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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (133031)	3/23/2001 9:03:37 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Respond to of 769667

Dems made him promise? Hmmm, wonder what they had on him... Have you seen the March American Spectator? Its the first issue of the Gilderized Spectator. Florence King knocks Oliver Wendell Holmes from his pedestal in one review, Tom Wolfe contributed, and theres even a piece by Jackie Mason. I think its gonna be a good rag. Its got Kudlow on the cover and on prominent display is a copy of Charles Adams' For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization amazon.com From an amazon review The book has 38 chapters, nearly every one discusses taxation in a different society starting in ancient Egypt and disucsses taxation by the Greeks, Roman, Russians, French, English, and finally Americans among others. The point is not that taxation is bad, but that corrupt systems of taxation are bad and that taxation above a certain level is bound to fail since people will find ways to avoid it. This is not made up history, there are 23 pages of endnotes and a twelve page bibliography. There are a number of illustrations, as well as, well written stories from the Rosetta Stone (it was actually a grant of tax immunity); to how Muslims taxed infidels more in order to get them to convert; to Lady Godiva (she made her ride get the King, her husband, to remit the heavy taxes he imposed on the Coventry);, to taxation as one cause of the Civil War that few are aware of (there are 16 endnotes on this chapter alone, many from articles written during the Civil War). This is a facinating book that should be required reading for every member of Congress.