The coming showdown between the United States of America and the State of Arizona over the jurisdiction and authority of each with respect to enforcement of immigration law actually signifies not one but two kinds of constitutional crises.
The more obvious of these is over the governing document of our republic. Specifically, the meaning and implications of the 10th and 14th Amendments.
The more subtle, though profound crisis, however, is over the constitution of the American people themselves.
A bit of essential, historical perspective
Soon after the thirteen, united States of America won their independence representatives from all of them met to consider amending the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union that had constituted their alliance during the war.
Although an entirely new United States Constitution was proposed instead, the fundamental form remained the same — a federation of independent states, not unlike a combination of the military and economic alliances of a NATO/EU in contemporary Europe.
Proponents of creating a new government were called “Federalists.” Opponents, who were so suspicious of any expansion of central government authority they preferred reforming the existing alliance, became known as “Anti-federalists.”
Side note: After the Constitution was ratified, the awkward appellation for the political philosophy of a subordinate, national government was replaced by the more descriptive: “State’s Rights” (nomenclature that is in fact also problematic since governments have powers — only people have rights.) The dominance rivalry between the two levels of government finally culminated in a long and brutal civil war, the central government crushing an attempted secession by some of the states. The “Anti-federalist” political philosophy, however, was not extinguished. But it was eventually rebranded yet again as, oddly enough, “Federalism.”
Constitution for the United States of America
The grant of powers and responsibilities by the states to the national government under the proposed United States Constitution were essentially to provide for their common defense and peacefully resolve any conflicts that might arise between any of them.
There were some, important, additional authorizations such as the power to coin money and to establish such national institutions as a post office, uniform standards of weights and measures, grant patents and copyrights, etc., that seemed practical, beneficial and harmless.
More significant was the elimination of a restriction on the authority of the central government — requiring assent of two-thirds of the states — in what, history would eventually show, were some crucial areas. Among these was the power of congress to “engage in war” (note, that this small, semantic difference in itself might have side-stepped the word game played by 20th century Commanders-in-Chiefs over the implied formality of “declare”), as well as to coin and/or borrow money (i.e., create a Federal Reserve Bank and unlimited, national debt.)
The most substantive, new authority provided in the Constitution was in remediation of what was arguably the fatal flaw of the erstwhile government — no reliable source of revenue — by granting the central government taxing authority.
This controversial, new power was, under normal circumstances, confined to indirect taxation, i.e., a levy added onto transactions and paid to the government by intermediaries (such as a tariff or a sales tax.)
To make allowance for possible emergency situations a direct tax, i.e., one paid to the government by those upon whom it is imposed (such as an income or a property tax) was also authorized. Intended primarily to permit the national government to quickly raise vital revenue in the event of war, the drafters were very cognizant of the dangers of a direct tax. Both in the lure for authorities to rely on what amounts to legal extortion as a routine revenue source and in the obnoxiousness of it for those who are compelled to pay under duress rather than merely accept the tax as a premium on an otherwise voluntary transaction. So a restriction was included requiring any direct taxes to be “apportioned,” i.e., borne equally by all citizens (such as a head or poll tax.)
Ultimately, the rise of the socialist idea in the mid 19th century — that “fairness” in taxation was not in citizens bearing the cost of their government equally, but rather according to their particular means — led to the adoption in 1913 of the 16th Amendment.
This degeneration of the laudable, revolutionary concepts of political and legal equality into a rationalization for economic leveling also heralded the birth of a grotesquely deformed twin: government as an enormous charity. In a single generation redistribution of wealth (a concept that would have been utterly repugnant, if not incomprehensible, to the founders of our republic) became government’s largest and most expensive function.
The United States Constitution also brought three, significant, new restrictions on state governments not in the Articles of Confederation.
The first was intended to preempt a looming threat, the others to redress issues that had already proven problematic, by prohibiting states from:
- Dealing directly with foreign powers or making separate, exclusionary compacts among themselves.
- Enacting legal tender laws or making anything other than gold or silver lawful payment for debt.
