PreserveTheAmericanDream.com (PAID)

Memo by Al Parinello, Founder Preserve The American Dream (PAID)

We’ve all read them and we’ve all been bothered or amused by them.  Some make us think, some make us laugh and some make us mad as hell.  I’m talking about the many junk email transactions many of us receive daily.  Many contain videos; some puzzles, some poetry, some pretty pictures and many are shall we say, less than socially acceptable.  I received today; the day taxes are due, one such familiar mass-sent cyber missive.   These emails are mysteriously born somewhere and like the proverbial snowball it continues to get bigger and bigger as it rolls out to its intended recipients who in turn take the hint and resend it along to their own email friends.  

The Presidential candidates are lining up like ducks in a row.  It’s really much too early to know whom if any can be taken seriously or if any can break through with medial clutter with a message that will resonate with the people.  PreserveTheAmericanDream.com (PAID) wants to know as much as you what the various candidates are saying and how their rhetoric blends with our goal to keep the American Dream alive for our children and us. 

Fred Thompson a yet to be named candidate wrote an editorial entitled Case Closed: Tax Cuts Mean Growth, that was published in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com) on the Saturday/Sunday edition dated April 14-15, 2007 on page A9.  I thought I would share some of Thompson’s views.  Sitting on the sidelines as the remainder of the pact tries not to embarrass themselves out of the running, is the former Republican senator from Tennessee whose commentaries, “The Fred Thompson Report,” can be heard on the ABC Radio network.  Mr. Thompson brings up an important point to all PAID members namely treasury statistics show that tax revenues have soared and the budget deficit has been shrinking at a rapid pace.  That shrinking deficit has halved since the first tax cut became effective.  All of this good news is the result of the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.  Opponents of those same tax cuts however, warned of ever increasing budget deficits and national bankruptcy unless the tax rates were increased, not decreased.  And increased especially on the wealthy!

I read an editorial written by Ari Fleischer entitled The Taxpaying Minority that was published in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com) on Monday April 16, 2007 on page A15.  Ari, a former White House press secretary, is now president of Ari Fleischer Communications and his comments directly hit home.    I believe his thoughts and ideas will be of great interest to all PreserveTheAmericanDream.com (PAID) members.  He makes a concerted effort to explain a rather immense problem in America and one that concerns PAID members at the very core.  Mr. Fleischer points out accurately that masses of Americans have no serious stake in what their government does because they don’t pay for it.  Think about it.  Why should a person who doesn’t pay taxes care about anything more than how they can benefit from others who do pay taxes?  And the reason they don’t contribute is because PAID members pay through the nose for them, a result of the DEAD’s attack on the American way of life.  The bottom 40% of American households, more than 44 million adults pay no income taxes.  That’s just not right and needs correction.  We are beginning to see that practical programs need to be instituted to fix this outrage.  But this of course takes bold innovation by brave politicians and they are very much in short supply.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report is a destroyer of the American Dream (DEAD) thinker of the first order.  Mr. Zuckerman has many times espoused his views that raising taxes on the rich is a very good idea no matter how much evidence exists to support otherwise.  Mr. Zuckerman is a big believer that the death tax, the most onerous of all taxes designed specifically to legally steal money from the deceased wealthy.  With that warning in mind, I read with interest an article entitled Giving The Boot To The Tax-Cut Era in the April 9, 2007 issue of U.S. News & World Report ( 

This article by Matt Miller appears in the April 2, 2007 edition of Fortune Magazine.  Matt Miller is a management consultant and senior fellow at the Center for American progress.  He is at work on a book on the new ways of thinking needed for capitalism to prosper.  He can be reached at mattino@att.net.  Here’s the article:

Sometimes, raising taxes just makes sense.  Even to conservatives.  John Edwards says we need to raise taxes to fix health care, and you can bet that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will eventually say so too.  Their red-blooded Republican foes will counter that raising taxes is always and everywhere evil, because it hurts the economy.  Well, suppose I told you there was a way to square this circle, courtesy of a $500 billion health-related tax hike that could save the economy?  And suppose I added that conservative economists would actually be okay with the idea?  Too good to be true, you say?  Well, welcome to what I call the “opening of the capitalist mind.”