday, but for matters of relevance, I decided I had
to do it. If you are Conservative and want to see a great movie, with time
sensitive themes... you'll wonder how on earth this one managed to sneak out of
Hollyweird... go see this movie!
The Island
is about a man who realizes that science and the gift of life from man, is
likely not Utopic at all. Finally, a movie that will make you uncomfortable for
all the Right reasons.
REDNECK SCRAP BOOK
Redneck cats are tough. They don't need no stinkin' carpet on
their furniture. The
Redneck Scrap Book goes on...
ATLANTA AREA FAIR TAX RALLY THIS FRIDAY Atlanta and Georgia listeners! We
want you at the "Fair Tax Rally" and Pre-Rally Luncheon this Friday at the Cobb
County Civic Center in Marietta, Georgia. Here's the schedule:
Friday, August 5
11:30am-1pm Luncheon and Neal Boortz Show broadcast. You must purchase a
ticket for this event. You get to watch the Boortz Radio Show, you get fed, and
you get a signed copy of "The Fair Tax" book. The National Retail Sales Tax
Alliance is running this. Call today to purchase tickets at 770/448-6311, and
hit Extension 100.
1:15pm "Fair Tax Rally" and book-signing. Doors open to the public at
1:00pm.
Neal Boortz, Congressman John Linder, and more. This 1:00 event is free and open
to everyone.
Chapter 11 will be there with copies of the "Fair Tax Book" for sale.
READING ASSIGNMENTS
President Bush's approval ratings are apparently down. He's a lame duck, so it
really doesn't matter, but
David Limbaugh looks at the reasons for the media's obsession.
Perky Katie Couric is reportedly mulling her future. Will she stay at the
'Today' show, or take a lucrative offer to anchor the CBS Evening News? Take
the CBS gig, Katie. Two words: sleeping in.
Saddam Hussein's trial will be broadcast on television. Expect the media,
liberals in the United States and other assorted Euro-weenies to be outraged,
call it public humiliation and be more worried about Saddam than the millions he
slaughtered.
A group has started promoting
The Hildabeast for president in 2008. The story goes is that she isn't
running yet. Right. Think she's doing anything to stop it? The commercial
shows her as a garbage woman taking out the trash. Insert your own joke
here.
So just where did Robert Novak get Valerie Plame's name? According to his
column on the subject, it looks like
Novak got her name from the Who's Who in America book. Arrest him now!
Rafael Palmeiro has been busted for steroids. Perhaps Jose Canseco was
right, and they're all on the juice. Maybe not. Either way, so much for the
Hall of Fame.
More good news from Iraq that the media will ignore.
The Iraqi Constitution is being drafted, and will be finished by the deadline.
A drunk driver in Ohio struck a 17-month-old boy who is in critical condition
with his truck. Perhaps instances of drunk driving would decrease if we
lined up all the drunk drivers and shot them.
Al Gore's TV channel has gone on the air. He's pretty decent
distribution...perhaps it will succeed. The odds are that it won't.
A Brooklyn politician has the right idea...he says it's time to start
profiling terrorists. The description of the suspect is all too clear.
Teddy Kennedy is calling George Bush's recess appointment of John Bolton
"devious." And just what was leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to die in 4 feet of
water? Oh right...that was an accident.
The latest government reports on the economy show that the Bush tax cuts
continue to fuel an economic boom.
Jack Kemp explains.
And now a few random thoughts from Thomas Sowell. As always, brilliant
observations.
Morning Sickness: Man's pneumonia caused by his
lost dentures found in his bronchial tubes.
Heather's reading assignments
Straight from the
"Oh.My.Word.Files."
Trees drink water too.
How they may be
depleting our sources.
Who gets a pay raise like this? We vote them in,
can we not vote for their pay?
Wednesday morning NASA is going to send an
astronaut to remove
protrusions by
cutting them off or gently tugging on them until they come out.
I'm not quite sure what a '
stinkhorn' is, but it was so retched that they thought it might be a
corpse.
Even the
French hate French fries
.
Well, you all made up your own rules to
GoogleWhacking , this game
may be more of a challenge:
GoogleSmacking.
This is NOT a contest; please do NOT submit your results. Thanks! J
Returning for his stash on the side of the road
near the court house, the police left him a post-it note. His mom says, "I know
my son has done some bad things,
but I did not train him to be this dumb ." | 
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