MAILBAG:

I generally admire Judge James P. Gray’s stimulating challenges to conventional wisdom, but I have one reservation about his call for a flat tax (“Alternatives to the income tax,” June 29). Almost every tax we pay (sales, property, gasoline, etc.) is regressive (i.e. they fall disproportionally on lower income families and favor the well-to-do).

The one exception is the progressive income tax. Even with the $30,000 deduction for a family of four, the flat tax would remove much of what progressiveness there is in the current system and make the overall tax burden more regressive.

Instead, how about a vastly simplified tax code to reduce the cost of collection while keeping two or three tax brackets?

BOB SCHMIDT

Newport Beach

Iraq can serve as democracy example

Once again, the Daily Pilot subjects us to the melodramatic driveling of Joe Bell running down our country for pure partisan politics (“Let’s take back our country,” July 3).

To hear Joe tell it, all is lost in this country he no longer recognizes; what a bunch of bunk! And the guy who Joe is going to bring in to save it all and lead the free world in the most dangerous time in its history has one incredible achievement in his life — he was a community organizer in Chicago!

This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic!

The “surge” in Iraq is working dramatically, much to the disdain of the Barack Obamas and the Joe Bells of the world who predicted its failure.

Our presence there and the resulting defeat of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, guided by the foresight and perseverance of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, General David Petraeus and our magnificent armed forces has led to the first functional democracy in the Persian Gulf, which will serve as the model to overthrow all the other dictatorships and klepocracies in the future in this vitally important region of the world.

The creation of this new democracy will serve the same purpose-by-example set by the emergence of the two democracies created in Germany and Japan after WWII that were made possible by the American and Allied armed forces out of the ashes of Nazi German and Japanese militarist dictatorships vanquished by us in 1945.

But Joe turns his usual blind eye to this for cheap, petty, partisan blathering and tells us we’ll all be safe and America right again if we will only put this empty-suit, wet-behind-the-ears punk in charge who hasn’t run anything more complicated then a welfare hot dog stand in South Chicago his whole life!

TOM WILLIAMS