- Imposing any tariffs or duties on trade with their sister states.
Thus the Constitution provided clearly defined and specifically enumerated powers to the central government, and placed a few, particular restrictions on the governments of the states.
Indeed, when a ten-amendment Bill of Rights was subsequently added the last two of these, considered superfluous by proponents, were included, nevertheless, to reassure suspicious opponents: the enumeration of some rights was not to be construed as authorization to intrude upon any not specified, and a declaration that powers not explicitly given to the federal government were reserved to the states or to the people themselves.
After heated debate, and despite the misgivings of many who had pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause of freeing themselves from imperial power, the new government was adopted.
“The natural progress of things…”
But the winners not only write the history. Henceforward, they make it.
Gradually, all the protections against consolidation of power in the central government incorporated into the Constitution were dismantled.
The egalitarian mindset, for example, that led to the removal of the apportionment restriction on direct taxation to permit a federal income tax (16th Amendment) simultaneously inspired elimination of the requirement that all national legislation be approved by both a popularly elected body and one appointed by and representing equally the governments of the several states (17th Amendment.)
Until we have finally come to a place where there is hardly even any memory of, let alone respect for, the sovereignty of the individual states as autonomous jurisdictions. The “laboratories of democracy” were ultimately harnessed into a single team, directed and driven under a national whip.
How did this happen? What went wrong?
Try to imagine a more masterfully crafted structure of government! Could Mr. Madison & Co. have created a more explicit separation of powers? A more effective system of checks and balances? A more clearly defined, more unambiguous limitation of the scope and jurisdiction of the national government than what they bequeathed to us in the United States Constitution?
What safeguard was omitted? What particular words could have been included that would have guaranteed in perpetuity the drafters’ stated intent to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”?
For as abolitionist and legal scholar, Lysander Spooner, observed only a few decades after ratification, “Whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it.”
In retrospect, the Anti-Federalists/State’s Rights/Federalists proved astonishingly prescient. The national government under the United States Constitution has grown into the very grasping, voracious, profligate, omnipotent, military empire the founders so feared.
Indeed, even the most ardent advocate for a more vigorous, national government, Alexander Hamilton, would undoubtedly have dismissed as patently absurd the suggestion that this — or any other — republican form could metastasize to the point where it would someday consume nearly half of all the wealth its citizens produce, maintain hundreds of military bases in dozens of countries around the world, and dictate every facet of its citizens’ lives down to the point-size of the typeface of a mandated list of ingredients on a box of breakfast cereal.
A body full of light
But at long last there is a beacon of hope on the horizon.
For the first time since the attempted secession by several of them more than a century and a half ago, the states are beginning to see that the union they formed in 1789, far from becoming more perfect, has become far and away the greatest, single source of injustice and domestic turmoil.
It was not the agents of Idaho or any of its political subdivisions who literally blew the head off of Vicki Weaver as she stood in the doorway of her family’s mountaintop cabin, clutching nothing more threatening than her infant daughter.
It was not the agents of Texas or any of its political subdivisions who launched an unprovoked attack on a peaceful, church community outside Waco, ultimately laying a military-type siege that ended in a conflagration incinerating 80 members of the congregation, including two dozen children under the age of fifteen.
Those horrifying debacles — and many, many more — were perpetrated by the agents of an out-of-control, federal government.
Finally, the people of the fifty states that now comprise the union are coming to the realization (albeit, belatedly and reluctantly) that if they genuinely wish to promote the general welfare, they must reassert their legitimate authority over the central government that they ordained and established.
The battle to do just that, tentatively begun a little over a decade ago, is now being aggressively joined on several fronts.
Prohibition redux
The first and most inarguable of these challenges is in repudiating what is, beyond question, the most blatant and egregious (not to mention unnecessary and destructive) federal overreach: marijuana prohibition.
