What services do you think you are getting for you tax dollars? Im curious. For the most part schools are funded by state and local tax, like the property tax you. Thats why everytime you turn around there is a new levy trying to be passed to raise your property tax. We pay untold taxes like gas, accounts receiveable, building permits, capital gains, cigarettes, alcohol, corporate, estate, fishing lic, food lic, inheritance tax, inventory, local, luxury, marriage lic, real estate, social sec, sales, recreational vehicle tax, school, state, toll bridge and tunnel tax, utility, vehicle regis, vehicle sales tax…to name a very few. From most of what i have read from various sides, most of the income goes straight to the federal reserve to pay our debt. If we need more money then they just turn on a printing press and we get more money for a nominal intrest fee of course.
I was just commenting about people not addressing your OP. You opened yourself up for the type of responses you recieve. I know about this because sometimes I’m intentionally provocative to get people talking. Trouble is though, you can’t control what they talk about.
So, do you actually believe that you have a useful argument to rescind the 16th amendment, or are you just looking for discussion on the side issues?
It’s not like the federal budget is super-top secret or anything. About 5% of it goes to pay interest on past debt. And I imagine only a fraction of that is in the hands of the Federal Reserve.
U.S. Federal Budget 2010. Interest on the national debt is 4.63% (see pie chart).
I was just wanting others opinion about the way some states ratified a constitutional amendment. from original accounts was not legal according to their state’s constitution. There are some valid points on both sides about the subject…all the cases noted before are after the fact. If they would have done things originally: signed, sealed and delivered then this discussion would not be taking place. But the law is the law and it is what it is.
It’s already been demonstrated to you that federal rules for Constitutional Amendment ratification trump state rules. In other words, none of the “impediments” you list matter…it’s moot.
Yes, and the law is that the 16th Amendment was ratified properly.
It’s not just the 16th amendment that had punctuation irregularities, but for some reason it’s only the 16th amendment that gets this treatment.
Fact is, you think the income tax is bad public policy, so you’re looking for a way to wave a magic wand and make it go away. But it won’t go away, no judge will ever agree with you that the amendment was improperly ratified, and therefore it is the settled law of the land that it is constitutional to levy an income tax.
And even if you could find a judge to agree with you and declare that the income tax is unconstitutional then all that would happen is that the amendment would be reratified, because our current government is absolutely dependent on tax revenue from the income tax. And if for some reason there were 17 states that refused to reratify the amendment, then we’d implement some other form of gigantic money-gobbling tax, like a national value-added tax.
We certainly aren’t going to go back to 19th century levels of taxation just because YOU want to, you’d have to convince a lot of people that such a level of taxation and spending would be desirable.
I think the OP raises a good point similar to the Obama birthers and Article V advocates. In fact, the same point can be raised over the validity of West Virginia as a state (and I know there is a SCOTUS decision on that).
The point gets shot down as part on a conspiracy thoery or nut job fanatics delusion. And that point is:
Suppose the government (specifically Congress) runs roughshod over the Constitution on a political question. For example, a group of Latinos decide to have a convention and select a pro-immigration advocate as governor. Congress being likewise pro-immigration recognizes the new Governor citing the Guaranty Clause.
Or suppose Congress writes an amendment banning flag-burning. They then declare that it has passed the requisite number of states although it actually hasn’t.
What is the recourse? Citizens can vote out the Congressmen although that attempting that is rarely effective plus it doesn’t fix the problem created. Supposedly SCOTUS can deal with the situation but there are issues of standing, “political question” issues or worst-case, the decision is the problem such as Kelo which allows the guv’ment to take your house if someone else can pay more tax on the property or a theoretical SCOTUS case in which the Priviledges & Immunity Clause (which specifically applies to US citizens only) is expanded to everyone in the United States citizen or not.
So without presuming the truth of the OPs statements or any other nut-job theories (yes the 16th Amendment was approved, Obama was born in Hawaii and there have never been enough requests for a Constitutional Convention during a session of Congress), what protection is there against the Federal Government just ignoring the Constitution?
