Barack, Pollock, and the Destruction of Equal
Protection
Or, Why Barack’s Tax Plan is
UNCONSTITUTIONAL CLASS WARFARE!
Barack Obama’s announced (income) tax plan, to exempt all persons earning under $250,000 from any increase in their income tax as a “middle class” tax cut, while passing an ever increasing burden to those who earn more than that number, is patently unconstitutional and has been recognized as such for over a hundred years by the Supreme Court because it is NOTHING but the CLASS WARFARE of the progressive socialism of the communist manifesto (see 2nd Plank).
The nation and the American People were warned, over a hundred years ago in 1896, that this, what is now occurring in our society and in our presidential election, is exactly what would happen if our politicians were ever allowed to enact, or allowed to promise to enact, different rates of tax on the different “classes” of American persons in the taxing legislation, under the promise of relief to any group of individuals based on their “economic condition” or level of earnings.
But why should you listen to me, what do I know? I’m just an American who’s still radical enough to actually believe in, defend, and advance the mandated equal opportunity of the U.S. Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land. Actually, I’m just reading the Opinion of Supreme Court Justice Fields, in his supporting opinion of the court, that he felt compelled to add to the Opinion of the majority in the Pollock v Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co decision, obviously believing that the majority opinion did not adequately address (and redress) the seriousness of the philosophical differences with the Constitution itself, raised by the provisions of the rejected legislation. Perhaps if I just let his opinion do the talking:
“The inherent and fundamental nature and character of a tax is that of a contribution to the support of the government, levied upon the principle of equal and uniform apportionment among the persons taxed, and any other exaction does not come within the legal definition of a 'tax.'”
Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co., 157
This is of course derived from a recognition of the Constitutional requirements that all direct taxes be proportionately laid, and apportioned, by population count under the census, to the States for collection of payment, and that all indirect taxes be uniform in operation, thus ensuring that every tax touches and operates on every man equally, and never disproportionately on any one man, or group.
Justice Fields goes on in discussing the problem with legislatively mandated preferential treatment in taxing legislation:
“The income tax law under
consideration is marked by
discriminating features which affect the whole law. It discriminates between those who receive an income of $4,000 and
those who do not. It thus vitiates, in my judgment, by this arbitrary discrimination, the
whole legislation. Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust
Co., 157
Justice Fields of course immediately recognizes the true nature of all such legislation:
“The
legislation, in the discrimination it
makes, is class legislation. Whenever a distinction is made in the burdens
a law imposes or in the benefits it confers on any citizens by reason of their birth, or wealth, or
religion, it is class legislation,
and leads inevitably to oppression and
abuses, and to general unrest and disturbance in society. “Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust
Co., 157
He continues in his opinion:
“It was hoped
and believed that the great amendments
to the constitution which followed the late Civil War had rendered such legislation impossible for all future time. But
the objectionable legislation reappears in the act under consideration.” Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust
Co., 157
The great amendments to which Justice Fields refers are of course the 13th Amendment barring slavery and involuntary servitude, the 14th Amendment, containing the about to be obliterated Equal Protection clause guaranteeing to all persons the equal protection of the law, and the 15th amendment securing voting rights for all persons, enacted after the civil war and all intended to terminate the discriminatory practices of the day aimed at black persons in the southern states.
In recognition of the fact that taxing policy should not, and legitimately cannot, violate the equal rights of the individual citizens secured by the Constitution and its Amendments, Justice Fields writes:
“There is no such thing in the theory of our national government as unlimited
power of taxation in congress. There are limitations, as he justly
observes, of its powers arising out of the essential nature of all free
governments; there are reservations of individual rights, without which society
could not exist, and which are respected by every government. The right of taxation is subject to these
limitations. Citizens' Savings Loan
Ass'n v.
The
concern identified by Justice Fields is simple and obvious.
His concerns and warnings were truly prophetic, as we are certainly now confronted today with all of the same aspects of the discriminatory, class legislation income tax that he confronted and the Court rejected in his day.
