Posted on 09/14/2013 3:33:06 PM PDT by JOHN W K
Tell me what I don’t know about it.
I agree that Levin is provoking a conversation that we must have. At the very least, the vigorous public discourse will drive the left (er, “progressives”) nuts. The debate will bring out all the worse in those in both (D) and (R) who benefit from big and Bigger government.
Let the debate begin!
Please note I never implied there was. You need to study up on the Fair Tax. Not particularly my cup of tea but the ideas you're spouting about it are not grounded in fact.
Good point about imported goods. But that also opens a bucket of worms. High labor prices, for example, have forced manufacturers to resort to foreign labor in order to keep their products priced competitively.
And it remains that corrupt Congress is taxing and spending way beyond the scope of its constitutionally limited powers.
Ahh katwoman5779. s live one. Did you read my note? I never once claimed to have read the new book, but did say that I intended to. Nor did I disagree with anything in his new book. What, for heaven's sake, are you talking about? My comments were initiated by someone’s criticism that Mark had not taken on the graduated income tax, something I don't have the background to have an opinion on. But I absolutely praised Levin for raising the validity of a state initiated amendment process.
Must have been something else I said that got your ire up. Perhaps it had to do with his ignorance, willful or otherwise, in citing a law that was repealed in support of an issue he doesn't want to hear about?
You exposed the fallacy yourself Arthur. “Each and every one of them was a citizen at birth.” Most, when they use the term “citizen at birth” are referring to naturalized citizens, naturalized by the 14th Amendment, the “Naturalization Amendment.” Wong Kim Ark was determined to be a “citizen at birth” by Justice Horace Gray, the famous case by that name. Wong Kim was born in San Francisco to “domiciled” Chinese parents. He was denied re-entry after visiting China. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court which invoked the 14th Amendment to make Wong Kim a “born citizen”, but not a ‘natural born citizen.” Nowhere in the 14th Amendment does the term ‘natural born citizen’ appear. Its author, Congressman John Bingham, made it absolutely clear in his explanation to the House preceding the vote:
I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….
Not one of Cruz, Haley, Rubio, or Jindal was born to parents who were (both) citizens when he or she was born. We've been through this for five and one half hears because both parties had candidates who failed to meet the Constitutional requirements. Laws and the Constitution are becoming more and more whatever those with opinions want them to mean - a ‘living Constitution’ and a true ‘Democracy’ ruled by public opinion rather than a foundation of laws. Democracies have always become dictatorships and failed, usually in violence.
There are indications that many people have believed the definition of NBC to require both birth on U.S. soil and two citizen parents.
But I have never seen proof that “natural born” means anything other than “citizen at birth.”
If NBC means “citizen at birth,” that would still mean that eligibility for the Presidency is narrower than eligibility for any other office.
I am far more interested in why Obama proffered a crudely forged “birth certificate.”
Well, then make the case for your grand idea.
It is dissolutive of your position to start with tearing down another’s idea, while proposing your own.
It replaces nothing and the argument you have is the current system.
So, feel free to write something amazing in argument against the current system and how your idea would improve a condition.
If you listen to Mark Levin as often as you purport to do, you would know that he comments often on his proposed amendments, stating that he doesn’t claim to have unlimited knowledge on each subject. He welcomes other’s ideas and comments. Maybe you should friend him on facebook and work with him on some of his ideas since you seem to think you have all the answers. And you are right, I did not read all of your post. When I come across a long winded hit piece, I usually read the first two paragraphs and the last paragraph. The paragraphs in between are usually the same garbage you read in other long winded hit pieces. If you don’t want to be part of the solution, I wish you intellectuals would just keep your opinions to yourself. You are all beginning to repeat yourselves.
DEFUND/DISMANTLE BIG GOVERNMENT/BIG TOTALITARIAN (IRS/FED) and its collectives, foreign and domestic. BIG GOVERNMENT = BIG TAXES
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/
BIG GOVERNMENT IS CRONY SOCIALISM.
“Socialism Is Legal Plunder” - Bastiat
taxes would be small
—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
JWK
Reaching across the aisle and bipartisanship is Washington Newspeak to subvert the Constitution and screw the American People.
JWK
Gee, you really are a presumptuous ass.
I didn’t imply much less directly impute a position. so you can’t know what it is I object to.
My point was that you lost the argument by impugning someone else’s position to manufacturer a platform for yours and in so doing obfuscated your position.
My opinion is supported by other posters who challenged you for the and now you sarcastically challenge me, as an opposition, to your synthetic superiority.
,
“I have been promoting our constitution’s original tax plan for almost 30 years.”
Cool! Through what organizations? How are you active? Do you go door to door or participate in activities/outreach - or do you just pimp blog hits?
I’ve been “promoting” tax reform since 1976. Let’s see....that’s 37 years, but in all that time I never considered my position on that issue to be a substitute for getting out with like-minded people and working to change other people’s minds; both for that issue and the larger group of conservative issues within our ideology. I’ve really enjoyed my time with the tea party lately.
Question - why do you think you have to tear down other conservatives like Mark Levin who pretty much agree with you on the issue of taxes instead of standing on your own?
You clearly don’t even listen to the man or you would know that he acknowledges that his plan is not the end-all be-all and that it’s up to people like me and you to get up and get active!
Posting on Free Republic is fraternity, sanity, and good debates, but it doesn’t strengthen the conservative cause in and of itself.
“One of several cheap shots...”
The approach this person used was just plain rude.
