Letter to Daily Journal on Fair Tax

The following is a letter that I sent to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in support of the Fair Tax. If you are not familiar with HR 25, the Fair Tax bill, I encourage you to learn about the bill and the benefits it would bring to our country.

Dear Editor:

Americans should be concerned about the competitive edge that our tax system gives foreign manufacturers. We should no longer allow the income tax to make foreign-produced goods more competitive than our own.

Replacing the income tax with the FairTax, a highly progressive federal consumption tax, will end this practice and make American products 20 to 30 percent more competitive, both at home and abroad. What a break for U.S. Producers and consumers as well! Getting rid of the income tax will dramatically lower production costs in this country. And competition will ensure that these cost savings will flow, not only to the pockets of American manufacturers who will be able to create more and better-paying jobs, but also to the pockets of American consumers who will be able to buy more, save more, and invest more. This is just one of the many benefits of the FairTax.

It’s time to give American producers and consumers a break by passing the FairTax into law. I would encourage your readers to contact Americans For Fair Taxation toll-free at 1-800-FAIRTAX to learn more about the FairTax, or log onto their Web site at www.FairTax.org.

Congressman Wicker is on record as being in favor of the FairTax, however he has not signed on as a co-sponsor. If your readers agree that this bill would be great for our state and country, encourage him to become a co-sponsor. There are currently 54 members of congress that are co-sponsors of HR 25 and Congressman Wicker would be a valuable addition.

The Invasion Continues

I have not had a chance to read Pat Buchanan's new book yet, but his title alone sums it up. We must get our borders back under control before we lose our entire country. The following, wrtten by Neal Boortz, will help stir your interest in this new book:

Pat Buchanan's new book, "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America" hits the book stores this week. I started reading it over the weekend .. and the news is not comforting. Buchanan goes to great detail to catalogue the Hispanic invasion of America and the re-conquest of the American Southwest.

How about a few gems from Buchanan's book?

By 2050 there will be more than 100 million Hispanics concentrated in the Southwest that most Mexicans believe was stolen by the united States and still belongs to Mexico.

One in every 12 people entering this country illegally has a criminal record.

President' Bush's legacy may be to have lost forever a Southwest that President James K. Polk won for the United States.

Both parties are paralyzed by guilt over America's racial sins, and lack the will and fortitude of pervious generations to do what is necessary to defend the nation from the Third World in invasion.

Now ... as if the Third World invasion of the U.S. were not enough, we also have the Islamic fascists out there. How about a few bullet points here also?

It is now becoming clear to almost everyone, even Israelis, that Hezbollah came out the winner in it's five-week war with Israel.

Lebanon has made it clear that it will not disarm Hezbollah. Hezbollah has made it clear it will not disarm.

Iran will announce within the next 30 hours that it will not cease it's nuclear enrichment program.

Islamic radicals across the world are feeling hyped right now by Hezbollah's victory, and by the world's condemnation of Israel for it's strong self-defense response.

Let's face it, things are looking a bit iffy in Iraq right now.

The West has delivered an unmistakable message to the Islamic fascists: We will not fight to defend our freedoms if it means that civilians, especially children, will die.

It occurs to me that none of these problems are insurmountable. We have the ability to defeat Islamic terrorism, and we have the ability to turn-back the Third World invasion of the United States. We have the ability ... we just don't have the will.

The Hidden Costs of Lawyers

The following article by John Stossel does an excellent job of describing some of the problems that lawyers are perpetrating on our society. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America have made a marketing move by changing their name to something they hope the majority of Americans will not find negative. Read and enjoy.


The Trial Lawyers' 'Justice' Myth

By John Stossel

The Association of Trial Lawyers of America recently changed its name to the American Association for Justice. It may be a smart PR move, because everyone likes the word "justice," and apparently the name "trial lawyers" has acquired a negative tinge. It's good that it has, because although trial lawyers say they "protect the little guy," that's a myth. In truth, for every little guy they help, they hurt thousands.

When those big medical malpractice awards hit the headlines, it sounds like the little guy was helped. "$1 million awarded to victim of medical device!" But the headline leaves out a great deal. First, the suit cost everyone involved -- and that includes you -- much more than $1million. In addition to the million-dollar settlement, there were the court costs and legal fees charged by the defense lawyers -- many defense lawyers, considering the plaintiff probably sued not just the maker of the medical equipment, but the surgeon, an internist, some nurses, the hospital, and God knows how many others. Lawsuits routinely name as many as a dozen people, because to not include someone who is later revealed to be at fault may expose the lawyer to a charge of legal malpractice.

For the lawyers and people like me, a lawsuit is just another part of our work, but for most people, it's a life-wrecking experience. Nurses are terrified. Doctors can't sleep. Their hard-earned reputations are trashed by newspapers quoting plaintiffs' lawyers, who paint deceitful pictures of the doctors' incompetence and negligence. The doctors are forced to hire defense lawyers who eat up their time, energy and entire life savings. Patients suffer while their physicians spend several hours a week with attorneys, preparing for and giving depositions. The suit drags on for years.

Soon doctors begin practicing hyper-defensive medicine, ordering expensive and largely unnecessary tests to avoid lawsuits. Some of the tests are painful for the patients. Today, 51 percent of doctors recommend invasive procedures like biopsies more often than they believe are medically necessary.

