Saturday, March 18, 2006

What might have been


Fascinating article by Gerard Baker in the Times, speculating on what might have been had the war in Iraq been avoided. And, yes, read it all.

IN MARCH 2003 Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, of the UN, secured a remarkable, last-minute deal that averted war and seemed to guarantee the disarmament of Iraq. “Saddam Hussein has finally consented to eliminate all his weapons of mass destruction,” they said, in a signing ceremony with the Iraqi leader...

...The war in Iraq goes on, three years later, to the unfolding judgment of history. But that judgment should encompass not just the consequences of what was done but the consequences of what might have happened had it not been done.

The consequences of what was done in Iraq are easy to see and hard to look at. The consequences of what might have been are by their nature unrecordable. But we know that history’s greatest tragedies could and should have been avoided, but never were.


Times Online: It's three years since the disarmament of Saddam and all that followed . . .

Oh, that's Rich


Frank Kelly Rich, Editor of Modern Drunkard magazine, interviewed by Sean Higgins of National Review:

“Who’d want a dreary, long, gray life when you can have those highs and lows? I’d trade ten years for that... It’s like a blackout. It’s better [to have] a good time that you can’t remember than a bad time that you can.”

Friday, March 17, 2006

Microsoft Vista: Moving away from .NET?


The impressive Vista OS has had substantial functionality stripped out in order to speed its delivery to customers. The WinFX file system, for instance, was dropped somewhere along the line. And the following article points out that .NET-based OS functionality has also been removed from the system as Vista evolved.

The implied question, then, is if MSFT can't use .NET for its own stated purposes, how can it expect its customers to develop acceptably performing applications and extensions using it?

This article presents results of an investigation of the usage of .NET on five versions of Windows... It is clear that Microsoft intended the .NET framework to be an important constituent of the Longhorn operating system...

...When Longhorn was announced we were told that it would be built substantially using .NET (or at least that was the implication from the publicity over WinFX). For example, Chris Sells, who is in charge of Longhorn content on Microsoft's MSDN web site (and someone who has my utmost respect), said the following in 2003:

First and foremost, while Windows Server 2003™ embraced managed code by being the first operating system to ship with the .NET Framework preinstalled, Longhorn is the first operating system whose major new features are actually based on the .NET Framework....


Microsoft appears to have concentrated their development effort in Vista on native code development. In contrast to PDC03LH, Vista has no services implemented in .NET and Windows Explorer does not host the runtime, which means that the Vista desktop shell is not based on the .NET runtime...


Microsoft's Vista: Moving away from .NET?

Iran's number one priority: Setting Israel on Fire


The maniacal despots known as Iran's Mullahs have used Nazi-style threats on Israel and the US for years. And the Mullahs' useful idiots in the media routinely underreport these threats in their zeal to harm the Bush administration. It's easy to imagine what will happen when these crackpots -- bent on martyring themselves -- get their hands on nukes. After all, they've told us what they'll do... starting with destroying America and Israel (hat tip: LGF):

Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar said Tuesday that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told him five years ago that “setting Israel on fire” was the first order of business on the Iranian agenda.

Aznar, in Israel as the guest of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, related the story to Major General (Res.) Professor Yitzhak Ben-Israel, who later confirmed to Haaretz that the remarks had been made. Aznar’s aides refused to give Haaretz the exact quote, but mentioned an article Aznar has written in the past on his meeting with Khamenei.

“He received me politely,” Aznar wrote, “and at the beginning of the meeting he explained to me why Iran must declare war on Israel and the United States until they are completely destroyed. I made only one request of him: that he tell me the time of the planned attack.”


HAARETZ DAILY: Khamenei said in 2001 Iran aimed to 'set Israel alight'

Was Digg Used for Stock Manipulation?


There have been three wild stories promoted to Digg's front page recently related to Google's supposed acquisition of Sun. According to Silicon Valley Sleuth, the rumors were baseless and the story promoted using fraudulent means:

Regardless of the credibility question, it's very odd that all there of these blog posts make it to the Digg.com front page... several users consistently turn up as early diggers for all of the stories: olseneric, ebrage, MarkIsCranky and ZRock...


Silicon Valley Sleuth: Digg used for stock manipulation?

