Free Republic

The flat tax, long a dream of economic conservatives, is finally getting its day -- not in the United States, but in Iraq. It took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a stroke of the pen Sept. 15 to accomplish what eluded the likes of publisher Steve Forbes, Reps. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) over the course of a decade and two presidential campaigns. "The highest individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent years shall not exceed 15 percent," Bremer wrote in Coalition Provisional...

As President Bush rebuilds his cabinet, we can expect to hear many in the media and on Capitol Hill claim the president lacks a mandate for his nominees and his policies. That's nonsense. The president earned more than 59 million votes -- about 3.5 million more than John Kerry -- in large part by making a convincing case for several clear-cut policy goals, including Social Security reform, a muscular foreign policy and, critically, fixing the tax system. "The American people deserve and our economic future demands a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system," President Bush announced in his acceptance speech at the...

Stunned Dems, jubilant GOP look for lessons By Peter Savodnik November 4, 2004 Americans want gutsy, unwavering leadership on the war on terrorism, judges who won’t make laws, energy independence and a government that cuts taxes and spends less of their money. Above all, they want a president and a Congress that will lead the world and not be led by world opinion. Those were some of the lessons an emboldened Republican Party took away from Tuesday night’s election results, as the GOP held on to the White House for another four years and padded its House and Senate majorities....

......Yet behind the Democratic presidential nominee's public confidence of victory in November, his advisers harbor concerns that not enough voters are comfortable with Kerry personally or enthusiastic about his ideas, a critical mass they long felt the senator needed to achieve by now to knock off an incumbent president. ......Kerry now refers to Iraq as "the president's most catastrophic choice," and with today's speech at New York University he plans to continue hammering "the failure of Bush's policy in Iraq and his lack of credibility as a world leader," Kerry communications strategist Joe Lockhart said yesterday. In a coordinated attack,...

Last week, Juliet Eilperin reported in the Washington Post(1) that "House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) would like to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the current tax system with either a flat tax, a national sales tax or a value-added tax." As reported, Hastert suggests that a new tax system would increase productivity and "double the economy" over the next 15 years. "All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won't seem so daunting anymore," The Post reports Hastert wrote. "People ask me if I'm really calling for the elimination...

Terror mastermind lived in flat under Heathrow approach By Daniel Foggo and Massoud Ansari (Filed: 08/08/2004) An al-Qaeda "communications chief" who is believed to have been co-ordinating a plot to bomb Heathrow spent three weeks living near the airport late last year, the Telegraph can reveal. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, 25, who is under arrest in Pakistan, lived in a ground floor flat in Reading, Berkshire. The address, on Wensley Road near the centre of town, lies below a western approach flight path to the airport. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan: reconnaissance He lived there with his grandmother, Batool Begum, and...

<p>CHICAGO -- Caterpillar Inc.'s first-quarter profit more than tripled due to strong sales of mining and construction equipment, causing the industry leader to dramatically increase its profit and sales guidance for the year.</p> <p>Caterpillar's results reflect the upsurge in earnings by many manufacturing and machinery companies in the first quarter. Volume and orders have been up throughout the sector.</p>

Flatten It, Already Our tax code is grossly unfair. By Daniel J. Mitchell America’s complicated tax system needs a complete overhaul, not minor fixes. The large role that system plays in many of the political dramas dominating the daily headlines shows why. Republicans and Democrats, for instance, are fighting over the “outsourcing” of jobs to foreign countries. But instead of sniping at each other, they should look at the corporate tax system. Our 35 percent corporate tax rate is one of the highest worldwide — higher even than the rate in socialist countries such as France and Sweden. Should we...

MADRID (Reuters) - Police have found a video in the rubble of a building blown up by suspected Islamic militants giving Spain an ultimatum of one week to pull out troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, news agency Europa press has reported. A group of Islamic militants blew themselves up in the building last weekend when cornered by police, and had been believed to be planning more attacks this weekend after a series of train bombs on March 11 killed 191 people. Interior Ministry officials were not immediately available to comment. The report on Thursday said the video showed three heavily...