Sitting around complaining is easy.
Preaching to the choir is easy.
Insulting others is easy.
Convincing others is hard.
Mark's amendments would render our consolidated government far more federal than that of the Framers’ 1787 design. That would be a very good thing.
I followed your path Arthur. Then, because I had some time when my company failed, I began to read original sources and both Leo Donofrio and Mario Apuzzo, lawyers who prepared cases for the Supreme Court.
If “Citizen at birth” were sufficient, any anchor baby would be eligible to the presidency. Our framers were not only remarkably literate (perhaps because they had no television or internet to disctract; when they communicated with letters their communications needed to be concise), but inspired by the specter of death for themselves and probably families should the new nation fail. They said exactly what they meant and the agreement was so complete among ratification congress that there was virtually no discussion.
Ask yourself, if you were designated to judge those in a society whose allegiance could be entrusted to defend his fellow citizens, what would be the most natural eligibility criteria for candidates? Many societies still require that parents approve the mates for their children; requiring parents with sole allegiance to our societal principles is natural. Then, requiring someone born in our society, meaning our sovereign territory, is almost as important. Children grow up with an innate attachment to our culture, which may be why our framers didn't include born and possible raised overseas, although to citizen parents, as natural born citizen. The criteria aren't perfect, but they have a history dating from Aristotle, and are what our framers chose.
The proof of the meaning is found in dozens of Supreme Court cases, culminating in Minor v. Happersett, because even when the definition is cited in a case, unless it is critical to the decision, it does not affect law - “dictum.” I quoted John Bingham’s lecture to the House because being a citizen at birth comes from his 14th Amendment, “a Naturalization Amendment.” The 14th Amendment makes “naturalized” citizens, as it did for Wong Kim Ark, whose parents were aliens.
Someone in this thread noted that these arguments have been made before, and that her/she was looking for something new. That is what propagandists count on. They want citizens to dismiss old ideas assuming their value has been depreciated. But these old ideas are our legal foundation. That is why they must be repeated. Here is the ‘money’ statement from Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, (1875):
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.
As Chief Justice Waite was explaining, albeit very concisely, “it was never doubted!” As with every definition of terms found in the Constitution, the definitions are found in the “common-law, nomenclature with which are framers were familiar.” And, because it confused me, the reason Justice Waite added "as distinguished from aliens or foreigners", was that the Constitution's ratification was considered urgent. Every state had its own naturalization law, and some made slaves into citizens.
The most urgent citizen for a new nation was the citizen who could be the sovereign - the President and Commander in Chief. Citizenship was left, by Article 1 Section 8, for Congress, which needed "an Uniform Rule for Naturalization. Until then, as far as the Constitution was concerned, you were a natural born citizen or an alien or foreigner. The children born on our soil to citizens naturalized by their states were natural born, and thus most citizens were natural born - and still are.
I agree with you in that the “birth certificate” was the first question that aroused my suspicion. But hiding documents from the public is not an original idea. I won't go off on that tangent, but assume you too have seen major events shaped by concealment of documents. But, in case you haven't followed it, the history uncovered by Leo Donofrio exposing Chester Arthur's concealment, and even burning just before he died, of his Vermont birth certificate, shows the likely subterfuge. Arthur had a journalist friend from his infamous days managing the New York Port Authority. His friend conveniently wrote a presumed expose claiming Chester was born in Canada or perhaps Ireland. That became the focus of the press, but for a variety of reasons, and probably because Chester was replacing the assassinated Garfield, and was already vice president, Arthur was not challenged. Donofrio discovered among some few personal papers Arthur didn't manage to have burned, the immigration papers of Chester's father, dated at Chester's 14th birthday. I suspect that the Obama birth certificate was a clever distraction (I should say that Leo Donofrio made this observation, but it took me a year or so to confirm and agree with him.)
Remember, Obama has never claimed to be a natural born citizen. He was inaugurated by a Chief Justice who certainly knows the law, but didn't preserve and protect the Constitution as both of their oaths required. Obama has always publicly stated his disapproval of the Constitution. I suspect a court would find difficulty prosecuting him for misrepresenting his eligibility. He might say “Both parties decided I was qualified; who was I to argue with them. I have always claimed that the Constitution is out of date, and needs another bill of rights.”
JWK
If the America People do not rise up and defend their existing Constitution and the intentions and beliefs under which it was adopted, who is left to do so but the very people it was designed to control and regulate?
What does your comment have to do with Mark Levin promoting a balanced budget amendment which would make it constitutional for Congress to not balance the annual federal budget?
What does your comment have to do with Mark Levin proposing to keep alive the unconstitutional and thieving federal reserve system with one of his "Liberty Amendments"?
Why do you find it necessary to make me the subject of the thread rather than answer a number of legitimate questions regarding what Mark Levin is proposing?
Tell me, have you ever heard Mark Levin talk about our founding fathers original tax plan, especially their reasoning for requiring direct taxes to be apportioned?
Did you ever hear Mark Levin talk about why our founding fathers specifically forbid notes of any kind, which would include today’s Federal Reserve Notes, from being made a legal tender?
I have never hear Mark talk about these two critical issues ____ honest money and honest taxation as our founders envisioned each!
JWK
“Honest money and honest taxation, the Key to America’s future Prosperity“___ from “Prosperity Restored by the State Rate Tax Plan”, no longer in print.
Most of the braying Freepers are in the Free Trader camp. They seem to hate tariffs and love income taxes.
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