Nixon Library to Release Tape Recordings

Nixon Library to Release Tape Recordings

3/18/05

WASHINGTON - In the face of criticism, the privately run Nixon library said Friday it intends for the late president's confidential tape recordings concerning politics to be made public once the government takes over the facility next year.

The Rev. John Taylor, the library foundation's executive director, made the commitment following an embarrassing episode in which the library canceled an upcoming conference of historians on the topic of Nixon and Vietnam.

Some participants claimed the move was aimed at stifling debate about Nixon, and the cancellation prompted objections to Congress by the American Library Association and some scholars who questioned whether the library should be entitled to federal support.

The library is scheduled to go from private to government control in February 2006.

After Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal, Congress feared he would destroy materials needed for the criminal investigation and passed a law giving the government possession of his papers and tapes.

Nixon maintained control over his tape recordings of a political nature and they have never been released. Nixon's White House taping system was in place from February 1971 through July 1973, a period that included his re-election campaign.

The Nixon foundation believes it is vital for the library to house the political tape recordings when the National Archives takes control of the facility in February 2006, Taylor said in a letter this week to Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United States.

"Our intent and promise is for the National Archives to be able to make these political tapes available to the public in exactly the same way that the rest of the tape collection is being made available to the public," Taylor said in an interview.

The library at Yorba Linda, Calif., is the lone presidential library without federal funding. It is seeking $3 million from Congress to pay for the transfer of records from the National Archives in College Park, Md., to the library in California, and millions more to build a new wing to hold the materials.

"This is a big step forward," said Tom Blanton, one of the people who criticized the Nixon library for canceling the conference.

An exchange of letters between Taylor of the Nixon library and national archivist Weinstein "lays down the markers that the National Archives will hold the Nixon library to if the Nixon people are really going to measure up as a legitimate presidential library," Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group based at George Washington University, said.

___


On the Net:


Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace: http://www.nixonfoundation.org/


National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/


U.S. National Archives & Records Administration: http://www.archives.gov/

Another Deep Throat Update

Hi Everybody!,

Rex has provided more information regarding the mystery of Deep Throat. The link is provided below.

If you or anyone you know have any other information, please let either myself or Rex know. Thank you.

Enjoy!

Bill
-----------------------------------
http://deepthroatblog.blogspot.com/

$27 Million Lottery Winner Rushes Back to Work

$27 Million Lottery Winner Rushes Back to Work

Fri Mar 18, 8:12 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's biggest individual lottery winner had no time to celebrate after becoming 20.4 million euros ($27 million) richer, because he was too worried about being late for work.

When the salesman, who was not identified by WestLotto, arrived Thursday to buy his weekly lottery ticket at a shop in the industrial Ruhr area he was told last week's 12-euro ticket that he hadn't bothered to check had won the jackpot.

The man's reaction left the lottery operator dumbfounded.

"After he was told he had won the jackpot, he said he didn't have time to chat because he would get into trouble with his boss," a lottery spokesman in the western city of Muenster said. Instead, he rushed off to catch a bus to work.

There were few details about the lucky man, a pigeon-lover in his 30s, except that he planned to trade in his rented apartment for something a little bigger in the country. It was not known if he would stay on in his job as a salesman.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill's Comment: My kind of guy!

How Would You Like to Meet This Guy?

How Would You Like to Meet This Guy?

Fri Mar 18, 8:06 AM ET

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian man on trial for having sex with dogs claims he did it out of compassion for man's best friend, a Belgian paper said on Friday.

Daily Gazet Van Antwerpen said the 36-year old in the eastern Belgian town of Genk told the court he had sex with dogs "out of love for animals," since a lot of them can't have sex, especially those locked up in refuges.

The man, only identified by his initials, could face six months in jail if convicted.

He had worked in an animal refuge before and had also posted thousands of pictures on the Internet of himself having sex with dogs, the paper said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill's Comment: Is there any chance that he is related to Michael Jackson?

REPUBLICANS, BLOGGERS AND GAYS, OH MY!

REPUBLICANS, BLOGGERS AND GAYS, OH MY!

Wed Feb 23, 7:58 PM ET

By Ann Coulter

In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown Web sites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA (news - web sites) agents.

The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?

Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay.

