A FAIRTAX TALE ....

I have a little scenario I would like to paint for those of you out there who just insist on finding something wrong with the FairTax. Admittedly, the FairTax isn't perfect. No tax plan is. How, after all, can you come up with a perfect way for a government to take its operating funds from its subjects? If you know an easier and more equitable way to do it, by all means, let me know!

I'm going to ask you to crank up your imagination for a moment here ... and by "you," I mean those of you who think that this FairTax thing is a bad idea and you're not prepared to come on board.

I want you to imagine a scenario. Don't worry about whether or not this scenario is possible .. Just accept it as I present it, and then consider the alternative picture I'm going to also present. Simple as that.

Let's imagine that the FairTax is the law. We've been operating under the FairTax since the day you drew your first paycheck. It's all you know. Here is your imaginarily "reality."

• On every payday you get your complete paycheck. There are no deductions. If you earn $2,000 per week, you get a check for $4,000 every two weeks.
• You never have to save receipts or create any records pertaining to federal taxes.
• You can invest money without paying any taxes on it.
• You don't have to pay taxes on the money you earn through your investment portfolio.
• You pay no taxes on any money you put in your savings account.
• When you die you get to leave your entire estate, everything you own, to whomever you wish. The federal government will take no taxes from your estate. Your death is not a taxable event.
• When you go to the store to buy an item, and the price tag says $19.99, you will had a $20 bill to the cashier and get one penny back. The price tag is the price.
• There are four people in your household. You, your spouse and two rug rats. At the beginning of every month you get a check or a credit to your checking or charge card account in the amount of $506.00 to compensate you for the federal sales taxes that are included in the price of everything you buy; right up to the poverty level.

All in all .. not such a bad deal. You keep all of the money you earn and you get five hundred bucks a month from the feds. Plus .. you only pay taxes when you spend money.

Now .. .here comes some politician who has a grand scheme for a new tax system. He wants to explain it to you. Here's his great idea ..... give him a listen and tell us what you think.

The plan is simple. First the federal sales tax is going to be removed from the price of everything you buy. This will mean that everything will cost 23% less than it does now. But ... he's going to levy an income tax on every single individual and business who plays any role at all in bringing those products to the marketplace. These people and companies are all going to pass the cost of these taxes down the economic line to the final consumer of the products they manufacture. These taxes will end up embedded into the prices of products in our retail marketplace, bringing those prices right up to the current level. So .. no loss, no gain.

Next your political benefactor is going to take away your $500 per month prebate from the government. In its place he's going to tax every penny you earn. It doesn't matter where the money comes from. Your salary, your investment income, winnings at the track ... whatever you earn and however you earn it, it's going to be taxed.

Wait! He's not through. He's also going to tax your wages for Social Security and Medicare. He's going to try to soften the blow by telling you that your employer is going to match the taxes he takes out of your paycheck, but you're employer has made it clear that this money is all going to come out of the money he has budgeted to hire you. You'll probably lose out on your next raise while the boss his accounting in order.

There are some more nifty ideas in your congressman's tax reform plan. When you die your family is going to have to file a complicated estate tax return. A huge amount of the wealth you have managed to build during your life is going to be sent to the government. Your survivors may well have to sell the family business in order to come up with the money to pay for these death taxes.

One more thing .. you're going to have to keep records of all of your financial transactions. Every year you're going to have to spend no less than about 30 hours or spend hundreds of dollars to hire someone to fill out tax forms for you. If mistakes are made you will be hit with a huge penalty and interest. Oh .. and the government is going to have access to all of your financial records to make sure that you are paying everything you "owe."

The question, of course, is why does this politician want to change the tax system in this way? Power, that's why. They want to be able to enact little changes to the tax code that will benefit certain constituents ... which constituents will then benefit the politicians -- with money or with votes. Under the FairTax system these politicians have no power to favor one group of voters over another for the benefit of votes. The new system would give them that power.

Your choice, my friends. If we had the FairTax now ... would you be willing to make the switch?

