• Thom took a rare day off sick, and the show was a "best of".
• Guest: Climate skeptic Marc Morano, communications director for Senator James Inhofe, minority leader of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
• Guest: Robby Schrum. Should the Post Office be privatized?
• Guest: Neal Boortz, nationally syndicated talk show host, former lawyer, and author of "The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS" and "FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics".
• Guest: Professor Saul Landau.

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Thursday 20 March '08 National show

• Thom took a rare day off sick, and the show was a "best of".
• From 5 February 2008...
• There's a real battle brewing in DC about the failure to list polar bears as an endangered species, and they have brought forward the drilling leases to tomorrow.
• Guest: Climate skeptic Marc Morano, communications director for Senator James Inhofe, minority leader of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. His committee has nothing to do with the leases; he has no comment. The polar bear decision is due any day. There are more polar bears now. Their habitat is disintegrating. The models are speculative concerning the ice. Scott Armstrong is calling their methodology to tasks. So why countries competing to go there? why can see shrinking on Google earth? natural causes. NASA study said it was unusual winds. John McCain said in debate, since if the climate skeptics are right, and we reduce use of fossil fuel, we will still have cleaner air, new industries, send less money to the Saudis etc; and if wrong, there's a disaster? Marc said if you guys are right, there is no realistic proposal that would have had any impact. So Thom asked, why not work together towards one?
• People For the American Way (PFAW) is collating information about problems voting, and looking for trends. Call 866-OUR-VOTE.
• Some listeners are upset because Thom seems to be preferring Obama, others because he seems to be preferring Hillary.
• Bumper Music: Nobody Told Me, John Lennon.
• The cooling trend between the 40s and 70s. Albedo. Particulate matter.
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News. American Samoa finished voting at 12:30. Hillary campaign conference call, irregularities in AZ, registered voters not on list, ID problems, no provisionals. She has a report problems page. 866-OUR-VOTE. - or similar. The Hillary campaign see themselves winning but inconclusive, it may go all way to convention. They say Obama is using Republican talking points. She has offered to debate him once a week through March 4th. Regional debates? If the Republican nominee is known and the Democratic nominee is not, the Democratic race would get more media attention. The Senate Finance Committee was run by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana today. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was testifying, defending the budget. Baucus said that avoiding recession is completely unrealistic, as is the idea that they would balance the budget by 2012. Medicare and Medicaid cuts would be devastating to older people and the disabled. Paulson said that the economy could not handle any increased taxes. The Senate votes on the stimulus package Wednesday, they hope to get the campaigning senators back. It is a different version to the House.
• From 18 February 2008...
• Guest: Robby Schrum. Should the Post Office be privatized? According to Thom's blog:
  

  Today I challenged Lexington Institute Fellow Robby Schrum about why he thinks America should privatize the US Postal Service. I like the idea of keeping union workers in union jobs knowing they have a career, a pension and a vested interest in what they do. I also like the idea that they are accountable to "we the people." Robby says the postal service isn't that accountable, their books are being cooked just like an Enron or WorldCom. I responded by saying "let's clean it up then!" Why should we throw out a system that works so that corporate America can make some money on it...the system ain't broken! Robby argued that we need competition. I say no...police, fire and the postal service should remain in the hands of the people.

• Bumper Music: End of the World, Blake Lewis (video).
• Clip: "I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'." Ronald W. Reagan.
• It's time to stop dismantling the commons.
• Clip: Fox News Radio's Tom Sullivan aired "side-by-side comparison" of speeches by Hitler and Obama.
• Bumper Music: In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins (video).
• It's Presidents day, when we remember in particular George Washington, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln loved to quote the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington fought for it.
• Quote: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

  "
  Declaration of Independence.
• Bumper Music: The Heart of Life, John Mayer (video).
• McCain only talks about war and borders. How can Democrats exploit that? The European dream is the old American dream. Cuba is exporting doctors, America is exporting weapons. Hope, change, competence, specifics.
• Site: handsoffiraqioil.org. Events this weekend.
• Article: FDA never inspected Chinese plant making Baxter's heparin.
• The insanity of the pharmaceutical Medicare Part D program, brought to you by Bill Townsend before retiring early to take advantage of the revolving door. The government cannot negotiate drug prices so pharma makes a huge profit, and we can't import drugs into the United States. Thom's dad was on heparin. A couple of people died from it in the last couple of weeks. It was made in China, unlicensed. In India, you cannot own multiple stores. major rant. Landed gentry.
• From 19 February 2008...
• Guest: Neal Boortz, nationally syndicated talk show host, former lawyer, and author of "The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS" and "FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics".
  "Wouldn't you love to abolish the IRS ...