First, liberals claimed Gannon was a White House plant who received a press pass so that he could ask softball questions -- a perk reserved for New York Times reporters during the Clinton years. Their proof was that while "real" journalists (like Jayson Blair) were being denied press passes, Gannon had one, even though he writes for a Web site that no one has ever heard of -- but still big enough to be a target of liberal hatred! (By the way, if writing for a news organization with no viewers is grounds for being denied a press pass, why do MSNBC reporters have them?)

On the op-ed page of The New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed?"

Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.

But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification"). Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost anyone can get a daily pass -- even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's deception.)

Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is "James Guckert." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews introduced the Gannon scandal this way: "Coming up, how did a fake news reporter from a right-wing Web site get inside the White House press briefings and presidential news conferences?"

Reporter David Shuster then gave a report on "the phony alias Guckert used to play journalist" -- as opposed to the real name Shuster uses to play journalist. (You can tell Schuster is a crackerjack journalist because he uses phrases like "phony alias.") With all the subtlety of a gay-bashing skinhead, Matthews spent the rest of the segment seeing how many times he could smear Gannon by mentioning "HotMilitaryStuds.com" and laughing.

Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner -- aka Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of The New Republic.

Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.

Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton (news - web sites) and John Kerry (news - web sites)) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.

Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like The New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on TV and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights.)

Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed. Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.

COME BACK, LIBERALS!

COME BACK, LIBERALS!

Thu Mar 10, 6:41 PM ET

By Ann Coulter

Liberals have been completely intellectually vanquished. Actually, they lost the war of ideas long ago. It's just that now their defeat is so obvious, even they've noticed. As new DNC Chairman Howard Dean (news - web sites) might say, it's all over but the screaming.

In an editorial last week, The New York Times gave President Bush (news - web sites) credit for democracy sweeping through the Middle East or, as the Times put it, "a year of heartening surprises." Yes, the Middle East's current democratization would come as quite a surprise to anyone who puts his hands over his ears and hums during the president's speeches.

Rolling Stone magazine is making fun of "moveon.org" for having no contact with normal Americans. Their Bush-hating cause has become so hopeless that moveon.org is on the verge of actually moving on.

Marking the first time Walter Cronkite and I have agreed on anything, Cronkite is ridiculing Dan Rather, saying he should have retired a long time ago.

No one, not even Chris Matthews, is defending the Italian Communist who claims American forces intentionally shot at her in Iraq (news - web sites). (But to be fair, Keith Oberman has been on vacation this week.) She may have lost some credibility when she backed her claim that Americans were targeting her by quoting her kidnappers. She said her kidnappers had warned her to stay away from the Americans because they would only hurt her. And then my rapist said, "Whatever you do, don't cry out for the police! They won't help you!"

Consider that less than 20 years ago, ABC's Peter Jennings and CBS' Mike Wallace announced at an "Ethics in America" panel that they would not intervene to prevent the slaughter of American troops while on duty as journalists -- especially during sweeps. As Wallace said: "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!" It almost makes you wonder if U.S. troops have ever targeted American journalists in the field during wartime. Maybe Eason Jordan would know something about that.

Now liberal journalists are pretending to support the troops. They hardly ever call them "baby killers" anymore, at least to their faces.

Democrats are even pretending to believe in God -- you know, as they understand Her.

The only people liberals can find to put up a fight these days are ex-Klanners and other assorted nuts.

There's former KKK "Kleagle" and Democratic Sen. Bob Byrd, who compared the Republicans to Hitler last week. Byrd having been a charter member of a fascist organization himself, no one was sure if this was intended as a critique or a compliment.

Aspiring first lady Teresa Heinz claims the election was stolen through the machinations of a vast conspiracy involving Republican polling machine manufacturers. We eagerly await a Michael Moore documentary to flesh out the details. It's only a matter of time before Heinz announces that anti-Bush insurgents control most of the Red States, and that the sooner the U.S. pulls out of those quagmires, the better.

Howard Dean -- chairman of the party that supports murder, adultery, lying about adultery, coveting other people's money, stealing other people's money, mass-producing human embryos for spare parts like an automotive chop shop and banning God -- has called the Republican Party "evil." One Democrat in the audience, a preschool teacher no less, complained that Dean was soft-pedaling his message.

