Fair Tax My A$$...

Some of you may have read that many people are attributing Mike Huckabee's surprise second place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll to the so-called fair tax movement. At the time, I made a mental note to look into the changes they are proposing. I just happened to run across this article in the Wall Street Journal. Boy, is it a bad idea according to BRUCE BARTLETT, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

Whatever your philosophical beliefs about consumption based tax structures, this one is pretty disingenuous. It reminds me of most of the recent proposals for Social Security, Clear Skies and healthy forests. The problem for the right-wing is that they would never be able to pass these proposals honestly, so they resort to back door tactics. They cannot say we oppose Social Security and Medicare because of philosophical reasons. They pretend to protect them while plotting to fatally wound them. I know politics is not nice, but I have a real problem with their tactics. This tax proposal strikes me as more of the same.

They remind me of petulant teenagers with no sense of propriety or purpose.

UPDATE:
Here is a link with a response to the article sited above...
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=198361

I did not find the response terribly persuasive, but I posted it in the interest of fairness.