  Keep all the money in your paycheck ...

  Pay taxes on what you spend, not what you earn ...

  And eliminate all the fraud, hassle, and waste of our current system?

  Then the FairTax is for you. In the face of the outlandish American tax burden, talk-radio firebrand Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder are leading the charge to phase out our current, unfair system and enact the FairTax Plan, replacing the federal income tax and withholding system with a simple 23 percent retail sales tax on new goods and services. This dramatic revision of the current system, which would eliminate the reviled IRS, has already caught fire in the American heartland, with more than six hundred thousand taxpayers signing on in support of the plan.

  As Boortz and Linder reveal in this first book on the FairTax, this radical but eminently sensible plan would end the annual national nightmare of filing income tax returns, while at the same time enlarging the federal tax base by collecting sales tax from every retail consumer in the country. The FairTax, they argue, would transform the fearsome bureaucracy of the IRS into a more transparent, accountable, and equitable tax collection system. Among other benefits, it will:

  • Make America's tax code truly voluntary, without reducing revenue
  • Replace today's indecipherable tax code with one simple sales tax
  • Protect lower-income Americans by covering the tax on basic necessities
  • Eliminate billions of dollars in embedded taxes we don't even know we're paying
  • Bring offshore corporate dollars back into the U.S. economy

  Endorsed by scores of leading economists and supported by a huge and growing grassroots movement, the FairTax Plan could revolutionize the way America pays for itself. In this straight-talking book, Neal Boortz and John Linder show you how it would work—and how you can help make it happen.

  "

  Mike Huckabee has taken up the idea of the fair tax.

  As Thom said in his blog,
  

  Today I had a rousing debate with fellow talk show host Neal Boortz (Jones Radio Networks), author of several books on the Fair Tax, including his latest "Fair Tax, The Truth: Answering the Critics." Neal argues that the Fair Tax is the way to go because it broadens the tax base and makes it fair for everyone. I pointed out that in my opinion it's not fair to the poor or the working class. In fact, it seems like just another conservative scheme to make the rich richer and the working people poorer. I also stated that nowhere in the world where a VAT exists does anyone stand in line to fill out the paper work to get back. I think it's a bad idea all around.

• Bumper Music: Taxes Nashville Session Players.
• Bumper Music: Instant Karma We All Shine On, John Lennon.
• Quote:
  "How far it may be the interest and the duty of all to submit to this sacrifice on other grounds, for instance, to pay for a time an impost on the importation of certain articles, in order to encourage their manufacture at home, or an excise on others injurious to the morals or health of the citizens, will depend on a series of considerations of another order, and beyond the proper limits of this note. The reader, in deciding which basis of taxation is most eligible for the local circumstances of his country, will, of course, avail himself of the weighty observations of our author.

  To this a single observation shall yet be added. Whether property alone, and the whole of what each citizen possesses, shall be subject to contribution, or only its surplus after satisfying his first wants, or whether the faculties of body and mind shall contribute also from their annual earnings, is a question to be decided. But, when decided, and the principle settled, it is to be equally and fairly applied to all. To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it." If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra-taxation violates it.

  "
  Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, 6 Apr. 1816.
• Taxes rant.
• Bumper Music: Say it ain't so, Joe, Murray Head (video).
• Guest: Professor Saul Landau.
  "Saul Landau, an internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau's most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights, for which he won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang." Landau has written over ten books, short stories and poems. He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt. He is a senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies."

  What does Fidel's stepping down mean for Cuba? America? Displaced Cubans? It's not going to make much difference. Nothing changed when he went into hospital. The changes have been institutionalized. He was charismatic, nobody can follow that, rule will be by committee. Aim of the Cuban revolution, history, it started against Spain. Castro has made Cuba a healthy, educated country. Cubans went on missions; doctors in Vietnam, a tank unit in Syria, they freed Mandela by fighting apartheid. Relatives are running other Latin American countries. Downside; divided families lack of some liberties, but they did not have them before. The embargo prevents change. Openness.