Teddy Kennedy's big new idea is to wheel out his 18th proposal to raise the minimum wage. He's been doing this since wages were paid in Spanish doubloons (which coincidentally are now mostly found underwater). Kennedy refuses to countenance any risky schemes like trying to grow the economy so people making minimum wage get raises because they've been promoted. Kennedy's going down and he's taking the party with him! (Recognize the pattern?)

I keep expecting the real Democrats to appear and drag these nuts out of the room, saying, Oh sorry, he's escaped again -- don't worry, he does this all the time, and then Howard Dean will stand up and have no pants on.

So now, the entire country is ignoring liberals. I'm the canary in the coal mine. Twenty-six congressmen have signed a letter denouncing me for a column I wrote two weeks ago; for the past two weeks, I've been attacked on MSNBC and CNN, in The Detroit Free-Press and on every known liberal blog and radio show. (I especially want to thank Pacifica Radio in this regard.) I personally have shouted their complaints from the rooftops. Liberals had fallen into my trap!

But there was no point in responding because no one had heard about the liberal denunciations in the first place. It was like explaining a joke: OK, and then they said, "Call me a cab," and then I said, "You're a cab! Are you following this? ... Sorry, let me start over again."

This is like beating Dennis Kucinich (news - web sites) in an untelevised presidential debate. That and $8.50 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbuck's. I'm tired of helping liberals publicize their attacks on me. Liberals are going to have to do better than that if they want a response from me.

It's not just that we're a divided nation, with liberals watching only CNN and conservatives watching only Fox News. I'm pretty sure liberals are aware of me, and I haven't appeared on CNN for months. It's liberals the country is ignoring. No one knows or cares what they're carrying on about in their media outlets. Liberals can't get arrested. They're even letting Martin Sheen off with a warning now.

I hate to sound selfish at such a great moment for the country, but this is nothing short of calamitous for completely innocent right-wing polemicists. Liberals are too pathetic to write about. I have nothing to do; my life is over. Where have all the flowers gone?

I'm confident they'll stage a comeback someday. In lieu of common sense, liberals have boundless energy. But I'm getting bored waiting. In the interest of good sportsmanship, I have some proposals for liberals. I think Democrats might want to drop the contract all Democrats apparently have to sign pledging to pretend to believe insane things. Also, if you could just get the base of your party to not participate anymore and maybe be a little less crazy, people might listen to you. Barring that, you're just going to have to scream a little louder.

FREEZE! I JUST HAD MY NAILS DONE!

FREEZE! I JUST HAD MY NAILS DONE!

Wed Mar 16, 7:58 PM ET

By Ann Coulter

How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists? Last week, a defendant in a rape case, Brian Nichols, wrested a gun from a female deputy in an Atlanta courthouse and went on a murderous rampage. Liberals have proffered every possible explanation for this breakdown in security except the giant elephant in the room -- who undoubtedly has an eating disorder and would appreciate a little support vis-a-vis her negative body image.

The New York Times said the problem was not enough government spending on courthouse security ("Budgets Can Affect Safety Inside Many Courthouses"). Yes, it was tax-cuts-for-the-rich that somehow enabled a 200-pound former linebacker to take a gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother.

Atlanta court officials dispensed with any spending issues the next time Nichols entered the courtroom when he was escorted by 17 guards and two police helicopters. He looked like P. Diddy showing up for a casual dinner party.

I think I have an idea that would save money and lives: Have large men escort violent criminals. Admittedly, this approach would risk another wave of nausea and vomiting by female professors at Harvard. But there are also advantages to not pretending women are as strong as men, such as fewer dead people. Even a female math professor at Harvard should be able to run the numbers on this one.

Of course, it's suspiciously difficult to find any hard data about the performance of female cops. Not as hard as finding the study showing New Jersey state troopers aren't racist, but still pretty hard to find.

Mostly what you find on Lexis-Nexis are news stories quoting police chiefs who have been browbeaten into submission, all uttering the identical mantra after every public safety disaster involving a girl cop. It seems that female officers compensate for a lack of strength with "other" abilities, such as cooperation, empathy and intuition.

There are lots of passing references to "studies" of uncertain provenance, but which always sound uncannily like a press release from the Feminist Majority Foundation. (Or maybe it was The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which recently released a study claiming that despite Memogate, "Fahrenheit 911," the Richard Clarke show and the jihad against the Swift Boat Veterans, the press is being soft on Bush.)

