Must Reads

At OPJ from Fouad Ajami on Iraq:

In the fullness of time, the Arab order of power will have to come to a grudging acceptance of the order sure to take hold in Baghdad. This is a region that respects the prerogatives of power. It had once resisted the coming to power of the Alawites in Syria and then learned to accommodate that "heretical" minority sect and its conquest of Damascus; the Shia path in Iraq will follow that trajectory, and its justice is infinitely greater for it is the ascendancy of a demographic majority, through the weight of numbers and the ballot box. Of all Arab lands, Iraq is the most checkered, a frontier country at the crossroads of Arabia, Turkey and Persia. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq and beyond have never accepted the diversity of that land. The "Arabism" of the place was synonymous with their own primacy. Now a binational state in all but name (Arab and Kurdish) has come into being in Iraq, and the Shia underclass have stepped forth and staked a claim commensurate with the weight of their numbers. The Sunni Arabs have recoiled from this change in their fortunes. They have all but "Persianized" the Shia of Iraq, branded them as a fifth column of the state next door. Contemporary Islamism has sharpened this feud, for to the Sunni Islamists the Shia are heretics at odds with the forbidding strictures of the Islamists' fanatical variant of the faith.

also from the OPJ, Brendan Miniter on New Orleans:

This most recent kerfuffle over who cares more about New Orleans began just minutes after the president concluded his remarks. Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, delivering the Democratic response to the president, mentioned the city's recovery early in his speech. Later he upped the ante by hinting to reporters that funds being spent on the war should instead go to the Gulf Coast: "If we're putting all this money into Iraq and ignoring New Orleans, then we're doing something wrong."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat desperate to move her approval ratings out of the 20s as she runs for re-election this year, scored the president's speech for failing "to lift up our citizens." And Walter Leger, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, dismissed the president's focus on the war by saying "we are at war here." The Times-Picayune reports he said this at a press conference last week as his face was "turning red and sweaty."

And from Townhall, Bill Murchison also on the Gulf region,USA:

"Sixteen months later," notes the Journal's Christopher Cooper, "the automobile bridge remains little more than pilings. The railroad bridge is busy with trains. The difference: The still-wrecked bridge is owned by the U.S. government. The other is owned by railroad giant CSX Corp. of Jacksonville, Fla. Within weeks of Katrina's landfall, CSX dispatched construction crews to fix the freight line; six months later, the bridge reopened. Even a partial reopening of the road bridge, part of U.S. Highway 90, is at least five months away."

The point being is that big government is excruciatingly slow and very wasteful in its desire to micromanage what the free market can accomplish much easier, more efficiently and at less cost to taxpayers than it can. The more government invades upon the free market, the less control we have over ourselves and is an evolution towards socialism and an invasion upon the very basis of America. Our tax code is regressive socialism as are many of our gov't programs, education, arts, energy, housing, healthcare, etc, etc, etc, that is why the Barnyard supports a consumption/fair tax where everybody pays taxes even the criminals, druglords, tax evaders, corporations as a national sales tax would apply to all of them and the burden of the taxcode would be lifted from the rest of us. That would not happen under a flat tax, the underground would still flourish, a fair tax would get the underground as well as they consume and buy things just like the rest of us. Employer still pays SSI and the employees have a choice in the gov't or private program for their half, with small business getting some options both ways. Income taxes are regressive and socialist by nature and we need to do away with them as well as gov't regulation over the free market, it can regulate itself just fine.
Since we are a consumption based economy would it not make since to have a consumpion based tax policy as well and not income based which penalizes hard work and success?
What say you?