From the Horse's Mouth

DO YOU HAVE vested interests?

You better hope not. Because if you do, you'll soon be paying more taxes. As soon as Jerry Brown gets elected president, that is. I know.

I called 1-800-426-1112.

JERRY BROWN, in an attempt to bamboozle voters into buying the notion that a two-term governer of California and a former chair of that state's Democratic Party is a political outsider, advertises a 1-800 telephone number for ordinary Americans to call to make contact with his campaign.

Anyone. From anywhere. Preferably with $100 at the ready, of course, but the point is that it's free. It's open. It's grassroots: A 1-800 number is the voice of the people and recognizes no privileged elites. In fact, this 1-800 downright hates privileged elites, special interests and other nasty phrases that may or may not have any meaning but have certainly run away with Jerry Brown's bid for the Democratic nomination.

I didn't know quite what to expect the first time I called 1-800-426-1112. I had a question about the flat tax proposal, the economic centerpiece of the Brown Insurgency, and I figured that I'd just go to the source.

Analyst after analyst has announced that the Brown proposal for a 13 percent flat tax on all earned income and a 13 percent value-added tax would fall most heavily on the poorest segments of the population, and I wanted to know how the Brown Brigade dealt with that fact. After all, soaking the poor would seem to be a problem for a campaign that breathes fire at Privilege and Insiders in the name of the Disempowered and Forgotten.

So I called. I knew the number, of course. Anyone who has watched television coverage of the presidential race has probably heard Brown shout the magical digits a thousand times as Ted, Dan, Tom, Peter or Mother Teresa tries to get him to answer a policy question.

I dialed. "Brown for President," said a man at the other end.

"I make less than $15,000 a year," I said, "and I want to know how Governor Brown's flat tax proposal will affect me."

The Brown worker wasted no time. "You'll pay less," he said. Then silence. I pondered whether to accept on faith this man's contradiction of dozens of media analyses of the tax's effect on the poor. I decided against.

"How exactly would that work?" I asked.

"Um...er...well," he began, "You take all the money you made during the year, and all your earned income (am I getting it twice?), and from that you deduct charitable contributions and rent, and then you multiply by 0.13 And that should be less than what you are paying now."

That didn't quite satisfy me. First of all, the number wouldn't be less, especially for people who make so little money as to be exempt from federal taxation altogether. Second, he made no mention of the value-added tax portion of the Brown plan. But I left those questions alone. Instead, I asked a different question. "If I'm going to pay less, who is going to pay more?"

"People with vested interests," he said.

Ahhh. A Vested Interests Tax! I envisioned a new IRS instruction booklet. "Question I. Do you have vested interests? If so, you must pay a lot more money."

Unfortunately, however, I couldn't quite figure out what a Vested Interest was. "Can you give me an example?" I asked.

"Well, one woman called yesterday and said that she had money in an individual retirement account (IRA). We figured out what her taxes would be with the flat tax, and it turned out to be more." He laughed quickly. "But not working-class stiffs like us. We'll pay less. And we actually figured out that there were other things she could deduct, so she might pay less, too."

Apparently, he was saying that even the people who would pay more wouldn't have to pay more.

More strikingly, however, the meaning of "vested interests" suddenly became clear. For him, income from vested interests includes interest earnings in savings accounts like IRAs. My telephonic Brownie had meant that people who earn interest, in this case in tax-sheltered accounts, would pay more. But he was so caught up in Governer Brown's rhetoric that "interest" became "vested interest"--which, we all know, is just another word for Evil. Stunned, I thanked him and hung up.

A day later, hoping for a clearer understanding, I called back. But they were ready for me.

"I have a question about the flat tax," I said.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss it with you," a woman's voice replied. (Not "I don't know." Not "I can't.")

I tried again 10 minutes later. "I have a question about the flat tax," I said. A man's voice muttered something about not being "permitted" to talk about that. He did, however, give me a number in California to call. There, he said, someone could help me.

The California number is not toll-free, of course. Getting answers to issue-related questions was less grassroots than donating money. But I called. "Thanks for calling the Brown for President headquarters," a recording said.

An extensive voice menu asked me to push different buttons to reach fundraising, scheduling and other exciting aspects of the campaign. Finally, at option 8-1800, I could reach "the issues department." I pressed 8-1800.

No one was there.