WorldNetDaily (admittedly not the most reliable of sources) is pushing a two-volume work by a fellow named Bill Benson, entitled The Law That Never Was, which claims to show through exhaustive research involving musty records, that the 16th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to levy income taxes, was never properly ratified. However, the notes provided by WND give absolutely no hint of the specifics of Benson’s argument.
Mind you, this is exactly the sort of thing that contributes to my rather low estimation of WND - especially when the link to the book promo is one of their top 5 ‘news’ headlines.
I went over to Amazon to see if a review would turn up over there; their site doesn’t show the book at all.
As many of you remember, Cecil has already addressed the argument that the Amendment isn’t valid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state at the time.
Anybody know anything about Benson’s argument? Is it the same old BS, or has he come up with something novel (but undoubtedly equally flawed)? I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $98 to read his opus, just to find out what approach he takes.
Funny, no one has tried the argument that the original copy of the Constitution uses the word “congrefs”. Thus, any legislation passed by congress is obviously unconstitutionable.
Heck with the income tax amendment, we could get rid of that pesky Bill of Rights,too.
Even if he did come up with something new, it would never fly. You’ll still get all of your stuff confiscated and spend time in jail for tax evasion.
Even if the Supreme Court ever ruled that a federal income tax was unconsitutional, a constitutional amendment would be passed before the next April 15th.
I don’t have time to look this up right now, but when I was helping my niece debate this topic last year (resolved that the 16th amendment should be abolished), a Supreme Court case came to light that seemed to imply that the power to have an income tax did not actually require the 16th amendment at all. (The clever squirelly affirmatives argued that they could repeal the amendment without changing the income tax laws, threw my niece for a loop).
<< Even if the Supreme Court ever ruled that a federal income tax was unconsitutional, a constitutional amendment would be passed before the next April 15th. >>
Well, no, it wouldn’t be physically possible to get an amendment ratified that quickly.
But no federal court would ever make such a decision. One of the immediate consequences of such a decision would be to cut off the funding for that court – salaries for the judge, the stenographer, the baliffs, cost of the courthouse – all that would come tumbling down, since the source of the money would be (illegal) income taxes.
I understand the mindset that says that a clever little inventor sitting alone in his garage can still create marvellous stuff (like, post-it notes). However, that doesn’t work when it comes to inventing perpetual motion, nor to trisecting the angle, nor to overturning the entire federal tax system.
Cecil gets about one of these silly things each week in his mail. Right up there with “photographic evidence that dinosaurs co-existed with early humans, overturns evolution.”
A very useful website for challenging tax cranks can be found at:
http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html
Whatever nonsense Benson puts forward is probably already covered there.