Replace the IRS With A National Sales Tax I have been a subscriber to your paper for about six months. I only wish I had known about it ten years ago. This is one of the only papers or magazines I receive that I read from cover to cover. I was intrigued by your article on taxes in the mentioned edition ["The Tax Man Cometh," HUMAN EVENTS, April 14, page 1] and hope that you will make this a major part of your future issues. I am, like most Americans, appalled by the abuses that our elected officials—either directly or through the IRS indirectly—have made us suffer under. (Read Sen. Roth’s The Power to Destroy.) I have been an advocate of a National Sales Tax ever since I heard about it from a former congressman who explained how the present system made our goods and services uncompetitive in the world market. I would like for you to ask your readers to contact their congressman and senators and tell them to support the FAIR tax plan. Below are our ten best reasons to eliminate the IRS and implement a National Sales Tax. • Fairness • Reduce the size of the federal workforce b y eliminating IRS • Add talented workers to the job pool (tax lawyers, accountants, IRS agents) • Direct savings for American taxpayers • April 15th becomes a regular day • Removes unnecessary fear of the government • Back to the Constitution • It is self-regulating • An honest Congress free from interest-group pressure • Reduced litigation Thanks very much for your time. Hope you might find this useful.
Gun-Grabbing Democrats Disregard 2nd Amendment When are the Democrats going to wake up ["Gun Rights on a Roll," HUMAN EVENTS, May 12, page 1] and stay away from the 2nd Amendment? All they have to do is check the results in Canada about guns and gun registration. It did not work there and it will not work here.
Readers Reflect Over Military’s Quandary The "environment" is secondary to the fitness of our national defense ["Endangered Species Envelop Marines in California," HUMAN EVENTS, February 24, page 5]. Potential enemies of the U.S. will simply choose their ground as that which more closely matches EPA-restricted environments. Seriously, some federal lands should be refuges for the furry, feathery and fuzzy relations of PETA, Earth First, and the Sierra Club; however, our military should be able to use the whole of their reservations to exact the maximum quality of training by utilizing the "environment" and terrain of the military base as required. Sanction the EPA here. An environment can always come back. Poorly trained dead soldiers can’t.
I’m a retired tank soldier who spent many years at Ft. Hood dating back to 1953. During those early years, the only restriction to maneuver on the reservation was a common-sense approach—try not to knock down any trees. Cedar, which grows like a weed in this part of Texas, was not included in the same category. As a matter of fact, during subsequent tours to Ft. Hood in 1968 and 1972, civilian cedar cutters were allowed to come in on a controlled basis and "harvest" wood for fence posts. This policy not only helped them but also kept the cedar from taking over the landscape. In later years, however, stringent rules were slowly developed to protect the habitat of the birds mentioned in your recent article. As you probably guessed, they love cedar. Now, Ft. Hood, in some places, looks like a gigantic cedar brake. The military map of the reservation looks like a mass of measles with large red sections denoting restricted areas. The growth of the pesky cedar bushes has also increased the potential for a range fire, something we used to let burn out with damage only in a small area. I have been told by good sources that under the current rules, if a range fire is not extinguished and damage to the habitat results, more acreage will be put on a restricted basis to make up for the loss. Although I don’t have documents to prove it, I feel that most of the extreme rules were put in place during the 1990s. While I agree with the idea that some control must be exercised to protect our environment, the criteria established during the Clinton years are not only ridiculous but are restricting military training on bases all over the U.S. Certainly, in the cedar-covered areas surrounding this Texas post, the "endangered" birds should be able to find refuge or, as I suspect, will survive even with normal training taking place around them.
Predatory Trial Lawyers Sap Tobacco Settlements Trial lawyers are predatory ["Soak the Trial Lawyers," HUMAN EVENTS, May 5, page 1]. Their actions should have been expected in hijacking the settlement. However, I have a big problem with the entire premise of the suit. How can anyone claim they didn’t know smoking could harm them? That logic is absurd. We have talked about the dangers of cigarette smoking for decades. I’m 50 and can clearly recall my grandparents talking about the negative effects of tobacco. Who hasn’t heard from a friend or co-worker that "smoking will kill you." I still hear the response "you have to die of something." I believe strongly in personal freedom and responsibility. If you decide to smoke or drink, I believe you have the right to make that choice. Having done so, you must accept the consequences. Our society must stop promulgating the mentality of no personal responsibility. That mentality is a worse cancer than that caused by tobacco.
The article by Stephen Moore, "Soak The Trial Lawyers" in your May 5th issue, states that a $250 billion settlement gave a maximum of $15 billion to 500 trial lawyers. One should keep in mind that $15 billion is 6% of the settlement. When a contingency of 25% is not unreasonable, 6% sounds like a bargain to me. The implication seems to be that Congress should correct this. That sounds like ex post facto to me.
