NEWS: 31 Days To Iowa, GOP Style

That's probably why Mike Gravel, who also supports the Fair Tax, calls it a "progressive sales tax". It does include those automatic monthly "pre-bates" to every American to offset the high rate.
Because most of the revenue currently lost to tax deductions would come from the wealthy, the rich would pay more under a flat tax - if the rate were set high enough. I tend to doubt that's the case with the 17% figure usually thrown around. (And the higher the rate goes, the more you have to worry about the effect on middle- and lower-income taxpayers, even with the large basic exemptions.)
I've thought combining the pre-bates with a flat income tax might be worth looking at, but I've no idea where the rates and pre-bates would be set. What I am sure of is no system will be perfect and people on both the right and the left will always find something to bitch about.

That's something we can agree on wholeheartedly.

Most of the rest of that stuff is over my head, though. I'm afraid my eyes tend to glaze over in economics discussions.

In some states, you affiliate with a party when you register to vote and can't change it at the primary, you actually have to go to the trouble of submitting a form a certain amount of time before the primary. The deadline in my state is passed, so I'm stuck (assuming I wanted to change, which I'm neither confirming nor denying.).
I have to agree that the choices on both sides are uninspiring at best.

Apologies. I tend to view economics as inseparable from dealing with problems like poverty and health care, so it's central to my political thinking, maybe too much so.

Oh, they are inseparable, to a large extent, at least from the technical aspects of policymaking.

I just usually concern myself more with the ethics. It's easier for those of us whose quantitative reasoning faculties are underdeveloped.

All he's got? Obama sounds like Osama! I'm sold!
Now if only he'd called her Hitlery.

I would like to think that Huckabee doesn't have a chance coming November 2008, but given the circumstances...

Anyway, cynicism aside, the fact that the front-runners in both the Republicans and Democrats are not in any way inspiring confidence should be a wake-up call for Americans to vote for third party candidates. Unfortunately, everyone has this mindset of "we won't vote for them because they won't win." Which is, after all, a complete load of horse-shit, since flocking away from the Big Two means more votes for the others, which increases their chances of winning. But, people fail to see the logic there, for some reason.

Tangential rant over.

Lemme say this as someone who lives in Iowa: Although I do work nights and sleep during the daylight hours a decent number of days, I still do attend college, and watch local TV, and I haven't heard one thing about the primaries from any of my local media. It's like no one around here actually cares. Freaking amazing.

.......then George Bush stays the president for another entire election cycle?

+1

Offensive, off-topic, and unoriginal.

I'm inclined to paraphrase a notice that used to posted on a bulletin board at my old workplace:

"It has come to the attention of management that [candidates] dying on [the campaign trail] are failing to fall down.

This practice must stop as it become difficult to distinguish between death and the natural movement of the [candidates].

Beginning immediately, [candidates] found dead in an upright position will be removed from the payroll."

I believe that Mike Huckabee has an excellent chance of being elected President of the moon. A place that he seems to believe is made of Green Cheese.

Rudy Guiliani is going to loose Iowa and New Hampshire, but he's going to flatten the competition in Florida, which is up after South Carolina. He'll take New York and California too. This is a race where size matters, and you can drive through New Hampshire in about twenty minutes and pass nothing but cows on the way.

Yeah, I'm sure he won't be affected by that scandal in which he is accused of having a mistress, using city funds to pay for his affair and using city cops to walk his dog. Can't see anything less than presidential there.

He's toast.

I predict Rudy will take Massachusetts. . .

Fixed.

Maybe yes, maybe no. People can overlook certain peccadilloes for the sake of other considerations (see above), as when in 2004 the warheads voted in droves for a draftdodger over a decorated veteran (something that punditocracy seems to ignore is that the Swiftboat Ads were really about shoring up the Republican base, not about changing any minds that weren't already made up). Giuliani's already received the endorsement of Pat fucking Robertson, for Christ's sake (presumably literally, by Mr. Robertson's lights), and it's not like partisanship never trumps principles, especially among conservatives.

I'm not saying he's going to coast through all this shit - he's definitely got some serious drawbacks from a conservative perspective, especially a socially conservative one, and he's given little sign of working very hard to overcome those challenges. But I think it would be unwise to count him out at this stage of the game.

There is, but the guy with the most money and corporate support, wins the election. All these people care about is abortion rights.
This article is based off of what? Straw Poles?? Or land line telephone conversations?
Come on, once again, the writers on this site Blow.

You really are a sad, sad, little man.

Ron Paul 2008!

Guy who regularly mauls the English language, meet me defying you to do better.

seriously. Good call, sir

You got me before the edit, though. I don't like how I used "better" twice there.

He couldn't give up his precious question marks?

Or his Straw Poles??

Try for three???

Can someone please ban this racist?

Yeah, I can't imagine how a "folksy" former governor of a Southern state who panders to evangelical Christians and talks about lowering taxes could ever stand a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the general election.

Oh, wait...

Nothing prevents you from submitting your own articles. You can do better, I'm sure.