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Liz Michael for United States Senate

The River War : An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan
by Winston S. Churchill


First published in 1899, this enduring, insightful account of the reconquest of Sudan not only chronicles a campaign but also demonstrates how it altered the destiny of England, Egypt, and the Arabian peoples in northeast Africa. In 1881, more by accident than design, as Churchill sees it, England was drawn into the affairs of Egypt. Once there, under Lord Cromer and with virtually sovereign power, the English strove to establish a sound government and to stimulate Egyptian prosperity. It was at this moment, however, that the Mahdi rebelled and plunged the Egyptian suzerainty of Sudan into the bloodshed and confusion. Placing the catastrophic events of the 1880s in the context of Sudanese history, Churchill shows how the ineffectually maintained suzerainty gave rise to the Mahdi, who, in his view, fathered Arab nationalism. After tracing the Mahdi massacre of General Charles Gordon in Khartoum and the emergence of the fanatical, plunderous, and slave-raiding regime known as the Dervish Empire, Churchill dramatically recounts the reconquest and pacification of Sudan by a mixed Anglo-Egyptian force under the command of Sir Herbert Kitchener. The outcome would for decades link the destiny of Great Britain to Egypt in Sudan.

A Charge to Keep
by George W. Bush, Karen Hughes

In this political memoir, the President tells us who he is and what he stands for. The George W. Bush who leaps off these pages has his father's energy, his mother's tart and honest wit, and his own irreverence and impatience. He has prospered as George and Barbara's boy -- "How can I deny it?" -- but has walked a very fine line between loyalty and independence. He addresses the questions that may well decide who becomes the next president: crime, education, abortion, tax and tort reform, and the continuing battle "for the soul" of the Republican Party. He is, by no one's definition, a conventional candidate.

You Won - Now What? : How Americans Can Make Democracy Work from City Hall to the White House
by Taegan D. Goddard, Christopher Riback (Contributor)


"Americans entrust their government to novices," Riback and Goddard remind us. "Every November they elect a bunch of people who have never done this before." You Won, Now What? offers practical tips on the task of governance, drawing upon real-life examples to illustrate how elected officials can do an effective job in their first--and in some ways most critical--days on the job.

Novice elected and appointed officials bring valuable energy and new ideas to government agencies, but most of these folks don't know how to get things done in government, so they often can't keep campaign promises, and public cynicism rises. So is government the problem or the solution? Both, say Goddard, who has held both federal and state appointed positions, and Riback, an investigative reporter.

Internet Taxes

Electronic commerce has grown rapidly over the past several years. The Internet is changing the way the world does business. From the perspective of the online consumer, it does not matter if a purchase is made from a web site in San Francisco, Boston, or Beijing — it only matters who offers the best product at the best price. Everyone — including government — gains from such increasing economic integration.

Unfortunately, the benefits of electronic commerce are threatened by the impulses of greedy elected officials to regulate and tax. Electronic commerce is changing daily in scope and scale: in the way the industry is structured, the ways information is formatted and transmitted, the ways in which exchanges are created and financed, and the ways in which privacy is protected. Every aspect of electronic commerce is in flux. Any effort to assert political control is an assault on this emerging medium. Taxes on remote sales will inevitably entail vast and invasive monitoring – Who would levy the tax; what level of tax and of record-keeping would be imposed; how would compliance and sales be monitored. Furthermore, tax proposals pose severe threats to the evolving privacy protections on the Internet such as encryption and anonymous digital money. The emergence of these technologies could be profoundly hampered by new tax collection schemes.

But the problems with e-commerce taxation go far beyond its invasiveness. Indeed, allowing state and local governments to tax across borders is fundamentally unjust and unconstitutional. Remote taxation is Taxation without Representation on an unprecedented scale; a practice that cannot be tolerated in a free republic. Such taxes must not be levied on or collected from people who have no say in how the funds are used. Imposing tax collection responsibilities on remote firms violates those important principles by staking claim on economic activity largely unrelated to the benefits provided by the taxing jurisdiction.

The advocates of new tax collection schemes rely on an increasingly irrelevant distinction between so-called "Main Street" businesses and online business. But the Internet is open to everyone. Main Street businesses are embracing the Internet in droves, through individual web sites and online auctions. In the name of the small number of Main Street businesses that would stifle rather than embrace the opportunities presented by the Internet, the proponents of new tax collection schemes are willing to sacrifice the ability of future small businesspeople to reach the world via the information highway. If the advocates of expanded taxation prevail, many mom and pop businesses will never reaching their full potential in the increasingly global marketplace.

Proposals to apply "efficient" or "uniform" taxes to remote sales are especially distressing. A uniform tax is easily raised and high tax rates, even when administered on a neutral basis, are detrimental to economic growth and development. Electronic commerce empowers consumers to take advantage of competitive tax rates in other jurisdictions and thus serves as a necessary constraint on excessive government. The flexibility in moving capital and economic activities around the globe offered by the Internet at last makes it possible to sharpen those disciplining influences.

Politicians concerned about "leakage" from state and local taxes due to Internet commerce should re-examination their own tax-and-spend policies, cutting unnecessary expenditures and streamlining tax collection systems. It is abundantly clear in this time of unprecedented federal, state and local budget surpluses that the last thing politicians need are new revenues.

