Huckabee, Fair Tax.

"Americans need to learn their history" Ron Paul, The Situation Room w/Wolf Blitzer May 2007

And this thread proves it.

There are so many things about the Fair Tax to oppose that I could write a book. But before I begin listing the reasons I oppose the Fair Tax HR 25 itself I think it's nessessary to touch on a few things regarding the 16th amendment.

The text of the first paragraph of Art. 1 Sec. 8 of the US Constitution was amended to now read as the 16th amendment.

Look at Art 1 Sec 8
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.htmlA1Sec8
"Powers of Congress"
Each power listed begins with the word "To".

Two of these powers are the most relevant to the issue of taxation -- 1)The method of taxation, and 2)the jurisdiction of the taxing authority.

-To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; (method)

-To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; (jurisdiction)

Before the 16th and 17th amendments, the method of taxation was the Federal Government taxed the states (the states raised revenue via taxing foreign and interstate trade, tolls, etc.). U.S Senators were appointed by the state's legislatures (Art. 1 Sec. 3) and acted in a capacity similar to an embassador (your state embassador TO the federal government. The 17th amendment reversed their role) that negotiated the "how much $$$ " between the state and federal government. This allowed YOU to effect government all the way to the hieghts of the Federal government via your district state legislator (state rep.). Litterally the people were the boss and their reprecussions could be felt from the roots of the individual all the way to the top of the tree. A true bottom to top system of government.

"To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

.. was replaced with
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.htmlAm16
(the 16th)
"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."

this
"Duties, Imposts and Excises,"
was replaced with
"on incomes, from whatever source derived"

and this
"shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
was replaced with
"without apportionment among the several States"

All this did was take away from the states the responsibility of collecting taxes on foriegn and interstate trade (though they could still tax it for their own revenue.) , and placed all responsibility on the Federal government. "A direct" tax on foriegn (jurisdiction), and interstate (jurisdiction) trade. It did not expand the federal governments authority to tax the labor wages of the residents of the individual states. (note- and it surely did'nt give the fed authority to tax the domestic purchases of the residents of the individual states.)

The 16th amendment (ratified 2/3/1913) was needed in order to acomplish the real agenda of the Federal Government -- amend Art. 1 Sec.3 with the 17th Amendment (ratified 4/8/1913). The complete, and total, reversal of power between the states, and federal government, to a "top to bottom" system of government.

The result of the reversal of power created by the passing of the 16th and 17th amendments are the conditions we are living with today. The reason we're on the brink of revolt. The reason we work longer harder hours for less and less pay. The reason why we never seem to get ahead. The reason why most Americans feel that no matter who they vote for nothing will change. We all know something's wrong but we never make the connection between the passing of the 16th and 17th amendment, with the loss of our prosperity, and the loss of our political power as individuals.

The reason why I bring all this up first, is because any talk of repealing the 16th amendment has to include a solution for "what are we going to do with the 17th amendment", because they are adjoined at the hip so to speak.

A repeal of the 16th amendment would revert back to a reinstation to the original text of Art. 1 Sec. 8
"To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
which completely eliminates the Federal governments taxing authority on anything other than a proportion tax on the states. (At this point the fed could'nt implement a federal sales tax because the Constitution does'nt allow for it.)

This is perfect. At this point why demand a new tax to replace the old fed tax (that would require another constitutional amendment to implement)? Why not just let the individual states tax sales, and the fed then collect from the states?

See, right from the begining the Fair Tax folks fail to take into consideration the Rule of Law - the US Constitution. This fact alone, IMO makes ANY debate over the details of the Fair Tax HR 25 irrelevant.

But since the topic is specifically what I do not like about the "Fair Tax", I'll list my reasons briefly.

-We're likely to end up with both a national sales tax and an income tax. (for reasons I stated above)

-It's designed to put every single American household on the dole. Instead of simply not taxing staple items like food (which is'nt taxed in Pa.), health care, transportation, or clothing (which is'nt taxed in Pa.), they want the federal government to send each of us a "prebate" or rebate check every single month. What Fair Taxer's call a "prebate" I call "welfare".