The bizarre crusade to exterminate a ubiquitous plant, used for a number of purposes throughout all of recorded history, was instigated in the 1930’s by a newspaper magnate as a cynical, self-serving, marketing ploy. The campaign was eagerly exploited by demagoguing politicians whose ambitions were also served by stoking the hysteria and pandering to racists. And then by criminals who offered up drug-induced helplessness as mitigation for their offenses and throwing themselves on the mercy of a credulous court.
But nowhere in the Constitution is the central government empowered to prohibit any product — let alone an innocuous, agricultural good that was cultivated by, among others, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. It is passing strange that so little notice is taken of the fact that the authority to impose nationwide prohibition of alcohol required a constitutional amendment.
For decades the federal government ignored compelling, anecdotal evidence that, aside from its fast-growing stalks making high quality rope, paper and cloth, the leaves and flowers of the marijuana plant also make an effective, yet exceptionally mild, palliative (there has never been a single instance of a fatal overdose in over four millennia of recorded medical use) that can provide relief from both nausea and chronic pain without the dangers and incapacitating side-effects of other drugs.
So pervasive and unquestioned was the propaganda campaign against it, that officials didn’t even get around to actually doing an objective study of marijuana until 1970. When the results where published two years later in a report titled, Marijuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding, concluding that marijuana was innocuous and recommending that prohibition be ended, an outraged President Nixon summarily repudiated the findings. Thereafter, every effort was made by the federal government to derail, defund and otherwise impede any further research.
Finally, in 1996 California became the first of what now number more than a fourth of the states to simply disregard federal dictates and make a medical exception for possession and use. (It should also be noted that there was never any constitutional authority for federal intrusion into the practice of medicine in any case.)
California is poised to again lead the way on this issue as there is a proposal on the November ballot in that state to repeal marijuana prohibition entirely and make the drug available for recreational use (and, more importantly to the struggling state, revenue generation) under a regulatory regime comparable to the handling of alcohol.
Your papers, please!
A less obvious, more ominous, federal overreach is the putsch to impose a national identity card system.
Americans have long recognized that comprehensive lists — of citizens, their arms, travels, associations, etc. — are an invaluable tool for despots, and an enormous danger to their own liberty and security.
Although many still possess social security cards bearing the bold disclaimer, NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION, the number (or SSN) associated with this Roosevelt-era, middle-class, entitlement program, inevitably joined in unholy matrimony with the Income Tax, soon devolved into a comprehensive, national registry.
Today it has become virtually impossible for anyone to work, contract, or engage in any significant, financial transaction without this de facto “Mark of the Beast.”
The next steps, taken by the George W. Bush administration, were in commandeering the drivers license systems administered by state governments.
Phase I was mandating association of state-issued identifications with holders’ social security numbers, ostensibly to facilitate enforcement of child support orders across state lines.
Phase II followed in a Department of Homeland Security directive creating uniform standards and features for federally-recognized, identification documents to expedite compilation of all records into a single, national database. The putative purpose of the program, called “Real ID,” was to protect us from terrorists.
Alarm over the move to connect federal SSNs with state IDs was expressed mostly by libertarians. The Real ID program, however, prompted a surprisingly broad and powerful backlash. Fifteen states flat out defied the national directive, conspicuously enacting legislation prohibiting its implementation. So vehement and vociferous was opposition in fact that the Obama administration renamed the program: “PASS ID.”
In addition, the focus of the PASS (nee Real) ID subtly shifted — from stopping terrorists to stopping illegal immigrants.
Phase III of implementation of a comprehensive citizen compendium, called the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, requires a passport of anyone wishing to enter the United States.
Although promoted as yet another protection against terrorism from abroad, the directive is — and, perforce, can only be — directed at our own citizens. Which begs an interesting question: To exactly where does the federal government expect foreign countries to deport U.S. citizens who have been denied entry into the U.S.?
Authorities did, however, offer a more convenient, less expensive alternative.
Citizens could be issued a comparable, DHS-approved, document, i.e., a state-issued drivers license, meeting the new, federal standards. And since recent United Nations passport requirements include incorporation of a tiny, passive radio chip capable of being remotely activated (similar to those already in use for locating and identifying shipping pallets and lost pets), this silent, tracking device would also have be added to make the ID federally compliant.
