The following is an excerpt from Douglas V. Gibbs‘ next book, soon to be on bookshelves, A Promise of American Liberty.
United States Are. Afterward, it became The
United States Is. Federal Supremacy began
to be applied at every level. A national
system was emerging, and the autonomous sovereignty of the States was being choked
out of existence. To punish the Confederate
States for seceding, the federal government used the power of centralization to
force them into compliance.
War Between the States, the Reconstruction Period, that the incorporation doctrine
truly began to take shape. If the
federal government could “guarantee” one’s rights through judicial activism,
the sovereignty of the States would finally become compromised so that they would
be reduced to nothing more than provinces who were subservient to the
all-powerful federal system.
Europe, the United States was not able to escape Marx’s global reach. Influenced by the socialists of Europe, the
progressive era began to take shape in the United States during the late 1800s. By the turn of the century, the progressive
movement was in full swing.
|
Spanish-American
|
The rise of progressivism after the beginning
of the new century was accompanied by concerns about the large national debt
that remained with the United States as a result of the Spanish-American War, and the growing social inequality between the
rich and the poor. The idea that there
should be a tax that “soaks the rich” began to take root among progressives of
both major parties. The Democrats took
to progressivism more than the Republican Party, and the progressives of the
Democrat Party were looking for a way to embarrass the conservative arm of the
GOP so that they could gain some traction in the next election.
population, a Democrat proposed the Bailey Bill with the express hope the
Republicans would reject it. The theory
was that after the Republicans rejected the bill, the Democrats could then
point a finger at the Republicans, claiming for political purposes that the
Republicans were in cahoots with the corrupt wealthy corporate types. A Republican rejection of the Bailey Bill,
which would have imposed an income tax on the rich, would serve as proof of
such an alignment between the Republicans and the wealthy. The slogan used by proponents of the Bailey
Bill was “soak the rich,” a direct call to tax
|
Plutocrats
|
people they considered to be profiteers, a class of plutocrats they claimed were in
collusion with the Republicans.
|
Bailey Bill – Income Tax introduced
16th Amendment – Amendment
|
The conservative Republicans knew what the
progressives of the Democrat Party were up to, and launched a counter
move. They proposed a constitutional
amendment that would impose an income tax on the rich, and when the States
refused to ratify the amendment, the Republicans would use that failure to
ratify the amendment as proof that the people, through their State
legislatures, were against the idea of a new income tax. In turn, that would defeat the Bailey Bill. After all, how could Congress approve an
income tax against the rich through the Bailey Bill after the people and States
rejected a constitutional amendment that would have done the very same thing?
would only be imposed on the top 5% wage earners, it would be voluntary, and it
would be temporary.
rallied behind the proposed amendment, and the Secretary of State announced the
amendment was ratified on February 12, 1913.
were required to submit tax returns.
Many of the rich, however, avoided the tax with charitable deductions,
and other creative strategies.
Delano Roosevelt saw the income tax as a way to vastly increase revenue, and
initiated a policy of withholding from “all” wages and salaries, not just the
highest incomes enjoyed by the rich.
Rather than the rich paying the tax at the end of the year, the tax was
collected at the payroll window before it was even due to be paid by the taxpayer. This style of collection shifted the tax from
its original design as a tax on the wealthy to a tax on the masses, mostly on
the middle class.
Article I, Section 9 prohibiting direct taxation, the income tax also opposes
the 4th Amendment which requires that a citizen’s privacy be protected. An income tax enforced by the Internal Revenue Service violates the
privacy of the home, business, personal papers and personal affairs of the
private citizen. Since the tax is based on
wages, as well as income, the IRS has the task of making sure everyone pays his
fair share. This task is physically
impossible without prying into the private papers, private business and
personal affairs of individual citizens.
there have been questions about whether the proper number of State ratification
votes were ever achieved. Despite the argument
by some researchers that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified by the
requisite three-fourths of the States, and that politicians of the day were
aware of the discrepancy, Secretary of State Philander Knox fraudulently
declared ratification. Some may suggest
that he did so under the urgings of wealthy bankers like J.P. Morgan.
tax, the Federal Reserve was also
created. The Federal Reserve is not a
federal agency, and is actually a privately owned corporation owned by a secret
group of international bankers. The
Federal Reserve holds a monopoly on the creation of money in the United
States. Whenever the U.S. Government
needs money it borrows the money from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve gladly loans that money
because doing so results in a good profit for the bankers.
central bank, but it is the longest lasting.
