Free Republic

In 1935, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was fretting about finding a constitutional basis for the Social Security Act. Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone advised her, "The taxing power, my dear, the taxing power. You can do anything under the taxing power." Last week, in his ObamaCare opinion, NFIB v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts gave Congress the same advice—just enact regulatory legislation and tack on a financial penalty, as in failure to comply with the individual insurance mandate. So how did the power to tax under the Constitution become unbounded? (Read the rest at the WSJ page) ============Dr....

While the individual mandate tax gets most of the attention, the ObamaCare law actually contains 20 new or higher taxes on the American people. These taxes are gradually phased in over the years 2010 (with its 10 percent “tanning tax”) to 2018 (when the tax on comprehensive health insurance plans kicks in.) Six months from now, in January 2013, five major ObamaCare taxes will come into force: 1. The ObamaCare Medical Device Manufacturing Tax (snip) 2. The ObamaCare High Medical Bills Tax (snip) 3. The ObamaCare Flexible Spending Account Cap (snip) 4. The ObamaCare Surtax on Investment Income (snip) 5....

Every American knows we will be celebrating the 4th of July on Wednesday; not enough of us remember why. Few of us truly grasp the profound significance of the separation between the American people and our government. We are a nation of self-sovereign individuals, and as the term implies, our government has no authority over our private affairs and no claim over our property. That’s what makes this country unique…or did. Our elected officials all talk about “the American people” like we were undifferentiated; they would have us believe what is good for us is just one thing and they...

CNN and Fox News aren’t the only ones doing a 180 on the Supreme Court ruling. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), the first attorney generalin the nation to file a lawsuit over President Obama’s health-care overhaul, said the sky was pretty much falling in a news release issued half an hour after the court upheld the law. “This is a dark day for the American people, the Constitution, and the rule of law,” Cuccinelli said in the release. “This is a dark day for American liberty.” By the time he held a news conference an hour and 45...

What government unit has the right to tax you - your local government, regional or state government, federal government or multinational organizations, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization? The reason the question is becoming more important is that rising numbers of politically powerful persons and institutions are calling for global taxes on such things as financial transactions, tobacco, sugar and carbon emissions. The modern concept of the nation-state goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Among other things, it limited the power of the sovereign to the territory of the state,...

BANGKOK (AP) — World markets took a beating Monday as another setback for the U.S. economic recovery sent investors fleeing from stocks. A weak U.S. jobs report flustered investors and intensified fears that a global recession was in the making. The dismal report released Friday came on the heels of other data that showed weak economic conditions in Europe and Asia.

Now is the time for all good men and women to put Country above Party. For far to long the RINO Wing of the Republican Party has been in control of losing National Elections. The time has come to cast aside the hold-your-nose clothespins that the RINOs expect us to use when we vote for their tweedle-dumb or tweedle-dumber Candidates. To all Primary voters: List the top 10 demonstrated positive values for each Candidate for all offices, and vote accordingly. If there is no Candidate that meets your values for a given office, then leave that slot blank. This will...

You remember U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., don’t you? He was the guy who said “the American people don’t care” about the wasteful, pork-barrel spending habits of Congress. He was also the guy who called a flight attendant the “B-word” because she asked him to turn off his cellphone prior to a flight. He was also the guy who told the state of New Jersey how it should spend its own highway funds, much to the displeasure of that state’s very outspoken GOP governor, Chris Christie. Schumer is at it again. This time, he set his sights on Facebook co-founder...

Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of "tax cuts for the rich" — for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day, when the top tax rate was brought down from 73 percent to 24 percent. What was the difference then? The biggest difference is that Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon took the trouble to articulate the case for lower tax rates, in articles that...

In America we treasure our religious freedom. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says that government will keep out of the religion business and guarantees religion will be practiced freely without interference by government. “The wall of separation” is revered. Have we misunderstood the meaning of the wall of separation? We all should be reminded that the First Amendment keeps government out of religion, but says nothing about keeping religion out of government. Under our Constitution, religious people and religious institutions are welcome in the halls of government. They are free to bring their religious convictions with them wherever...

The Tea Party movement did the nation a great service in 2010 by focusing on the problem behind much of what’s gone wrong in America: government, and too much of it. It’s refreshing to see that the sentiment lingers about this nation under God dedicated to preserving our God-given rights. “Voters believe too much government power is a dangerous thing and put a very high value on protecting the rights of the individual,” says ...

America’s religious and private philanthropic organizations are under attack from the left. Money begets power in almost every endeavor of human life. The couple with the largest down payment receive the lowest mortgage interest rate. Those with the reputation as big tippers get the best tables and service at restaurants. The business with the healthiest cash reserve has the power to not only prosper but also to gobble up its competitors during lean times. As true as this maxim is in the private sector, it’s even more prevalent in government circles. Politicians buy votes by offering “free stuff” to their...

Even small dis-incentives can drive economic activity to die off or move.While discussing the near inevitability of a tax on buying or selling shares in a company (separate for already existing taxes for gains from those transaction) the German newspaper Der Speigel cites the British experiment with exactly this sort of tax:  To see why, one must look no further than the meager successes of the British stock exchange tax, which only applies to share transactions, which constitute a tiny portion of all financial transactions. Since the introduction of the "Stamp Duty Reserve Tax" of 0.5 percent on the sale...

With a ton of family issues (medical issues with my oldest son), I've not been active as of late, either in posting to the Hear Us Now site or in actual 'activism'. I did not want to ignore today's anniversary though. And though it is not the best posting ever, because of the end of it, I am sharing the link in as many places as I can. It (the end), has been one of my primary messages for at least a decade now. Even more so since the Tea Party/912 and Liberty movement in general came to be. Check...

Margaret Thatcher once famously pointed out the core problem of socialism: “They always run out of other people’s money.” California has been intent on demonstrating exactly what Thatcher meant with its highly progressive income-tax system that relies heavily on hitting the higher-income earners to fund their government. As the state has been discovering for the past few years, it’s a recipe for amplifying disaster in an economic downturn: Gov. Jerry Brown wants to hit California’s highest-income taxpayers with billions of dollars in new taxes, and is jousting with other groups with their own tax-the-rich measures over which, if any, will...

Gene Sperling, director of the White House's national economic council, said today at an official meeting that "we need a global minimum tax": “He supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually...

President Obama is now campaigning all of the country in the name of “fairness” especially how it relates to the US Tax Code. According to President Obama, “fair” means a progressive tax (where as one makes more money, they pay a higher percentage in taxes). What he’s trying to do through his “fairness” campaign is make the progressive tax more progressive by increasing tax rates on those that have higher incomes. According to the Obama administration, it is more “fair,” to raise taxes on the rich. I’m here to tell you that this isn’t true. Of course all of that...

Much has been made already about President Obama’s comments yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast concerning the Christian faith’s teachings about social responsibility. During his time at the breakfast, the president opined that getting rid of tax breaks for wealthy Americans amounted to a Christian obligation: In a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if...

When I hear others say "fair share," I know what is coming -- a diatribe against the wealthy followed by recommendations to more heavily tax "millionaires and billionaires." The specifics usually follow. I learn that it isn't just millionaires and billionaires who are targeted. The actual income threshold is $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples, and it is business and investment income that constitute the real target. You know: the evil capitalists. Today, the current top tax rate of 15% for capital gains and dividends is getting a lot of attention because of the recent release of Mitt...