Can you name a country that has a flat 10 percent income tax on both personal and corporate income, and that is also running a budget surplus of 8 percent of gross domestic product (the equivalent of the United States running a budget surplus of more than $1 trillion)?

The surprising answer is Bulgaria, formerly one of Europe's most backward countries.

Most of the former communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe have instituted flat-rate income tax systems. Estonia was the first, and Bulgaria is one of the most recent, having only moved to the 10 percent flat rate at the beginning of this year.

It's one of several lessons America and the politicians she elects could learn from Bulgaria.

South of the border, down Mexico way, a new and savage revolution rages just beyond our inspection lanes. After less than five years of fighting, estimates of the dead have reached 22,000.

The rate of killing accelerates each month. And Washington covers its eyes like a kid at a scary movie. Well, the Mexican narco-insurgency, in which well-armed guerrilla forces confront the authority and presence of the state, is our No. 1 security challenge.

The chaos in northern Mexico has far deeper implications for our country than Islamist terror or even an Iranian nuclear capability (as grim as those threats are).

The rule of law has collapsed from Tijuana (across from San Diego, California) on the Pacific's edge to Matamoros (across from Brownsville, Texas) on the Gulf of Mexico. Major cities are now "ungoverned spaces," as our diplomats refer tidily to distant trouble spots.

And Arizona's "discriminatory" new state law empowering police to pursue criminal aliens? Should Phoenix let the rule of law collapse because Washington prefers political correctness to public safety? In DC, it's about politics. In Arizona, it's about survival.

If government agencies pressure banks to give loans to people who are poor credit risks, do you view this as a failure of capitalism or a failure of government? A number of left-wing politicians and commentators have made the assertion that the financial crisis is a result of too much deregulation under the "capitalistic" policies of President Reagan.

Those who make the assertion are either ignorant of the facts or being untruthful.

What we have seen is not a failure of free-market democratic capitalism, but another failure of a government that destroyed the normal market mechanisms for dealing with risk.

There have been many calls for the "greedy" to be punished, but the political "greed" for power and money is even more dangerous than excesses practiced by occasional business people.

Israel's status as the US's most vital ally in the Middle East has been so widely recognized for so long that over the years, Israeli and American leaders alike have felt it unnecessary to explain what it is about the alliance that makes it so important for the US.

This week - April 19 - we celebrate Israel's 62^nd Independence Day.  As the Obama administration is openly distancing the US from Israel while giving the impression that Israel is a strategic impediment to the administration's attempts to strengthen its relations with the Arab world, recalling why Israel is the US's most important ally in the Middle East has become a matter of some urgency.

Much is made of the fact that Israel is a democracy. But we seldom consider why the fact that Israel is a representative democracy matters. The fact that Israel is a democracy means that its alliance with America reflects the will of the Israeli people. As such, it remains constant regardless of who is power in Jerusalem.

All of the US's other alliances in the Middle East are with authoritarian regimes whose people do not share the pro-American views of their leaders. The death of leaders or other political developments are liable to bring about rapid and dramatic changes in their relations with the US.

The question of the week:  who is stupider, the Norks or all those intimidated by them?

Lot's of fun stuff happened this week.  Tombstone Burris dug his political grave deeper with a tape of his offering a bribe to Hot Rod Blogojevich. 

Zero's Chicago gangsterism towards Republican Chrysler dealers - spotted by sharp-eyed TTPers on the Forum (see the thread for A Letter to America from a Dodge Dealer) - is being exposed for all to see.   Drudge is carrying both Rick Moran's article and that of the Washington Examiner.  My old friend Joe Farah is running solid exposés on WorldNetDaily.  Zero is running a straightforward Political Mafia.

And Zero further solidified his racism by nominating a racist shrew for the Supreme Court who is so IQ-challenged she'll be steamrollered by Roberts, Alito, and Scalia in conference - as pointed out by Jack Kelly.

But we'll focus on the Norks, who can't seem to make a real bomb yet somehow sucker the world into thinking they have.

Last month, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem.

Second, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima. In other words, the "crisis" between the US and Israel -- so named by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama -- was a set up, created by a conspiracy between the Kadima and Democrat Parties.

