"The government must have the ability to lay and collect taxes or it will not be able to function.

Should this ability be without limits?
Remember the Sixteenth Amendment
reads "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." Notice the lack of any limits! What is to stop this Government from taxing income at 100% and forcing compliance at the point of guns of armed IRS agents? 87,000 of them! That's a little more than 4 Army Divisions.

If anybody is going to get reparations for slavery, the only ones who would be entitled to get it would be people who were actually slaves, and the only ones who would have any obligation to pay it would be slave owners. How many of either category are still around now?

Time for some rational though by those demanding to be paid for having been born. Had slavery not happened they never would have exited and if they believe they would have been born in Africa, that is not how reality works. One's consciousness develops in the individual body and will not develop in any other body. There is no separation of consciousness and body, no ghost in a machine. What a rational person does is to look at history and not practice the evils of the time, in this case slavery and racism. Those demanding reparations are attempting to bring back slavery of those of other races ( if races actually exist ) believing that somehow that will correct the evils of the past. It is nothing more than a wish to never have been born. Also, reparations would be due to all future generations of decedents of slaves.

A lot of people seem to be predisposed to feel guilty. From my experience, protestant churches push this perspective. When someone tells them they have something else to feel guilty for, they shrug and accept, instead of asking "why".

When you argue that the government should be funded by tariffs, that is a method of means rather than ability - two wholly different arguments. The government must have the ability to lay and collect taxes or it will not be able to function. Article I of the Constitution recognizes this (and the difficulties in the Articles of Confederation) and specifically authorizes Congress to lay and collect taxes for its own funding with the condition that such be apportioned equally. (Read further for my suggestions.)

Regarding the use of tariffs, I don't disagree with this premise and note that this was the original means of Federal funding until well after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment. A reliance on tariffs provides an external feedback mechanism to Congress which forces them into robust debate between which nations to trade with (at all), which nations to exempt from tariffs via Most Favored Nation Status, and how high to set individual tariff rates so as to generate revenue without unduly restricting imports.


I don't approve of personal or corporate income taxes as a federal funding mechanism for several reasons. First, personal taxes and taxes on business were the entire reason there was a Revolution in the first place! There is no shorter road to tyranny than that which allows a government to confiscate personal property through punitive taxation.

Second, personal income taxes at a Federal level stifle free speech. Such taxes provide an easy mechanism for an abusive IRS to go after groups who evince speech they do not like, Lois Lerner being a potent example. (I also note that until the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, churches were instruments of public policy and robust debate in the public square. The squelching of their participation in the public policy sphere because of threats of taxation should not be underestimated.)

Third, corporate taxes are always passed along to consumers. The reason corporations are taxed is to hide this fact from consumers! Taxes should always be DIRECT taxes - never indirect taxes. Everyone deserves and can make good decisions only with the full information regarding costs. Diversion and obfuscation emanate from government operatives who don't want to have to justify their tyranny.


In my perfect world, the funding of the government would be primarily through tariffs on trade. If further funds were requested, the taxes should be laid on the States themselves according to their population at the last Census, i.e. if California has 13% of the US population and a nationwide tax is levied, California would be responsible for paying 13% of the levy amount. How California then collects the money to pay that tax is then a matter for their State Legislature to ascertain. (My druthers would be that such additional taxes be levied only for specific purposes such as prosecuting a war, building major infrastructure projects like the Interstate Highway system, etc.). Such levies would require a 2/3 vote to pass.

The second aspect of this would be that government spending bills be constrained to budget not a penny more than the government actually collected through taxation in the second year prior to the one being budgeted. In other words, budgets would be created every other year but the amount actually allotted could never exceed actual/historical inflows. This would have the economy itself provide an effective check on those enamored with taxation. This would also force robust debate and the elimination of government functions which could not be supported in a bipartisan manner. Pet projects would necessarily have a short shelf life and perpetual welfare programs would cease to exist.

A Government strictly limited to providing a military force would not need to tax income or property in order to complete its mission. These costs could be covered by tariffs and fees.

All else could be covered by the private sector more efficiently.

Johnson certainly sits up there with Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama IMHO. In order to measure evil, however, one must look at how far each advanced the football in relative terms, however. When we consider that those who came along later in history required the events of their predecessors, it makes an objective comparison difficult. I'm not nearly as interested in the comparison of evil as I am that they were evil in the first place, however.

"The fatal flaws in our Constitution were that the Right of the Individual to own property was not made absolute..."

