"...a number of conservative tax experts have praised it because it is even handed, based on solidly researched facts and is not ideological... I hope you read my book because every single reader I have heard from has spoken highly of my work."

Perfectly Legal is "an important account of the IRS's declining state of health and its increasingly moribund capacity to enforce our tax laws... [with] solid investigative reports on a wide range of topics, expanding on what previously appeared in the Times .. the greatest contribution in Perfectly Legal [is] exposing the scandalous lack of resources given to the IRS..."

It also is "infuriatingly simplistic in its political assumptions" and a "populist tirade against the super rich."

" ...what is wrong with Perfectly Legal? Basically, the problem lies in Johnston's distinct and loaded ideological perspective, which rests on the dubious premise that the tax system is designed to 'subsidize' the super rich and 'cheat' the ordinary citizen/taxpayer.

"'[O]ur tax system now levies the poor, the middle class and even the upper middle class to subsidize the rich.' We hear this over and over throughout the book. Those who already believe this stuff out of deep-rooted ideological conviction will love to hear it repeated in the book. ...The rest of us get a bit tired."...

"Johnston simplistically portrays the tax system as designed for one purpose: 'subsidizing' the rich"... but this obviously is contracted by plain facts.

"The top 50 percent of taxpayers shoulder 96 percent of the burden of the individual income tax, while the bottom 50 percent contributes virtually nothing to the Treasury ... 4 percent of the individual income tax isn't enough to fund the government for a week...

"Even a 12 percent reduction in the top tax rate (from 39.6 percent to 35 percent) does not amount to a subsidy. There is no positive cash flow in favor of the rich on account of the federal income tax. ....

"[T]he tax system may not redistribute wealth ...as much as Johnston wants. But that hardly means the tax code is rigged to take money out of the pockets of the middle class and give it to the wealthy."

So Johnston thinks not taking enough *from* the rich is giving a subsidy *to* them. Moreover, the basic premise of the book -- expressed in its title -- just isn't backed by what's reported in it. "One last complaint with Johnston's book: Its title is misleading. Few if any of the scams recounted in Perfectly Legal are legal, let alone 'perfectly legal.' "...most of the abuses described in Johnston's book are not just questionable or aggressive applications of current law, but outright illegal scams! The problem isn't so much that the system was rigged, but that existing laws are not rigorously enforced. There is virtually nothing that is 'perfectly legal' in the bogus claims of the tax protesters or the confidential tax opinions sold with the COBRA tax shelter and other similar schemes [that Johnston complains about].

"That confusion over what's legal and what's not extends to a tax avoidance scheme that Johnston condemns as a scam simply because it benefits corporations. Johnston despises the corporate inversion that recently made headlines and raised the ire of Congress, but he doesn't seem to know exactly what's wrong with it.

" Johnston sees the inversion as just another corporate rip-off -- even worse, an 'unpatriotic' rip-off that can save some big multinational corporations millions of dollars in taxes.

"But there is nothing unpatriotic, let alone illegal, about a multinational business reorganizing its corporate structure so as to minimize its worldwide taxes, even if it means Treasury ends up collecting less revenue ... Legality is the issue, and it's a perfectly legal transaction under the tax code.

"Of course, there is great potential for abuse and tax evasion after the corporate inversion, as the new U.S. subsidiary ...attempts to bail out U.S. taxable income [to] the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. But that is NOT perfectly legal, and the IRS expends considerable effort in policing abusive transfer pricing practices...."

"Whether Johnston realizes it or not ...his greatest contribution" is reporting the fact that the IRS lacks the resources it needs to adequately police such situations -- not his political analysis at to the reasons why.

Krugman claims that the drop in federal revenues "probably reflects an epidemic of tax avoidance and evasion" by "wealthy people who don't feel like paying taxes." Krugman's evidence for this? None, really, except to recommend that readers buy a book on the subject by his Times colleague David Cay Johnston. Operators are standing by.

1. I suppose Paul Krugman could be considered a colleague, but since he works for the Op-Ed page and I work in news and they are totally separate that seems a stretch.

2. My book PERFECTLY LEGAL, about which you wrote "operators are standing by" is on the bestseller lists -- and a number of conservative tax experts have praised it because it is even handed, based on solidly researched facts and is not ideological... When law enforcement fails to do its job that is usually a matter of grave concern. That you treated my book so flippantly reflects, I hope, your attempt at humor and not a cavalier attitude toward criminal conduct when it comes to taxes. I hope you read my book because every single reader I have heard from has spoken highly of my work.