Rather than impose new and onerous tax collection schemes, we should respect the sovereignty of both taxpayers and local jurisdictions.

Many governments are using consumer telephone bills as cash cows, imposing multiple and high taxes on services. Such taxes should be slashed to a single tax per state and locality, and filing/auditing procedures streamlined.

Internet access taxes

The temporary federal ban on Internet access taxes should be made permanent. States and localities that imposed such taxes before the ban took effect should repeal any taxes on access to keep costs down for consumers.

The negative effects of a new Internet tax regime would reverberate throughout the national economy. Almost every American industry is now engaged in some form of electronic commerce or has initiated Internet-based services. Imposing burdensome taxes on Internet access or sales would discourage further efforts in this regard and likely retard innovation, job creation, and economic growth in general, possibly even causing a stock market crash like we saw in 1929.

The creation of such a tax regime or regimes would likely require a significant increase in government tax oversight and enforcement efforts. Tax collection agencies at all levels of government would grow larger and more intrusive as efforts to tax electronic commerce proliferated. The resulting expansion in the overall size of government would likely lead to more government meddling in the private sector in general and the high-tech sector in particular.

Constitutional problems

Just as the economic arguments against Internet taxation are strong, so are the legal and constitutional arguments. The Supreme Court has long held that attempts by a state or local government to tax or regulate out-of-state activity or "remote commerce" are unconstitutional. State and local governments can only tax those parties that have a "nexus" or "substantial physical presence" within their jurisdictions. Establishing a tax system that grants state and local governments the right to impose multiple and over-lapping taxes would reverse two centuries worth of sound Supreme Court case law and create a disturbing precedent for the taxation of other forms of interstate commerce.

Beyond upsetting legal precedent, taxing electronic commerce represents a direct affront to constitutional first principles and a threat to America's federalist structure of government in general.

The Founding Fathers included language in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to allow Congress to "regulate interstate commerce" in an attempt to remedy the problems the colonies experienced when they operated under the Articles of Confederation. Excessive parochialism and perpetual interference with the free flow interstate commerce forced the Founders to abandon the Articles and instead adopt our modern Constitution to alleviate these ills. The federal republic they created allowed for extensive state and local experimentation and autonomy, but also placed firm limits on the ability of state and local governments when interstate commerce was at stake.

An important part of America's federalist system of government, therefore, is an understanding and appreciation of the limits of state sovereignty. In order for each state to preserve an autonomous sphere for itself, there must necessarily be limits on its jurisdictional authority. A state's jurisdictional authority ends at its own borders. Allowing state or local taxation of the Internet would betray this constitutional first principle by allowing governments to impose their will on consumers and companies outside their jurisdictional boundaries.

Tearing Down Tax-Related Barriers to Internet Access

Repeal the federal 3% excise tax on telecommunications. This tax is an anachronism that should be repealed immediately and in its entirety.

Taxes on telecommunications are, inevitably, taxes on the Internet. Whether through dial-up access or Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), over cable modems or wireless ones, access to the Internet takes place over the telecommunications network. Indeed, over 50 percent of the traffic on the public switched telephone network is now comprised of data rather than voice. Thus, high telecommunications taxes slow the spread of Internet access and discourage deployment of the broadband networks needed for the next generation of Internet growth. They raise the costs of electronic commerce for every business, big or small, and raise the price of Internet access for every household, rich or poor.

Federal Excise Tax most regressive U.S. tax on poor

Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Analysis have all concluded that the FET is the most regressive of all federal taxes. A recent study by The Progress & Freedom Foundation estimates that at least 165,000 U.S. households are priced out of the market for fast Internet access due to high telecom taxes, with the impact falling disproportionately on low-income and rural households.

The FET also discriminates against the very sector of the U.S. economy that is driving economic growth. While the information technology sector of the economy accounts for less than 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product, it has produced over 40 percent of GDP growth in recent years. Jobs created by the IT sector are among the highest paying jobs in the U.S. economy, with average annual wages in excess of $52,000, as compared with an economy-wide average of less than $37,000.

As Internet access is highly dependent on the telecommunications backbone, any excessive taxes on telecommunications restricts access to the Internet, either through higher costs to users or under-investment in capital expansion in telecommunications infrastructure. Available and affordable Internet access to Americans requires a nondiscriminatory tax burden on telecommunications service providers.

State property tax discrimination against interstate telecommunications

Discriminatory property taxation usually takes two forms. First, as part of the concept of unit valuation, many states tax the intangible assets of public utilities while not taxing the same assets held by other businesses. These intangible assets, which include assets as diverse as federal operating licenses to an assembled work force, are often the most valuable portion of the utility's business. Second, states often apply a higher tax rate to the tangible personal property held by utility companies than that held by other business taxpayers generally.

The poor spend a higher portion of their incomes on utilities than wealthier Americans do. To the degree that discriminatory property taxes are wholly or partially passed on to customers in the form of higher utility rates, they constitute a regressive tax aimed at the nation's less fortunate citizens. Discriminatory property taxes increase telephone rates on the poor and exacerbate the digital divide.

Telecommunications service providers that are subject to property tax discrimination are not able to compete on a level playing field with those that are not.