1Declaration: Free Markets, Free People, Free Minds

I found a great little tool that will help you to figure out which political affiliation you most identify with. Even if you think you know, try it you might be surprised to figure it out. I'll also add a link to my Ignorance is No Excuse section.

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

Enjoy the quiz.

This work has already been done for me. Please take a moment to look over this PDF supplied by FairTax.org

This PDF will give you comparisons of the Fair Tax versus the Flat Tax and the current Income Tax.

Enjoy. Feel free to pass this around!

It has been several days since my last post. I will be sending off a letter to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas in support of the Fair Tax on Wednesday. I invite you to read it and encourage you to write your own to your member of the House of Representative or Senator.

To the Honorable Kay Bailey Hutchinson,

I write you with utmost urgency and passion. Your fellow Texas Senator, John Cornyn, has heard the voice of the people and joined the fight to transform our economy and save our country. I ask that you join the struggle to end an oppressive and inefficient tax collection system that was of chief importance to Karl Marx, the founder of Communist ideology, as written in the Communist Manifesto as step two to form a Communist state. I present to you the Fair Tax.

The Fair Tax is a non-partisan tax proposal to replace the current income, payroll, estate, gift, death, savings, corporate, and investment taxes into a simple to understand national sales tax (23%) that will be collected on only new purchases and only at the final retail sale of all purchases made by consumers. To cover the basic necessities of life the Fair Tax will give every legal citizen of the US a pre-bate to cover the costs of taxes up to the poverty level as determined by the Department of Health and Human Services. After all, “all men are created equal” and no person should be forced to pay taxes on items of necessity.

The Fair Tax will create unrivaled economic growth (over 11% higher, 10 years from passage, than today), unprecedented job growth (10 years after passage, a rate of 9% higher than today), income from employment up 27.4% the first year and 41.2% higher in year 10 from passage, and 41.2% higher domestic investment 10 years from passage than today's level. This is due to the fact that workers are no longer penalized for working harder or for high achievement and the lack of corporate taxes that will reverse the outsourcing of American jobs overseas to areas with lower taxes on corporations.

Corporate taxes in reality are another way to tax the citizens of our country as around 22% of the current cost of items directly relate to taxes that are paid for during the manufacturing process due to materials or personnel. Corporations simply pass on the taxes they are required to pay onto the consumer. Corporate taxes stunt economic growth, limit job production, and make our products less competitive in world markets because of the embedded 22% tax rate.

For brevity, I have only touched on the some of the main aspects of the Fair Tax. For more information please visit FairTax.org. I ask that you formally place your support behind the Fair Tax to stop an oppressive and inefficient tax collection system. I eagerly await your response on this important issue. Thank you for your service to our state and country. Your support for the Fair Tax will keep Texas in the forefront of positive change in American politics.

Neal Boortz has recently compiled a free web seminar to offer more information about the Fair Tax. For those of you with the time to do so (about an hour) I encourage you to take some time to watch it, get informed, and then spread the word about the Fair Tax. Until I can get my next post up have fun with this.

http://wsbradio.com/ads/fairtax_webinar.html

Remember to sign the Fair Tax petition before April 15th at http://www.changedc.org

Who pays taxes? Great question. The common answers will be income earners, investors, and corporations. What if I told you that corporations don't really pay taxes? You would say I'm crazy right. Well call me crazy then but Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Milton Friedman agrees with me. He stated in a President's Advisory Panel hearing for Federal Tax Reform on March 31, 2005 that, "[a]ll taxes ultimately-the consumers pay the taxes. Nobody else pays the taxes. Corporations don't pay taxes. The collect them, but they don't pay them."

Still think I'm crazy? Well here's why Dr. Friedman is correct in his assertion.

In every process of manufacturing corporations, companies, and etc. pay taxes on this things that they buy to produce their products. For example, consider some of the processes in making something as simple as cereal. First the grains must be grown by a farmer who pays for a harvesting machine, fertilizer, and pesticides. He pays taxes for everyone of the products that the previous manufacturer had to pay for the chemicals, metal, or plastics to create those products who likewise had to pay the taxes. After the product is harvested it has to go to the mill to get turned into a usable product and they add on their own tax burden into the final cost of their product. Finally, the cereal manufacturer creates the cereal, paying taxes on all the purchases they have made including the plastic bags and cardboard boxes. All these taxes get added up and passed onto YOU the consumer who buys that item.

