Dear Senator Williams:
I endorse Jack's comments to you and add a very serious admonishment.
The constitution in very specific language denies you the power to enact a sales tax much less to increase one. It is not an insignificant fact that the state had no sales tax before 1947.
My argument is not a sophisticated one, nor does it require sophistication to simple men who can read plain unambiguous English. It is one which relies quite firmly on the clear text of the constitution.
Article II Section 30. "No article manufactured of the produce of this state, shall be taxed otherwise than to pay inspection fees."
In "Benedict v. Davidson County," 110 Tenn. 183, 67 SW. 806 (1901), a court ruled that "The terms 'produce of this state,' as used in this section [Article II Section 30], embrace whatever is produced or grown in the state, or is the yield of the state, whether it be crops or timber or coal or iron or marble or wood or any other article which may be treated as produced or grown within the state from or on the soil, or which may be found in the soil."
In "Nashville Tobacco Works v. City of Nashville", 149 Tenn. 551, 260 S.W. 449 (1923) the court ruled "This section contemplates things produced by nature and then converted by a process of manufacture into articles of merchandise and use. . . .Tobacco, converted into chewing tobacco, smoking tobacco, or snuff, like wheat ground into flour, is exempt from taxation under this section. . . Where articles' manufactured from the produce of the state are exempt from taxation under our taxing laws, such articles from another state would likewise be exempt, for the state cannot, in its taxing statutes, discriminate against the products of another state in favor of the products of its own citizens under the commerce and equal rights clause of the federal Constitution."
"This state cannot discriminate against property brought from another state, by imposing upon it a burden of taxation greater than that levied upon domestic property of a like nature, without directly burdening interstate commerce in violation of the federal Constitution (Art. 1, § 8). The imposition of a tax on lumber logs imported from another state into this state, and lying in the importer's mill yard in this state awaiting manufacture into lumber, or already manufactured into lumber and awaiting sale, which, if the produce of this state, would be exempt from taxation under this section, as held in the case of Benedict v. Davidson County, 110 Tenn. 183, 67 S.W. 806 (1901), operates as a discrimination against interstate commerce and as a direct burden upon it, and is, therefore, void as violative of the said interstate commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States." I.M. Darnell & Son Co. v. City of Memphis, 208 U.S. 113, 28 S. Ct. 247, 52 L. Ed. 413 (1908).
It could not be clearer for the text of the constitution and the rulings of courts are unambigous. Most items sold in the state are exempt from taxation except for an inspection fee.
The tax you contemplate increasing and subsequently voted to increase is not an inspection fee. It is a fee to generate revenue. It violates the letter and spirit of the constitution.
You once observed in one of your rare letters that you had little knowledge of the constitution, but relied on the AG to tell you what it means. This is malfeasance in office; an abrogation of your oath taken before God to support the constiution.
This is pathetic.
Constitutional law is for the benefit of the people, not for the pleasure of civil leaders. Constitutional law in a constitutional republic, not a democracy, protects the people from the plunder of elitists bent on establishing democratic welfare states.
It is noteworthy that when Jefferson read the 1796 Tennessee constitution, he observed that is was the most republican of any constitution yet written. Jefferson also noted "Free government is founded on jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power. In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
You are bound by the chains of the constitution. You cannot wiggle out of these chains because of the greed of our incompetent leadership which has instigated the current spending boondoggle. Their arguments are meritless when compared to the high oath you have taken.
I strongly urge you to reconsider your position.
I withheld the man's name.