CNBC LAST NIGHT

OK .. I know the audience wasn't exactly in the Hannity & Colmes category, but Sean hasn't invited me to come on the show to talk about the Fair Tax.  CNBC did.  After Alan Greenspan said those nice words about a consumption tax the folks at CNBC asked me to come on their "Bullseye" show at 6:00 to discuss the matter with an expert from the Cato Institute.  

So .. how do you know when someone hasn't done their homework on The Fair Tax?  They will ask you how the poor are going to be able to cope with a 23% sales tax.  That, of course, was my first question ... and I (naturally) hit it out of the park.  We'll cover it in more detail today on our "anything goes" edition of The Neal Boortz Show, but suffice it to say that the one economic class that will make out like a bandit with The Fair Tax would be the poor.  If they knew how good this would be for them they would be demonstrating in the streets for its passage.

MARTHA STEWART AGAIN

Give me a freakin' break, would you?  As soon as I got up this morning to start preparations for the show ... turned on CNN ... and there was the coverage of Martha Stewart again. It dominated the coverage.  We had shots of her private jet ... shots of her home in New York ... shots of her web page ... Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart.  We learned how every aspect of her release was carefully choreographed for the news cameras.  The SUV that delivered her to her private jet near the prison had to be positioned just so --- so that Martha could walk a specific number of feet to the jet while smiling and waving to the crowd.  When she got to her home her handlers made sure to keep her in front of windows so that the news cameras outside could show every move.

This woman is a felon.  She committed a crime.  She lied to federal prosecutors!  Now she's our de-facto Queen!  Talking faces on the news this morning were telling us that she looked very relaxed!  Very casual!   She was waving and smiling!  She has such enormous energy.  Grinning, fawning anchors.  

This is sick!  This is the American celebrity-worship culture taken to the extreme!  None of this is going to make any difference in the lives of any of you, yet you would think that Martha had just discovered a cure for cancer judging from the television coverage.

In the meantime ... the politicians smile.  They know that as long as the American people are focused on Martha Stewart, or Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jackson, or Robert Blake, or any of the other big-deal celebrities in the news you are not focused on what they, they politicians, are doing to increase their power, to strengthen their control over your lives, and to destroy our Republic.  

Oh .. in case you don't know it ... many people who have had the "privilege" of working for Martha Stewart say that she is a tyrant and a completely unpleasant human being.  I suspect that this is true.

TIME TO START DRILLING

OPEC's acting secretary general was quoted yesterday as saying that crude oil could hit $80 a barrel within two years. Gasoline prices in the past few days have shot up 30 cents a gallon, to around $2.09 in the Midwest for the cheap stuff. Oil is at $53 a barrel right now....imagine what a gallon of gasoline will cost when it hits $80. It's still not the most expensive it has ever been, but it could be cheaper.

Yet there is a solution to this. It's called producing our own oil, and not relying on OPEC for so much of it. It's time to send the oil rigs north, to start drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR,) where, by some estimates, there are between 6 and 16 billion barrels of oil. The area where the drilling would occur is but 8% of the entire refuge. The other 92% wouldn't be touched. Time to start drilling for oil. 

Next, it's time to start building refineries. Lots of 'em. Big, huge, smelly gasoline refineries, where enough capacity exists to offset the summer driving season squeeze. That will also bring prices down. And last but not least, it's time for the EPA and all 50 states to settle on a single gasoline blend to be used year round...to stop the nonsensical practice of requiring oil companies to make 50 different blends of gasoline.

Of course, it's unlikely any of this will happen. Perhaps when gas hits $3 or $4 a gallon, people will start to think about it. Just maybe. 

GOVERNMENT CENSORS AFTER THE INTERNET

It's been some time since I've had the occasion to think about that atrocity called the McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act.  My bad.  We should never allow this assault on our free speech to rest on the back shelf for too long.  I can think of nothing our congress has done in the last 30 years that curtails basic freedoms as much as this does, and George Bush deserves eternal condemnation for signing it into law.  

Well ... McCain-Feingold is back; back with a vengeance.  The Federal Election Commission, charged with enforcing the campaign finance law, is beginning the process of extending the reach of the law to the Internet.  Bradley Smith is a member of the FEC, and he says that a "bizarre" regulatory process is now under way.

First step?  It may soon be illegal for any Internet blogger (Yes, Nealz Nuze would be considered a blog) to link to any campaign website.  That would be considered a "contribution" and would be illegal under the act.  

OK ... here's some background.  In 2002 the FEC, on a 4-2 vote, decided that it would not attempt to regulate the Internet under McCain-Feingold.  Well, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (omigod .. a hyphenated type) has ruled that any exclusion of the Internet from campaign finance regulation is not permissible because it "undermines" McCain-Feingold.  So now the FEC is going to have to step forward with regulations on just how the Internet can be used as it relates to political campaigns.  The decision of this federal judge is not limited to political advertisements on the Internet.  Now listen to this .. it's important:  The judge says that any coordinated activity over the internet needs to be regulated.  That's any coordinated activity relating to political campaigns.  What about freedom of the press?  After all, many Americans now rely on the Internet for their news and opinion.  Sorry ... current federal law limits the "press exemption" to a "broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication."  The Internet is not covered.

Political free speech is under assault.  But who cares?  Martha Stewart is free!

For those of you who do actually care, click here to read more.

ALCOHOL ... 

Do you have any understanding how much money it takes to get the training necessary to be an airline pilot?  No -- I don't have any hard and fast figures, but I'll bet the farm that $50,000 wouldn't do it.  I know it cost me over $13,000 just to get to the point where I was instrument rated ... and I easily spend another $1000 a year or more for recurrent training.  The point here is that when you get that "ATP" rating on your ticket you've spent one pant load of money.  