The First Bank of the United States in 1791, created by Alexander Hamilton,
became a system of control over the American economy shortly after the
ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and was, as described at the time by Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison, “an engine for speculation, financial
manipulation, and corruption.”
bank needs a collection of large sums of money from the people to pay off the
interest on the money the government borrows.
The creation of the income tax provided that opportunity.
Reserve Act surrendered control of the monetary system to the international
banking cartel and guaranteed the eventual abandonment of the gold standard. The Federal Reserve’s debt-based money guaranteed the enslavement of every American under
a crushing debt burden. The Federal
Reserve guaranteed the ability of the international banking cartel to confiscate
wealth through artificially created boom-bust cycles.
and the bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve, can manipulate the economy
simply by the amount of money they decide to pump into the system. The more debt-based money that is pumped into
the system, the greater the rise of inflation rates. A reduction of the printing of money then
results in a recovering economy. Government
spending, in relation to the national debt, has a direct impact on the economic
cycles we experience. The more the
government borrows, the more fiat money is pumped into the system. The result is increased inflation, and a stalled
economy. Cutting spending results in
less money being borrowed, which then returns value to the dollar, and in turn reduces
the level of inflation while encouraging capitalism to thrive.
system was created to compensate for the damage to the American Economy caused
by the Federal Reserve and the income tax.
on income from whatever source derived, which gives Congress, for the most
part, carte blanche to tax at will, while giving the IRS the power to do all of
the things the founders specifically disallowed the federal government from
doing. This invasion of privacy, without
due process, will continue as long as the 16th Amendment remains in force.
philosophy of destroying a capitalist society by steeply graduating taxes on
income and applying heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.
Federal Reserve Act was signed, the States also ratified the 17th Amendment.
established a number of checks and balances during the creation of the federal
government in the hopes of providing enough safeguards to protect the people from
an ever expansive, tyrannical, consolidated central government. The separation of powers between the three
branches of government, and between the federal government and the States, was
an integral part of these protections against tyranny. However, not all of the checks and balances
put in place were obvious, nor are all of the checks and balances taught to us
during our school years.
bicameral contained two houses that were different from each other. In Rome, the assembly was by and for the
people, and the senate was populated with representatives for the wealthy and powerful. In Britain their parliament also has two
different and unique houses. The House
of Commons was established to represent the common citizen, and the House of
Lords is the legislative voice of the nobles.
republican form of government based on a system of We the People and autonomous
sovereign states was not designed to give power to nobility or the rich and
powerful. In the U.S. the first House of
Congress, as with other systems, is a voice of the people. For that reason, the members of the House of
Representatives have always been democratically elected into office. The second House of Congress, however, was
originally established as being the voice of the States. To achieve this dynamic, the State
legislatures were tasked with appointing the Senators to their six year terms, rather
than the people democratically electing them.
congress were established in a manner similar to the rest of the federal
government; with the intent of preventing any part of government from having
access to too much power. Too much power
in any one part of the system could be dangerous, and this includes too much
power in the hands of the people.
government, cannot be fully trusted with absolute power. To prevent the danger of too much power
residing in any part of government, power needed to be divided as much as
possible so as to keep it under control.
Too much power in the hands of anybody has the potential of being a
dangerous proposition.
directly to the people. The voting power
was divided to ensure the Republic was protected from the mob-rule mentality of
democracy.
the States in the U.S. Senate, and by the States appointing the Senators, the
method of appointment allowed State’s interests to be represented in the U.S.
Congress.
legislatures, the Senators looked at the political atmosphere in a different
manner than the members of the House of Representatives. Members of the House of Representatives, as persons
directly voted into office by the people, focus their concerns on what they
believe the people’s concerns are.
functioned in a very different manner than it does today. When the Senators were appointed by the State
legislatures they were expected to abide by the wishes of the State legislators. The Senators were expected to be a representative
for what was best for their States; State’s Rights, State Sovereignty, and protecting
the States not only from a foreign enemy, but from a domestic enemy, should the
federal government become the potential tyranny that the Founding Fathers, and
especially the Anti-federalists, feared a central government could become.
federal government through the U.S. Senate was also another way that checks and
balances were applied to the system. The
House of Representatives represented the people, and the Senate represented the
States. Through this arrangement, it
gave the people the ability to check the States, and the States the ability to
check the people, and together they checked the Executive.
the people through the House of Representatives approving a senatorial
proposal. The people could not get much
done without The States through the U.S. Senate agreeing with a proposal that
originated in the House of Representatives.