The anonymous "studies" about female officers invariably demonstrate that women make excellent cops -- even better cops than men! One such study cited an episode of "She's the Sheriff," starring Suzanne Somers.

A 1993 news article in the Los Angeles Times, for example, referred to a "study" -- cited by an ACLU attorney -- allegedly proving that "female officers are more effective at making arrests without employing force because they are better at de-escalating confrontations with suspects." No, you can't see the study or have the name of the organization that performed it, and why would you ask?

There are roughly 118 million men in this country who would take exception to that notion. I wonder if women officers "de-escalate" by mentioning how much more money their last suspect made.

These aren't unascertainable facts, like Pinch Sulzberger's SAT scores. The U.S. Department of Justice (news - web sites) regularly performs comprehensive surveys of state and local law enforcement agencies, collected in volumes called "Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics."

The inestimable economist John Lott has looked at the actual data. (And I'll give you the citation! John R. Lott Jr., "Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments and Crime," Economic Inquiry, April 1, 2000.)

It turns out that, far from "de-escalating force" through their superior listening skills, female law enforcement officers vastly are more likely to shoot civilians than their male counterparts. (Especially when perps won't reveal where they bought a particularly darling pair of shoes.)

Unable to use intermediate force, like a bop on the nose, female officers quickly go to fatal force. According to Lott's analysis, each 1 percent increase in the number of white female officers in a police force increases the number of shootings of civilians by 2.7 percent.

Adding males to a police force decreases the number of civilians accidentally shot by police. Adding black males decreases civilian shootings by police even more. By contrast, adding white female officers increases accidental shootings. (And for my Handgun Control Inc. readers: Private citizens are much less likely to accidentally shoot someone than are the police, presumably because they do not have to approach the suspect and make an arrest.)

In addition to accidentally shooting people, female law enforcement officers are also more likely to be assaulted than male officers -- as the whole country saw in Atlanta last week. Lott says: "Increasing the number of female officers by 1 percentage point appears to increase the number of assaults on police by 15 percent to 19 percent."

In addition to the obvious explanations for why female cops are more likely to be assaulted and to accidentally shoot people -- such as that our society encourages girls to play with dolls -- there is also the fact that women are smaller and weaker than men.

In a study of public safety officers -- not even the general population -- female officers were found to have 32 percent to 56 percent less upper body strength and 18 percent to 45 percent less lower body strength than male officers -- although their outfits were 43 percent more coordinated. (Here's the cite! Frank J. Landy, "Alternatives to Chronological Age in Determining Standards of Suitability for Public Safety Jobs," Technical Report, Vol. 1, Jan. 31, 1992.)

Another study I've devised involves asking a woman to open a jar of pickles.

There is also the telling fact that feminists demand that strength tests be watered down so that women can pass them. Feminists simultaneously demand that no one suggest women are not as strong as men and then turn around and demand that all the strength tests be changed. It's one thing to waste everyone's time by allowing women to try out for police and fire departments under the same tests given to men. It's quite another to demand that the tests be brawned-down so no one ever has to tell female Harvard professors that women aren't as strong as men.

Acknowledging reality wouldn't be all bad for women. For one thing, they won't have to confront violent felons on methamphetamine. So that's good. Also, while a sane world would not employ 5-foot-tall grandmothers as law enforcement officers, a sane world would also not give full body-cavity searches to 5-foot-tall grandmothers at airports.

NOT CRAZY HORSE, JUST CRAZY

NOT CRAZY HORSE, JUST CRAZY

Wed Feb 16, 7:59 PM ET

By Ann Coulter

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has written that "unquestionably, America has earned" the attack of 9/11. He calls the attack itself a result of "gallant sacrifices of the combat teams." That the "combat teams" killed only 3,000 Americans, he says, shows they were not "unreasonable or vindictive." He says that in order to even the score with America, Muslim terrorists "would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and kill something on the order of 7.5 million people."

To grasp the current state of higher education in America, consider that if Churchill is at any risk at all of being fired, it is only because he smokes.

Churchill poses as a radical living on the edge, supremely confident that he is protected by tenure from being fired. College professors are the only people in America who assume they can't be fired for what they say.

