Reg-E on Palestine

Last week I made the comment "who cares if they are killing each other." The terrorist organization, Hamas, has now high jacked the People of Palestine. A review of history would seem to indicate that the people of Palestine were given a raw deal when the Israeli state was created, but I still believe that situation can be resolved between the parties.

The new fly in the ointment is the introduction of Hamas. This is a terrorist group determined to destroy the State of Israel and the cost of this war will be the blood of the people of Palestine not the Iranians, not the Syrians, or the Islamic terrorist groups in the middle east. Maybe it is time that the people of Israel and Palestine sat down and looked at the real enemy from outside their borders. The one common trait these two groups of people share is survival and maybe it is time they rise up together and wipe out the threat to their land.

I would like to see this situation resolved but Hamas does not care about the people of Palestine and it's their actions that are the obstacle to any peace in this region. Maybe the United Nations should send combat troops into this area and solve the problem they created.

Reg-E on The Fair Tax: BOTW

I viewed several different web sites this week in my research on the Fair Tax and I found some of the benefits of the plan to be very attractive. The first benefit I see that it calls for the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service as it exist currently.....Amen. The IRS for years has terrorized the citizens of this country and they have their own federal court system, The U.S. Tax Court, to impose their will.

The plan calls for the destruction of the federal income and payroll taxes by replacing it with a federal retail sales tax. Basically it is a consumption tax, the more you spend the more taxes you pay into the federal coffer. This would allow our country to capture the taxes not currently being paid by illegal immigrants and it would be interesting to see a projection or calculation on how much money this one area of our "population" would have to contribute to our economy. This fact along with the outright elimination of the IRS is enough to garner my support for the plan.

I suspect that the Fair Tax Plan will meet stiff resistant from segments our federal government. The first group that will resist any efforts to eliminate the IRS will be the government unions as this will dip into their pocketbooks because the members will be out of job at the IRS and the other support organizations. In addition to the labor unions the politicians in Washington D.C. themselves will not want to give up the power of the tax hammer, because how else can they promote and fund their political agendas if they lose the power to tax. Finally, the group that will lead the fight against the Fair Tax will be the Democratic Party as a large part of the political dogma is to engage in class warfare with the battle cry "The rich must pay and the poor should not shoulder the burden of paying taxes."

In my humble opinion there will never be any meaningful attempts to reform the taxation process in this country until the voting public imposes their will at the voting booth. The two greatest threats to our ecomony is the current tax system and the illegal immigration problem, but in addition to the Fair Tax the President should be allowed the power of the line item veto. Implementing the Fair Tax Plan would be only a half-measure unless you stop the reckless spending by the politicians, so I would advocate a three pronged approach (1)Implement The Fair Tax; (2)Allow the President the Line Item Veto; and (3)Term Limits for both houses of Congress.