In addition don't forget about the cost of the human element as well. Corporations must take into account the pay increase that will be required because of income, pay roll taxes, and their matching "contributions" for Social Security and Medicare. These all get added into the final price of that box of cereal, loaf of bread, or other products that you buy.

A Harvard study done by Dr. Dale Jorgenson concluded that 22% of the total cost of the item are these taxes that are added onto every step of the manufacturing process and then are graciously passed onto you. Great isn't it!

That means even those people who fall into a category where they pay no income taxes pay these taxes. Not to mention the fact that they don't take home their full paycheck each month making life even more difficult for them and unfair. On average about 25% of a paycheck is deducted due to income taxes. Don't forget to add on your contributions for Medicare and Social Security which in some cases mean that over 30% of your paycheck is never reaching your bank account.

Now let's take into account what the Fair Tax will do.

The Fair Tax as already stated is a national sales tax that will be added only onto the final purchase of a NEW product or service. The sales tax rate will be at 23%.

But wait, are price going to increase by 23%? The simple answer is no. Since corporations will no longer have taxes to pay or contributions to make towards Social Security or Medicare they will be able to decrease their prices on their products around 22% due to the embedded taxes that are currently added at each step of the process. Some corporations will try to maintain their prices at the current rate but as smaller companies who wish to be more competitive and gain traction versus larger entities, the larger entities will be forced to knock down their prices.

On average the price of products will only increase by a single percentage point. That is $.01 more for each dollar spent. This is now the time to come out and say that this is a plan to increase revenue for the government. Wrong! Don't forget that you will be receiving your entire paycheck with no taxes or contributions taken out. In addition you will be able to save and invest without penalty.

Finally, if you so desire you can cut back your spending and pay no taxes by spending only up to the poverty line. Why? Simple, every American citizen will receive a pre-bate each month through wire transfer to a credit or checking account or through a check covering the taxes on spending up to the poverty line.

The Fair Tax is totally voluntary, if you don't want to pay you can just save your money.

Look for more posts in the coming days and weeks about the Fair Tax.

Have questions or comments, please post a comment or send me an email to srk.sb6@gmail.com.

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To take action now go to changedc.org or visit fairtax.org to sign a petition that will be presented to our elected officials and political candidates on Tax Day 2008 (April 15th for those of you not in the know). Let your voice be heard. For more information or to see other ways you can join millions of other supporters around the country in spreading the message about the Fair Tax now, visit fairtax.org or pick up one of the two books written by Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder that are listed in my "Try Reading Something" section.

The Fair Tax, or House Resolution 25/Senate Resolution 1025, in simplest words is a repealing of all income, payroll, corporate, capital gains, savings, and other taxes like the Alternative Minimum Tax in favor of a progressive national sales tax. In addition the Fair Tax will result in the removal of the 16th Amendment, which made it constitutional to levy an income tax (originally declared unconstitutional by the USSC in the 1890's). The Fair Tax is NOT about the repealing of a federal tax which would cripple our government.

Here are the main focus points from which my series on the Fair Tax will progress from. The Fair Tax:

• Will allow all workers of every economic group to receive their full paycheck with not taxes or "contributions" deducted
• Will be calculated onto the final sale of only NEW goods and services
• Will give every household (legal citizens only) in America a pre-bate check, no matter the level of income, for the taxes that would be payed up to the poverty level, in accordance with the Dept of Health and Human Services. Family size will be taken into consideration.
• Will be revenue neutral meaning that the current level of taxation income by the federal government will remain the same
• Will not change the services that Medicare or Social Security provide
• Will eliminate the IRS as it exists today as only retailers would be audited instead of individuals saving enforcement cost and increasing enforceability by decreasing the possible pool of people that can be audited
• Will collect taxes on every purchase made whether made by a legal citizen, undocumented immigrant, or foreign traveler
• Will allow the collection of taxes on ALL economic forces even those coming from illegal and the "underground economy"
• Will decrease compliance costs that corporations face that place our goods at a disadvantage to other products around the world
• Will encourage foreign and US companies alike to increase business enterprises in the United States instead of outsourcing the jobs overseas
• Will not tax education or other investments such as savings, stocks, or bonds
  
• Will encourage economic and job growth in our country
• Does not punish high achievers or hard work
• Allows any legal citizen of the country to be untaxed by only spending up to the poverty line.
  