In
conclusion, Justice Fields lays out the philosophical conflict just beginning
in his day, but now beginning to consume
“Here I close
my opinion. I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundation of the government.
If the provisions of the constitution
can be set aside by an act of congress, where is the course of usurpation to
end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be
but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the
rich,-a war constantly growing in intensity
and bitterness. 'If the court sanctions the power of discriminating
taxation, and nullifies the uniformity
mandate of the constitution,' as said by one who has been all his life a
student of our institutions, 'it will
mark the hour when the sure decadence of our present government will commence.'
If the purely arbitrary limitation
of four thousand dollars in the present law can be sustained, none having less than that amount of income being
assessed or taxed for the support of the government, the limitation of future congresses may be fixed at a much larger sum,
at five or ten or twenty thousand dollars, parties possessing an income of that
amount alone being bound to bear the burdens of government; or the
limitation may be designated at such an amount as a board of 'walking
delegates' may deem necessary. There is
no safety in allowing the limitation to be adjusted except in strict compliance with the mandates of the constitution,
which require its taxation, if imposed
by direct taxes, to be apportioned among the states according to their
representation, and, if imposed by
indirect taxes, to be uniform in operation and, so far as practicable, in
proportion to their property, equal upon
all citizens. Unless the rule of the constitution governs, a majority may fix the limitation at such
rate as will not include any of their own number.” Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust
Co., 157
It occurs to me that since the 14th Amendment was put in place in 1868 to establish, preserve, and protect the rights of black persons in America, isn’t it truly ironic that it is now a black man who is using the destruction of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to rise to capture the office of the President of the United States through the promise of the enactment of this discriminatory taxing, class legislation, exactly as envisioned by Justice Fields in his opinion – with exactly the same type of discriminatory class legislation taxation that was rejected as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1896 in this Pollock decision.
Now many people, specifically attorneys, judges, Department of Justice officials and I.R.S. employees will try to tell you that the 16th Amendment did away with all of these “problems” with a bracketed (discriminatory) income tax, and that it effectively repealed the Pollock decision as the controlling decision in the matter. They want you to believe that the 16th Amendment overrules and does away with these issues of such gravity identified in the Pollock decision.
However, while the Supreme Court did rule in the Brushaber decision that the income tax legislation that was enacted in 1913 under the 16th Amendment was constitutional and upheld that legislation, in truth that ruling did not, and does not, touch the Pollock decision to modify or set aside the Court’s ruling in that case.
You see in Pollock the Court strikes down a legislative attempt to tax directly and without apportionment, upholding the Article I constitutional prohibition on non-apportioned direct taxation of the People. In the Brushaber and Stanton decisions of 1916 addressing the income tax, the Court upholds the tax as a constitutional exercise of the power to tax indirectly. It did not rule that under the 16th Amendment the government now has the power to tax income directly and without apportionment, as the government would have you falsely believe. The cases (Pollock and Brushaber) address entirely different constitutional powers, one addressing direct taxation, the other addressing indirect taxation. One striking down as unconstitutional a tax laid directly but without apportionment, the other upholding the power of the federal government to tax income indirectly. The two decisions have no impact what-so-ever on each other, and one certainly does not render the other irrelevant or replaced.
All of the
issues and problems with a discriminatory, bracketed, class legislation based
income tax system, identified by Supreme Court Justice Fields, imposing
different rates of income tax on different groups of citizens in America,
effectively establishing distinct different “classes” of citizens who are not
treated equally under the law, thus denied equal protection, is
still entirely improper and unconstitutional.
And if you recognize the current, existing
So good luck with the complete destruction of the constitutional Republic in America that will result from the UNCONSTITUTIONAL SOCIALIST CLASS SYSTEM that we are erecting and headed for with all of these federal bail-outs and class-based taxation, because the class warfare of socialism consumes and destroys a nation’s wealth, it DOES NOT build it.
Because government and politicians
www.tax-freedom.com
– untaught essential knowledge all Americans must know !