Posted on 08/20/2005 11:40:22 AM PDT by Turbopilot
The self-proclaimed High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth is power-walking through Concourse B at an impressive pace for a man limping on a recuperating knee. He's on a scouting mission: Are shops at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport stocking his latest book?
Is he curious? In need of an ego boost?
"Revenge," he says in a voice Atlantans might recognize as either a jolting cold shower of meanness or an invigorating brew of straight talk on the radio.
Neal Boortz is a New York Times best-selling author. So, as Boortz loves to say on air, "Bite me."
His literary accomplishment, "The FairTax Book," debuted at Numero Uno for nonfiction titles, and it's there for a second week in a row. That puts him ahead of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and "Confessions of a Video Vixen."
Consider it a satisfying endorsement for Boortz, especially since he did it with a book that doesn't bash liberals — a favorite topic — but instead suggests throwing out the federal income tax and replacing it with a national retail sales tax. He also sees it as sweet revenge because he says his earlier book, "The Terrible Truth About Liberals," wasn't even stocked by many stores.
Boortz, 60 and a fixture on Atlanta radio for more than half his life, is doing all he can to pump up sales of the new book. For weeks he has promoted the book on his nationally syndicated radio show, which airs locally on his home station, WSB-AM. Since the book came out, he's been rushing around the Southeast urging listeners and crowds at book signings to get on board.
His 4 million weekly listeners — 480,000 of them in metro Atlanta — make for a national audience significantly smaller than that of Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. Now Boortz has the kind of book credentials those bigger-name talkers enjoy. He's expecting to get some mileage out of it, winning converts for the tax plan and perhaps persuading more radio stations to carry his show, though he says that's not why he wrote the book.
By the way, a Georgia congressman co-authored "The FairTax Book," but that's in finer print on the cover. In fairness, Boortz often gives credit to the congressman, John Linder (R-Ga.), a longtime friend who for years has unsuccessfully pushed legislation that would switch the federal tax structure to a national sales tax. Boortz says he has backed federal consumption tax ideas for more than 20 years.
As the authors tell it, the idea for the book bubbled up when Linder's wife suggested the two men stop yapping about the tax and start writing.
Boortz put on hold another book he had been working on — "Somebody's Gotta Say It" — which he hints might include an entire chapter about The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a publication he enjoys skewering. Cox Enterprises, the owner of the Journal-Constitution, also has a controlling stake in Cox Radio, which owns WSB.
Trading places
On "The FairTax Book," Boortz and Linder each wrote sections and then swapped their work for the other to fix.
"Neal's streams of consciousness were not entirely accurate," Linder says. "[And] I would write stuff that was pretty damn boring."
Boortz says he tried to persuade the publisher, ReganBooks, to make his and Linder's names the same size on the cover. But the talk show man in him understands. "More people know me than him," Boortz says. "My name will sell more books than his."
ReganBooks declined to comment on how many copies have sold. The book, which came out Aug. 2, is on its fourth edition, with 300,000 copies in print.
Boortz and Linder decline to rate the tax plan's chances of becoming law.
Bill Ahern, a spokesman for the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group whose statistics are quoted by Boortz and Linder, said he hadn't read the book.
"Any fundamental reform is a long shot, but there is no denying that the momentum behind the fair tax concept is building," Ahern said. While consumption taxes, such as the sales levy, have advantages, Ahern said, it can be hugely difficult to enforce a tax on every retail transaction.
While the book has gained some media attention, including time on Fox News and CNN, Boortz acknowledged that national coverage of it had been limited.
Online, it's garnered both praise and criticism. Supporters consider it easy to read and straightforward. Detractors say Boortz and Linder put an overly rosy spin on what the effective tax rate will be and whether it will be sufficient to replace existing federal payroll and income taxes.
Boortz says he had to brush up on some simple tax concepts before writing the book. He assures that he's no dummy. He fell six hours short of getting an undergraduate degree, he says, but he has a law degree. Still, he doesn't do his own taxes. His wife, Donna, handles their banking, and he relies on her to load his wallet with cash, a fact he notes while using a crisp $50 bill to buy a newspaper at Hartsfield-Jackson. "Balancing a checkbook would be a major effort," he admits.