That's correct the Fair Tax is a completely voluntary tax that you choose to pay for.

In the coming days I will address each part of this focus in more detail and cover concerns about the Fair Tax. Likewise I will take time to address comments left for me here over concerns about the Fair Tax.

If you wish to know more about the Fair Tax now please check out FairTax.org or view Neal Boort'z free web seminar.

If you already support the Fair Tax I encourage you to sign the Fair Tax petition at changedc.org and write letters to your representatives.

In the coming days and weeks the majority of my time will be spent on explaining the FairTax of which I am utmost passionate about. Barak Obama and Hillary (McCain isn't much better for that matter) is right that Washington needs change, but he is wrong about the type of change. We don't need more government intervention in our lives.

Instead we need the single largest shift of power to the people in the history of our great country to save our Republic. This issue is not about being a conservative, liberal, libertarian, Democrat, or Republican. It is about being concerned for the sake of America's future economic and national security. The issue I speak of is the Fair Tax.

Before I start telling you what the Fair Tax is, here are a few things to ponder.

• On March 9th of 2005 David Walker, Comptroller General of the US Government Accountability Office offered testimony to the House Committee on Ways and Means stating that at the rate of current taxation and Congressional discretionary spending, by 2040 the government will no longer be able to pay the interest on the federal debt, meaning our country will be bankrupt and will no longer be able to provide any government services because every cent of tax money will be spent to pay the interest of our national debt.
• Dr. Larry Kotlikoff of the Economics Dept. at Boston University has shown that to fix Social Security and Medicare permanently it will cost us $74,000,000,000,000 by 2030 (that $74 trillion if you don't want to count up the zero's). The current net worth of every household in America is around $45 trillion, so to pay it off the government will have to take every item from your house, cars, CD's, books, savings, investments, absolutely everything and they would still only be able to pay 60% of the debt off. Clearly we don't have the money.
• Democrats and some liberal Republicans preach out against corporations who have record profits and low taxes and insist that corporations should pay higher taxes. Well, who do you think really pays for those taxes and where do the jobs go that the citizens of Ohio made such an issue in their primary this past week? Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Milton Friedman knows and it has nothing to do with NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement). I'll leave you to ponder that for a few days when I address this question in my series about the Fair Tax.
• The current "heavy progressive or graduated income tax system" takes its founding from none other than Karl Marx, the founder of Communist ideology, as written in the Communist Manifesto. This is the second step of ten to form a Communist state. Wouldn't he be proud?
  
• Finally, the thoughts of two distinguished men.
• "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves [generous benefits] from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
  
• From Alexander Fraser Tytler's The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.
• "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic" (referring to the United States).
  
• Benjamin Franklin
• Our current tax system has over 64,000 pages of regulations and statutes that are so complicated your chance of a correct tax submission if you do it on your own is near 0%, your chance of getting an accurate answer from an IRS agent on a tax question is less than 40%, and 2 out of every 3 American will be forced to pay professionals large sums of money to complete their tax submission. To top it off in 2002, the economic impact it cost just to collect taxes for compliance was around $500 billion just to collect $950 billion in federal income taxes. Talk about a highly inefficient process (for every $1.90 collected it cost the US economy $1 in compliance costs).
  

Hopefully I have ushered your attention to the single greatest threat to our freedoms that American's faces today. Immediate resolve is needed and you can make it happen.

I have heard all too often, that "It sounds like a great idea, but it won't happen." A majority of colonists in colonial America took this stance during the Revolutionary War (thankfully George Washington and a few righteous men stood up to seemingly insurmountable odds). Change can happen, all it takes are voices to be heard.

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To take action now go to changedc.org or visit fairtax.org to sign a petition that will be presented to our elected officials and political candidates on Tax Day 2008 (April 15th for those of you not in the know). Let your voice be heard. For more information or to see other ways you can join millions of other supporters around the country in spreading the message about the Fair Tax now, visit fairtax.org or pick up one of the two books written by Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder that are listed in my "Try Reading Something" section.

I am in Texas, but that is not the question.

The question is, where are you? Do you have the things that you want? Do you have the job, money, or waist size that you want? Are you where you planned on being in life? With greater brevity, are you happy with your current place in this world? Where are you?

Well don't worry, because it is not your fault if things are bad.

