The Real Problem Is The 16th Amendment
June 29, 2012 2 Comments
The individual mandate is now a tax even though Obamacare says it is not a tax. Talk about legislating from the bench. Keep in the individual mandate has two aspects to it. First, you must buy insurance. Second if you don’t buy insurance you’re fined by the government. Apparently that fine is called a tax. As such you aren’t entitled to due process. It appears Obamacare left this issue open, so it’s a matter of time before the government fines people for something and denies due process by calling it a tax. Good job Roberts!
The end result is that Obama is now responsible for the largest tax increase in history. In 2008 he promised not to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000. He’s now absolutely responsible for a tax increase that will largely hurt the poor and middle class. Perhaps Roberts is good for something after all, he’s at least given Romney something that ought to sink in with most people.
The bigger issue though is that it’s going to take a lot more than the repeal of Obamacare to swing this nation back towards the Constitution and the traditional culture that loves true Christian freedom. The libertarians who want all or nothing today will absolutely get nothing. It’s going to be a long, slow process. The Obamacare ruling proves that. We have a Constitutional problem first and foremost. It’s called the 16th amendment. Nothing has advanced the progressive agenda more than the income tax amendment. It is the income tax amendment that allows Obamacare to be called a tax and therefore Constitutional. Otherwise Obamacare would fall under the Commerce Clause and even Roberts wasn’t going to expand the Commerce Clause that far.
The 16th amendment more or less declares that all of our income is the property of the Federal government. Any amount they let us keep is the result of the benevolence of Congress. The Courts have ruled as such throughout the history of the income tax. This includes any income, from gifts to fringe benefits. If your employer pays for a business lunch, the Federal government can tax you for 100% of your lunch if they so desire. There are of course loopholes and all sorts of deductions and write offs. But those are all by the grace of Congress. According to the Courts and the 16th amendment Congress doesn’t have to write any deductions into law. They’re entitled to everything.
The income tax was sold to the American people by progressive Republican President William Howard Taft as a tax on corporations and rich people. Prior to the amendment taxes had to be apportioned to the states according to the census. As such most taxes the Federal government collected were Tariffs and various excise taxes. When it was sold to the American people, the idea was to tax the rich. Within 5 years of its passage the top rate was 77%. After a generation, most Americans were stuck paying income taxes. Now we’ve gotten to the point where government is calling a healthcare fine a tax. And why not? If everything belongs to the government what is to stop them from taxing us in fines?
Repealing Obamacare is a good move because it stops the tide towards socialist healthcare. But it doesn’t stop the problem which is the basis for the healthcare ruling. The income tax amendment is where the problem lies and until that is removed you can expect more problems like this ruling. We as a nation must ask ourselves whether we are truly free if the government is entitled to 100% of all our combined earnings, under the Constitution no less. This is a discussion that we Americans have for far to long put off having. With the 100th anniversary of the income tax amendment coming up next year and with this disastrous Obamacare ruling having its origins in that amendment, we need to have a serious discussion about our freedom. It’s discussions such as this that will slowly move the people back to freedom and away from socialism.
About Steven
I agree with your premise except for one detail. Perhaps you could explain how an amendment was passed that took the original way that congress either detailed a direct tax and then a indirect tax and did away with them without repeal. The first response to arguments by chief justice White, when the amendment was appealed, he did what justice Roberts did and changed semantics, calling it an indirect tax in order to implement. The actual argument should have been, ‘ tax corporations, because they received their power to exist from congress’, whereas citizens received their rights from their creator. To determine that the income tax is indirect is correct if speaking about corporations, because corporations receive their power to exist from congress. Just as alchohol and tobacco are indirect taxes, so is the income tax on corporations. I don’t have to drink, smoke, or incorporate. But if I should decide to, I then place myself under the authority of the sixteenth amendment. That also brings up another issue concerning firearms. Diluting by intention the vocabulary on firearms, the government has shown it is deceiving it’s citizens. To the normal American citizen, firearms are considered guns, rifles and pistols. So if the 2nd amendment guarantees gun rights, why create an all inclusive bureau named ATF. Though alcohol and tobacco are legal they are not guaranteed rights like guns and to include guns with alcohol and tobacco show a more sinister method of rule by the “federal”,(by agreement) government. Didn’t the repeal of the 18th amendment by the 21st amendment set some sort of a president in how government for the people changes it’s method of rule?
All the 16th amendment did was allow Congress to tax incomes without regard to apportionment among the states. It did not repeal other forms of taxation nor did Congress eliminate other forms of taxation. Excise taxes and the like remained in place, the 16th amendment did nothing to eliminate them.