TAX NEWS - JUNE 2010

New York Tax: Stop misguided taxation

The latest and most frightening tax and control proposal, presented by the Federal Trade Commission in a staff discussion draft, would charge a 5 percent "iPad" tax to raise up to $4 billion a year to pay for government-funded news.

Apparently, from all the hand-wringing and crocodile tears, the political elite are worried that newspapers like the New York Times are in trouble. If the Times is in trouble it is not because of the change in technology but because it has forgotten how to report news. The Internet has not caused the failure of the newspaper model, it has exposed the Times' reporting to be selective, spotty, and untrustworthy. It can be sometimes excellent and other times dangerous to your health. The Times has yet to show embarrassment for the Pulitzer it won publishing Walter Duranty's Stalin propaganda.

Government funding news should be laughed into oblivion, followed by any political candidate unable to see why government news is a bad idea.

That the FTC could define what journalism is means it could define away journalism it does not like. That the FTC could "encourage innovations" means that the FTC could play favorites. That the FTC could control search engines and aggregators means that the FTC could play favorites. That the FTC could define some facts to be "proprietary" means that the FTC could control news. That the FTC could create anti-trust exemptions means the FTC could deliver special favors to its friends. That the FTC could redistribute wealth from one form of media to another means state control of the news.

The time has come to throttle back government's ability to tax and control. Government is not the answer to everything. Government, misdirected and ham-fisted, too frequently adds more problems than it solves. Myopic progressives somehow believe that good intentions count, and terrible consequences that occur as a result of those intentions don't seem to matter to them. Test candidates during the upcoming political campaign on their tax and spend habits.

Do not move the country one step closer to closed statism that failed in the former USSR or that is killing today's Venezuela. The FTC proposal needs to die today. Anything less is the first step to shredding the First Amendment to the Constitution.