The historical lesson drawn from the Whiskey Rebellion is usually that Americans are inherently anti-tax. Actually, that’s not quite true. The problem with taxing whiskey wasn’t so much that Americans weren’t willing to be taxed as that whiskey was the principal medium of exchange — it was what people used for money.  more

In his new book, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, Matt Latimer writes that the Bush White House never developed an effective communications strategy. They had a policy of having the president make public comments on at least a daily basis – whether there was anything to say or not. The result was that any special quality the president has when he speaks was diluted.  more

Matt Latimer’s new book, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, confirms the portrait of George W. Bush I painted in my Impostor book of a bully who cannot stand to be contradicted, and who browbeats those beneath him into agreeing with him.  more

I got an e-mail from a prominent Republican asking why I am so anti-Republican these days. In my opinion, the party got on the wrong track during the George W. Bush years and no longer bears any resemblance to the party of Ronald Reagan.  more

Yesterday, Colin Powell restated his continued membership in the Republican Party.  But he didn’t really explain why.  It seemed more like an act of defiance than a statement of fact—no one is going to tell him what part of the bus he can sit in and no one is going to tell him what political   more

Bruce Bartlett in Forbes.com today:
The reason that the tax revolt of the 1970s — which today’s tax protesters hope to emulate — was successful is that it was based on detailed policy initiatives and a solid body of research and analysis that supported them. At the state level, there were things like Proposition 13 in   more

I have spent most of my life trying to cut taxes. Back in 1977, while a staffer for Congressman Jack Kemp, I helped draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which was endorsed by Ronald Reagan and enacted into law in 1981. According to the Treasury Department, this is the largest tax cut in American history.
So one might assume   more