Posted on 04/05/2010 12:49:59 PM PDT by Presto
I suppose you think this will be legally ratified. That wasn’t a problem for the people who wanted to subjugate us with the 16th amendment.
Good thing the sensible people of NY elected Schumer and Hillary instead of the left-wing radicals that - uh, wait. Nevermind.
MichiganConservative,
You make an excellent point. Not only is it always extraordinarily difficult to amend the Constitution, but it is also true (as you indicate) that the States were willing to give away a tremendous amount of the power when they ratified the 16th Amendment.
However, that ratification happened under Taft before we had even had The Great War (World War I). - So the Industrial Military Complex had yet to be born. There were no entitlement programs. So, the Federal Government had yet to turn into the insanely huge bureaucracy it is today. The gold standard was still in effect. In short, the States were not aware of how massively they were empowering the Federal Government.
I believe it is possible to educate enough voting citizens to popularize the eventual ratification of this Amendment. And while State governments will not look forward to the increased scrutiny of their inner workings; they will LOVE the super-increase of their power to accrue revenue.
You don’t know what it’s like to live with the most corrupt and incompetent legislature in the world. The Reps are as bad as the Dems. Any Senator chosen by the NYS legislature would likely make Sen Burris of Ill. look like Daniel Webster.
Read Article V.
GoldenPup,
I have. Many times. What in particular would you like me to notice about it?
Congress can _propose_ Amendments by bicameral super majorities. But under no circumstance can they ratify an Amendment. - Only States can do this when they summon 3/4’s of their legislatures in favor of a proposed Amendment.
But States can propose Amendments too by Constitutional Convention. At such a Convention, the States must propose by summoning 2/3’s of their legislatures to be in favor of the proposal. But if you have 3/4’s ready to ratify, it obviously won’t be an obstacle to get 2/3’s to propose.
Is there something else to note?
Further the US Constitution allows for a special was powers act to fund, well war. This is how the original corporate excise tax of 1913 was created and it lawfully stopped two years later, if not extended and after the war if extensions were made. Instead, after the war, the forces of evil made it an ongoing tax, legislatively. Then extended it from corporations to individuals by further sleight of hand.
This current usurpation of the USConstitution has been ongoing for quite some time. Some of us have been trying to say that to whoever would listen; myself for almost 40 years!
It matters not what laws we pass, what the constitution says, if evil contorts the meanings of what has already been written.
They are evil. That goes for the R's and D's.
UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide,
I agree with you that the left plays unconscionable word games with important legal language to the severe detriment of our culture and law. (What kind of pathetic audacity could have led anyone to parse the meaning of the word “is”?)
But the “Social Security Food Stamps” example you provided is not one that actually happened. - But one that might have happened were there a Balance Budget Amendment that exempted Social Security funding. Perhaps it would happen. But you can see the clear window such a balanced budget amendment would have given to those aberrations.
The example you provided in your earlier post, used the word “tax” - which would be a clear and undeniable contradiction to the Amendment and would therefore be unconstitutional.
Can you provide a hypothetical example where Congress used language that would not so obviously contradict the Constitution were it to have the 28th Amendment I am proposing? I do not believe the language window you suggest exits.
IOW, you want to go back to the failed approach defined by the Articles of Confederation.
I agree with your general sentiment about corrupt forces not taking out Constitution seriously and the damage these forces have wrought.
However, I do not agree that Article I section 8 limited the Fed to only taxing State governments based upon apportionment. I do believe they already have the power to tax State governments. But President George Washington and the 1st Congress obviously thought the Whiskey Tax Act (a direct tax on the production of whiskey) was perfectly Constitutional. None of Washington’s fellow Founding Fathers spoke up in disagreement. To the contrary at least one - Hamilton - was heartily in favor. Washington led 13,000 troops to Pennsylvania to enforce this tax law.
“r9etb”,
Which Article(s) in the Articles of Confederation are you referring to? And how exactly did failure precipitate?
r9etb,
You can stop searching the Articles of Confederation in vain hope of finding a similarity with the Amendment I am proposing. I have done the research for you, and it is clear that you know not of what you speak. The Articles of Confederation specifically DENIED the Congress the power of taxation. Congress could only “request” money from State governments.
