there's literally a constitutional amendment saying congress can issue taxes however they want. The supreme court is so full of its own shit they think they can rewrite every law they don't like.
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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That's why they've been stacking the courts with conservative activists for so long, so they could get a majority that would go along with these paper-thin justifications for completely changing our society from the top down.
Well said.
The stated goal of "originalism" is to read the Constitution without interpretation.
Which would be bad enough, since it was written by a bunch of slavers without any input from women whatsoever.
But in reality it is impossible to read something (especially law) without interpretation; they simply start with the desired conclusion and look for any historical justification no matter how implausible.
But in reality it is impossible to read something (especially law) without interpretation
Some people might see that as a challenge, so I'd state it even more bluntly: reading is interpretation. Reading without interpretation is not just impossible; it's an oxymoron.
I would hope every single high school graduate could remember the simple pictograph of how communication works:
- Person A has an idea -
- Person A encodes the idea and transmits it -
- Person B receives the transmission and decodes it -
- Person B has the idea-
- Reverse the process for feedback and confirmation of idea -
That encoding bit is pretty important...
So cool, because this is also how tcp/ip works.
What amendment is that? Because the 16A doesn't say that - and neither does the core document, which is why we needed the 16A.
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They not even hiding it now. They control the court, so they control the law.
This is one issue where I get angry with the democrats. They could have stacked the courts a long ass time ago and prevented shit like this.
This is one issue where I get angry with the democrats. They could have stacked the courts a long ass time ago and prevented shit like this.
When? They pushed through candidates when they could, but they had to change the Senate rules during the Obama administration just to end Republican filibusters on non-controversial nominees. The news was all over both the backlog of empty seats and the need for Democrats to change the rules just to get what nominees they could past Republicans.
And of course, that ended once Republicans took the Senate.
Bad idea but fun to fantasize about: use some of those patriot act powers I assume exist to drag Republican Congress people off to detention centers because they're enemy combatants. Suddenly Democratic super majority, fewer traitors in government, and an unbearably bad precedent set for the next time Republicans have power.
On the other hand, trump is probably going to try that kind of thing anyway.
On the other hand, trump is probably going to try that kind of thing anyway.
Correct. According to Project 2025, they'll use an old provision in the Constitution to justify using the military to round up anyone who they deem a dissenter. I think there's a later law that prohibits the deployment of troops on American soil, but they're confident they'll have the courts on their side.
Deploying the military on home soil isn’t new
They did it for the Rodney King riots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
It's one thing to deploy it as a response to an emergency. It's another to plan ahead of time to use it to stage a coup.
Staging an emergency isn’t that hard, and the courts are on their side
That's why they're planning it. There's plenty of law and precedent against it, but they know all they need is the thinnest veneer of an excuse to get their partisan justices to rule in their favor.
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Do any of these fucken galaxy brains stop for a second to think what reality would be like the minute the government can't fund itself? Because, I do, and I'm targeting their houses first.
"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." - Grover Norquist, Republican lobbyist
That sounds like some shit a dude with the name Grover would say. Is he also the monster at the end of this book?
If the book is titled "Imagine What America Would Look Like if a Single Shitbag Convinced Republicans to Vote Against Every Tax Increase for Thirty Years", then yes, yes he is.
We are long overdue to cut out these middlemen in our representation. Not saying I know how, but it seems like even a small amount of power corrupts absolutely.
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Yes. That's why they're doing it. They want to destroy the government so they can convince us to replace it with the feudal society they have in mind. They think they have enough control over sufficient resources that they'll be safe from any violence you might offer thanks to their private armies.
I'm glad there's no Justices on the Supreme Court taking lavish vacations, homes, RVs, bribes, jobs and planes from wealthy people who are arguing that wealthy people should pay no tax while receiving only bailouts!
So I dug in on this and the batshit thing here is they have a strong enough case to absolutely win with the current court. "Strong" here meaning "believable enough for this court to bullshit."
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.
That's the 16th amendment, with the relevant part bolded. The argument is that wealth is not income, and thus this falls back on Article 1 section 9 which states
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
Effectively they're claiming that wealth taxes are direct taxes (this is another shaky part, legally, and the part referenced in Moore).
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. Found that a tax on income which was derived from property (rent, dividends, interest, etc.) was effectively a tax on the property, and so was a direct tax.
This was the case that set up for the passing of the 16th amendment, hence the shaky ground.
Wealth is property, holdings, capital, and money - thus by a... Let's call is "selective" view of cases like Pollock, the SCOTUS has reasonable plausibility in saying that this tax is direct, non-enumerated, and not income, and thus not protected.
It's a ridiculous decision that they could plausibly make, but they've shown they don't care if it's ridiculous, only plausible.
Edit: and of course, this was all planned.
The Trump tax bill largely gave up on taxing US companies’ foreign assets in the future — corporate money kept overseas is now generally immune from taxation, even if it is brought into the United States.
Also
When Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, it used a process that imposed a $1 trillion cap on how much the bill could add to the budget deficit over the next decade. So there’s a decent argument that, if Congress had known that the bill would increase the deficit by an additional $340 billion, it would have chosen not to enact any tax law at all.
Lmao at "cutting taxes raises revenue" being a thing Republicans run on
"Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. Found that a tax on income which was derived from property (rent, dividends, interest, etc.) was effectively a tax on the property, and so was a direct tax."
Ayyyy there it is, another argument for more benefits for the owners! Us schmucks should pay all the bills taken from our income and they get to laugh all the way to the bank sitting on their expensive properties they generate wealth from simply by existing. Fair and Balanced System™©®
I know it's old, but what a gross read. My income generated by my actual fucking labor should be taken, but your leech money is safe because you own a thing and do literally 0 work.
Hmm. Maybe we shouldn’t ask wealthy people who take money from even wealthier “donors” to make decisions about how much we tax wealthy people.
how dare you be anti free speech - - court who is enjoying that money
Didn’t Teddy Roosevelt implement wealth taxes via the Estate Tax and Capital Gains Tax?
These aren’t exactly new ideas. We’ve just slowly dismantled them over the past decades.
No, because taxes aren't levied until after estates are transferred or dividends are paid. Yes, the idea has been out there for a while and there are very good economic and social reasons to impose wealth taxes that other nations have already figured out and implemented, but we're...exceptional. So exceptional that we'll let our exceptionalism drive us into the ground.
This tax would aliviate the tax evasion problem Trump has been always talking of. Why do this article then fear republicans could be against the proposal?
Before you crucify me: I know Trump is amongst the tax evaders, but at least he talks openly about the issue.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The specific details of this very complicated change to the US tax code are not especially important — although, for reasons discussed below, they could matter a great deal if the Moore plaintiffs prevail.
These three cases arguably mark the dawn of the Lochner era, which is named for a 1905 Supreme Court decision that imposed strict limits on both the federal government and the states’ power to enact laws seeking to improve workplace conditions for workers.
The plaintiffs in Moore are represented by Andrew Grossman, an adjunct scholar at the right-libertarian Cato Institute, and David Rivkin, a Republican lawyer known for defending torture during the George W. Bush administration, and for filing one of the first lawsuits claiming that Obamacare is unconstitutional.
Macomber, a 5-4 decision mostly joined by pro-Lochner justices, said that “enrichment through increase in value of capital investment is not income in any proper meaning of the term.” That conclusion closely tracks the reasoning of Pollock, which was supposed to have been overruled by the 16th Amendment.
The Moore plaintiffs’ approach will be familiar to anyone who has studied the Lochner era, the age when the Court routinely struck down laws, not because they violated the Constitution, but because five justices deemed them “unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.”
When Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, it used a process that imposed a $1 trillion cap on how much the bill could add to the budget deficit over the next decade.
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