I must admit, Greg, your post is really confusing. It's as if you didn't even read what I said. You state that you "perceive an obfuscation of the issue," but seriously, you're not even reacting to my post. Seriously, go back in read it. At no point did I ever suggest that you had ever "proposed the concept of no federal taxation." Your setting up a strawman and responding to an argument that was never made.

Secondly, you're not really responding to the thrust of the argument. The vast majority of this post has to do with your belief that the increased spending will necessarily cause a rise in your taxes. But that's not what I was talking about, or even what you originally posted about. You raised the point of him being a hypocrit because he sheltered a portion of his own money while arguing that taxed funds ought to be spent in a certain fashion. And as I said before, you do the exact same thing. You believe in a certain tax structure and you want a say in how taxes are spent. There is absolutely no difference here.

From what I can tell, what you appear to resent are two things: (1) that someone who is not American would use his celebrity influence to convince your government that they ought to do something with their national budget and (2) that increased spending on Africa will necessarily bring about an increase in your taxation.

To the second point, I would say you are incorrect. You are working on a faulty assumption. It is quite possible to increase the spending in a certain given arena without increasing one's income. It's called reallocation of funding. Slash something less important and pour those resources into the more important issue. Again, you may disagree with whether or not the issue is more or less important than other areas within the national budget, but that's not the point. You are assuming a necessary increase in taxation and that is a flawed argument.

As to the first point about a "a non-US citizen" having a say in how your government spends or allocates money ... well, I don't know what to say. If you don't have faith in your elected leadership's ability to listen to someone's argument and then make up their own mind, you must hold them in very low regard. As for me, I don't have an issue with a "non-US citizen" asking for a meeting and making an argument about effective policy. I guess I just assume that if the argument is sound, it will rightly persuade its audiance. If not, it'll be rejected.

Two more questions for you because you talked about making sure that we don't obfuscate the issue." First, what do you mean by suggesting that Bono is using "forced coercion?" You kept returning to that phrase, but you never spelled it out. What coercive force has Bono brought to bear that is so potent that our government can't resist? I just don't see it. What I see is polemical argument that is vague and undefined.

Lastly, as to why "Saint Bono" didn't "use his celebrity status and [white guilt] to appeal directly to the people"... Look it up, because that is exactly what the ONE Campaign (of which he is one of the major authors) is attempting to do. But rather than asking people to pony up their money, they are asking them to become involved politically by exercising their power to vote for increased spending on Africa. So they are appealing to the masses. They're just not doing that exclusively. They using all of the avenues available to them to make the change that they are seeking to effect.

So I return to the original thrust of the argument. How can you call a man a hypocrit when you act in the same manner as he does?