FC: Groups try to hold McCain to his no-Net-tax pledge

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43740,00.html
   
   Vexing Questions About Net Tax
   By Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com
   2:00 a.m. May 12, 2001 PDT
   
   WASHINGTON -- Remember all those promises that U.S. presidential
   candidates made last year?
   
   Some libertarian and conservative groups sure do, and they're trying
   to hold Sen. John McCain to his New Hampshire pledge to oppose
   Internet taxes.
   
   At a January 2000 event designed to distance himself from George W.
   Bush, McCain signed a Citizens for a Sound Economy declaration
   that says: "I will support making permanent the current ban on
   Internet access, sales or use taxes."
   
   But with the current moratorium expiring in October, the Arizona
   Republican has quietly shifted his stand. He no longer talks about
   banning all Internet taxes, and he has not reintroduced his bill from
   the last Congress, Senate Bill 1611, which would have extended the
   existing moratorium.
   
   "McCain is allowing the Internet tax cartel train to roll right down
   the tracks and doesn't appear willing to do much to stop it at this
   time," said Adam Thierer, an analyst at the libertarian Cato
   Institute. "I don't want to be overly harsh here, but this seems like
   a rather abrupt about-face on this issue, considering how hard he was
   nailing Bush on it during the campaign."
   
   Currently, McCain is trying to broker a deal between the pro-tax state
   governments -- which say uncollected sales taxes on Internet purchases
   could cost them $12.5 billion by 2003 -- and a shaky coalition of
   online businesses and groups ideologically opposed to granting
   governments new powers to tax.
   
   "We are trying to work out a bill that can not only pass the Senate,
   but that can become law," said Mark Buse, McCain's staff director.
   "Every version that Senator McCain has worked on has contained a
   permanent extension of the Internet tax ban."
   
   "We're political realists," Buse said. "A pure extension right now
   does not have the votes to pass the Senate or the commerce committee.
   It probably has just 6 votes out of 22 on the committee. Instead of
   just posturing, we're trying very hard to work out language that will
   pass."
   
   Besides, McCain may have an easy out: By signing the CSE pledge,
   McCain only promised to oppose taxes "if elected to the office of
   president."

   ---
   
   Porn worm in Congress: Sen. Robert Bennett may be the former chairman
   of the Republican High-Tech Task Force and the current chairman of a
   GOP working group on "cyber safety and critical infrastructure
   protection," but you wouldn't know it by his own electronic security
   measures.
   
   On Thursday, Bennett's staff received the "homepage" worm, which their
   Windows mail software dutifully forwarded to colleagues, contacts and
   journalists on their press list.

   [...]




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