Tenure was supposed to create an atmosphere of open debate and inquiry, but instead has created havens for talentless cowards who want to be insulated from life. Rather than fostering a climate of open inquiry, college campuses have become fascist colonies of anti-American hate speech, hypersensitivity, speech codes, banned words and prohibited scientific inquiry.

Even liberals don't try to defend Churchill on grounds that he is Galileo pursuing an abstract search for the truth. They simply invoke "free speech," like a deus ex machina to end all discussion. Like the words "diverse" and "tolerance," "free speech" means nothing but: "Shut up, we win." It's free speech (for liberals), diversity (of liberals) and tolerance (toward liberals).

Ironically, it is precisely because Churchill is paid by the taxpayers that "free speech" is implicated at all. The Constitution has nothing to say about the private sector firing employees for their speech. That's why you don't see Bill Maher on ABC anymore. Other well-known people who have been punished by their employers for their "free speech" include Al Campanis, Jimmy Breslin, Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek and Andy Rooney.

In fact, the Constitution says nothing about state governments firing employees for their speech: The First Amendment clearly says, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." Firing Ward Churchill is a pseudo-problem caused by modern constitutional law, which willy-nilly applies the Bill of Rights to the states -- including the one amendment that clearly refers only to "Congress." (Liberals love to go around blustering "'no law' means 'no law'!" But apparently "Congress" doesn't mean "Congress.")

Even accepting the modern notion that the First Amendment applies to state governments, the Supreme Court has distinguished between the government as sovereign and the government as employer. The government is extremely limited in its ability to regulate the speech of private citizens, but not so limited in regulating the speech of its own employees.

So the First Amendment and "free speech" are really red herrings when it comes to whether Ward Churchill can be fired. Even state universities will not run afoul of the Constitution for firing a professor who is incapable of doing his job because he is a lunatic, an incompetent or an idiot -- and those determinations would obviously turn on the professor's "speech."

If a math professor's "speech" consisted of insisting that 2 plus 2 equals 5, or an astrophysicist's "speech" was to claim that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, or a history professor's "speech" consisted of rants about the racial inferiority of the n-----s, each one of them could be fired by a state university without running afoul of the constitution.

Just because we don't have bright lines for determining what speech can constitute a firing offense, doesn't mean there are no lines at all. If Churchill hasn't crossed them, we are admitting that almost nothing will debase and disgrace the office of professor (except, you know, suggesting that there might be innate differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women).

In addition to calling Americans murdered on 9/11 "little Eichmanns," Churchill has said:

- The U.S. Army gave blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians specifically intending to spread the disease.

Not only are the diseased-blanket stories cited by Churchill denied by his alleged sources, but the very idea is contradicted by the facts of scientific discovery. The settlers didn't understand the mechanism of how disease was transmitted. Until Louis Pasteur's experiments in the second half of the 19th century, the idea that disease could be caused by living organisms was as scientifically accepted as crystal reading is today. Even after Pasteur, many scientists continued to believe disease was spontaneously generated from within. Churchill is imbuing the settlers with knowledge that in most cases wouldn't be accepted for another hundred years.

- Indian reservations are the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps.

I forgot Auschwitz had a casino.

If Ward Churchill can be a college professor, what's David Duke waiting for?

The whole idea behind free speech is that in a marketplace of ideas, the truth will prevail. But liberals believe there is no such thing as truth and no idea can ever be false (unless it makes feminists cry, such as the idea that there are innate differences between men and women). Liberals are so enamored with the process of free speech that they have forgotten about the goal.

Faced with a professor who is a screaming lunatic, they retreat to, "Yes, but academic freedom, tenure, free speech, blah, blah," and their little liberal minds go into autopilot with all the slogans.

Why is it, again, that we are so committed to never, ever firing professors for their speech? Because we can't trust state officials to draw any lines at all here? Because ... because ... because they might start with crackpots like Ward Churchill -- but soon liberals would be endangered? Liberals don't think there is any conceivable line between them and Churchill? Ipse dixit.