Therefore, you must not have understood the second sentence in the proposed Amendment. It explicitly gives the Congress the POWER to tax State revenues.
You haven’t ruled out a VAT tax, a tax based on people’s age, height, skin tone or other biometrics besides head-count. You could have a fixed tax based on occupation without regard to a person’s actual income. The ways are infinite to avoid the terms you used. And then you could have very similar taxes that go by different names. Is an ability-to-pay tax based on wealth and income a tax meant by either? Or they could end all taxes and just inflate your money away by printing it weekly based on your income and knock some zeroes off new currency every few years.
They could base the tax on state revenues in progressive amounts and declare catastrophes whenever they need to. They could tax the states 90%, forcing the states to confiscate your property. When the Dems and Reps collude, there is nothing withheld from them that they imagine to do. You just have to bring the Towel of Babel down on all of them and let them play with words as they scatter to the four corners.
A value-added tax will always fall under the category of either a sales or excise tax. - Prohibited by the Amendment. An occupation tax will always fall under the category of either an income tax, excise tax, or a capitation tax. - All prohibited by the Amendment.
Note that in order to enforce a tax, there has to be a statement as to what the tax is based on. So they can name a tax whatever they like (for instance, the “Magoogapuppy” tax) - But in order to extract funds from any entity whatsoever, the law will have to stipulate what the tax is actually based on. Raising hypothetical questions as to what any tax law might be based on is not the same as answering the question as to what a tax law is based on. Without that answer, no taxes can be collected because no collector of the tax would have a basis on which to begin collection. None of your examples fell outside of the tax prohibitions listed.
As far as the States confiscating your property - that’s unconstitutional too. As far as the Congress raising the tax rate on State revenues to 90%, they will no more have the political will to do that than do today to raise the individual income tax rate to 90% on all Americans. In fact Congress will have far less political will to raise taxes that absurdly high against the collective will of fifty State governments than they do now against all individual citizens.
A major point of the Amendment is that citizens and State governments will have a common and calcified goal: keeping Federal taxes low. And that no Congressional representative will be able to survive politically by hurting the interests of his State by voting for excessively wasteful budget bills that will require the States’ Tax Rates to be raised.
UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide,
And let me just add that (regardless of the proposed 28th Amendment): taxes based on age, height, race, etc would all fly in the face of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment – which is why none exist now.
I did not state my rebuttal to your point about Congress raising taxes to 90% on States very clearly. Let me clarify. There is a reason that Congress does not _today_ raise the tax rate to 90% on all American citizens’ incomes. Under the Constitution, Congress certainly has the power to raise the tax rate to 90% on all Americans incomes. But obviously Congress lacks the political will to do this because of how immensely unpopular such a tax act would be. No representative could survive re-election, and the bill would be promptly repealed and tax refunds issued. Under the proposed 28th Amendment, Congress has even less political willpower because now it is taking on not only the political will of the American people who will never stand for such an absurdly high rate of taxation, but in addition Congress is taking on 50 Governors backed by their State legislatures who have a financially vested interest in railing against any such absurdly high rate of taxation.
No exceptions should be allowed. If there is a catastrophe or 'strain', then the state tax revenues will go down and the fed revenues also. Having Detroit in Michigan is a perpetual 'strain' on the State of Michigan, or a perpetual catastrophe, as you chose. But stupidity or cupidity should not allow escape from taxes. Government charity turns into entitlements, whether it's by handouts or tax abatement. Keep the taxes low, and let the private sector handle charity.
This proposal also needs to include a firm limit on the amount or the rate that government can confiscate. That was a major flaw in the 16th Amendment. We'd be in a lot better shape now if the income tax had been limited to original 3% top rate.
UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide,
Your point about that I do not have a vote to cast on the Supreme Court is a reiteration of your original argument in your first response-post. There you essentially said that it does not matter how law is worded because the unconscionable left will always play word games to distort the meaning such that the Constitution is effectively inoperable as the law of the land.
I agree with you that unfortunate word games are played that hurt our laws. But I do not agree that such damage has rendered our Constitution inoperable as law.
I think that we are still a nation of laws more so than a nation of men.
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