Thursday, March 16, 2006

The Democrats' Formula for Success


Howard Dean's recent letter to ostensible Democratic supporters is so misleading it's become, literally overnight, a poster-child for blithering inanity. Consider its key sentence:

On Monday, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to censure the President for breaking the law by creating a secret domestic spying program.


Secret spying? Say it ain't so! Gosh, I didn't know the spying they did was secret. Perhaps, Einstein, covert information collection operations need to be secret... but maybe that's just me. If they weren't, Brainiac, the terrorists might find out, thus defeating the very purpose of the program. This ain't exactly calculus here, folks. In fact, it's not even arithmetic, but it's apparently enough to thoroughly confuse the Democratic Party.

Domestic spying? Well, sure, if an airplane flying from Moscow to New York can be called a domestic flight then, well yes, the wiretaps were domestic. But I think most of us would call that an international flight. Just like the wiretaps, which have been approved for years by, oh, only the Attorney General, the White House Counsel, members of Congress from both parties, and so on.

Better still, the majority of the public favors these international wiretaps. So this'll work out real well -- just like the last bunch of elections -- for the Democrats' 2006 chances.

Here's a real simple formula for the Democrats to learn:

Protecting Americans from International Terrorism = Good
Not protecting Americans from International Terrorism = Bad

Got it, Nancy Feingold-Dean?

Inside Dan Rather's Cocoon


This James Taranto snippet captures life inside Dan Rather's cocoon. Rather possesses all the intellectual honesty of Tommy Flanagan: "Yeah, yeah... in fact, I had the documents... uhm, I mean two documents... it's a motherlode, it's a treasure-trove of documents that we found... which proved that Bush never showed up... plus video-tapes! Yeah, that's the ticket, video-tapes!"

A hilarious story from columnist Jim Walsh in the Courier Post of Cherry Hill, N.J.:

Here's the scene: Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather is in Cherry Hill, giving a speech about the need for journalists to do better.

"What's gone out of fashion is the tough question and the follow-up," he tells an admiring audience of about 600 people at Cherry Hill's Star Forum.

So how can I, the guy covering Rather's remarks, just sit there?

When he finishes, I hurry to a floor mike to ask Rather about an issue that will be part of my story.

"Mr. Rather," I say. "Great suggestions. But you left the anchor desk last year after your report questioning President Bush's military service was discredited. Key memos could not be authenticated. Do you think the failure to ask questions then affects your credibility now?"

Rather responds with civility--if not clarity. He notes, in part, that an independent review "couldn't determine whether the documents were authentic or not."

Eager to please, I follow up: "The Courier-Post won't run something if we're not sure it's authentic. Are you saying it's OK . . ."

But my microphone goes dead...


That Rather sure knows how to speak power to truth.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Clooney: Useful Dupe


The Astute Blogger stifles George Clooney with an impressive amalgam of historical fact and richly deserved insults:

...if Clooney and other [Hollywood] doves actually bothered to read the 2002 Iraq War Resolution and Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly in September of 2002, then they'd discover that WMD's were only one of nearly two-dozen reasons to attack and depose Saddam.

And these reasons are nearly all "classically liberal" - which is to say "neo-con"; that is, based on the idea that all people EVERYWHERE deserve to be free. This is what we're fighting for in Iraq. And this is what classical liberals like FDR and Truman and JFK believed in - and, they all believed that sometimes you have to fight a war over it.

YO CLOONEY, LOOK AT IT THIS WAY: if it was right for "liberals" to support Rosa Parks and send freedom-riders into the south (to demolish segregation and the KKK, too) - in order to help Blacks win their rights, then it is right to help ALL other people - yup, ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE - win their rights, too. In fact, it's our duty.

Sound too radical to you, George? Too neo-con? Well, it's what FDR said in his most famous "liberal" speech - THE FOUR FREEDOMS...


Immerse yourself in the hot-tub of wisdom and read the whole thing.

CIOs to become the new venture capitalists?


IT departments are swarming to mainstream open-source packages. But while horizontal offerings -- operating systems, web servers, databases, application-servers, etc. -- are increasingly popular, there's a relative dearth of vertical products that exist higher up on the value chain. CIO India Magazine remarks:

Some CIOs are skeptical that open-source communities will ever emerge for some of the software they really need. “There are things I need, but people in the community think it’s too boring to work on them,” says Barry Strasnick, CIO, CitiStreet, a benefits management company.