DEATH BY CONSUMPTION

DEATH BY CONSUMPTION

Tue Mar 15, 7:58 PM ET
By Ted Rall

The Push for a National Sales Tax


NEW YORK--They've trashed protection for bankrupt consumers and sunk their fangs into the soft fleshy throat of Social Security (news - web sites). Now Republicans are laying the groundwork for the ultimate goal in their ongoing war against the idea that government has a duty to mitigate economic injustice: replacing the income tax with a national sales tax.


If current GOP trial balloons lead to full flight, their long-hoped-for dismantling of the progressive tax structure in place since World War I could involve going beyond the flat income tax long championed by Steve Forbes (news - web sites) to a system that's fully regressive. The smaller your salary, the higher a percentage of taxes you would pay. Our social devolution to McKinley-era America would be complete.


In the latest reminder that Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) has become ideologically indistinguishable from right-wing econoquack Milton Friedman, the once acclaimed Fed chairman told Congress on March 3: "Many economists believe that a consumption tax would be best from the perspective of promoting economic growth--particularly if one were designing a system from scratch--because a consumption tax is likely to favor savings and capital formation."


Republicans count on our ignorance of history as they quietly re-spin the national consensus on taxation. Could that be why they relentlessly slash the education budget? There is, after all, a precedent for an America without a progressive income tax: the late 19th century.


Back then the government relied on three sources of revenues: tariffs, property taxes and sales taxes. High tariffs, critics on the left and right agreed, stifled trade and drove down wages. And, since everyone buys the same necessities (like food) at the same prices, sales taxes fell disproportionately heavily on the poor. The average worker earning the equivalent of $30,000 a year spent all or almost all of that $30,000. The average person taking home $300,000 spent less and saved more--savings that, under the consumption tax scheme, was gloriously tax-free and, for the most part, sat in savings accounts gathering interest. The disparity between rich and poor became staggering; robber barons built magnificent mansions while millions starved. There was no middle class to speak of. Because the Carnegies and Vanderbilts who had all the money paid few taxes, the government of the 120-year-old United States was too weak to maintain a strong standing army, much less compete internationally against France, Britain and the other colonial powers.


The modern income tax, enacted in 1913 with rates ranging between one and seven percent, replaced most tariffs and consumption taxes. By 1945 federal taxes started at 23 percent; the wealthiest individuals paid 94 percent. Though the top rate has since fallen, individual income taxes have since hovered at eight to 10 percent of GDP (news - web sites). Increased revenues allowed the federal government to fund massive mobilizations in two world wars, launch expensive anti-poverty and public works programs to fight the Depression, outlast old Europe and outspend its principal international rival, the Soviet Union, into bankruptcy. Government also acted as an agent of wealth redistribution, using taxes dunned from the wealthy to help Americans in need. Income taxes transformed us into a superpower and helped create the large middle class that capitalist economies require for continuously expanding consumption.


Ah, yes, consumer spending. Bush's economists argue that "removing the tax...on savings and investment...would increase savings and investment." That's true. But if you've ever had to factor in the 20 percent national sales tax on goods purchased in Europe (they call it the "value added tax"), you know that taxes on purchases are as much of a disincentive as taxes on savings. Corpo-conservatives want you to think that investing creates most jobs. It doesn't. Consumer spending generates 70 percent of GDP. A high national sales tax--it would have to be big to replace taxes on savings and income--could plunge us into a depression.


There are, if you open your mind, other options. For example, a six percent tax on purchases of stocks, bonds and other securities would allow the complete elimination of individual income taxes: no more 1040s, no more H&R Block. Even the rich wouldn't have to pay. (Here's the math: in 2004 the feds collected $809 billion in individual income taxes. Transactions on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) alone totaled $12.6 trillion.) Investors wouldn't come out ahead until the value of their securities increased by at least six percent, but that's also true about real estate. The standard six percent broker's fee doesn't seem to hurt the housing market.


Or, given the rising disparity of wealth since 1975, we could restore the maximum 90 percent income tax on the wealthiest Americans. We had that during the 1950s, when the American century hit its zenith. We could hike taxes on corporations, and ban the creation of phony offshore headquarters whose sole purpose is the avoidance of taxes.


Rich or poor, corporate or individual, government will collect its revenues from whomever screams the least. The howls of the rich and powerful for a consumption tax have disproportionate influence upon our supposed elected representatives. But the rest of us can scream too--and there are a lot more of us.