G. Edward Griffin, author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island” explains how the Federal Reserve system came to be and how it affects you, our country and the world.

As a rule of thumb, on a nonstop domestic flight, taxes are generally about $21 round trip. On a one-stop domestic flight, taxes are generally $42. On an international flight, taxes can approach up to $200 round trip. Starting Thursday, all those amounts will be bundled into the fares displayed,” said Travelzoo.com in the Salt Lake Tribune

If you’ve ever bought an airline ticket you know that when you look at the price, there’s going to be taxes and fees added to it. Even if you don’t realize it, it becomes very clear as you head toward purchase. No one presses the final buy button until they’ve looked at the final price (unless they’re so rich they don’t care). And most airlines like Delta will show you the price before and after fees while you’re searching their site (see screen shot below taken before the new rule went into effect).

Flight from Chattanooga to Salt Lake City, UT, search results on Delta on 1/25/2012

There’s no surprises at purchase, so I’m asking myself, why is the government so concerned about passing a law that requires airlines to include the taxes and fees in the advertised price?  The reason is obvious. In the name of “consumer protection and full disclosure” they’re really masking the amount of taxes they’re tacking on! For example, the flight above listed for $280.00 plus $43.20 in taxes and government fees will look like $323.80 in the future — with no mention of the taxes/fees.

In other words, consumers will eventually become oblivious to the fact that at least 15% of their airline ticket is government fees and taxes. And yes, they are government fees — click here to view the disclosure on what those fees are about.

Eventually, airline tickets will be like gasoline. Very few people realize that the average gallon of gas includes 18.4 cents per gallon in federal tax and up to as much as 31 cents per gallon in state and local taxes (depending upon your state).

When prices go up at the pump, everyone rags on the gas stations (who actually clear only pennies on a gallon). In reality, taxes, fees, regulations are all jacking up the price. It may be no big deal today that the airlines have to give a total price after tax and fees, but a decade from now, no one’s going to remember when the taxes and government fees were transparent. They’ll just blame the airlines when the prices go up, and the government can go on their merry way dipping into our pockets on everything we buy, jacking up prices with taxes, regulations and devaluing the U.S. currency.

If I owned an airline, I’d put a big neon box on my website that said, “The $323.20  price of your ticket includes $43.20 in taxes and government fees. If you’d like more reasonable airline fares, write your congressmen and tell them you’re not so stupid that you can’t tell that a tax on what you purchase is the same as a tax on YOU!”

I’ve heard my father speak for years about liberty and freedom. One of the reasons I love writing about history is because I can transport myself and others back into an earlier time when life was simpler and there was less government intervention in our lives.

We can learn a lot from history. Unfortunately, people who remember those times are dying daily. My father, for example, remembers when there was no income tax withheld from paychecks. Nothing withheld from paychecks. His father, a railroad engineer, was the first person in Chattanooga to have income tax withholdings. And then, they said it would only be for a short time. The federal government never does anything for a short time. The withholding stuck and has grown ever since.

People today not only can’t remember these simpler times when government didn’t meddle in their lives, but they don’t know what they’re missing. This is why I’ve put together this little video to paint a picture of what a free Constitutional Republic really looks like

The next story that came up was about how Ron Paul is the number one “new front runner” in the Iowa polls. The anchorwoman defined Ron Paul’s campaign by saying that he wants to cut foreign aid, including to Israel. She reported that Ron Paul may have support in Iowa, but he doesn’t in the rest of the country. The rest of the country “only” showed 45 percent of the people seeing Ron Paul as a positive candidate (not bad for someone who’s been laughed at and ignored by the media for years). She continued to explain that odds were slim he’d win the rest of the country, but he could deny Gingrich and Romney an influential win in Iowa.

In essence, this flow of logic says, “The Bible says we need to support Israel. Ron Paul wants to stop sending aid to Israel, so a good Bible believing evangelical shouldn’t vote for Ron Paul. Besides, he isn’t going to win anyway. Perhaps, we should be annoyed with him, even, because he’s going to deny more suitable candidates an influential Iowa win.”

So the real question comes down to the definition of “support.” What does it mean for the government to support someone or something?” In our current socialist society, support generally means to throw money at it. But Ron Paul doesn’t define support the same way.

Let’s say the government comes to me as a business person and says, “We want to support you. How can we help?” You know what my answer would be? “Just stay out of my way and let me keep what I earn. Let me make my own decisions about my business and run my affairs as I see fit.”

That is what Ron Paul is saying with his foreign affairs policy. He isn’t saying that Israel isn’t our friend or we don’t care about them. He isn’t saying that you can’t personally donate to causes that support Israel. He’s saying that the Constitution doesn’t support meddling in other nations’ affairs, yet that’s exactly what our government has been doing. The UN and US are constantly getting in Israel’s way and crippling their efforts to protect their country.

The best support you can give a person, a business, or a nation is to get out of their way and let them be sovereign and free to make their own choices.

You hear people talk about “helicopter parents” — mothers and fathers who enable their children by constantly making decisions for them and meddling in their lives. The U.S. has become a helicopter parent for the globe. It’s not healthy for other nations and it’s not healthy for us.

If you want to hear what Ron Paul really believes about Israel, listen to him explain it for himself and you decide.