The executive branch could get little done without both the people and
the States approving of it. However, if
the President did not like what the people and the States were trying to accomplish,
he could veto the bill. If the people
and the States felt the legislation was important enough, they could override
that veto with two-thirds of a vote in both Houses.
be approved by both the people and the States before it went to the President
to become law. This gave the Executive
and both parts of the legislative branch the opportunity to approve or
disapprove potential laws.
the originally intended dynamics of the American form of government. The amendment removed the States’
representation from U.S. Government proceedings. The Seventeenth Amendment changed the
appointment of the Senators from that of the State legislatures to that of the
direct vote of the people. As a result, the
protection of State Sovereignty was removed, and in its place was inserted
ideology, and the willingness of Senators to buy the votes of individual voters
through gifts from the treasury in a manner that was already emerging from the
House of Representatives.
Seventeenth Amendment also changed how a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate would
be resolved. The governors of the
States, should the legislatures allow such, may make temporary appointments
until a special election takes place.
The State legislatures may change these rules as they deem necessary,
such as requiring an immediate special election instead of allowing the
governor to temporarily appoint a replacement.
This leaves most of the power regarding
|
Mitt Romney – Born: March 12,
• • Governor of Massachusetts, 2003-2007
• United States Senator, Assumed
Deval Patrick – Born: July 31,
•
• U.S. Assistant Attorney General,
Edward Kennedy – Born: February
• United States Senator from
Scott Brown – Born: September
• Member, Massachusetts House of
• United States Senator from Massachusetts,
• U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand,
Elizabeth Warren – Born: June 22,
• United States Senator from Massachusetts,
|
|
|
filling vacancies
in the hands of the State legislatures.
|
|
Massachusetts,
during the reign of Democrat governors, used the rule that if there was a
vacancy in the U.S. Senate, the governor could appoint the new Senator to complete
that term of office. When Mitt Romney, who was a Republican, was
governor, the Democrat dominated legislature feared a Republican appointment
should one of the Massachusetts Senators die, so they changed the rule to
require an immediate special election, fully confident the people would put
another Democrat into office should one of the seats be vacated. The Massachusetts legislature even overrode a
veto by Governor Mitt Romney to accomplish their rule change.
and his gubernatorial term in Massachusetts ended January 4, 2007.
|
|
he new governor
of Massachusetts in 2007 was Deval
Patrick, a Democrat. When Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy passed away August
25, 2009, since the State of Massachusetts had a Democrat governor, the
Democrat-led legislature hurriedly changed the rule to enable the governor to
appoint the new Senator as had been allowed before Mitt Romney was governor,
just in case the people could not be trusted.
the seat until a special election in January of 2010 that pitted Republican Scott Brown against Democrat Martha
Coakley. To the surprise of the entire
nation, Scott Brown won the election, sending tremors through the political
establishment, which included the Democrats losing a filibuster-proof majority
in the U.S. Senate. Brown was defeated
in 2012 by Democrat Elizabeth Warren,
returning the Senate Seat back to the Democrats when she took office on January
3, 2013.
of the Seventeenth Amendment was that State representation in the Congress was
removed. Senators, after the
ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, would be voted into office by the
vote of the people, making the U.S. Senate more like the House of
Representatives, eliminating a very important check and balance, and making the
United States more like a democracy and less like the Republic the Founders
originally
|
|
intended.
|
|
The people, fooled
by a relenting rallying cry of “The will of the people,” and a common belief
that the leaders of the States could not be trusted to appoint a worthy individual,
and were instead being bought off by wealthy special interests, demanded that
the federal government be changed into something more like a democracy. As the progressives desired, and planned, the
American form of government moved closer to a democracy with the Seventeenth
Amendment.
|
|
The Progressive
Era ended with the end of the Woodrow Wilson presidency. President Warren Harding, and then his successor, Calvin Coolidge, used constitutionally based principles to pull
America away from a recession, and begin prospering again despite the recent
end of the first World War. When
Coolidge took office, he reduced taxes and federal regulations, and what
followed was one of the most prosperous decades in American History, the Roaring Twenties. In 1928, running on the popularity of
Coolidge, Republican Herbert Hoover
won the presidency, keeping the Grand Ol’ Party (GOP) in office. Hoover, however, was not as conservative as
his predecessors, and a year into office was slammed by the Great Depression –
an economic collapse caused by the overprinting of currency by the Federal
Reserve, and worsened by the Smoot-Hawley
Tariff Act. Hoover’s dismal presidency
opened the door for the progressives to get back into the White House in 1932,
launching the presidency of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt that would span over a decade. FDR introduced the New Deal (which extended the Great Depression in the United States
by seven years). During his presidency,
FDR also sent United States Troops into a second
World War.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