Thank you for posting that exceptional story from City Journal about the "infectious PC movement." As a Phillips Academy Andover graduate ('99), I can verify the depiction of one of our school deans, Mr. Robert Edwards. Let me first say that Mr. Edwards is indeed a friendly, amiable chap who loves the school and enjoys impacting the student's lives. Unfortunately, the message he preaches is devastatingly divisive, as the article goes onto describe. I went to Andover from a small town in Pennsylvania, where my two closest friends are a Philippino immigrant, and a gentleman whose mother is from a west African country, and a white father. It was clearly obvious that my friends didn't look like me, but that was never an issue. We were three kids from a catholic school that had the same interests and developed a strong relationship. Each of us knew of our heritage, and did not need some "academic" dean to generalize about who came from what. It troubles me to think about the "education" and "awareness" that my friends may have been subjected to. 40 years ago we likely would not be so close. It angers me that people like Mr. Edwards are constantly try to divide America, rather then working toward a race-neutral country, where people will think of themselves as Americans above all else.

Actually the Friedman prescription from Robert Reich is worse than you've explained -- it's internally self-contradictory isn't it? He's saying that we need MORE unionization in precisely those jobs that are NOT threatened by outsourcing? That's an ideologically driven non-sequiter.

I am writing from Saddam's old presidential palace in downtown Baghdad. Please withhold my name.

Concerning your comments on The New Yorker's coverage of the use of the terms "deserter" and "AWOL." As you are a regular contributor to National Review, I am sure you have seen the piece last week by Byron York. As a member of the Army Reserve, I understand immediately what the young Lieutenant Bush went through. For a "good year" in the Reserves or Guard, one needs to earn 35 retirement points in addition to the grant of 15 membership points every year. Those points can be earned by being a member of a unit that drills once per month and a 15-day Annual Training, for 39 days per year of duty.

However, positions are not always available in a unit for all skills or ranks. That was certainly the case as the Vietnam war wound down. Even today, many thousands of reservists, like me, are individual reservists. We can still earn "good years" and even advance in rank, as long as we do some duty at sometime, some where, in order to get an efficiency rating. I can only manage a few days of active service per year, and earn the rest of my points via correspondence courses. Any reservist of Guard member can earn the required 35 points in a single month or less per year. Lieutenant Bush did exactly that for his sixth year of good service in June and July 1973. As for the period May 72 to May 73, Lieutenant Bush once again earned his 50 points (15 points for membership, and then at least 35 for duty or courses), serving in five separate months, including 14 days in May 1973 before his fifth "retirement year" ended.

Such a pattern of service is so common in the Reserves and Guard that it doesn't even deserve comment. Unit members quite often miss unit drills due to business, family, health, or personal reasons. If such absences harm the unit or hamper the ability of a Reservist or Guardsman to demonstrate proficiency, then this will show up on the efficiency reports or in the discharge papers. Granted, the leftish intellectuals to whom the NEW YORKER sell their magazine, and who dominate the leadership of the Democrats are certainly more knowledgeable than the rest of us about draft dodgers and draft resisters. It is terribly obvious, though, that they know very little about the US military, including the reserve forces who have shouldered a good portion of the defense burden since 1990.

Of course, since Republicans cannot adequately present such information is telling about their political instincts and skills.

"The fundamental question we have to ask as a society is, what do we do about it?" notes Robert Reich, the former labor secretary and now Brandeis University professor. "For starters, we're going to have to get serious about some of the things we just gab about — job training, life-long learning, wage insurance. And perhaps we need to welcome more unionization in the personal services area — retail, hotel, restaurant and hospital jobs which cannot be moved overseas — in order to stabilize their wages and health care benefits." Maybe, as a transition measure, adds Mr. Reich, companies shouldn't be allowed to deduct the full cost of outsourcing, creating a small tax that could be used to help people adjust.

If Bush had appointed an investigative commission headed by Valerie Plame (the outed CIA wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson) and composed of such journalists as Seymour Hersh, Jim Fallows, Stephen Kinzer and Paul Krugman, its report would probably be worth reading. Short of that, I propose abolishing the agency and reducing our annual deficit by about $30 billion.