NOW ... MORE ABOUT THE RALLY

The Columbia, South Carolina FairTax rally is already causing a bit of a buzz amongst the Republican presidential candidates. They're referring to it as "the other event." Is this good news, or bad? It completely depends on the turnout Tuesday night. Since the candidates and their advisors are aware of the "other event," it means that they're going to be watching to see how things go. If the rally is success ... and that is measured in the number of people who show up .... the candidates will know that the FairTax is something that deserves their attention. If the "other event" is a flop, they'll think that the FairTax is something they can safely ignore.

Can you spare a day to change this country?

OPIE AND ANTHONY ... THREAT TO US ALL

Drudge posted this yesterday. Since it appeared on Drudge, you can rest assured that by today everybody in a position of power over radio – that would be politicians – have either heard it or heard about it.

What am I talking about? It's an excerpt from the Opie and Anthony show on XM Satellite radio. These two pigs were once on broadcast radio, but they lost their jobs when they thought it might be cute to send some listeners out to have sex in a church.

Now before you get to the link .. I want to warn you what you're about to hear is vile, repulsive and disgusting. These two jerks had someone on their show named "Homeless Charlie." The person was either black or using a black accent. Charlie begins to discuss having sex with Condi Rice. In fact, what he was talking about was raping the Secretary of State. Then, in similarly vulgar terms, he talked about having sex with Laura Bush and the Queen of England. When you click on this link (if the server isn't slammed by now) you're going to hear extremely disgusting language ... so be prepared. OK, here's the link.

So .. how did you like that? Pretty pathetic, wasn't it? This was the product of two extremely immature and sick people trying to be cute by seeing just how far they can push the envelope.

Now I don't know what other radio hosts might have to say about this today, but I most certainly have something on my mind, and if you chose to read on you're going to get an earful.

These two pathetic bastards need to be removed from XM satellite radio right now. Today. No suspension. No warning. Fire them. Now.

By the end of the day today you're going to hear liberals in congress and the media referring to these two jackasses as talk show hosts. Comparisons will be drawn between them and people like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and myself. You'll hear the phrases "hate speech" and "hate radio" over and over again as these leftists push their Stalinist-inspired plans to destroy conservative and libertarian talk radio. By the time the dust has settled the majority of the people in this country --- who don't by the way, listen to talk radio --- will absolutely believe in their hearts that this Opie and Anthony stunt is representative of all talk radio, and these people will be eager to support their politicians in their goal to shut us all down.

Right now we have a little gem called H.R. 3302, the "Media Ownership Reform Act," in the congress. H.R. 3302 is a project of DC Democrats who know that conservative talk radio constitutes a real threat to their plans for total victory in 2008. If H.R. 3302 were to become law, talk radio as you know it would be dead inside of nine months. Period. Thanks to the antics of these two idiots there will be more congressmen who will be willing to join in this and other efforts to control broadcast radio and, incidentally, to control satellite broadcasting as well.

Opie and Anthony just gave these control-freak politicians a huge bit of leverage with their crude little skit about raping the Secretary of State and the First Lady. Oh .. and throw in the Queen also. What fun. What incredible talents these two assholes are.

Those of us in talk radio, both broadcast and satellite owe it to our country and to our listeners to rise up in outrage against these disgusting shock jocks and demand their immediate dismissal from XM. If XM doesn't want to act then we should consider canceling our subscriptions. I'm serious. I mean it.

And don't give me that "free speech" nonsense either. I know that many of you were educated by the government, but you don't have to go around advertising it, do you?

The free speech guarantees of the First Amendment only apply to actions by government, not by private entities. The government cannot use its exclusive franchise on the right to use force in order to prevent you from speaking our mind ... but your employer damn sure can. Not by force, mind you, but by job action.

Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say anything you damned well please on any radio station or any private satellite cannel. Whoever owns and controls that station and/or satellite has every right in the world to control content. Opie and Anthony are content. XM ought to show some responsibility ... now ... today.

Get rid of them.

Exercise some responsible control.

OOWWWWWEEEEE! AM I TAKING HEAT!

