Letters to the Editor

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If people don’t accurately perceive how much government policies cost them, then how can they make informed decisions in our democratic process?

As Steve Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation points out, “Visibility requires that the tax system reveal clearly to the citizen/taxpayer what he or she must pay for government goods, services and activities. Taxes are the ‘price’ we pay for government; taxes ‘cost out’ government for the taxpayer.”

While many Americans associate a lack of visibility in the tax code with excise and value added taxes, the visibility of some taxes is impaired by the fundamental public misunderstanding of who actually pays taxes.

Many believe corporations pay taxes when economic reality demonstrates they do not. The tax burden is displaced to individuals. Yet very few taxpayers are cognizant of this fact.

Income tax withholdings and the employer’s share of payroll taxes are further examples of taxes that cloud visibility and continue to mislead the average taxpayer with respect to how much he or she really pays in taxes.

For example (remember these are all 1992 prices):

•  Taxes account for 35 cents of the cost of a $1.14 loaf of bread.

•  18 cents of a 50-cent can of soda go toward taxes.

•  72 percent of the cost of a 750-ml bottle of liquor goes toward taxes.

•  Taxes for an $80 hotel room average 43 percent.

•  Taxes account for $63.60 of a $159 airline ticket.

•  A $153.09 monthly utility bill consists of $39.35 in taxes.

•  More than half the cost of a $1.33 gallon of gasoline is due to taxes.

A 1992 Cato Institute study looked at taxes somewhat differently, calculating how much someone needed to earn to have enough after-tax dollars to purchase several products. The study concluded a typical worker needed to earn $17,038 to buy a $10,000 car and $2,556 to purchase a $1,500 computer.

That is an old article but it points out the “hiding” of taxes so lower income people pay more than they realize.

We have 17,000 pages of tax code and another 40,000 pages of rulings, IRS letter, definitions, etc. used by companies to get out of taxes so prices will be lower. They may spend $400,000 to save $500,000 but the bottom line is at least $100,000 better. However, all of that “cost” is paid by the consumer.

We have dozens of taxes that have to have “government employees” to collect and distribute. A simple tax that could combine dozens of taxes would mean a lot fewer government employees in the tax compliance areas. The costs to companies to account for all the different taxes would be reduced, the prices to consumers would be lower and tax revenues could actually be higher.

For some companies paying up to 400 percent more in tax compliance than actual tax bill, they could pay 100 percent more tax and save money, lower prices, have higher taxable profits, etc. with a simple tax code. But, try to get Congress to do that and you are banging your head against a wall.

Michael Allen

Ontario

Thanks for a great MudFest

Editor,

I am writing to publicly thank Amanda Villines of Bank of the West and Dale Jeffries of KSRV radio for their tremendous efforts in making the 2008 MudFest Mud Volleyball Tournament a success.

We also had fantastic support from volunteers, sponsors, vendors, local media and the teams themselves — my gratitude to each and all — but Dale and Amanda have been the driving force behind the creation, promotion and implementation of what has now become a summertime standard. Since they started, the event has raised more than $5,000 each year for the Southeast Oregon Regional Food Bank serving families in need throughout the area.

My personal thanks to you both! You are fantastic examples of what makes a great community!

Peter Lawson

branch coordinator Southeast Oregon Regional Food Bank

America needs Paul’s

energy plan

Editor,

Our economy and standard of living are being destroyed by high taxes, over-regulation and extreme energy costs. Presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul has an energy plan. He introduced the Affordable Gas Price Act (H.R. 2415) on May 21, 2007. This bill would suspend federal gas taxes when gas prices rise to more than $3 per gallon and allow drilling offshore and in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and speed refinery building.

The 1950s Congressional Reese Committee discovered elite socialists were working to reduce our standard of living so we could merge into a world government.

In 1966, The Hudson Institute’s “Report from Iron Mountain” revealed that globalists planned to use the environment to scare us into accepting a world government.

In 1971, the price of gasoline was 25 cents per gallon. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, created by presidential executive order, along with environmental extremists have largely stopped oil exploration, nuclear power plants and refinery building.

The result is $4 gas despite the fact we have a 300-year supply of crude oil and coal gasification and liquefaction technology that could make us energy independent.

Wind and solar power will not solve our energy needs and both require a 24/7 backup. Despite United Nations propaganda, carbon energy is not causing global warming, but is controlled by the sun’s cycles.

We must drill here, drill now and pass H.R. 2415 to unlock our energy supplies and stop the socialists’ plan to merge us into a global government.

Adrian L. Arp, Ph.D.

Twin Falls

Hicks has it wrong

Editor,

“Talk radio bulimia” is an unfortunate condition in which the victim, through prolonged exposure to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, loses the ability to reason independently or converse in anything other than regurgitated sound bites. Purported columnist Roy Hicks suffers from a particularly acute version of that affliction.

In his latest assault on reason — “Real torture,” July 24 — Hicks claims, inter alia, the practice of controlled drowning, a.k.a waterboarding, is not torture but rather “a thoroughly frightening but non-lethal procedure simulating drowning.”

Hicks should consult with fellow war cultist Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, who — after undergoing the mildest form of the procedure in conditions he controlled — concluded: “If waterboarding isn’t torture, nothing is,” from the article “Trust Me — It’s Torture,” Vanity Fair, August 2008.

Japanese interrogators who practiced waterboarding on American POWs were prosecuted and executed for war crimes after WWII.

Torturers employed by Cambodia’s Communist Khmer Rouge likewise found waterboarding to be the most effective tool in their demonic arsenal.

Perhaps Hicks is of the opinion that such methods are criminal only when employed by other governments. But it is the government that rules us — not the distant hordes of savagely-bearded Mohammedans upon whom Hicks focuses his unremarkable mind — that poses the most serious threat to our lives and liberty.

Hicks tends to go all girly at the sight of a man in uniform.

He may be interested to know that professional U.S. military interrogators, as well as the top JAG officers from all of our uniformed services, strongly opposed the Bush regime’s institutionalization of torture.

They are aware of the fact that torture is a wonderfully efficient method of extracting false confessions, but useless as a means of obtaining reliable intelligence.

When he’s not embracing torture, applauding the evisceration of the Bill of Rights, or demanding the nuclear incineration of various Arab countries, Hicks often uses his column to extol his own credentials as a Christian.

If, against the available evidence, he is capable of reflective thought, Hicks might want to ponder the fact that our Lord, before offering his life, was subjected to every form of bodily torment devised by the perverse imaginations of professional torturers.

If Hicks can claim, in all sobriety, that the Lord Jesus Christ would condone torture, his copy of the Bible must be the moral equivalent of a photographic negative.

William Norman Grigg

Payette