Doctors become more secretive, talk less openly with patients and become averse to acknowledging any mistake. Insurance premiums rise, and both doctors and hospitals pass the cost on to patients. Newly fearful, the medical device manufacturer decides to stick to proven technologies, dropping its plan to pursue a new line of tools that would make surgery less painful and less risky. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Lawyers, of course, get a big percentage of any award, but to cover what the lawyers take, the price tags of all consumer goods are a little higher. Life-saving products are especially penalized by the "lawyer tax." A manufacturer who produces pacemakers says lawsuits add thousands of dollars to the cost of every pacemaker. Lawsuits punish hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people.

Critics of lawsuit abuse tend to focus only on the cost of litigation. The cost is nasty. But the higher cost is just the start of the nasty side effects. What's worse is that fear of lawsuits now deprives us of things that make our lives better.
Sure, fear of the "invisible fist" makes manufacturers more careful. Some lives have been saved because the litigation threat got companies to make their products safer. That's the "seen" benefit.

But that benefit comes with a bigger unseen cost: The fear that stops the bad things stops good things, too -- new vaccines, new drugs, new medical devices. Fear suffocates the innovation that, over the past century, has helped extend our life spans by almost 30 years. Every day, we lose good things.

We can't even begin to imagine the life-saving products that might have existed -- if innovators didn't live in a climate of fear. That'll be the subject of next week's column.

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate

Thomas Sowell Is Right On Once Again

The following article by Thomas Sowell describes the problems caused when government tries to interfere with the free market. Setting a minimum wage hurts the most those people that mis-guided politicians are attempting to help. If the politicians would look at the facts, and stop trying to buy votes, they would realize the foolishness of their proposals.

August 08, 2006
A Glimmer of HopeBy Thomas Sowell

It was a common political move when Chicago's city council voted recently to impose a $10 an hour minimum wage on big-box retailers. There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.

What was uncommon was the reaction. Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley denounced the bill as "redlining," since it would have the net effect of keeping much-needed stores and jobs out of black neighborhoods. Both Chicago newspapers also denounced the bill.

The crowning touch came when Andrew Young, former civil rights leader and former mayor of Atlanta, went to Chicago to criticize local black leaders who supported this bill.
While the $10 an hour minimum wage was politics as usual, the unusual backlash against it provides at least a glimmer of hope that more people are beginning to consider the economic consequences of such feel-good legislation.

A survey has shown that 85 percent of the economists in Canada and 90 percent of the economists in the United States say that minimum wage laws reduce employment. But you don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know that jacking up prices leads fewer people to buy. Those people include employers, who hire less labor when labor is made artificially more expensive.
It happens in France, it happens in South Africa, it happens in New Zealand. How surprised should we be when it happens in Chicago?

The economic consequence of political largess -- whether in the form of minimum wage laws or medical or other benefits mandated to be paid for by employers -- is to make labor artificially more expensive.

Countries with generous employee benefits mandated by law -- Germany and France, for example -- have chronically higher unemployment rates than unemployment rates in the United States, where jobs are created at a far higher rate than in Europe. There is no free lunch. Higher labor costs mean fewer jobs.

Since all workers do not have the same skill or experience, minimum wage laws have more impact on some than on others. Young, inexperienced and unskilled workers are especially likely to find it harder to get a job when wage rates have been set higher than the value of their productivity.

In France, where the national unemployment rate is 10 percent, the unemployment rate among workers less than 26 years old is 23 percent. Among young people from the Muslim minority, the unemployment rate is even higher.

In the United States, the group hardest hit by minimum wage laws are black male teenagers. Those who refuse to admit that the minimum wage is the reason for high unemployment rates among young blacks blame racism, lack of education and whatever else occurs to them.

The hard facts say otherwise. Back in the 1940s, there was no less racism than today and black teenagers had no more education than today, but their unemployment rate was a fraction of what it is now -- and was no different from that of white teenagers.

What was different back then? Although there was a minimum wage law on the books, the inflation of that era had raised wage rates well above the specified minimum, which had remained unchanged for years.

For all practical purposes, there was no minimum wage law. Only after the minimum wage began to be raised, beginning in 1950, and escalating repeatedly in the years thereafter, did black teenage unemployment skyrocket.

Most studies show unemployment resulting from minimum wages. But a few studies that reach different conclusions are hailed as having "refuted" the "myth" that minimum wages cause unemployment.

Some of these latter studies involve surveying employers before and after a minimum wage increase. But you can only survey employers who are still in business. By surveying people who played Russian roulette and are still around, you could "refute" the "myth" that Russian roulette is dangerous.

Minimum wage laws play Russian roulette with people who need jobs and the work experience that will enable them to rise to higher pay levels. There is now a glimmer of hope that more people are beginning to understand this, despite political demagoguery.

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate

S. 2590 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006

Let your Senators know that you want them to sign on as co-sponsors of this legislation. The following excerpt is from the Citizens Against Govenment Waste and gives some background:

Help shed light on the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent each year on federal grants and contracts. Tell your U.S. Senators today to support S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006.

Introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), S. 2590 would require the full disclosure of all companies and organizations that receive federal funds. This bipartisan legislation would direct the Office of Management and Budget to create a searchable database that would include information regarding each entity that receives federal funding, the amount received, how the money is being used, and where the entity is located.

Taxpayers have a right to know where their tax dollars are going. With the widespread use of personal computers and the growth of the Internet, creating such a database is an idea that’s time has come.

Letting the sunshine in on the $460 billion in federal grants and $340 billion worth of federal contracts each year will create a more accountable and less wasteful government.

Help make government spending more transparent. Tell your Senators today to sign on as co-sponsors of S. 2590!