Adopted amid post 9/11 apprehensions and justified as a necessary, “War on Terror” measure, the value of WHTI as a tool for immigration enforcement, and the shift in emphasis by proponents to that issue are, of course, no coincidence.
The abysmal failures of the Department of Immigration would be laughable if the consequences of their lapses weren’t so disturbing.
It is not widely recognized, for instance, that all 19 terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11 entered the US legally — although two had in fact overstayed their student visas. The Keystone Kops of the INS actually sent notices to a Florida flight school that renewal applications for the two had been approved — six months after they died in their suicide attack on the World Trade Center!
No pre-nup
Perhaps it was simply an especially disastrous instance of the (always dangerous) goes-without-saying presumption, but it seems inexplicable in retrospect that the states, so jealous of their autonomy, did not insist that the Constitution detailing the terms of their union include a secession clause.
That omission led to the costliest, most calamitous war in our history. From which emerged a national government so invigorated that it not only banished any thoughts a state might have of divorce, but turned it into so abusive a spouse it would even dictate a “Definition of Marriage” for private citizens to the states that actually issue the licenses.
This one (something of a two-fer, actually, given that personal relationships ought not require a “license” from government at any level) is an excellent example of how a century of grovelling by the states merely encouraged ever greater, federal bullying. This issue would, undoubtedly, never have arisen had residents of what is now the State of Utah not capitulated to the forces of religious intolerance and outlawed polygamy as a condition of entering the union.
Borders and boundaries
A national government now grown so bloated and bloviating that it almost defies satirizing, nevertheless manages to neglect one of the few functions we actually expect it to perform — protecting our borders.
Indeed, its incompetence and ineffectiveness in this regard finally prompted the good people of Arizona to enact legislation making it illegal for anyone to be in their state who is in the country illegally.
While this measure may sound like it was created by Firesign Theater’s Dept. of Redundancy Dept., the purpose was to give state and local authorities grounds to act where federal authorities have utterly failed to do so.
Now the federal government has — no surprise — sued Arizona, contesting the premise that states have concurrent jurisdiction with respect to enforcement of residency requirements.
The Justice Department’s argument that the federal government has exclusive responsibility in this area should be interesting in as much as the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” (Emphasis added.)
The first round in United States v. State of Arizona is scheduled to begin in a courtroom next week.
Where liberty dwells
However this dispute – or any of the others, aforementioned — is resolved, we are long, long past due for state governments to stand up to leviathan over its myriad excesses.
But there is something here even profoundly more important than reassertion of state sovereignty.
History has repeatedly demonstrated the ineluctability of legal scholar Lysander Spooner’s Constitutional quandary. The plain fact is that no government, however carefully designed, no document, however inspired and unambiguous, can save us from ourselves.
A century after Spooner posed his dilemma another brilliant, American, legal scholar, Judge Learned Hand, provided an explanation.
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women,” the jurist observed. “When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”
The real hope is that we are witnessing the rebirth of the spirit of liberty in American hearts.
[...] See the article here: Constitutional Crisis: Where liberty lives and dies | Smallgov.us [...]
I’d just like to point out that the ‘income’ tax was never actually written as a direct tax. Even following the 16th Amendment, nothing in the statutes or code had changed the fact that the federal ‘income tax’ (in effect since 1862) only applies to activities of federal privilege not of Constitutionally acknowledged rights: i.e. the right to earn a living by production and trade of property. Those who wrote the statutes definitely misled Americans into thinking that the federal ‘income’ tax applies to private nonprivileged earnings. But as Pete Hendrickson points out so solidly in Cracking the Code, unless you are a federal official or employee, you are not a federal taxpayer of the income tax.
You raise an important issue that I considered addressing, but ultimately didn’t. For a couple of reasons.
First, when you’re pushing 3,000 words you really need to either do some idea triage or else write a book. And second, I dealt with the issue of the definition of the word “income” vis-à-vis the 16th Amendment – as well as both Pete Hendrickson’s book, Cracking the Code generally and his court case, specifically – in some detail only a few weeks earlier (Gotcha!).