It was recently discovered that the original draft version of the Declaration of Independence recognized property rights but was removed so as not to give credence to slavery, as slaves were considered property at the time. It was a necessary omission at the time but I agree that the right to property should have been codified by Amendment immediately following the Civil War.

"and the power of the Government to tax was not denied to it absolutely."

This one isn't feasible in any way, shape, or form. Government has to be able to operate and to do so requires a funding mechanism. Until the Sixteenth Amendment, however, the US Federal government was reliant on tariffs and import taxes for its income source and I advocate to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment and return to a reliance on tariffs and dropping Most Favored Nation status from any nation which does not have a non-socialist representative government - basically everyone at this point. I have a much longer diatribe on this subject I have posted elsewhere.


"The very essence of a civilized society lies in:
1) The absolute Right of the individual to own property that he has earned or inherited and;
2) The respect paid by each citizen to each other's right to own property."

I would suggest a Zeroth law: the right to own one's self and the results of one's labor and mind. Without those, the others are irrelevant.

First, there is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is. Systemic racism is when a system of governance or culture embodies, emboldens, and protects racist behavior. This was done by Democrats mainly in the South.
The Minnesota move is racist, no other motivation. Violating someone's property, ability to work, or protection of law with a law is immoral and a contradiction of establishing justice. If your great grandfather stole from my great grandfather my stealing from you does nothing to rectify that criminal act, it merely perpetrates an evil act on you.
There were 350,000 African slaves brought to this country, 3,000,000 African people have freely immigrated here. The chances that someone is of particular slave descent because of the color of their skin is 1 in 10. Why are all black people entitled to compensation?
All of these efforts are not about righting a wrong, it is about the excuse to have power, the right to use violence against others, in order to obtain property (money) that is not theirs.

Lying Lyndon Johnson set in motion with the "Great Society" Trillions in taxpayer dollars in "reparations" on condition they break up their black nuclear family.
Lying Lyndon could quite possibly be the most evil man this country ever produced.
Stepford Biden is simply dupe and a dope.

Ayn Rand detested those who thirsted after unearned wealth.

I tried to explain this in greater detail on the index page of my now defunct website ,

The fatal flaws in our Constitution were that the Right of the Individual to own property was not made absolute and the power of the Government to tax was not denied to it absolutely.

Taxes are the price we pay to arm and feed those who would enslave us.

The very essence of a civilized society lies in:

1) The absolute Right of the individual to own property that he has earned or inherited and;

2) The respect paid by each citizen to each other's right to own property.

As fewer and fewer people adhere to the latter principle, the faster will be the erosion of the first. As civility declines so will savagery increase.

The essence of a non-civilized society can be found in the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels in 1848 in which they wrote

"...In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property..."

Joseph William Gabriele

I fear that we are quickly becoming a "has-been" in that respect. Why? Because people take for granted things they themselves did not earn.

The sad fact is that even nations who fought in WW II quickly devolved back into socialism once the war was over. Britain did so even before Japan had surrendered. Greece as well even though the British specifically fought to keep the Russian-backed communists from taking over. Italy backslid right back into it as well as did France and the Netherlands.

Americans are going to have to fight for their freedom or it will be lost for generations. They can choose now to fight via the ballot box or be thrust into a physical confrontation if they do not.

There has been no one alive for 100 years who even remembers actual slavery. "Reparations" were paid at the time the slaves were freed with over one million American lives. Anything more denigrates their sacrifice and serves only to feed the greed of individuals who were not harmed.

There have been federal court cases about this stuff. Sue them.

Visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons -I have no more use for Bible fundamentalists than I have for Marxists or whniging emotional blackmailers with chips on their shoulders.

No, it isn't reverse racism....it is "Institutional Racism."

Now that great idea is being put to sleep by sheeple group thinkers who call themselves Woke.

Oh, bubah1mau posted it.

Is there info on this or just hearsay?

Yup. Long slide to oblivion. How sad. America was such a great idea.

simple
too many parasites

to much false anger, it is liberals that for decades have been keeping blacks poor

lies that are easier to believe than for people to get off their butts and work

Enough is enough now. We've done enough, it didn't work, we don't owe anything at all anyway. You can lead a slave to freedom, but you can't make him be free.

Because some very twisted people are setting up these twisted rules. Alice In Lib-land.

As fast as me dino read your question, the words "slippery slope" popped into my mind.

Hear! Hear! The fact that such a commonsense statement by MLK jr. can so easily be ignored is frightening. How much longer will America be the home of Individual Rights?