How Massachusetts Supports The Troops And Unfair Criticism Of The Fair Tax

We've already seen a few instances where the government of Massachusetts has been cracking down on displays that support the troops fighting the War on Terror. It gets even worse now. Massachusetts is now trying to eliminate U.S. flags and other diplays along the highways. According to the Boston Globe:

The crackdown comes a year after the state's last attempt to regulate the overhead displays. At the time, under pressure from military families and their advocates, highway officials said signs would be allowed if positioned behind fences, but now they are saying even these must go. "When the soldiers or their families hear about this, they're going to be up in arms," said James Wareing, the leader of a military support group who assembled and maintains the display dedicated to Jimenez, whose family lives in Lawrence. "It has nothing to do with safety. . . . Nothing has ever happened in six years." ... "I was told I could do that and they gave me their word and that was it," said Linda Noone, 49, of Reading, who put up a series of flags on an Interstate 93 overpass near the Wilmington border in 2005, a year after the death of her father, a Korean War vet.

What will they do next?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Overpass Flags, Troop Tributes To Be Removed
Noah Bierman
The Boston Globe
December 4, 2007

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You know, when people criticize the Fair Tax, it would be a good idea if they actually read the plan before commenting on it. I showed earlier how Bruce Bartlett got his criticism wrong in this blog post:

Bruce Bartlett Gets It Wrong
84rules
August 29, 2007

Now Rich Lowry is commenting on a Tax Plan for which he has obviously not even read the plan. Here is what Lowry wrote in the New York Post:

To avoid the risk of getting both a national sales tax and an income tax, FairTaxers would have to repeal the 16th Amendment. Good luck: Huckabee's magic wand will come in handy. Then, there's the sales-tax rate. FairTaxers say that a 23 percent rate would be enough to replace current revenues. What they're really talking about is a tax of 30 cents on every dollar - what most people would call a 30 percent rate. The government would pay the tax on all its purchases, a gimmick "done solely to make revenues under the FairTax seem larger than they really are," notes economist Bruce Bartlett. Budget trickery aside, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the rate would have to go as high as 57 percent.

I will simply repeat what I wrote about Bartlett's misguided comments:

"This is a total misrepresentation of how the Fair Tax works and hence my conclusion that he never really researched it or he is deliberately giving false information.

What Bruce forgot (or neglected) to say was that the Fair Tax first strips away all Federal taxes that go into the price of a new consumer good at the retail level. Currently, 22% of what you pay at the retail level is taxes that have been passed on from supplier to producer to distributor to retailer to you.

Thus, under the Fair Tax, an item that costs $1 under the current tax system would be reduced in price by 22% (i.e. all of the taxes passed on to the consumer), that is, its real cost would be $.78. It is at this point where the Fair Tax is levied. A 23% tax rate would take to price of that product up to $.99. But to keep it simple, round that back up to $1."

As for the part about repealing the 16th Amendment, if Lowry and Bartlett had actually read and fully comprehended HR 25, they would have both seen that the bill includes a provision for a national referendum on repealing the 16th Amendment. But apparently, people like Lowry and Bartlett just don't want the facts to get in their way.

Lowry, Bartlett, et. al. would be better served if they would inform themselves rather than just listening to the blather of others without bothering to check out the validity of the blather. In each case here, Lowry and Bartlett both rewrote the Fair Tax Plan and then criticized their own rewrites.

Isn't that how libs do their reporting?

You can access Lowry's misguided and erroneous criticisms on-line here:

Huck's Sales Tax Lunacy
Rich Lowry
New York Post
December 4, 2007