CIOs could become the venture capitalists. It would work this way: CIOs hire consultants to write code for patchy areas but the software isn’t part of their core competence and is broadly applicable enough for other companies to benefit from it. They have the consultants release the software as open source. The consultants are happy because they get to sell services to other companies. CIOs potentially benefit because other customers may pay consultants to write useful additions to the software that the original CIO gets to use for free. Maintenance and support are handled by the consultants and perhaps a community of users that emerges around the new product. If the community and the consultants disappear, CIOs simply take the code base to another outfit for support.


CIO India: CIOs to become the new venture capitalists?

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Are Cable Companies targeting VoIP?

The cable companies in the US and Canada may be moving to quash what they perceive as a threat: Voice-over-IP (or VoIP). A Canadian cable company is now charging customers a tarriff on the use of VoIP applications (never mind that it's just another form of IP traffic). Canada's Shaw Communications requires that customers pay a $10 "packet prioritization fee". This little tax serves to stifle the use of innovative IP applications, which is precisely what many fear will happen in the US if network neutrality regulations aren't enacted and enforced.

Some Comcast customers are also complaining that their provider is purposefully degrading their Vonage phone calls. On an independent VoIP forum, many users have complained about issues running Vonage over Comcast. The implication is, of course, that there's some sort of nefarious packet-filtering going on.

My opinion: things will likely only get worse with the phone companies coalescing to form only two major providers (AT&T and Verizon). There will be little incentive to innovate, more incentive to deter innovation, and plenty of opportunities for collusion. If we're leaving it up to two phone companies and a couple of cable leviathans to spur competition, we're really grasping at straws.

It really could be the end of the Internet as we once knew it.

Networking Pipeline: Are the Cable Companies Trying to Kill VoIP?

The Six Gotchas Of Skype For Business

The alternative telephony provider -- Skype -- has revamped its business offering. The proposition: you don't need to pay $50+ per business line when you can simply run calls through broadband-connected PCs. But Networking Pipeline calls out some major limitations associated with the use of Skype. Among them:

1) Lack of a centralized reporting and filtering capability
2) Lack of hunt groups (ringing multiple lines for a given extension)
3) Lack of call transfers
4) Lack of unattended mode or -- better yet -- an IVR that works through PSTN
5) Encryption of calls prevents call logging, which is often required in businesses for compliance reasons
6) Lack of support for e-911

That said, there's really nothing preventing Skype from continuing to improve the offering to address these issues. And, as for the telcos, one is only left to wonder why they've never pursued innovative IP telephony applications like Skype. And we'll still be wondering about this when the last residential landline is disconnected.

Networking Pipeline: The Six Gotchas of Skype

Monday, March 13, 2006

YouSendIt appears to drop .NET and go LAMP


The trés cool YouSendIt service appears to be dropping support for .NET and going open-source. Specifically, its new beta service is LAMP-based and this MySQL job posting from last year appears to confirm the move.

The free, high-profile service -- if you haven't come across it before -- allows users to send files of any size via email. It stores the attachment(s) on its server (for about a week, I think) and sends the URL of the attachment(s) to the recipient. The recipient can then download them at his or her convenience. It's a simple, powerful idea. And apparently, they've decided against paying the Microsoft tarriffs in their new, enhanced version.

That's the same thing that occurred with Fellowship Church, one of the world's largest churches. After their LAMP consultants routinely beat their .NET team to market with features and innovative capabilities (and after a lot of introspection documented here), Fellowship decided to drop .NET and go LAMP.

A trend? Dunno, but interesting.

Getting Bloglines on your BlackBerry


If you've got a BlackBerry, you're probably like me and love to find new ways to use it. If you like reading blogs, you may have run into Bloglines, an RSS aggregator that coalesces your favorite blogs into a single user-interface. Now there's a new tool that combines Bloglines with Blackberries (I'm reminded of the old commercial: "You've got Bloglines on my BlackBerry... But you've got a BlackBerry on my Bloglines... Two great tastes, together for the first time...").

Now Bogle's Blog has unofficially combined the two services into Berry Bloglines, yet another mashup, this one providing a mobile Bloglines reader with a simple, elegant interface. The mashup? The author used three pre-existing thingamabobs to create a new service: (a) the Bloglines web services interface; (b) Michael Josephson's Bloglines service client written in Python; and (c) Mark Pilgrim's sweet Universal Feed Parser.