So these were matters about which I opted not to digress. But I certainly welcome the opportunity to give the issue a bit of additional explication.
The 16th Amendment is concise and (seemingly) unambiguous:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Historical clarification/digression (see, I’m at it already – it’s an irresistible impulse): The first Income Tax was, indeed, enacted in 1862 to support the Civil War. However, it was repealed ten years later. Reenacted in 1894, it was struck down by the US Supreme Court the following year as unconstitutional because it was not apportioned. It’s not clear why it wasn’t struck down the first time for the same reason. Perhaps no one challenged it on that basis.
Most observers infer that it was the roadblock of the 1895 Supreme Court ruling — in an era of growing support for collectivism and redistributionist schemes — that led to the adoption of the 16th Amendment in 1913.
As I understand it, Mr. Hendrickson’s fundamental argument — and I’m necessarily doing him and it an injustice here and, therefore, urge everyone to read Cracking the Code for themselves — is that this amendment in fact created only a very narrow exception to the constitutional requirement that direct taxes be apportioned for, as he correctly observes, the amendment itself does not define the crucial term: “income.”
The definition of this, as well as several other essential terms, including “wages” and “employer” and “trade or business,” are only to be found buried deep within the gargantuan, implementing, Internal Revenue Code.
Mr. Hendrickson maintains that the exemption of the “Income Tax” — properly understood — from the apportionment/enumeration restriction on direct taxes is very narrow in scope, i.e., applicable only to gains resulting from exercise of a federal privilege (largely, either employment by the federal government, the board of a federally-chartered corporation, or return on investment in the latter.)
He cites several, relevant US Supreme Court rulings in support, particularly the consecutive, 1916 decisions in Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co. and Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.
Hapless, ignorant, private sector workers, assuming the everyday definitions of these words, mistakenly report the money realized from their (non federally-privileged) labor and investments as “income” and voluntarily pay the appropriate tax. A representation and remittance the federal government is all too happy to unquestioningly accept. And, according to the Cracking the Code author, the actual, nefarious purpose behind the whole exercise.
Thus have hundreds of millions of Americans been bilked out of trillions of dollars by what amounts to the greatest feat of legislative legerdemain in history.
Given libertarians’ distrust of government, not to mention the parasites who find it easier to attach to and feed off of the body politic than earn an honest living through voluntary exchange, the Cracking the Code argument has an inherent, even seductive, appeal. All the more so for those who are by nature given to a ‘conspiracy theory’ worldview.
I am no legal scholar. But I have some confidence in my understanding of the text of US Constitution. Less so, judicial interpretation of it in the relevant Supreme Court rulings. I would, however, consider myself a virtual Learned Hand in both areas of jurisprudence by comparison with my knowledge and comprehension of the mind-numbing, 17,000-page, Internal Revenue Code.
Frankly, I find Mr. Hendrickson’s contention that the latter has been deliberately made inscrutable – if not incomprehensible – compelling. Indeed, its daunting 5.5 million words aside, Exhibit A in this regard are the scattered and buried definitions of terms. Customarily, legislation includes a comprehensive assembly of all such “For purposes of this Act” terms in a specific section placed prominently at the beginning.
However, I find the argument that the 16th Amendment was craftily crafted to lay the groundwork for this subterfuge, not to put too fine a point on it, implausible.
The inescapable implication of this premise is not merely that ‘grandpa was a moron’ but that the 16th Amendment is a hair’s breadth from being a legal nullity. Unlike Robert Bork’s snide characterization with respect to the 9th Amendment, it would follow that the sine qua non of Mr. Hendrickson’s code cracking, the 16th Amendment, truly is “an inkblot on the Constitution.”
Further, the presumption that the 16th Amendment does alter the US Constitution to permit the imposition of a direct tax on “income” – in the everyday sense of that word – by excepting it from the apportionment requirement is (Mr. Hendrickson excepted) the all but universal understanding of its meaning and intent.