Big crowds
The book tour has been a blur. Fans show up by the hundreds at bookstores, according to Boortz staff estimates. Jacksonville, 800. Fairhope, Ala., 350. Fayetteville, N.C., 600. Boortz zips in and out of airports, his way paid by the publisher and radio stations that air his program.
After finishing a recent radio show at the WSB studio, he doesn't have time to stop by his Buckhead condo — he also has a home in Naples, Fla. — before a limo driver ferries him to Hartsfield-Jackson for another flight, this one to Charleston. As he bustles through the airport, fans call out to him. The praise comes from whites and blacks, though some listeners occasionally accuse Boortz of being a racist.
Boortz's colleagues say his on-air persona isn't far from what he's like off air. Except that he's very shy, says Royal Marshall, one of the show's associate producers. "He's the type of guy who will throw a party and one hour before will wonder, is anybody going to show up? "
Away from the studio, Boortz avoids engaging fans on the kind of issues that incite his radio rants.
"I don't like doing the show off the air," he says. It's a stance he says some people misinterpret as arrogance.
On the trip to Charleston, though, it's as if his face is still buried in a mike. He fires opinions and criticism like a machine gun. Everything gets hit. A young woman's fashions. A traveler's Louis Vuitton bag. The smokers in their own puffing aquariums at Hartsfield-Jackson airport. "Watch this," Boortz says, walking up to stare in at them. "God, what losers," he mutters.
Soon he's on the plane, sitting in his roomy first-class seat. It's not long before he complains — repeatedly — about insufficient air conditioning. "I'm a creature of comfort," he says, using a temperature feature on his fancy wristwatch to prove his point about the heat.
He also stews about the Delta crew's failure to announce why the plane has not pulled back from the gate though it was supposed to depart 40 minutes earlier. "I can guarantee, if we were on AirTran there would have been an announcement," Boortz says. AirTran also happens to be a sponsor of his show. Coincidence?
Hours later, the driver of a stretch limo deposits Boortz at the back door of a Barnes & Noble in Charleston. Store managers and a police officer hustle him into the store and in front of a crowd that eventually grows to about 400 people.
"How'd you like to get the federal government out of your paycheck?" Boortz booms to those in the crowd, some of whom got news of the book-signing via e-mail from a local group supporting the tax. The fans shout approval.
"Make us mad, Neal," a man yells.
"We're smarter than the government thinks we are," one woman calls out.
Using a strategy suggested by fellow talker Sean Hannity, Boortz tries to keep the book-signing line moving by writing only his name, rather than personalized messages.
"We listen to him on the radio every day," says Ridgi Neumayer, beaming at Boortz's signature on a radio he and his wife, Georgia, brought to the event. "Him and O'Reilly, I love them both. He sets the mood for a great day. So entertaining, and right on the mark."
Michael Morgan, a professor of economics at the College of Charleston, also is there for the event.
He often listens to Boortz's show and favors some kind of change in the nation's tax system, but he says, "I wouldn't base any conclusion just on what's in this book."
Still, Morgan says he's not uneasy about potentially far-reaching tax reform being championed by a radio talk show host.
"Why not?"
Though Boortz happily tells radio listeners he will lie to them and urges them to independently verify what he says, off air he says he wouldn't lie about anything substantive.
At the Barnes & Noble, Charleston attorney David Popowski scans the book's jacket. He puts it down after reading Boortz's short bio inside. It mentions Boortz's last book, "The Terrible Truth About Liberals." That's too much for Popowski, a Democrat who's never heard of Boortz before.
"I find it sort of a turnoff," he says. "Right away that's such a far-right-thinking guy."
Selling ideas, too
Boortz describes himself as a Libertarian, favoring less government and more personal responsibility. Linder, Boortz's co-author, says the tax plan needs the support of Republicans and Democrats to become law. But no Democrats have signed on to the latest version of his bill.
Boortz sees hope though, especially if the book keeps ranking high on best seller lists.
"Every week it stays up there in the top two or three, politicians get more and more nervous," he says.
He says he doesn't remember what percentage of the book's take he'll get, but in dollar terms he predicts it will work out to "way less than six figures." He says all his proceeds will go to the Donna Boortz Foundation, which his wife is setting up in part to help people who have recently completed drug rehab.