Well .. it happened again yesterday.  An airline pilot was arrested, this time in Germany, as he was preparing to board a flight as a crewmember.  German authorities thought that he had been drinking.  They're investigating .. and the pilot has been suspended pending the results of that investigation.

It's amazing .. amazing how people will destroy their entire careers with alcohol.  I'd venture to say that there is not one person listening today who doesn't know someone who worked hard, succeeded, had it made, and then destroyed everything with alcohol.  Can you imagine the despair you would feel if you spent years upon years and tens of thousands of dollars on your career ... only to blow it because you just had to have a damned drink.

How sick.

DON'T FRET TOO MUCH ABOUT THAT SUPREME COURT DECISION

Think about it.  Death would the the easy way out for these teenaged murderers.  I'm not all that strong a proponent of the death penalty anyway.  We make celebrities out of people on death row with movies, newspaper and magazine stories and legions of fawning "activists" working endlessly to save their worthless lives.  I'm of the opinion that a much worst punishment is to be sentenced to life in prison with absolutely no possibility of parole.  

The way things are now, when you're sitting at that table and you hear the judge sentence you to death, you have no expectation that the sentence will be carried out anytime within the next decade.  That death sentence is just another step for you in your legal journey.  But when you hear a judge sentence you to life in prison with no possibility of parole, you know that when you are led from that courtroom that your life has changed forever --- and not for the better.  You will soon be locked behind the gates at a prison, and there you will stay until you die.  No activists, no newspaper articles, no prime time specials, no vigils ... just day after day after day of life behind bars with your buddies in some prison.  Day after day worrying about prison violence and wondering what's going on on the outside.  Day after day without a family, without beaches, mountains or trips to the ballpark.  You know it is never going to change.   You will see people who committed lesser crimes than you come and go, and then wonder what life is like for them on the outside .. a life you will never experience.  Death would be salvation.   You're not there to be rehabilitated so that you can become a productive member of society, you're there to be caged.

Let's stop worrying about this Supreme Court decision, and start planning how we can make these prisons even more miserable for the human scum we have stored there.

DUMP THE INCOME TAX ENTIRELY

It would seem we have a new supporter of the Fair Tax, in the form of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Yesterday, Mr. Greenspan testified before the president's advisory panel on federal tax reform. Here is the part that jumps out:

"As you know, many economists believe that a consumption tax would be best from the perspective of promoting economic growth--particularly if one were designing a tax system from scratch--because a consumption tax is likely to encourage saving and capital formation. However, getting from the current tax system to a consumption tax raises a challenging set of transition issues."

Right on, Mr. Greenspan. But before that, he also floated another idea, one which would be a disaster:

"However, past experience suggests that as the panel's work gets under way, one of the first decisions that you will confront is the choice of tax base; possibilities include a comprehensive income tax, a consumption tax, or some combination of the two, as is done in many other countries."

A combination of the income tax and a consumption tax? Absolutely not. To wind up with both, like other countries, would simply increase the confiscation of wealth by the Imperial Federal Government and would make us worse off. We should repeal the 16th amendment and abolish the income tax before instituting the Fair Tax.

Still though, this is good news. The Fair Tax plan is on the march.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

When Chimps Attack!

Greenspan wants a simpler tax code.  A nice boost for The Fair Tax.  

Can it be?  Are Democratic governors actually considering tax cuts?  Tell me it ain't so!

What's more important to unions?  Backing Democrats or working for their actual union members?

It's a light sentence for the Islamic cleric involved in the Bali bombing.  

Dan Rather was on David Letterman last night, and continued to recite the fantasy that his forged documents story was not politically motivated. The historical revisionism continues.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the most partisan man in Washington, is calling Alan Greenspan a political hack. I believe it's the other way around, Senator Reid.

More than 70 faculty members at the University of North Carolina are demanding administrators stop negotiations with a foundation that wants to start a western cultures program. After all, western civilization is evil, right?

Time to warm up the bombers....Iran is building tunnels deep in the ground to store nuclear components. And we're letting them do this why? Time to start testing out some of those nifty new bombs we've been developing.

Now that things are looking pretty good in Iraq, Max Boot says neocons may get the last laugh. What was supposed to have turned into a huge disaster just hasn't come to pass.

Democrats are suddenly all worked up over White House security because of Jeff Gannon, but as Byron York points out, they didn't seem to worry about it too much back when the Clinton administration handed out White House passes like candy.

You may have read that journalist Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide. What you may not know are the egotistical, selfish circumstances surrounding it, as Jeff Jacoby reports. The media is conveniently ignoring some of the more interesting facts about Mr. Thompson's self-inflicted dirt nap.

Freedom is on the march in the Middle East, and it comes as the result of two events: the elections in Afghanistan and the elections in Iraq. Charles Krauthammer says revolution is in the air.  Let's put Democrats on a suicide watch.

Democrats are running scared....the reason? Because Republicans are making inroads with black voters, and Democrats can't win elections if their base starts to crack. Mona Charen explains the left's dilemma.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision prohibiting the execution of murderers under the age of 18 is not only a bad ruling, but bad law all the way around. David Limbaugh tells us why.

Tampa listeners interested in the Fair Tax should attend the President's Tax Reform Panel on Tuesday, March 8th.

You demand, we supply. Missed the Boortz Power Lunch 2/25/05? Want to share it with someone? Here's the complete audio broken into segments.

Thoughts of Boortz Blast subscribers on abortion and last week's episode of House. More will be added today.

Look at Jim Morrison all clean-cut and collegiate in this 1964 PR film on Florida State University.

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