Mashup. Now there's an idea for a revamped New York Times' Op-Ed page. Just combine Cohen, Dowd, Krugman, and Rich into a single, hysterical, anti-administration super-columnist!

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Chinese Bank Hosting Phishing Attacks on US Banks


The invaluable Netcraft site has a rather disturbing report of a major phishing attack, hosted on a Chinese State Bank's server:

Phishing e-mails sent on Saturday (March 11) targeting customers of Chase Bank and eBay were directed to sites hosted on ip addresses assigned to The China Construction Bank (CCB) Shanghai Branch. The phishing pages are located in hidden directories with the server's main page displaying a configuration error. This is the first instance we have seen of one bank's infrastructure being used to attack another institution...


Chinese Bank's Server Used in Phishing Attacks on US Banks

Book Review: The Guv'nor


If you ever saw the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , you probably noticed the mob enforcer character, "Barry the Baptist", who "baptized" his victims in trash-bins filled with water. While reading an article about the movie, a mention was made of the real mobsters and hard-edged sorts that were used in bit parts. One such role was played by Lenny McLean, who portrayed Barry, and was called out as "in real life, the hardest man in England".

As an American fight fan, I'd never heard of Lenny McLean. So I did a bit of Internet research and happened upon his autobiography -- this book -- over at Amazon.co.uk. I bundled it with a few other UK-only purchases (at the time, certain AJ Quinnell books were only available there, too) and received it days later. It was a captivating, compelling read -- the working-class, Cockney nomenclature notwithstanding -- that details McLean's rise from an abused child to the top of England's unlicensed fight game.

An unlicensed fight can take place anywhere: a warehouse, tavern, gym... wherever there's enough room for two willing fighters and a plethora of bettors. The rules? Let's just say there aren't many. Head butts, hair-pulling, elbows, knees, and the like are all part of the game. One might consider UK's unlicensed fights as the logical ancestor to today's UFC or mixed martial arts.

Over time, McLean proved himself the most dangerous man in the fight game. He participated in thousands of these no-holds-barred bouts, and it can be argued he lost only once. And in a rematch of that fight, he handily won. McLean doesn't shy away from describing his experiences on the seamy side of things. He details his role as a real-life mob enforcer willing to do anything -- except kill -- to collect or intimidate. Even his tangles with the law -- including a murder charge for which he was found innocent -- are fully described in colloquial, yet entirely satisfying, prose.

The book's ending is filled with promise for a new life as an actor: McLean appeared in several TV and film roles. But during the filming of LS&2SB, McLean was stricken by a bout with the flu. Subsequent testing showed that he was suffering from advanced lung and brain cancer and he passed away in July 1998, just days before the release of the film. The book is a fascinating testament to a hard man who lived a hard life, but was equally dedicated to his family and destined for great things no matter the odds.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Imagining an Open-Source World


Imagine I've got my very own company. Let's say it's a paint manufacturer. Call it "Doug's Discount Paints" or DDP for short. DDP makes the finest paints available anywhere... at far lower costs than better-known brands. How have we done it?

From the outset at DDP, we've used open-source software.

For basic accounting tasks, we use GNUcash. Our supply-chain management software is Compiere ERP and our wholesaler relationship management package is Compiere CRM. We started off with Oracle licenses but eventually retrofitted our packages to use MySQL Community Edition.

All of our servers, of course, run on Linux. The web servers -- it goes without saying -- use Apache version 2 and PHP for application serving. In fact, our batch jobs are all driven use PHP's command-line mode because the scripts are easier to maintain than their Perl equivalents (though we have plenty of those, too).

Our directory server is OpenLDAP's slapd, with replication between our boxes provided by slurpd. The email system used to be Sendmail, but we're now piloting OpenXChange.

While we started off with Windows desktops, we've since transitioned to all Linux desktops. We use GNOME as our desktop user interface, but some of the developers use KDE. Our email client is the very capable Evolution and web browsing is provided by (what else?) Firefox.

Our basic office suite is OpenOffice, which we use for word processing, spreadsheet work, and presentations.

So those are the basics of our environment.

