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 2^nd 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 U.S. 429, 599 (1895)

Hamilton says in one of his papers (the Continentalist): 'The genius of liberty reprobates everything arbitrary or discretionary in taxation. It exacts that every man, by a definite and general rule, should know what proportion of his property the state demands;…” 1 Hamilton's Works (Ed. 1885) 270. Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429, 596 (1895)

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 U.S. 429, 596 (1895)

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 U.S. 429, 596 (1895)

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 U.S. 429, 596 (1895)

The great amendments to which Justice Fields refers are of course the 13^th Amendment barring slavery and involuntary servitude, the 14^th Amendment, containing the about to be obliterated Equal Protection clause guaranteeing to all persons the equal protection of the law, and the 15^th 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. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655, and Parkersburg v. Brown, 106 U.S. 487, 1 Sup. Ct. 442.” Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429, 599 (1895)

The concern identified by Justice Fields is simple and obvious. ALL class legislation, taxing or otherwise, violates the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment requiring that all persons be given equal protection, and treatment, under the law.

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 America as it comes to fulfillment through Barack Obama’s tax plan to exempt all persons earning less than $250,000 from any increase in tax.

“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 U.S. 429, 607 (1895 (emphasis added)

It occurs to me that since the 14^th 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 14^th 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 16^th 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 16^th 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 16^th 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 16^th 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 IRS enforcement operation as being Unconstitutional for exactly these same identified but never-discussed reasons concerning the resultant effected socialist class society ? - Congratulations, you get an A.

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 DON’T share the wealth, THEY DESTROY IT !

www.tax-freedom.com – untaught essential knowledge all Americans must know !