May 10, 2005

Human Events argues in favor of the flat tax:

When a luxury sales tax was once placed on items such as boats and expensive cars, many businesses were devastated as consumers bought used or lower priced products or did without the items entirely. Spending drives our economy and is the major factor in our unprecedented prosperity. Another tax on that consumption would be detrimental because almost everything you tax you’ll get less of—except income. The desire for earnings will overcome all but the highest rates.

The flat tax is thus the superior choice. It maximizes the urge to earn with rates that actually start at zero thanks to generous personal exemptions. Under one 20% flat tax scenario, a family of four would pay no income tax on $36,000 and would keep 80¢ of each additional dollar. Only $4800 in income tax would be owed on $60,000 (an overall rate of just 8%) and only the highest incomes would pay 20%. With this incentive, commerce, investment and job creation would soar.

“For me, the only question is how do we goad the imbeciles into testing two bombs?”

Mac Johnson on North Korea’s planned nuclear bomb test:

...the world will likely be a safer place after the test. Kim Jong-Il and his dead father, Kim Il-Sung, have bankrupted North Korea in pursuit of nuclear weapons, which they believe can protect their hedgehog kingdom from the secret American invasion that never seems to happen, even though it has been “imminent” for 50 years now. Because they are so important in their own minds, they naturally believe they are equally important in ours, so they live in a delusion in which America sits and broods daily on how it might extinguish the light of the World, the last great Worker’s paradise, North Korea. (Of course, the lights are pretty much out already, thanks to North Korea’s failed power grid.)

...But consider this: if we take a higher-end estimate of five bombs as accurate, then even a single nuclear test by North Korea would reduce their total arsenal by 20%. In one great flash of glory to the Dear Leader, North Korea’s mindless belligerence will have done more to reduce their own arsenal than the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter combined have managed to do since they first announced their “success” in preventing North Korea from building atomic bombs ten years ago

For me, the only question is how do we goad the imbeciles into testing two bombs?

...Fear the looming test if you want. But me, I’d be happy to attend it in person—carrying a cooler, a lawn chair, and a really thick pair of welding glasses.

Boom: one less bomb! Now let’s order Chinese and talk about what needs to be done: cutting off all charity and blackmail payments to North Korea and allowing it to collapse under its own rotten weight.

It’s not Correct that U.S. Soldiers in Vietnam were Disproportionately from Minorities. Correcting War Statistics:

As “everyone knows” today, Vietnam was a war in which the lives of Americans drafted from the lower classes, disproportionately black and Hispanic, were wasted in a failed American intervention in what was basically a civil war between Vietnamese. Except, as a former secretary of the Navy who served in Vietnam as a Marine officer, James Webb, has pointed out, 67% of those who served and 73% of those who died in Vietnam were volunteers, not draftees. And blacks “comprised 13.1% of the serving age group, 12.6% of the military and 12.2% of the casualties.”

The Filibuster is not in the Constitution. From radio talk host Alan Nathan

Democrats want the political force of the Republicans without the numeric force to attain it. To let them have such leverage through the filibuster, a non-constitutionally guaranteed entitlement, is to deny the larger agreeing block of voters their proportional representative voice. You don’t get to enjoy the very prize that you lost at the ballot box.

...For example, thanks to liberal ads, most Americans mistakenly think that jettisoning the filibuster would be a break from the intent of our Founding Fathers. New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer says, “We’re in the ramp-up to a constitutional crisis.” Well a quick scanning of our old daddies’ Constitution would reveal in Article 1, Section 5 that, “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.” In short, the party in power enjoys the greatest influence over said determination of rules. It appears that the only ones in a crisis are those on the losing end of an argument. (Perhaps that’s why Mr. Reid has been backpedaling a bit on the rhetoric and making overtures to Mr. Frist on two of President Bush’s 10 conservative judicial nominees.)

WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH GOOGLE? Google still runs anti-DeLay ads:

Search engine claimed it pulled all political attack spots last week

WASHINGTON – Google, the Internet’s No. 1 search engine, is still running attack ads against besieged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, despite assurances by the company’s spokesman they were all pulled last week.