Sadly it seems that our employees are unwilling to face the hard questions concerning the validity of the amendment's ratification. So, what next ? Either we have a system in which the government is accountable to the people or we don't. Either we accept this intransigence, or ....
While the guy was polite & sounded to be interested, when I asked if anyone from his office would attend, he claimed they weren't invited
Actually Congress Critters weren't invited. The promoters of this fiasco were only interest in questioning the peons, i.e. (IRS & DOJ).
Since it's Congress that make the income tax laws, seems to me the focus should be on Congress. The Courts have been saying so for nearly two hundred years now:
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819)
- "The power of taxing the people and their property is essential to the very existence of government, and may be legitimately exercised on the objects to which it is applicable, to the utmost extent to which the Government may choose to carry it. The only security against the abuse of this power is found in the structure of the Government itself. In imposing a tax, the legislature acts upon its constituents. This is, in general, a sufficient security against erroneous and oppressive taxation."
Springer v. United States(1880), 102 U.S. 586
"The central and controlling question in this case is whether the tax which was levied on the income, gains, and profits of the plaintiff in error, as set forth in the record, and by pretended virtue of the acts of Congress and parts of acts therein mentioned, is a direct tax." "Our conclusions are, that direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that instrument, and taxes on real estate; and that the tax of which the plaintiff in error complains is within the category of an excise or duty." "If the laws here in question involved any wrong or unnecessary harshness, it was for Congress, or the people who make congresses, to see that the evil was corrected.
The remedy does not lie with the judicial branch of the government."Champion v. Ames(1903), 186 U.S. 321
- 'But if what Congress does is within the limits of its power, and is simply unwise or injurious, the remedy is that suggested by Chief Justice Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden [21 US 1, 9 Wheat. 1, 6 L. ed. 23], when [195 U.S. 27, 56] he said: 'The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments."
MCCRAY v. U S, 195 U.S. 27 (1904)
- "Let us concede that if a case was presented where the abuse of the taxing power was so extreme as to be beyond the principles which we have previously stated, and where it was plain to the judicial mind that the power had been called into play, not for revenue, but solely for the purpose of destroying rights which could not be rightfully destroyed consistently with the principles of freedom and justice upon which the Constitution rests, that it would be the duty of the courts to say that such an arbitrary act was not merely an abuse of a delegated power, but was the exercise of an authority not conferred. "
So why were Schulz & Company focused on the minions and not the culprits who we should be going after? Congress Critters. After all they are the ones who make and change the laws, seems kinda silly to go after the bureaucrats doing the Congress Critters dirty work.