Longshot visits pizza joint

Traci and Pete Christophersen listen to Republican Presidential candidate John Cox at the Picadilly Circus Thursday afternoon, July 26.

John Cox is a venture capitalist from the Chicago area who is running for the Republican Presidential nomination. Cox stopped in Mapleton last Thursday as part of a tour of all 99 counties in Iowa.

Cox spoke mostly about Iraq, pointing out that it is producing less oil than it did before the United States invaded four years ago. He believes that it is a mistake to expect either a military solution to work, like other Republicans, or to look for a political solution, like many of the Democratic candidates propose. Cox believes that the best thing for Iraq is an economic solution.

Cox proposes an approach similar to the “Marshall Plan” used to reconstruct Europe after WWII. Except that rather than having America pay for it, he believes that Iraq can pay for it’s own recovery because it is capable of producing five million barrels of oil per day. According to Cox, that much oil would bring Iraq somewhere between 75 and 80 billion dollars a year, enough to pay for plenty American force or private security.

Cox imagines that kind of prosperity arousing envy among Iranian citizens and transforming the Middle East.

The former lawyer and accountant considers himself a Reagan-Republican and proposes eliminating all income taxes and replacing them with a 23% national sales tax that he believes would discourage indebtedness and encourage investment.
___________________________________________________________________________________ Back Story; The regular reporter was gone today at the Mapleton PRESS offices so Ann, the Office Manager asked me if I wanted to go over and get a picture of this guy, "if you want to, I don't really care."

Neither of us had ever heard of him. I looked him up on the web to get a little background.

Seems he told the Sioux City Journal that he's "No Barack as far as drawing crowds," but that's not going to stop him. Traci, Pete, their son and I were the only three people in the place. He rattled on about how we could win in Iraq if we could just have their power on for more than an hour a day and then zeroed in on me, like I'm gonna give him SO much publicity and it will be SO positive.

Our publisher made it clear back when I tried covering Obama that our coverage of candidates will be short and general for all of them in order to be fair and balanced.

Note to ALL candidates if you want a crown, tell people sooner than ten minutes before that you're coming.

"Did you give him the hard questions?" Ann would ask me later. I don't know, we had all of five minutes and I hadn't really prepared.

The 23% sales tax really threw me. Here I thought that most Reagonomics fans were brazenly in favor of helping the super-rich and the corporations enough already- AND I thought that Steve Forbes was a nut job with his idea for a 10% Flat tax back in the 90's. Could you imagine having to pay 23% on a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread? How about adding 23% more to a gallon of gas? Try tacking on another 23% to the cost of a house. What is he THINKING?

Talk about hurting the poor, working class, and middle-classes and letting the wealthy and big companies hold onto their stock options, portfolios and inheritances! I appreciate his concern that America had a negative savings rate last year and that credit is way too easy to come by so we're all spending ourselves into a hole, but get real.

And these Reaganites think we Lefties are whacked? No wonder in recent polls most Americans say that their favorite G.O.P. candidate is "none of the above!"