It seems more plausible to me (especially given other, contemporaneous examples of constitutional folly by the citizenry, including both of the next two, succeeding amendments), that grandpa really was a moron than that deviously clever, incredibly farsighted, early 20th century politicians managed to pull off the kind of conspiracy required to set the stage for the Cracking the Code hypothesis.
Indeed, while there is some indication of lapses in the Hendrickson’s defense at his recent trial (especially with respect to the failure of his counsel to introduce important documents into evidence), it is the rejection his legal analysis and interpretation of the 16th Amendment and the Internal Revenue Code that has him currently enjoying the hospitality at the Milan ClubFed.
An open letter to my dear friend, Tim O’Brien, of the Small Government Alliance
Dear Tim,
You know I love you. But I was taken aback, and quite disturbed, by what I read in your July 24, “Soapbox” article titled, ‘Constitutional Crisis- Where liberty lives and dies.
While a typically great Tim O’Brien piece in most every respect, things said about the income tax were unfortunately incorrect. The errors have at least two ill effects: getting this important subject wrong makes getting other important subjects right impossible by way of the Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) effect (as I shall explain presently); and it is the persistent proliferation of misunderstandings about the tax that has me playing Galileo the Heretic right now.
For instance, you repeat the long-standing product of poor scholarship and deliberate misinformation cultivated by those who want America to believe that the tax was the product of a Constitutional amendment in 1913 to the effect that the 19th-century tax was repealed in 1872. This is not true.
Looking at the 1870 law providing for the what-was-then standard two-year authorization of the application of the tax reveals that it merely went into hibernation in December of 1872. It was never repealed. Looking at the text of the 1913 enactment first reviving the tax after the 16th Amendment reveals the same fact, as that text directly references the many pre-amendment tax provisions, of which it makes use. Looking at the derivation tables for the more modern IRC versions reveals that 30-40% of the current code derives its authority from enactments prior to the 16th amendment. All of these authorities can be found on your CtC Companion CD. But the easiest bit of research to debunk this myth is to look at pages 68 and 69 of ‘Cracking the Code- The Fascinating Truth About Taxation In America’ to read the actual preamble to the 1939 IRC, in which the fact that our modern embodiment of the law relies on legislation dating back to 1862 is flatly acknowledged.
Please, don’t ever again say, or even think, that the income tax — or even just “today’s” income tax — began with, or is grounded in, a Constitutional amendment. In fact, any time you encounter such an assertion in someone else’s work, or one to the effect that the tax was repealed in 1872 (or at any time since 1862), treat it as a warning that anything else said on the subject of the tax by the purveyor of the error should be disregarded. (GIGO, don’t you know…)
You can easily see why this bit of cognitive accuracy is important. That myth about the 16th Amendment allows for the proliferation of another: that the tax is now something that it couldn’t have been before, that is, a direct, un-apportioned tax on general American revenue. No matter how often and how clearly the Supreme Court has said, “No, this isn’t so…”, the persistent misunderstanding of the 16th Amendment and the origin of the tax feeds the notion that in 1913, a power never granted to the federal government came into its hands. This leads to a grumbling acceptance of the misapplication of the tax without suspicion or skepticism on the part of huge numbers of Americans.
Worse, the heavily-promoted myth about the significance of the 16th Amendment causes many Americans to overlook one of the chief defenses against a rogue government put in place by the genius of the founders: individual control over the state’s access to resources. The lack of historical memory and of widespread current understanding of this potent weapon is one of the primary reasons for many of the threats to liberty faced by Americans today.
Misunderstanding the income tax is also a contributor to the modern mistake of viewing the Constitution as having been a massive screw-up on the part of the framers, or a massive “sleeper” subterfuge that somehow kept the federal government to a profile never rising above 4% of GDP for 125 years, with only periodic episodes of offense, all the while just waiting for the moment to leap out and impose tyranny. (Granted, at least one of those “periodic offenses” was pretty significant, but any decent scholar will acknowledge that the War of Northern Aggression was conducted in defiance of the Constitution, not in compliance with it.) Imagining the Constitution to have been the problem serves to displace responsibility from where it really belongs: those Americans who fail to discipline that ambitious state with the tools the founders provided.
