1Declaration: Free Markets, Free People, Free Minds

This years presidential election may be on of the most followed elections in US history. In what should be a clear cut Democratic presidency because of poor economic indicators, an unpopular war, and the most unpopular president in history the Democratic candidates can't take an upper hand and keep fighting each other instead of Republican nominee, John McCain.

The 2008 Presidential Election will have its two major parties, the "Big Two" once again vying for power, but it will not be an election between conservatives and liberal. This will be an election between moderates and liberal fascists (yes...I borrowed that term from Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism) and will feature a variety of other third party candidates from Libertarians to statists.

Today's "Big Two" (Republicans and Democrats) politicians are out of touch with the founding principles of our country. (Go ahead and read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and information about the signers of the Declaration. Then try reading about the over reaching British government and compare where our government is heading.) Instead of limited government, maximation of individual liberty, and self-responsibility our nominees and elected representatives preach about and enact laws that seek to minimize individual liberty by limiting choice (no more incandescent light bulbs) and increasing government intervention in our daily lives. They have clearly forgotten, or what I believe have intentionally misplaced, the idea of the most famous Chinese provers, " Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will feel himself for a lifetime."

The "Big Two" (not all politicians but a large portion of them) no longer believe in the people of this nation. Democrats are in favor of the "nanny state," welfare state, or as Neal Boortz calls it the, "I want my mommy state." Democratic candidates offer up a constant barage of rhetoric on nationalized health care, lies about global warming (without scientific evidence), and the golden oldie to blame the rich or big corporations for your problems. Republicans offer few better solutions. John McCain recently spoke to 9th war Hurricane Katrina victims promising more federal government intervention and preaching of the failures of the national level response while neglecting the lack of state, local, and personal responsibilities. There is no doubt things could have been handled much better with regards to the federal response but the primary responders state, local, and private citizens all failed to take responsibility. McCains sponsoring of the McCain-Feingold bill limiting people's freedom of speech, McCain-Kennedy bill offering amnesty for illegals, and McCain-Liberman global warming bill offer more credibility to this argument.

This leads me to one conclusion. The politicians, praised by some of you, but nothing more than mere mortals and imperfect beings like yourself believe that you are totally incapable of taking care of yourself. Look at the policies they are creating and then look at yourself and American society at large objectively. Instead of offering permanent solutions that feature individual improvement, problems need solving by more government dependency and inefficient government programs.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach and man to fish and he will feed himself for a lifetime." This quote no longer applies. Self-responsibility have been eliminated and freedom of choice has been erroded. Clearly this quote no longer applies so lets update it for the time.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give a man a fish a day (aka welfare and entitlements) and he will become dependent on us (government and politicians) and vote for us (politicians) forever." This has become the ideology of the "Big Two" and it will continue until the people of the United States call for change sternly in elections or mass communications with their representatives.

Don't forget that their are more than just two political parties! I firmly believe that Liberty in America can only be saved by Libertarian ideals.

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.