Are all too many in the global political class doltish, or do they just appear that way? The current financial meltdown has revealed an amazing number of revelations from people who were surprised by the obvious.

For years, liberal Democrats in Congress and some Republicans pushed for banks and other institutions to make home loans to unqualified borrowers, and suddenly we find many of these people cannot repay their loans.

The reaction from members of Congress, like the "surprised" Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is to demand investigation of "greedy bankers," while ignoring the fact that it was her left-wing colleagues who created the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that required the banks to lend to people who were poor credit risks in the name of "housing rights."

A Chicago "public interest" lawyer named Barack Hussein Obama was active in this movement.

First up this week is something I should entitle Blown Away By Who You Are.  We have been deluged by TTPers who wish to participate in the Achilles Heel Project (AHP) and are simply in awe of their bios.

The talent pool of TTP - the variety and depth of accomplishments, experience, knowledge, and credentials in so many fields - is astounding.   We're marshalling it for AHP, but I want to synergize it for TTP as a whole.  So we have formed a "social networking" site for this purpose:  http://tothepointnews.ning.com/.

Here is where TTPers can go to meet, chat, and collaborate with each other.  There are so many wonderful folks on TTP - here's how you can all get to know yourselves.  Have fun and synergize!

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Next is an announcement:  the TTP Summer Rendezvous -  the Winning the Revolution Rendezvous - will be in Williamsburg, Virginia from Friday, September 11 to Monday, September 14.

Colonial Williamsburg  recreates the America of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.  Nearby Jamestown is where the settlement of America began in 1607.  And close by is Yorktown, where America achieved victory in its War of Independence in 1781.

What more appropriate place could there be - and what more appropriate date than September 11 weekend - for TTPers to join together and commit to winning our American liberty once again?

Rank the following taxes from best to worst: individual income taxes; payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, sales or consumption taxes, and residential property taxes. The vast majority of economists would rank the corporate income tax as being worst and the sales tax and residential property tax as the best.

Unfortunately, the corporate income tax is often the favorite tax of fiscally irresponsible politicians because it is not easily seen.   In fact, the corporate tax is paid by workers in lower wages and fewer new jobs, by consumers in higher prices and by savers and investors in lower rates of return.

Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a study that showed 28 percent of large companies paid no corporate income tax in 2005 almost always because they had made no profit.

Rather than thoughtfully considering whether the corporate income tax should be reduced or abolished, several bluster brains in the U.S. Congress used the report as an excuse to attack corporations.

Ever heard of Richard Armitage?  Assistant Secretary of Defense for President Ronald Reagan.  Deputy Secretary of State for President George W. Bush.  An impressive résumé as long as your arm.  Why would such a man lie about being a Navy SEAL?

SEAL is an acronym for SEa, Air, and Land for the comprehensive training required to be a member of the most elite special operations force in the US military.  It was my great privilege to serve my country as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, and ultimately to be the Commandant of the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, California, where graduates of the BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) course earn the right to be a SEAL.

I had heard Armitage's claim before and knew it was false, because I had researched the student personnel files at the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, and there was no record of an Armitage ever having been enrolled in BUD/S (much less graduated).

This got me to thinking - how many others are there who lie about their being a SEAL?  I decided to look into it, and got a number of retired SEALs to help me.  What we discovered astounded us.

Grab a seat, folks - a ringside seat to the Greatest Show on Earth.  What more exciting fun could there be than watching Zero's Washington caught in a vise between California and England, struggling vainly as it gets squeezed to death?

From California comes what America needs more than anything else, a Tax Revolt.  California voters didn't buy the extortionist threats from its girlie-man governor and the Dem crooks who run the Legislature.  They prefer state bankruptcy to more thieving taxes.

Such bankruptcy would be the solution to its woes, for e.g., all contracts with public employee unions would be voided.  What fun...

That the federal government is also headed towards Bankruptcy City can be seen by this observation in Bloomberg:  The Dollar Is Dirt, Treasuries Are Toast, AAA Is Gone.

As the dollar disintegrates, unemployment and inflation explode into deep double digits, and taxpayers decide to spend what money they have on food, clothing, and shelter instead of government thieves, the fury of what's happening now in England is going to be replicated here.