As Tax Deadline Approaches, Isakson Renews Call for Fundamental Reform Atlanta, GA- With less than two weeks to go until this year's April 15th tax filing deadline, U.S. Representative and Senate candidate Johnny Isakson renewed his call for fundamental tax reform of the U.S. tax system. "Year after year, Congress makes numerous amendments to the tax code. With each set of amendments, the code gets more complicated, confusing and counterproductive. It is past time for Congress to debate and enact real, fundamental reform of the tax system," said Isakson. "The current tax system is broken beyond repair. There are several...

ATLANTA, Georgia Only a year ago, the month of March would have held the same positive associations for me as it has for many - the beginning of the end of winter, the promise of springtime and even summer. This year, and for every year for the rest of my life, the approach of March will mean something else entirely - the anniversary of the brutal death of my cousin, Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, an Israeli soldier and his commander ran over Rachel with a nine-ton Caterpillar bulldozer while she stood - unarmed, clearly visible in her orange...

March 16 is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death. I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending. Perhaps it was these explosives that in the year since her martyrdom – oops, death – have been strapped around suicide bombers to blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in Jerusalem, killing men, women, and schoolchildren (two of them classmates of my daughter and her friend in the February 22, 2004 bombing), and leaving hundreds more widows, orphans, and...

'Intel inside' comes to flat panel TVs 14:05 09 January 04 NewScientist.com news service Computer chip giant Intel is to enter the consumer electronics market for the first time with a chip specifically designed to power cheaper, better flat-panel TV displays. Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday that his company’s new liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) chips would yield displays priced below $2000 and provide crisper images than rival technologies. These include the digital light processors (DLP) pioneered by Texas Instruments - those displays sell for between $3000 and $6000. Philips, Sony, Mitsubishi and Toshiba...

Corries Reject Israeli Claims about Rachel's Death -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, September 30 2003 @ 02:41 PM EDT Cindy Corrie, left, and Craig Corrie, the parents of American International Solidarity Movement activist Rachel Corrie answer questions at a news conference in Jerusalem Monday, Sept. 29, 2003. "The Israeli military conducted an 'internal investigation' and said the bulldozer driver could not see Corrie because of the size of the bulldozer and its limited view .." By Lara Sukhtian JERUSALEM (AP) - Parents of an American activist killed earlier this year in Gaza by an Israeli army bulldozer called Monday for an independent U.S....

<p>The Israeli military has exonerated soldiers involved in the March death of Rachel Corrie, 23, the Olympia woman crushed beneath an armored bulldozer as she protested home demolitions in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The military prosecutor concluded the bulldozer's crew could not have seen or heard Corrie, the Associated Press reported Thursday. That contradicts eyewitness accounts that Corrie was in the bulldozer driver's line of site when she was buried under a wave of dirt and rocks.</p>

Ancient Egypt ~ Link with Australia An Article by Paul White - 1996 After 5,000 years Australia's Amazing Hieroglyphs still struggle for recognition ! Egyptian hieroglyphs found in New South Wales: The hieroglyphs tell the tale of early Egyptian explorers, injured and stranded, in ancient Australia. The discovery centres around a most unusual set of rock carvings found in the National Park forest of the Hunter Valley, 100 km north of Sydney. The enigmatic carvings have been part of the local folklore of the area for nearly a century with reports of people who sighted them as far back...

Live in a Former Toilet -- Only $200,000 May 30, 2002 12:06 pm EST LONDON, May 30 (Reuters) - A former Edwardian public toilet in south London, measuring just four meters square, is to be converted into a two-story "duplex apartment" and will be worth 135,000 pounds ($200,000), say estate agents Acorns in Lewisham. "I don't think the fact that it was a loo will put people off," said an Acorns spokesman of the convenience, at 17 Devonshire Road, on the busy South Circular road. "It is very convenient as it is opposite Forest Hill station," added the spokesman....

I pay a wide variety of taxes. I think my local quot;taxquot; for fire protection is the quot;fairest.quot; My water bill, for example, is simplistically the cost of the service to the town, divided by the number of users (households). If the household paid for water based on the cost of service to the town divided by the town's income.....each household would pay based on their income - not their water usage - and thus be regressive. Federal income taxes are horribly regressive and tax productivity. Even a flat income tax is regressive. Sales taxes and FICA are regressive. Take...