On Tax Day: the Fair Tax option

Today was the deadline to file your income tax returns. Mr. Vodkapundit, Stephen Green, marked the occasion with his column at PJ Media, "Abolish the Income Tax, Abolish the IRS":

The Fair Tax isn't exactly a new idea, but it's one worth reminding people of every April 15.

The Fair Tax would completely eliminate payroll taxes and individual and corporate income taxes by repealing the 16th Amendment. Washington would be funded instead by a national sales tax -- partly offset by a monthly "prebate" paid to every household. As described by Americans for Fair Taxation, the prebate is "an 'advance refund' at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free." You would take home 100 percent of your pay, and determine your own tax rate based on how much you spend each month.

The IRS is abolished, replaced by a tax collection mechanism every single merchant is already familiar with. Conspicuous consumption by the rich would be met with a heavy sales tax burden, but investments in jobs and growth and innovation would be tax-free.

Other benefits include zero compliance cost for individuals, no more audits, no more loopholes, and vastly reduced opportunities for official corruption and graft. Almost as good, perhaps, is that only legal U.S. residents are eligible for the prebate, but everybody, from native-born citizen to illegal alien, pays their fair share at the cash register.

Makes sense, which is why it's unlikely to happen. Full article is here.

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Joe DiGenova on James Comey

image/art credit: thinkgeek.com

Joe DiGenova is one of my favorites. He is a “former U.S. Attorney, Independent Counsel, Special Counsel to the House of Representatives, and investigator for more than 40 years,” and he is my nomination for the "Must Read" for the Weekend. His article, James 'Cardinal' Comey — the man who destroyed the FBI” is posted at Fox News, and it begins:

Wyatt Earp. Elliot Ness. J. Edgar Hoover. Inspector Clouseau. James Comey. The names reflect a continuum, from greatness to farce and mediocrity.

In the annals of U.S. law enforcement, no individual has reached such depths of disgrace as James “Cardinal” Comey. The “Cardinal” was a sobriquet that FBI agents used to denigrate their leader. As Deputy Attorney General, he was called “drama queen.” Known for his pomposity and self-regard, Comey cut a swath of arrogance unmatched in the histories of either of those illustrious organizations. He was the cult of personality. He surrounded himself with sycophants, people dedicated to his promotion and their advancement. The Bureau and the public became the losers.

The Comey Memos, a 15-page suicide note, reveal a deeply tortured and troubled man. They have a hausfrau sentimentality. But they are telling nonetheless.

DiGenova’s full column is here.

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Blatant: Google’s censorship

The other day, this blog linked to a report about Google’s dishonest and ham-handed censorship of Kay Cole James, Heritage Foundation President. Now there’s this by Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator:

As we now learn from the Daily Caller, The American Spectator has been blacklisted by Google. The DC’s headline, in a post by J. Arthur Bloom, is this:

Exclusive: Documents Detailing Google’s ‘News Blacklist’ Show Manual Manipulation Of Special Search Results

. . .

[American Spectator founder R. Emmett] Tyrrell drew the analogy of Communists taking over an old-fashioned pre-computer-age public library — and then methodically going through the card catalogue to remove the cards listing conservative books and authors. “Google can make all kinds of excuses,” he added, “but this is censorship, the most blatant censorship imaginable.”

Indeed it is.

. . .

(Google CEO) Sundar Pichai . . . looked a congressional committee in the eye and insisted that “we don’t manually intervene on any particular search result” — while the Daily Caller revelations revealed that “Google does manipulate its search results manually, contrary to the company’s official denials, documents obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller indicate.”

There is a name for doing that. It’s called lying to Congress. A federal crime with jail time attached.

. . .

This time around, the target is The American Spectator. This time around the iron fist belongs to Google.

The question has reached the point that conservatives need to have a serious conversation among themselves. Is it time for government regulation of these tech giants? Or is it — my preference — time for free-market competition that provides serious and successful competition to these companies?

Full report is here.

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Update: Electoral College in Ohio

Good news, for now. Ohio's presidential votes will not be counted in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact but will continue to cast those votes in the Electoral College. Cleveland.com reports:

Organizers have aborted their attempt to change Ohio’s constitution to award the state’s presidential electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who wins Ohio.

J. Corey Colombo, a Columbus elections attorney working for the organizers behind the proposal, wrote a brief letter to Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Tuesday saying the group is withdrawing its petitions. The letter (click here for a PDF) did not offer an explanation, but Colombo’s law firm later issued a statement citing time constraints and the large number of signatures required to get the issue on the ballot.

Full report is here.

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How we are losing our Freedom of Speech

Jeffrey Lord has an article titled “Google Bigots and the High-Tech Lynching of Kay James” at The Spectator. The opener:

Kay Cole James, the president of the Heritage Foundation, steps to the podium of the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in suburban Harrisburg and gives the startling update.

Ms. James, at a laughing, self-admitted 70 and famously one of the best known, longtime conservative leaders in the country, announces to the PLC crowd (the PLC is the Pennsylvania version of CPAC and was celebrating its 30th anniversary) that this was her first public comment since she had learned only hours earlier that she had been removed as a recent appointee to Google’s Advanced Technology External Advisory Council. The board, on which she would have served without salary, was designed to review artificial intelligence ethics.

Among other things the outrage mob of over 2000 Google employees accused Kay James of being a “white supremacist.” Kay is an African-American. With a gay son. But Google quickly caved to the mob, dismissing Kay and then dissolving the board entirely.

And Mr. Lord concludes: 

In sum what we are witnessing in Google culture and on too many college campuses is what Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the then-new Soviet Union’s secret police known as the Cheka, described this way: “We represent in ourselves organized terror — this must be said very clearly.” And that “organized terror,” Dzerzhinsky emphasized, involved “the terrorization, arrests, and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles.” Or, as in the case of Kay James, the mother of an openly gay son [and] her race.

Kay James just had an up-close and personal encounter with this totalitarian mindset — from a major American high-tech company. The organized terror of a Google lynch mob came for her. The quite deliberate message for the rest of America from Google is: Watch out. The next time it could be you.

Full article is here. Alternative search engines to Google include DuckDuckGo and StartPage.

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When That Did Not Work …

Historian Victor Davis Hanson is always eloquent, and his column here at American Greatness provides a handy history of the Progressives' efforts to de-legitimize candidate Donald Trump, President-Elect Donald Trump, and President Donald Trump. Hanson starts off:

Right after the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein—cheered on by Hillary Clinton dead-enders—sued in three states to recount votes and thereby overturn Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. Before the quixotic effort imploded, Stein was praised as an iconic progressive social justice warrior who might stop the hated Trump from even entering the White House.

When that did not work, B-list Hollywood celebrities mobilized, with television and radio commercials, to shame electors in Trump-won states into not voting for the president-elect during the official Electoral College balloting in December 2016. Their idea was that select morally superior electors should reject their constitutional directives and throw the election into the House of Representatives where even more morally superior NeverTrump Republicans might join with even much more morally superior Democrats to find the perfect morally superior NeverTrump alternative.

Hanson recites all the failed efforts -- “When that did not work” -- to rid this country of its duly-elected President.  The full article is here; it’s a good one to save for future reference. 

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Border crisis cartoon

Michael P Ramirez cartoon via Flopping Aces

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