Just to save me some time, I copied this from a rant I had on another site, but I think it is pretty relevant to this issue.
"The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the International Bankers was the Prime reason for the Revolutionary War." -- Benjamin Franklin
Source? The language of this quote doesn't even sound like 18th century English. Who in the 1700s would use the term "international bankers?"
Here's wikiquote's take on it:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Disputed
Seems like it dates back to a Canadian from 1913.
Woodrow Wilson, the acting President at the time even regretted his mistake:
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson
Manufactured quote.
Wilson never made that statement, but instead said things in a book that were used to construct that statement.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Misattributed
The source book is available online for all to read. The link is at wiki.
"I think if you were to go back and try to find and review the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which was the internal revenue, Income Tax, I think if you went back and examined that carefully, you would find that a sufficient number of states never ratified that amendment." -- Federal Judge James C. Fox (page 23)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/m...11998400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rs&pagewanted=all
Quote from the NYT piece:
To buttress the claim that the 16th Amendment is invalid, the film displays a quotation from a federal district judge, James C. Fox. But the transcript from which the judge’s words were taken shows that while he spoke those words, they were in the context of laying out issues and that the conclusion he reached was the opposite of the words quoted.
Judge Fox, the transcript shows, concluded that no court would accept any argument that the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified and therefore invalid.
"The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice White, first noted that the Sixteenth Amendment did not authorize any new type of tax, nor did it repeal or revoke the tax clauses of Article I of the Constitution... Direct taxes were, notwithstanding the advent of the Sixteenth Amendment, still subject to the rule of apportionment and indirect taxes were still subject to the rule of uniformity." -- 1980 Congressional Research Report
If you want to use Brushaber for support let's use the actual words of the decision
(link). What did Cheif Justice White say?:
That the authority conferred upon Congress by 8 of article 1 'to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises' is exhaustive and embraces every conceivable power of taxation has never been questioned, or, if it has, has been so often authoritatively declared as to render it necessary only to state the doctrine. And it has also never been questioned from the foundation, without stopping presently to determine under which of the separate headings the power was properly to be classed, that there was authority given, as the part was included in the whole, to lay and collect income taxes.
This is the text of the Amendment:
'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.'
It is clear on the face of this text that it does not purport to confer power to levy income taxes in a generic sense,-an authority already possessed and never questioned,-or to limit and distinguish between one kind of income taxes and another, but that the whole purpose of the Amendment was to relieve all income taxes when imposed from apportionment from a consideration of the source whence the income was derived.
What he's saying is that the Congress has always had the power to tax incomes (that may legitimately be disputed), but that the purpose of Amendment XVI was simply to remove the apportionment clause, and so solve the problem of the Pollock case. Stop citing Brushaber as if it supports your conclusions, it doesn't. It also concludes that the newer Amendment is not a violation of Amendment V's "takings clause." I saw you do this in the Yahoo! Answers thing earlier this week:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070623012346AASt9BR&show=7 You're not making your case any better by repeating things that don't support you.
This is also backed up by Supreme Court case: Stanton v. Baltic, "...the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation..."
Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.
(link) merely affirmed the Brushaber case decided one month earlier. Here's a quote in context:
But, aside from the obvious error of the proposition, intrinsically considered, it manifestly disregards the fact that by the previous ruling it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation subject to apportionment by a consideration of the sources from which the income was derived,-that is, by testing the tax not by what it was, a tax on income, but by a mistaken theory deduced from the origin or source of the income taxed.
I think it is pretty obvious where the law is. Which is exactly what Ed and Elaine Brown stated, "Show us the law and we will pay!".
A stupid argument on behalf of the Browns. The law is clear for anyone willing to look it up. It's not an article of faith, it's there for the reading, like all of the other laws on the books.
What they should be saying instead of their stupid argument is that even though there is a law requiring people to pay income taxes, it is immoral because it represents the government initiating force against the citizens and we won't follow an immoral law.
And here is the law:
Title 26,
Subtitle A,
Chapter 1,
Subchapter A,
Part I.
Inside Part I we find first: that a
tax is imposed. And if you're unsure of the definitions of certain words like, "surviving spouse", or "head of household", the
second part of Part I tells us what they mean.