Boortz has reason to believe that sales are going well. On his reconnaissance at the Atlanta airport, he told a bookstore cashier he was looking for a copy of "The FairTax Book."
Sorry, she said, it sold out and is on back order.
Boortz gave nary a smile as he walked away. "That's what you want to hear," he said. Earlier at WSB, associate producer Royal Marshall considered the book's success.
"I hope it doesn't change him," Marshall said. Then he shook his head as if at the absurdity of his comment.
"Neal Boortz has been Neal Boortz for 35 years," he said, laughing. "He'll still be hanging up on people."
"Now that's just plain funny. Congress screws us seven ways to Sunday in a myriad of different ways, and the American People just don't give a damn. Gatekeepers? There isn't even a gate."
“I discussed the importance of abolishing the income tax because of its tendency to form a habit of servility in the souls of a people that accept it. Servility of soul is bad not only in itself, it is also an open door through which will soon walk the abuses of ambitious government power. Leaders who find themselves with governmental power over a servile people will be quick to conclude that such a people exist to serve them.”
Alan Keyes “The Power of the Purse”, WorldNet Daily, August 27,1999
Your victim's mentality is your problem, Wolfie, not mine.
Trajan88; TAMU Class of '88; Law Hall (may it R.I.P.) Ramp 9 Mule; f.u.p.!
The FairTax bill (HR25) repeals both the income tax AND payroll taxes early in the bill so there will certainly not be both together.
Here, though, is a link to comparative features of different tax systems (note that there are 2 pages):
http://fairtaxvolunteer.org/pdf/Comparison_Chart.pdf
You seem to be intentionally overlooking the substantial downsides to the any income-based tax in supporting some idea of a flat tax ... which flavor of flat tax do yu support?
"Honey vanilla, please - no tax preferenced items to originate from the time of transition, and allowing a sunset period for the grandfathering and expiration of all pre-existing tax-advantaged items. 15-18% rate could probably do, but since the existing (not future) residential mortgage contracts would have to be grandfathered, initially it might have to be 20-22% to compensate for it."
Sounds like a flat tax proposal which hasn't been developed or entered in to congress yet.
You wanna live in a fairy tale world, knock yourself out. The reality of the way Congress works will take over every time.
But any system of income taxation is not eligible for border adjustment. That is a HUGE ball and chain for onshore manufacturing concerns....and largely the reason they went offshore. We MUST abandon income systems of taxation. Please see: http://www.inquit.com/461/wto-and-tax-subsidies
Nonsense. Offshoring has very little to do with taxes or border adjustments, and much more to do with the labor costs - why else is it happening to the places like China, and not to Luxembourg or tax heavens like say, Monaco?
Read the bill and then come back and let's talk.
You seem to have little grasp of what it does and how it operates.
"Our present system makes everyone that pays tax unhappy. this probably means its working."
"It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, that is, an extension of the revenue. When applied to this object, the saying is as just as it is witty, that, 'in political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.' If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them."
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #21
Your argument above is a weak one vs a vs the FairTax in the sense that the FairTax's much greater visibility would lead to much more resistence to the rate of taxation than the current one does, since so much of the current system's tax burden is hidden from the taxpayers who pay it.
Longer term sutdies by different economists show that consumption is more stable a revenue source than is income.
Your reasoning is not correct since in any event if consumption is affected as you suppose, then also the income that derives from that will take a huge hit also. With consumption it is possible for people to use savings or borrowing if necessary to continue their consumption at whatever their level might be.
"Income is less directly affected by the marketplace ups and downs, and thus is a more stable revenue source."
That is factually incorrect. Historical trends reveal that consumption is a more stable revenue base than taxable income.
Boortz is on the air this morning saying that the fire marshalls kept out late comers to the book signing last night in Dayton, OH. He said that he signed about 800 books.
I wish they could extend the book signing tour into September. The exposure that this is giving the FairTax is enormous.
Offshoring is happening all over the world and taxation is an undeniable part of it. The placement of the operation is dependent on several factors, including labor costs, basic infrastructure like roads and utilities, increased inventory turn time due to transportation lags, etc. Taxation is likewise and undeniable factor and we've shot ourselves in the foot, but we now wonder why we limp into the world market.
http://www.idaireland.com/home/index.aspx?id=659
Please also see: http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041130-084445-1131r.htm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.