P 334 Quotes

You know, Ham," Breeze noted. "The only funny thing about your jokes is how often they lack any humor whatsoever. ~ Brandon Sanderson

(Somalia) was a watershed," said one State Department official, "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she'll say, yes, of course, I pray for it daily. All the things you'd expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another in order to have that peace, and she'll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I'd die first.' People in these countries - Bosnia is a more recent example - don't want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and the killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it." (pg 334-335) ~ Mark Bowden

[W]hen you look at who'll be collecting this tax, the chances of drumming up a conspiracy suddenly look even worse. In America, .03 percent of all of America's companies - 688 companies, to be exact - sell 48.5 percent of all of the merchandise. Those companies aren't going to help you cheat; there's simply too much at stake. Date also show that 3.6 percent of all of America's companies - 92,334 firms - collectively make 85.7 percent of all sales…
When it comes to the services sector, the fact is that 1.2 percent of all businesses make approximately 80 percent of the sales in the services sector. They have too much to lose to risk helping you cheat. Even if the FairTax were paid only by these few companies, we would still have a better collection rate than the IRS currently has with the income tax. ~ Neal Boortz