The comments I've made above were posted today on the Townhall.com website. Following the column Townhall readers can post their comments. Apparently there is not one single person who, thus far, agrees with me. Well, that's not the first time that's happened, and it certainly won't be the last.

Let's go through the comments and pull out some nifty and nasty little excerpts:

Most of the people who posted comments wanted to remind me that XM is a subscription service and that you can block XM channels. Well ... duhhhhhh. Someone out there is missing the point. The politicians want control ... pay service or not! The holier-than-thou fundies out there want control so they can do something about sexual content, and the libs want control so they can do something about political content. The Opie and Anthony stunt gives them leverage and ammunition, pay service or not. There is nothing magical about paid TV or radio that prevents politicians from stepping in and seizing control of content. When the law is finally passed that gives the FCC the power to regulate what the political class deems to be "offensive content" on cable television and satellite radio, you "but it's a subscription service and you can block it" can go tell your story to a federal judge somewhere. Good luck.

Another critic writes: "It's called Freedom of Speech. It's on the Bill of Rights. And it protects, you, Howard Stern, Joe Taxpayer and ever Opie and Anthony." Ahhhh ... isn't government education a wonderful thing? Freedom of speech offers me no protection whatsoever in the course of hosting my radio show. The people who have hired me can take me off the air any day they want to. The stations who carry my show can do likewise. The Constitution offers me absolutely no guarantee of any kind that I can so much as recite my favorite recipe on any broadcast TV or radio station or on any satellite service, paid or unpaid. The only thing the freedom of speech provisions in the First Amendment do is offer me protection from government! And the courts have specifically ruled that the "public's interest" in controlling what is broadcast over the "public's airwaves" allows the government to control broadcast content. Wake up! Just because you got your government school diploma doesn't mean your learning years have to be over.

Another person wrote that Homeless Charlie's comments were no worse than the rape scene on The Sopranos. Sorry ... politicians in Washington, and that's who we're dealing with here, not entertainment TV critics, will see something more serious about the broadcast of the comments of a man describing how he would rape the Secretary of State and the First Lady than in a rape scene of a fictional character in TV series.

Oh well .. the day is just started. Lord knows what O&A are going to have to say about me on their show today ....... I'm sure it won't be complimentary. Maybe I should try to be more like them. Can I get some volunteers to go tape record a little sex romp in a place of worship today? What fun that would be!

NOW ... A FEW QUESTIONS

Condi Rice is a Republican. Laura Bush is a Republican. Let's sit back and see if race pimps Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have anything to say about this. I fact, let's see if CNN spends an entire day dwelling on this as they did on the Imus matter.

Inquiring minds, and all that.

MOTORCYCLE SAFETY MONTH

In honor of May being Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, we'll feature a daily reminder for you to be safe on or around motorcycles. Since we're going to wrap this up today, we'll give you two videos: a montage of tricks from the X-games and a dumbass kid who is hopefully sterile and won't contribute to the gene pool. Check out Monday's, Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursday's if you missed them.

REDNECK SCRAP BOOK

Yep, we have to add this to the stack of redneck tattoos. Classy! More in the Redneck Scrap Book.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

This article says that revenue collections have hit an all time record in April. I can think of a better headline .. or at least a better opening paragraph. How about: "The forced transfer of wealth from the private sector to government hit an all-time high in April." Government has reached a net all-time high in spending also!

Our friend John Stossel has something to say about the current size of government, and the money it is seizing from our economy. He says that the public trough is bigger than ever.

This is why they call them water hazards

We've talked here before about Al-Hurrah, the taxpayer financed television network that is now broadcasting Islamic Jihadist propaganda to our "friends" in the middle east. Here's today's editorial from The Wall Street Journal.

Dick Morris draws some parallels between Royal Segolene, the European European-style socialist, and Hillary Clinton, the American European-style socialist.

We asked, and you sent them in. Listeners report that these companies block access to boortz.com from their servers.

Need to combat democrats with good news from Iraq? You'll find some here.

That's it. It's Friday and I don't want to work this hard. You don't think I'm having other people do this for me, do you?

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