The other day, a major software vendor came in trying to pitch a revamp of our architecture. Here was their proposition:

  >  We've got to pay a hefty fee for the initial software license

  >  Each year, we need to re-up and pay a maintenance fee

  >  From time to time, we need to re-license the software when the old version is no longer supported

  >  When we re-license new versions of the software, we may be forced to simultaneously upgrade our hardware

  >  There's no access to source code permitted by the vendor, so we're quite reliant on the vendor to add the features we need

  >  There's also no official support community, so we're dependent upon the vendor for any low-level help

  >  Product innovation hinges upon the vendor's ability to staff a project, not based upon the product's merits and its ability to attract a community to further its goals

  >  Security is based upon a promise from the vendor to adequately protect its code from internal and exteranl attacks... it's not something independent parties can verify on an ongoing basis by reviewing source code

After hearing the vendor's pitch, we politely showed them the door.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

In Maureen Dowd's World


MoDo - Maureen DowdIn Maureen Dowd's World: if President Bush orders wiretaps on international telephone calls between terrorist cells, it represents some sort of heinous, domestic crime. But if every President since FDR exercised similar warrantless taps for national security reasons, it was all okey-dokey. And just you never mind that the public overwhelmingly approves of said international taps: in Mo's socialist dream-world, the public doesn't count!

In Maureen Dowd's World: the fraternity-hazing gaffes at Abu Graib -- for which lower-level soldiers were rightly punished -- qualify as torture and are the direct responsibility of George W. Bush.

In Maureen Dowd's World: Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin performed flawlessly during and after Hurricane Katrina. And all blame can be fixed on (of course!) "Bushie" and "Brownie". And just you never mind that real reporters -- operating with foreign concepts to Dowd known as facts -- called the Katrina response, "the largest -- and fastest -- rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall."

In Maureen Dowd's World: 9/11 is never worth a mention and fighting back against terrorist attacks is unnecessary. Because the problem of fundamentalist extremism will simply go away if we ignore it. Certainly she does.

In Maureen Dowd's World: Al-Qaqaa was sufficient reason to pillory the President prior to the election (remember her column entitled, "White House of Horrors"? Of course not. No one -- not even Mo -- remembers a Dowd column once the coffee wears off). But Al-Qaqaa hasn't rated a mention since the day President Bush claimed a huge victory over John Kerry.

In Maureen Dowd's World: Saddam Hussein was a benevolent leader bent only on helping his people. And he had no connections to terrorists, or Al-Qaeda, or Zarqawi, or either WTC attack.

In Maureen Dowd's World: the Madrid subway bombings, the USS Cole attack, the first WTC attack, and Beslan never happened. Or, if they did, are somehow President Bush's fault.

In Maureen Dowd's World: the New York Times subscription site is working out just fine, thank you.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Democrats: Sputnik may pose danger to U.S.


From the Washington Post (hat tip: Hugh Hewitt) comes this astounding article: the Democrats plan to have a plan in the very near future.

Democratic leaders had set a goal of issuing their legislative manifesto by November 2005 to give voters a full year to digest their proposals. But some Democrats protested that the release date was too early, so they put it off until January. The new date slipped twice again, and now House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) says the document will be unveiled in "a matter of weeks."


Thank goodness. It's only taken a little over five years for the Democrats to reach consensus about how to lead us. It's truly fortunate we haven't been attacked by terrorists during that time, or suffered a catastrophic series of natural disasters, or watched Iran go nuclear thanks to the AQ Kahn nuclear parts network (kudos, Madeline Albright!). 'Cuz we'd be in real trouble if any of that stuff had happened during a half-decade leadership vacuum.

Some Democrats fear that the hesitant handling is symbolic of larger problems facing the party in trying to seize control of the House and Senate after more than a decade of almost unbroken minority status.


And some Republicans fear -- needlessly -- that the Democrats might get their act together. Uncertainty, chaos, and disorder? The Democrats' work here is done - and their minority status is guaranteed for another election cycle.

There is no agreement on whether to try to nationalize the congressional campaign with a blueprint or "contract" with voters, as the Republicans did successfully in 1994, or to keep the races more local in tone. And the party is still divided over the war in Iraq: Some Democrats, including Pelosi, call for a phased withdrawal; many others back a longer-term military and economic commitment.


Aside from those trivial issues, the Democrats are singing with one voice!

"By the time the election rolls around, people are going to know where Democrats stand," Reid said.