As your own article observes, it is only when individual Americans preserve liberty in their hearts that their liberty can be secure, and that doesn’t mean simply paying lip service to one’s rights, and throwing a good barbeque on the Fourth. It means honoring and enforcing one’s rights with action, even in the face of state disapproval. We have certain specifically recognized rights, and specifically enumerated restraints on government (not to disparage rights unmentioned, and leaving for another conversation the fact of enumerated powers and its implications), because it was anticipated by the founders that the state would encroach, and that we would need to actively bind it down. Too many of us having failed to do so thus far is not the fault of the Constitution, or of those who designed it or relied upon it. The fault is in US, and committing it is made easier and more likely by the perpetuation of myths such as that of the 1913 “origin”– or even just “transformation”– of the income tax.
A few other misunderstandings which make an accurate understanding of the tax impossible (again, the GIGO effect) appear in your subsequent exchange with Coffee Coaster’s Brian Wright (www.thecoffecoaster.com) . To address one: the Supreme Court only struck down ten sections of a MUCH larger tax act in its ruling in Pollack v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust in 1895– it by no means declared the income tax unconstitutional. See ‘The Supreme Court and the Meaning of “Income”‘ in CtC for the details on the court’s ruling, and the subsequent jurisprudence on the issue of the tax, including an accurate discussion of the limited, loophole-closing purpose, meaning and effect of the 16th Amendment, as laid down by the High Court. (Also, see losthorizons.com/Intro.pdf for an even more detailed drill-down on these subjects.)
Further, the perfectly benign 16th Amendment was not “crafted” to provide for a subterfuge; it has simply been subsequently exploited as part of a subterfuge conceived a generation later, when it was noticed– much to the voracious political class’s delight, I’m sure– that Donald Duck’s exhortations to the American people during WWII led to a massive adoption of serfdom, and those who benefited have never looked back. Grandpa was really NOT a moron, but, unfortunately, Dad was…
Finally, you make a few comments about my current circumstances and suggest that it is a consequence of my analysis of the law being “rejected” in a courtroom. Nothing could be further from the truth– indeed, the course of things just underscores how right I am. While it is true that my defense team made serious errors, the government was obliged to step deep into corruption to get its way with a jury even in the face of a less-than-sterling defense presentation. This involved refusing to let the jury see key evidence in the words of the actual statutes, even after they asked to see them; “interpretations” of statutes custom-crafted by the prosecution and selected as part of the jury instructions only after all the evidence had been presented; the prosecution being allowed to present hundreds of pages of documents containing variously vague or more specific allegations relevant to the charges despite putting not one single witness on the stand to validate and be cross-examined about any of this material; not a single witness ever testifying to any single element of the charges, but the jury being given instructions that essentially left it no choice but to convict, and much, much more. All of this had to be done because the government CAN’T overcome the truth about the tax revealed in CtC in a fair contest, and never has. “(To see a documented snap-shot of government efforts to suppress CtC, including details on many of the liberties taken by judge and prosecution in this last-ditch criminal assault, see http://losthorizons.com/ADocumentedCtCSuppressionHistory.pdf. )
Cheat it did, and thus, I sit here in order to frighten Americans away from the liberating, empowering truth revealed in my books, even as readers across the country continue to receive complete refunds of everything withheld, or paid in, in connection with the income tax, Social Security and Medicare “contributions” and all, and/or acknowledgments of no “income” received and no tax owed. I’m not here because my analysis was “rejected”, I’m here because my analysis is correct, and those grown accustomed to a lifestyle requiring that analysis to be kept from view are unscrupulous, and enjoy the benefit of widespread, deeply-rooted misunderstandings about the tax such as those that unfortunately compromise your otherwise typically excellent article on the true dwelling-place of liberty.
Best Regards,
Pete Hendrickson