That's what the two Democrats running for President are telling us. After all, you are victims of circumstance because you were born into a poor situation, that you are disadvantaged because of the color skin, or that you can't succeed because of your gender so you are automatically disadvantaged and things that happen to you are not your fault. They tell you that things can be better if you vote for them.

The candidates speak out against CEO's who make millions each year, corporations who make record profits, or companies who move jobs overseas. Hillary and Obama say the Bush tax cuts should be revoked because the rich don't need that much money and that corporations should pay higher taxes. So don't worry if things are bad for you because the entire system is against you. You cannot succeed.

The government is clearly the correct place for these problems to be fixed. The Bush Tax cuts should be revoked and corporations should be paying higher taxes. The government should control our health care.

Now its time for the sarcasm to end. Sorry if you actually believed that.

I will give credit to Hillary and Obama as they are right on one account: things can get better for you!

What have you done in your life that has made it better? This is the question you must ask yourself if you are not happy with your position in life. What have YOU done? Your lack of success, wealth, health or any number of other measures of success is the result of the decisions that you make in your life or your lack of decisions. What's the summation here?

Take the responsibility for your own actions and stop blaming others for your own misfortune. There are things you cannot control such as the parents you have, the color of your skin, or your families socioeconomic status upon birth. There are things that you can control and these are the decisions that you make everyday. Has your unhappiness every gotten you anything?

This leads me to a brief story. I was talking to an unhappy gentleman at my place of work around a week ago. I did not know his political positions as he stated that Hillary and Obama were both childish and petty. I agreed with him without hesitation. He consequently stated that he had never voted for a Republican in his life with the exception of Eisenhower because they supported smaller government. Finally he stated that he was upset with the current MediCare program and that it just doesn't work but he would keep voting for Democrats who promised more government programs.

He blamed the rich and corporations for his problems all his life but his life did not improve even though he received the government assistance that he desired. Quite simply, his unhappiness was not due to the rich or record profits of corporations but his own lack of success in life because of the decisions that he made and continues to make. His beloved Democrats had gotten him nothing yet he continued to follow them blindly in hope of change but change will never come.

Government programs are not the cure all. Government programs instead entrap the human spirit and imprison the mind into state of constant victimhood in which you cannot succeed or gain true happiness. The story above is just one of many. Examine this for yourself.

Take responsibility for your own actions and get your life moving. True happiness is right around the corner. The solutions to your despair are in the decisions you make.


Remember to sign the FairTax petition at changedc.org or to learn more about the FairTax visit fairtax.org to save America's economy, end a communist form of taxation, and bring jobs back to our country. Look for more information on the FairTax in my next update.

What good is it to have freedoms and not be able to use them to there fullest extent because you are afraid to be labeled some arbitrary name? Simply put, not good at all! Political correctness is just one way others try to limit your freedoms as it is mine just so someone's feelings don't get hurt. That does not apply here. If it needs to be said, I will say it.

If you think my posts are unfair then you need to grow up because life is not fair! If you think I am being insensitive to your feelings then you should probably examine your own life and what you have done with the life you have been given to make you so sensitive to what I think of you or your beliefs. If you are not happy with where you are, don't blame me or anyone else. The only person you have to blame for your current situation is yourself!

If I make you think then I have done my job. Alfred Korzybski, a Polish philosopher and scientist born in the nineteenth century was correct in stating that "[t]here are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking." Unfortunately, most people in our great country fall into one of two these categories letting others lead them to decisions that imprison the human spirit, take away our freedoms, or trap them into the perpetual prison of victimhood. This fact is currently being demonstrated in the presidential primaries where millions are fleeing towards candidates who seek towards candidates who seek to do exactly this (more on that in the coming days).

If I make you think, then I am thrilled your life has gotten harder. Our freedoms are under attack everyday because people are afraid to speak up and make a declaration because it is easier to sit back and let life pass you by.

I am not afraid to say what many are!

I welcome your comments and remember to speak up!

I am finally tired enough of all the bickering in Washington and the lack of education about our federal government and its place in our lives. I am not a Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative so neither side has my favor here.

I am just getting this blog up and running. Please check back daily for new posts and see how you can help. I hope to get the first posts up on Saturday March 8th.

As for now please visit fairtax.org (see the links under "Ignorance is No Excuse...") for the link and sign the Fair Tax petition which will be submitted on Tax Day 2008 (April 15th). Don't say it can't happen or it won't happen. Make it happen.