These checks will be issued to households based on the number of people living in the household of which social security numbers or national id numbers will need to be provided to the Federal government in order to prevent fraudulent recieving of "prebate" checks.

- The requiring of Social Security numbers will further ensure that social security will never be privatized or eliminated.

Fair Taxers will argue that no one is required to file for the prebate. Ok fair enough, but what about religious folks (for instance, the Amish, Mennonites, and those who believe the SSN is the biblical Mark of the Beast) who do not have social security numbers? They would have to pay the heavy national sales tax without being compensated in any way. They will be forced underground to the blackmarket for survival.

-The requiring of a national id as an alternative to Social Security Numbers to recieve these "prebates" further ensures the need for a national id card. I expect eventually, your "national ID card" will be required when you buy anything, and databases will combine the records of your credit cards, medical records, criminal record, radio-frequency ID tags on merchandise, etc. into one vast set of interlinked records, immediately accessible to – and subject to manipulation by – government agencies. Therefore, the national sales tax will be used as another excuse to track – and manipulate – what we purchase. Instead of merely being profiled by Wal-Mart or the grocery store, your buying habits will be available in detail to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, BATF, etc.

By "manipulation" I mean, it has the potential to become Draconian once politicians realize they can use the sales tax as a control mechanism. For example, say Congress or some powerful regulatory agency decides that fatty foods or whatever are bad for you. Given the historical reputation for greed, and meddlesome social engineering of governments, it's not hard to imagine that custom tax levels would become a reality.

- Government won't have to ban firearms; they'll just place a 500 percent sales tax on them, or a 1,000 percent sales tax on ammunition.

- Your purchases could lead to criminal investigations (for buying unapproved books or contributing to the "wrong" charities), denial of insurance (for buying unhealthy foods, firearms, or cigarettes), suspension of your drivers license (for buying too much liquor), and other arbitrary bureaucratic punishments. Such investigations and prohibitions are already underway in America. The national sales tax can make them much easier by creating a federal database of all purchases in real time, linked to the identity of the purchaser.

- A national sales tax will create a huge black market, as many Fair Taxers openly admit. This will will give government another reason to make cash purchases illegal, and get rid of paper cash alltogether. The government will claim paper cash is a means of tax evasion.

(All of this becomes even more potential when there is no way to collar your US Senators ala the 17th amendment, as I discussed above.)

I could go on, as I hav'nt even gotten into the market based issues such as housing and energy, but for now what I've provided should give you plenty to mull over, and respond to.

Tell them that abolishing the irs is a great idea. Ron Paul wants to do that too. We want to cut spending to pay for it. No more tax. Huckabee wants the same level of taxes, except consumers pay it all. not such a good deal.

Does anyone even doubt that the "Fair Tax" would be implemented over time in the end? Of course we will have to keep keep our current system in place while we switch over the the "Fair Tax" won't we? Soon we will have to face the realization that we will now have both taxes to pay.

The government will never give up any revenue stream and would love to get their hand on another.

Our national debt is now One Million Dollars a Minute. There is no such thing as a Fair Tax to me. Super rich pay nothing everybody else pays.

I was a very big supporter of the Fair Tax, until I thought about it in this way:

Income Tax
----------------
* Takes away my money that I can use on other more productive things
* Not Used by the Government in a better way then I could use it
* Promotes Large Government
* Is Unconstitutional
* Because It is Unconstitutional, once contested hard enough - can be killed.

Fair Tax
-------------
* STILL Takes away my money that I can use on other more productive things
* Will NOT be used by the Government in a better way then I could use it
* Does NOT reduce the size of the Government
* IS Constitutional
* Because it is constitutional, once implemented will be hard to reduce, get rid of or control by the people

Basically, the government realizes that the IRS is detested and hated by many and its life span is probably coming to an end due to its illegality by the Constitution.

So, they devise a better plan to keep OUR money in their pockets and make it Constitutional and 'play on the hate of IRS' to get this plan implemented.

Do you think 'Tax-Hike-Mike' would support it if it wasn't better for the Government?

