A Bitter Pill

America is Evil Shockumentery Checklist:
1. Theatrical movie music - check.
2. Random political speeches clipped in (out of context for the most part) - check.
3. Random segments spliced together giving no frame of referancfe and only making unresearched assumptinos - check.
4. Random “authorities” agreeing with you - check.
5. The internets said it was true - check.

I think that video might be hinting on some debatable points, but much like the enemy it tries to engage. Fearmongering met with even greater fearmongering.

I’m really opposed to heavy taxing which is why I do consider my a conservative in the very strictest and older sense (not to be confused with neoconseravtism).

But,

We are in a new day and age, and I was bend my will a degree or two to come in line with modernism. I think mistaking the US Government as peddling “Americanism” is stretching it. It’s the companies, the fortune 500, the marketing, and the general willed ignorance of most people.

– Addressing the income tax:
Regardless if it is law or not, it’s there. I can see the argument that the rich don’t pay enough or whatever you want to say… but if we’re gonna go the “all is fair and free” route then we should remove minimum wage laws and such. Income tax is represenative of the federal government having control of your life to a degree. Well, why should they bother business owners to fair practices and protection of labor unions? Let’s get rid of it all at once.

– Addressing strong government control:
As opposed as I am to strong government control and taxes, the confederate states were a pretty clear of example of what happens when the government can’t levy taxes or has little inter-state power. Founding fathers and some of the4 most brilliant men were for a stronger government. I’m not advocating abuses of power or anything like that, but simply trying to meet this extremist preview half way.

I think the video makes the mistake Michael Moore made many times (no, not being a hypcrotical fatass): tries to squeeze to many arguments under the banner of “things are fucked up”. Too many shockumenteries only point out problems without going deeper into the ramifications of the alternatives or how to handle those ramifications or transitions would be (e.g. if we did removee income tax, how to compensate the various budgets of the federal government, etc). It’s really easy to be negative, but it’s hard to be constructive.

I’d have to see the video, but I’m willing to bet it’s not very constructive. Legal or illegal, consequences are reality in so far as repealing the income tax would have dire ones. So, unless it offers reasonable solutions I really don’t wanna hear it.

Tax protester constitutional arguments

Some tax protesters, conspiracy investigators, and others opposed to income taxes cite what they contend is evidence that the Sixteenth Amendment was never “properly ratified.” One such argument is that because the legislatures of various states passed resolutions of ratification with different capitalization, spelling of words, or punctuation marks (e.g. semi-colons instead of commas) from the text proposed by Congress, those states’ ratifications were invalid. A related argument is that various states illegally violated procedural requirements of their constitutions when passing their ratification resolutions. Another argument made by some tax protesters regards Ohio, one of the states listed as ratifying the amendment. They contend that because Congress did not pass an official proclamation recognizing Ohio’s date of admission (1803) to statehood until 1953 (see Ohio Constitution), Ohio was not a state until 1953 (and, therefore, could not have ratified the Sixteenth Amendment). These and similar arguments have been universally rejected by the courts.

Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co.

In Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co.,[12], the Supreme Court laid out what has become the modern understanding of what constitutes ‘income’ to which the Sixteenth Amendment applies, declaring that income taxes could be levied on “accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion.” Under this definition, any increase in wealth—whether through wages, benefits, bonuses, sale of stock or other property at a profit, bets won, lucky finds, awards of punitive damages in a lawsuit, qui tam actions—are all within the definition of income, unless Congress makes a specific exemption as it has for items such as life insurance proceeds received by reason of the death of the insured party[13], gifts, bequests, devises and inheritances[14], and certain scholarships. [15]

The only court case since then that repeals any powers is from disability, injury, compensation, etc.

Murphy v. IRS

On August 22, 2006 the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service[16] and United States [Murphy v. United States]) that 26 U.S.C. § 104(a)(2) is unconstitutional under the Sixteenth Amendment to the extent that the statute purports to tax, as income, a recovery for a non-physical personal injury for mental distress and loss of reputation not received in lieu of taxable income such as lost wages or earnings. The Court stated:

At the outset, we reject the Government’s breathtakingly expansive claim of congressional power under the Sixteenth Amendment — upon which it founds the more far-reaching arguments it advances here. The Sixteenth Amendment simply does not authorize the Congress to tax as “incomes” every sort of revenue a taxpayer may receive. As the Supreme Court noted long ago, the “Congress cannot make a thing income which is not so in fact.”

The Court also stated:

In sum, every indication is that damages received solely in compensation for a personal injury are not income within the meaning of that term in the Sixteenth Amendment. First, as compensation for the loss of a personal attribute, such as well-being or a good reputation, the damages are not received in lieu of income. Second, the framers of the Sixteenth Amendment would not have understood compensation for a personal injury — including a nonphysical injury — to be income. Therefore, we hold § 104(a)(2) unconstitutional insofar as it permits the taxation of an award of damages for mental distress and loss of reputation.

The Murphy ruling is mandatory precedent only in the District of Columbia.

So, if conspiracy theorists are going to argue against the supreme court and not trust any of the three branches of government, then we shoudl just start a revolution because if this is true then the government is beyond hope anyways. Otherwise, statutory law and decisions should be recognized instead of randomly citing pieces of the constituion and trying to debase the 16th amendment under symantics.

In Summary: