{"id":227,"date":"2003-11-02T00:43:44","date_gmt":"2003-11-02T07:43:44","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2003-11-02T00:43:44","modified_gmt":"2003-11-02T07:43:44","slug":"a-dictator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2003\/11\/02\/a-dictator\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dictator?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post reports that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A50031-2003Nov1.html\">the Coalition has brought the flat tax to Iraq<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>It took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a stroke of the pen Sept. 15 to accomplish what eluded the likes of publisher Steve Forbes, former representative Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and former representative Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) over the course of a decade and two presidential campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The highest individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent years shall not exceed 15 percent,&#8221; Bremer wrote in Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 37, &#8220;Tax Strategy for 2003,&#8221; issued last month. <\/ul>\n<p>Here comes the punchline:<\/p>\n<ul>Bremer&#8217;s new economic policy for Iraq will slash Saddam Hussein&#8217;s top tax rate for individuals and businesses from 45 to 15 percent. <b>Of course, since Hussein&#8217;s government, like others in the Middle East, almost never enforced tax collection, there is no real history of paying taxes in the country.<\/b><\/ul>\n<p>I have to admit that Saddam had some endearing qualities (ok, just this one)&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post reports that the Coalition has brought the flat tax to Iraq: It took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a stroke of the pen Sept. 15 to accomplish what eluded the likes of publisher Steve Forbes, former representative Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}