How a VAT tax will be sold

George Will quotes Larry Summers before the job:

Liberals oppose a VAT because it is regressive and conservatives oppose it because it is a money machine, but a VAT might come when liberals realize it is a money machine and conservatives realize it is regressive.

via Kos Pundit Roundup

Bring an end to this false newsman Murdoch

Another take on Glenn Beck’s laughable defense of his incitements to kill (I couldn’t help myself).  What if I said one night in my prime-time television show that…

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Rupert Murdoch, in spite of his public newsman image, is really the leader of a secret organization that seeks a New World Order.  His newspapers and TV channels control half of the world’s opinion and information, and he is working tirelessly to gain control of the rest.  His media outlets use well-documented Orwellian techniques to pit the uneducated masses against themselves while deflecting criticism away from those actually responsible for their pains.  And there is reason to believe his wife is a secret agent that gets orders directly from the Communist Party (she’s from China, duh).

Mr. Murdoch’s propaganda machine is just like the Nazis’.  I’m not saying he is one, but really what we saw in the Weimar Republic was a group that controlled the message spreading lies and innuendos to mobilize the poor and disaffected to hate and eventually kill others that weren’t like them, so I’m just saying….

His conglomerate also manages to pay no taxes.  Some have famously called him a traitor to his ‘supposed’ homeland (the U.S.)

But I tell you he would do well to return to whatever Australian little town he came from because I talk with our valiant soldiers in the field and they are sick of it, in fact I know if any of them found themselves in an elevator with Mr. Murdoch, Harry Reid and Osama Bin Laden, he would get shot twice, then Reid and Bin Laden would get strangled to death (ha ha ha ha).

And I’m not advocating that of course, that would mean breaking the law.  But we must bring an end to this false newsman Murdoch, and I won’t be surprised when it happens, ahem, I mean IF it happens: Whether you choose to ignore it or not, there’s no longer a question of if the pot is boiling. We can all see the pot is boiling. Now the question is how do we pull ourselves together to defend ourselves against a common enemy?

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So, would I get away with it?  Well, surely not if my target was Rupert, but anyone inconvenient to the GOP? Sure!

Such is the state of our ‘media’ that slander, innuendo, fearmongering and calls to violence pass as news at Fox and talk radio, and the rest of the media is too busy watching their profit margins to do the right thing and call them out.

What a charade.

P.S. Yes, obviously Beck didn’t make all these outrageous statements himself, but he’s made his fair share and he has the biggest horn of all, so he is perp #1.

Tax revolt? What tax revolt?

It is hilarious that some are trying to position last weeks’s budget proposition defeats as a ‘tax revolt’.  Certainly some people voted no to keep their taxes put, but just as many on the left voted NO because we saw them as totally inadequate solutions, the proverbial kicking of the can down the road (and not very far at that).

I didn’t vote.  I knew they were all going down so didn’t bother.  But I have to confess I had to restrain myself: For a while I intended to vote YES just from listening to all the Howard Jarvis anti-tax commercials.

We need a real solution.  That’s why I support an end to the 2/3 rule, and I’m glad about the possibility of a constitutional convention next year that would address the complete un-governability of the state.