It used to be called Flat Tax (Steve Forbes). The latest avatar of this idea is being hawked as the Fair Tax. Watch out for U.S. Representative John Linder who is trying to introduce it in congress. Neil Boortz has a book out advocating it and perhaps you already know he has a lunatic fringe following. Neil is making a lot of money by stirring this pot. Neil is a capitalist without scruples. He makes the world work to his own benefit. He does tend to shout down anyone who disagrees with him. I mention this because Jay Bookman has a second column on the Fair Tax in the paper today. Of all the editors of the AJC, I find that Jay says what I'm thinking the most, only he says it with his facts all checked out and in a more logical order than I would say it.

Jay was eviscerated by Boortz for the first column and makes a point by point response to Boortz's complaints, showing Boortz wrong in every case. Bookman brings to light that he has let it be known that he'll come on air and debate Boortz on this issue. Squawk, squawk, squawk . . . the sound you hear is the Boortz response. He's afraid to do that. He'll get his clock cleaned before a national audience, which wouldn't be that good for him.

Since I wrote about those nasty percentages yesterday, I loved that one of the issues between Boortz and Bookman is how big a percentage is the Fair Tax proposal. Boortz says that a $130 item would be 23 % tax under the Fair Tax. And he is correct. 77% of 130 is . . . Do the math. You were not expecting that the original cost without tax was $100. When you add on $30 in tax to a $100 item, that is a 30% tax, not a 23% tax, Neil. If the fair tax plan was so good, why did Neil feel the need to lie about it?

A final comment on radical tax reform: Were we foolish enough to try something this radical, the unintendended consequences, spread over our nation would undoubtably cause many disasters. Lives would be ruined. You can't take 80 years of tax codes and dump them and create a one page replacement that works. No one has any idea of how fair tax would work. It would take 80 years to make it work as well as what we have now, and then the tax code would be 2000 pages again. Forgetaboutit and pay you taxes.

Worse than this, I heard both Boortz and Newt Gingrich say that the Virginia Tech shootings were the direct result of the teachings of liberalism. Newt thought the students in the classroom should have been armed and so Cho could have been stopped. (He doesn't mention that if you armed all the students there would be 100 times as many shootings during the year, but fewer killed in the massacres. It would be better for the country if the students were killed one at a time in random school shootings?) Boortz said that students have been taught not to fight in public school so they cowered away from the gunman instead of rushing him and stopping the killing. Is this the same Boortz who is afraid to debate Jay Bookman on the radio? I see in today's paper that Cho got off 170 rounds while killing the 30 victims in the second shooting. He had two guns so he could reload when one was empty and the other full, thus protecting himself at all times. In the face of overwhelming fire armies dig in, or retreat. They do not advance. You must have fire superiority to advance. Boortz has forgotten Pickett's charge. 1863, Neil. Rushing into a hail of bullets gets everyone killed. There was no viable strategy for the students.

I can't figure out if the mouthpieces for this kind of nonsense are bad people or just stupid. I'm thinking that they are not stupid though.