What do you choose? Tax or No Tax?
We have Dr. Paul to set things right, he wants to abolish the IRS, and replace it with NO Tax. I can not understand why some of us would even consider replacing it with anything else?

When we get Dr. Paul to the White house, we will finally be able to do something about the size of our Government. Why even consider for a second that one tax is better than another? Especially when it is proven that the Government does NOT need that money. They just need to be disciplined by us to reduce spending.

Reducing only about 35% of Government Spending (right about the level of Year 2000) will allow us to abolish the Income Tax and replace it with NOTHING!!

Can you taste the freedom? Having ALL of your money for yourself?

Lets be unified in this vision that Dr. Paul has presented to us - once he is in office don't even for one second consider that ANY tax is better than another.

Look, this is very simple. Whenever somebody mentions the words "Huckabee" and "tax" in the same sentence, direct them here: http://taxhikemike.org/

Period.

---Signature---
Liberals want to be your Mommy. Conservatives want to be your Daddy. Libertarians want to treat you like an adult.
---
Stop the Thought Crimes Act (H.R. 1955) with one click: http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=10528846

I hate to see Huckabee get traction over the "abolish the IRS" issue. He's such a johnny come lately on it compared to Ron. Living in Arkansas, I can tell you that Huckabee never met a tax he didn't like, and he wouldn't abolish any program in Washington. He didn't in Arkansas, and he sure couldn't under the special interest pressure of Washington.

I like Ron's approach, "We'll do away with the income tax system and replace it with "nothing".

I've always felt proud of the level of education and of the ability to see the nuanced aspects of difficult issues by Ron Paul supporters. This backlash by some against the FairTax is seriously scary though. Idealism must meet with pragmatism when you are trying to get someone elected. Like it or not, RP will not get rid of taxation entirely while in office. All he can do is start a process. The FairTax is one potential part of that process. It's not the only way to go, but it's by far the best one I've seen. Supporters of the FairTax are either POTENTIAL or CURRENT supporters of Ron Paul. Get them to come from Huckabee OVER to Ron Paul. You won't do it by bashing the FairTax. Read the book, understand its points, THEN pan it if you want. All of the criticisms I've read on this forum are answered clearly and intelligently in the book. Shoot, there is a section entirely related to the criticisms. Read that if you can't read the whole book. I support Ron Paul. If he wasn't running, I'd support Huckabee if ONLY for the FairTax.

Regardless of the Numbers, there is no way the IRS goes away. My own feeling is (just gut) that we will need more IRS or Some Taxing Authority to Monitor. Remember, under the current tax system, the taxes are withheld and the IRS just has to machine read the W2 or 941 or whatever.
A great deal of the dog work is already done and afterwards by various tax code programs comparisons can be made of deductions, tax owed etc.
Feel it will be a lot more difficult and number of employees in the IRS will grow and the chance to cheat on payments will increase dramatically.

In addition as I have mentioned on previous occasions the Heavy Voting population, the old goats like myself will not take to kindly to the idea of paying taxes on monies being spent that has already been taxed during our working careers.

The only way to reduce the size or eliminate the IRS, will be number one get our troops home so we can work on the massive savings possible and then go to the Dr. Paul's Zero Income tax. Huckabee's plan has to be exposed as bs.

Spending is the real measure of the burden of government on the economy (us). The whole FairTax thing is a complete fraud. It just redistributes the way the money is collected. It does not reduce the size of government. Also, it is bad because it taxes the black (read free) market.

When they would get the fair tax. Along with the National Id Card. The government would know everything you purchased. Now with the national Id card and the flat tax and universal health care. They can tell what you eat. They then can regulate what you buy. Telling for your health, you cannot have too much salt, saturated fats, red meat, potatoe chips, pizzas, cigarettes, butter, margerine,,,,etc. etc. What a wonderful world it will be........Sarcasim included. Oh yeah too much booze. That you went to the movies too often..... you used too much gasoline. Watched too much television. your water usage needs to be lower. Smile....You will be on candid camera!

www.ronpaul2008.com