Wait for it... wait... for... it... BWAAAAAAHHHHAAAAAAWWWWWWWAAAHHAAAAAAWWWW! *cough* *sputter* *chortle* ... son of a... I almost herniated myself there. You know... you just can't make this stuff up.

Also dividing Democratic strategists is the question of what lessons to take from the Republican landslide of 1994, when the GOP won the Senate and picked up 54 House seats, wiping out 40 years of Democratic rule.


Perhaps they could appeal to America's core by highlighting national security, winning the war on terror, promoting small businesses to boost the economy, providing more school choices for inner-city kids, and reducing the public assistance mentality that traps so many urban poor. Oh.... wait, that's right. I forgot. This is the Democratic Party we're talking about. Never mind.

[Democratic] Governors privately scoff at the slogan ("Together, America Can Do Better"). They also say the message coming from congressional leaders has been too relentlessly negative. "They want to coordinate. They want to collaborate. That's all good," said one Democratic governor who declined to be identified in order to talk candidly about a closed-door meeting. "The question is: Coordinate or collaborate on what?


That's what most Americans have been asking. It's one thing to have an opposition party. It's another thing altogether to have an obstruction party. The Democrats' incessant fixation on constipating any progress is tragicomic. And, truth be told, that's what the Democratic Party has become: a joke... a parody... a travesty of a real political party. And it's a party that hasn't a chance to win any significant election anytime soon.

WaPo: Democrats Struggle To Seize Opportunity

Book Review: The First Horseman


Book Review: The First HorsemanIn the era of Avian Flu, the First Horseman is a chilling tale. The reappearance of the 1918 Spanish Flu near a North Korean bioweapons facility causes alarms to go off in Washington. The hunt for a potential vaccine leads to an unlikely venue: an Arctic mining town where victims of the flu were buried in permafrost in 1918. These victims, provided they never thawed, would still have virus material in their lungs. This material could be harvested for use in a vaccine.

When American scientists finally reach the frozen town, they're startled to find an unsavory surprise awaits them. And things go downhill from there as an investigative journalist, the intelligence community, and other parties all race to get the vaccine before a biological attack is launched.

Yes, you've got predictable plot twists in store as well as the conventional, whoa-is-that-guy-psychotic criminal mastermind. And, true, you know how everything will turn out in the end. But in between, a fair amount of excellent research detail and some chilling analogs to today's world of H5N1-brand Avian Flu make Case's book both highly relevant and truly ominous.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Book Review: The FairTax Book


The FairTax BookThe idea of a federal consumption -- sales -- tax has been around for decades. That Congressman John Linder and radio host Neal Boortz have created a bestseller on -- of all topics -- taxes is indicative of how flawed the current system is... and the power of the book's tenets. A quick, easy (and fun!) read, the book describes the fundamental flaws of our current tax system, which has simply grown into an insidious leviathan of complexity.

Two of the book's fundamental concepts are exceedingly easy to grasp:

- Embedded taxes: under the current system, we pay the tax costs (payroll, attorneys, preparation, etc.) of every business that comes into contact with a good or service we purchase. That extra cost is estimated at 21% or higher of the final consumer cost, depending upon the study (Harvard puts it at 22%, I believe).

- Increased federal tax revenue: under our current system, black-market operators pay no taxes. With a consumption tax, even a drug-dealer contributes to the federal tax coffers.

The net-net is that a variety of simulations by dozens of economists show that prices won't significantly change even with the sales tax! That's because the embedded costs of our current tax system will be forced out of the cost equation for competitive reasons. A simple example: a tire that might cost $100 today could cost $80 in the future (no embedded tax costs for the businesses upstream of the consumer!). A 30% sales tax would take the total price to $104. Now imagine that sort of price differential while paying no withholding, no federal taxes of any kind, other than sales tax...

Our current, achingly complex tax system is a devastating anchor on the economy. It pulls businesses and consumers into ever darker sinkholes of preparation, attorneys' fees, and avoidance schemes. The IRS estimates that nearly 40% of the public is out of compliance with the current system. And that doesn't even include illegal income sources, estimated at $1 trillion of uncaptured federal revenue.

Buy the book and share it with a friend. You'll be amazed at what simplicity could do for us -- the citizens -- and the federal government. You'll also be startled at what it means for the elderly on fixed incomes as well as folks living below the poverty line. In a nutshell, it's a huge improvement for everyone. That's why members of both parties are strongly advocating the FairTax plan.