Linder and Boortz in Gwinnett County, Georgia
The Gwinnett Daily Post Staff Writer Arielle Kass provides this account of Linder and Boortz’s recent visit:
LAWRENCEVILLE – As David Klepinger calls it, Lawrenceville is John Linder country.
And judging by the lines snaking around the Chapter 11 Books where Linder and radio host Neal Boortz were signing “The FairTax Book” Saturday, he was right.
Klepinger, the state’s director of Americans for Fair Taxation, was one of several volunteers at the bookstore handing out petitions and organizing the throngs of people who showed up to buy the book and get autographs.Linder, the Republican congressman, co-wrote the book with Boortz that proposes abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and income taxes in favor of a national sales tax. The book was the No. 3 best seller on Amazon.com Saturday, after its Tuesday debut.
Shoppers at Chapter 11 bought three, four and five copies of the book, and most said that having an autographed copy was just icing on the cake.
The book itself was the draw for Lawrenceville resident Junior Pavik, a tax consultant for the AARP, who said he just wanted to get the message out.
Snellville resident Cynthia Hamer Omey said she has been a proponent of the FairTax ever since she heard Boortz talk about it on his show in 2001. She said she discusses the proposal with 30 to 40 people a day, and was already three chapters in by the time she got to the front of the autograph line.“This will never leave my possession, ever,” Omey said.
Michael Warlick, who came from Dahlonega, brought a shrine to Boortz that his sister, a liberal, had made for him because he spends so much time discussing the host’s conservative views. Boortz signed the shrine and Warlick’s four copies of “The FairTax Book.”
Warlick, who said he read Linder’s proposed FairTax bill in its entirety, said he was standing in line next to an IRS worker who was also a proponent of the plan.
“Who hasn’t dreaded April 15 in some way?” Warlick asked. “What if it was an ordinary day? We could completely change the way we’re taxed.”Dorothy Jubon, the store’s manager, said more than 500 people came through the Chapter 11, buying up most of the 700 copies of the book they had ordered. A handful of people were even camped out at the front door when she arrived to open the store at 9 a.m., Jubon said.
Jubon was enthusiastic about the possibility that a grass roots movement to convince people of the plan could change the way that taxes are collected. Linder has said that if he can convince the American public of the national sales tax, the people would convince Congress.
Klepinger said the bill has been promised an up-or-down vote on the floor of Congress in the next year. If that vote fails, he said, Americans for Fair Taxation will begin a national media campaign to push it further.