Point well taken…i just had a question about the whole process. I didnt mean to get anybody in a uproar. Thought it was a subject worth discussing, nothing more. We rely on it so much now, that without the income tax we would be hurting because we owe so much. Value of the dollar doesnt have the power it used to. The eruo is starting to crumble as well. Only thing to do is make war so we can make more money, after all war is very profitable to the most powerful banks who play like the las vegas house and fund both sides. Somehow i dont see any profits coming our way as in tax relief. Surely you agree we are taxed to death whether direct or indirect. So where does it all end? Thanks for your comments, i am learning alot from of you guys and just want to know the truth about some things.
You do sound like you believe that the 16th amendment should not have been passed, based on its content, aside from procedural technicalities. Do you think individuals should not be taxed? Do you have some alternate means of taxation? Anything along those lines.
There could be interesting discussion on those points instead of arguing about the legality of the 16th, which has been repeatedly deemed valid through due process of law.
Wait, the central banks are funding the Taliban, and the Iraqi insurgents?
You seem unaware that you are quoting wholesale parts of books/blogs/etc which are totally unsourced, either by you as to where you got them, and also by the original authors. They’re ususally the ravings of people who are anti-Jewish, anti-establishment, anti-tax. It doesn’t mean that everything they say in historically incorrect–just that they almost always fail to give you the source of their information–and, it’s quite, quite often slanted/wrong.
When you make these kinds of wild accusations, your arguments are taken with less value.
lemur866?? huh? anyway’s ed…there are not too many more creative ways to tax us…they pretty have it down pat from birth to death. Just about anything you can see or touch is taxed. Why does the income tax dwarf the corproate tax in comparison. I saw studies that showed in 2005 the government collected over 900 billion in income tax and only almost 300 billion in corporate tax. So the average american since then has had to lower their standard of living while the big biz just gets to skate by. But as some has pointed out i am not a tax expert by any stretch of the imagination…but i would like to say to lemurr866…who do you think propped up the taliban and gave them training and weapons to fight the russians? They didnt just throw rocks at them. But thats ok, we will keep giving up our civil liberties to keep us safe…like one politician said:whats the big deal, we should give up some civil liberties to be free! that’s the definition of free today i guess. Give up freedoms to be free! what a novel idea.
Without attribution (and, more cogently, permission from the copyright owner). Because they fear (legal) retribution. 
– Yours for advanced nitpickery,
Poly
I only refer to some history accounts to make my point instead of typing everything out…just like i dont expect people when they provide links to court cases…i dont expect them to type it all out. I write my own stuff unless i am referring to historical data. history to me is an important subject and if you choose not to take what i say seriously then thats ok. Its still a free country now and you can choose to ignore what i write or post from literature to make a point:)
My apologies…i will refrain from literature i have read. So is quoting someone a no no also? Only my second day on here. I didnt mean to step on anyones toe’s…my bad
You can quote them and provide a link to the source. That way we all know it’s a quote and where it comes from. If you just copy and paste it we have no idea.
They teach this stuff in schools now.
You can quote stuff, consistent with “fair use” principles. Generally, you can quote a small section of a longer piece, and link to the source.
However, some sources are more reputable than others. If you cite tax protester/birther/nutjob websites, people aren’t going to take the cites, or your points, seriously.
well steronz…i graduated in 81 so they didnt go over much about copy right laws on the internet. Again my apologies. I will provide links from now on. Thanks:)
The corporate income tax taxes corporations. If the corporations pay dividends to the stockholders, the dividend income is taxed as personal income tax.
Pakistan is who propped up the Taliban. We didn’t fund the Taliban during the Soviet occupation, the Taliban didn’t exist then. We sure funded a lot of militias and warlords during that time, but most of those ended up in the so-called Northern Alliance, who were fighting the Taliban.
As for your confusion, you did say this:
The most powerful banks don’t fund the Iraqi or Afghan insurgents that we’re fighting now. Why would they?
And as for your contention that they can’t tax us any higher, well, there are european countries that have higher taxes than the United States, so it is certainly possible for our taxes to be higher. In fact top tax rates were much higher in the US during the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. And of course there’s a way we aren’t taxed, for instance there’s no national sales tax or VAT. In my state we don’t have a state income tax, instead we have a state sales tax. If you wanted to get rid of the national income tax we’d have to implement something similar.
At least a VAT would mean the average person wouldn’t have to deal with tax authorities any more, we’d pay our taxes every time we bought or sold something. It would make things tougher for businesses who’d have to keep track of it all, but if you want a VAT instead of an income tax I could be talked into it pretty easily.