Government Theft, i.e. tax Bills, Must Originate in the House of Misrepresentatives
The Judicial (J) third of the L-E-J Cabal proclaimed the "individual mandate" (IM) to be a "tax" — not a "penalty". Now, against all past rulings about "explicitly written laws", the J has ruled against their own precedent established years ago.
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
Now, a case brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation is using the court’s own terminology to argue Obamacare is constitutionally invalid.
The issue is simple: When the Senate adopted its own bill, installed it inside the shell of a separate and unrelated House bill, called it the Affordable Care Act and passed it, it created a long list of “fees” and “penalties” for Americans to pay.
But the John Roberts-led Supreme Court, recognizing the Constitution doesn’t allow the government to force people to buy consumer products, turned the “fees” and “penalties” into “taxes.”
However, the Constitution requires all tax measures be initiated in the House, not the Senate.
The recent decision by the high court upholding subsidies paid through federal exchanges, even though the law itself specified exchanges “established by the state,” actually “changes little about Obamacare,” according to PLF Principal Attorney Timothy Sandefur.
Your roadmap for surviving the nationalization of health-care decision-making is here, in “Suriving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare.”
In a statement released after last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court, which earlier affirmed Obamacare’s mandates but then struck down its demand that everyone pay for abortion-causing drugs, Sandefur said, it’s “no surprise that there are major disagreements over the meaning of this law.”
He pointed out a law more than 2,000 pages “was passed without a fair debate, literally in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve in the Senate, by a Congress that didn’t bother reading it before voting.”
"...pass the Bill to find out what's in it."
Gruber: "...stupidy of Americans..."
“Though defenders of the law desperately want the legal challenges to be over, a more fundamental constitutional challenge has been pending for several years and could reach the Supreme Court next term,” Sandefur said.
“It focuses on the fact that the law was passed in violation of the Constitution’s ‘Origination Clause,’ which requires that any tax law start in the House of Representatives,” he said. “The Supreme Court has ruled that the Individual Mandate ‘penalty’ payment is a tax – yet it started not in the House, but in the Senate.”
He noted PLF’s challenge to Obamacare on Origination Clause grounds, which is pending before the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on a motion for a rehearing of the full court, has received “impressive support” from organizations filing friend-of-the-court briefs.
WND reported earlier on the case when Judge Judith Rogers reasoned for the three-judge panel that if the aim of Obamacare is to force people to buy government-approved health insurance, the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases are incidental and allowable.
[Editor's Note: True at the time of formulating the Constitution, i.e. the House of Representatives was designed to represent the People. Today, the House represents the lobbyist with the biggest check! ]
See an explanation of the PLF’s arguments:
The Case Against the un-Affordable Tax-Fraud Act
Beard explained the”loophole” allows all sorts of taxes that “could be given a pass from having to start in the House.”
“After all, many taxes have purposes other than simply to raise revenue. Cigarette taxes, for example, are designed, also, to affect behavior.”
Using words spoken by Beardsley Ruml, chairman of the New York Federal Reserve from 1941 to 1946, we can dispel the widely believed myth that income taxes are needed for government income. Income taxes have nothing to do with providing income to the government.
In a famous speech he read before the American Bar Association during the last year of World War II, titled “Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete,” Ruml said, “The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government.”
The speech was originally printed in American Affairs in the January, 1946 issue. The editor of American Affairs wrote: “His [Ruml’s] thesis is that given (1) control of a central banking system and (2) an inconvertible currency, a sovereign national government is finally free of money worries and need no longer levy taxes for the purpose of providing itself with revenue. All taxation, therefore, should be regarded from the point of view of social and economic consequences.”
[Editor's Note: All the feds must do to get revenue is sell t-bills, notes and bonds to the Creature from Jekyl Island, the Federal Reserve. Of course, the US dollar is worth 3 cents now compared with 1913, thanx to central bank inflation.]
Even then, Sandefur said he expects the case will end up in the Supreme Court.
“PLF’s challenge to Obamacare involves fundamental constitutional principles and protections for all taxpayers, and for everyone who is covered by the tax and regulatory burdens of Obamacare,” he said.
“Americans may not be subjected to new taxes by the federal government if those taxes [don't] start in the House, the chamber closest to the people. That’s the principle underlying our lawsuit, and it’s so basic to our constitutional framework that the case ultimately deserves a judgment by the nation’s highest court.”
The case was filed on behalf of Matt Sissel, a small-business owner who wants to pay medical expenses on his own and has financial, philosophical and constitutional objections to being ordered to purchase a health plan he does not need or want.
The first case to the high court challenging the Obamacare mandate cited the Commerce Clause. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 the law was a tax and, therefore, constitutional.
In its second decision regarding Obamacare, the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court ruled the government cannot force company owners to violate their faith by funding abortion-causing drugs in employee insurance plans.
Just last week, the court said the law’s references to exchanges “established by the state” can be read broadly to include virtually every exchange that has been established, even those by the federal government.
[Editor's Note: So, let's get absurd — North Korea or Mexico is a "state". A Mexican either here illegally or residing in Mexico can get subsidies with their fraudulent Social Security number or fraudulent Birth Certificate, yes?]
That’s even though a key Obama architect specifically said the law was written to punish states that did not set up exchanges by depriving their citizens of subsidies.
Much hay has been made of video showing MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, [recommend viewing entire video] an architect of the law, arguing in 2012 that this is exactly how the system would work: “If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. …I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges.” After these remarks were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute last week, Gruber claimed it was a “speak-o”—like a typo, but from the mouth. But Gruber wasn't alone in thinking that the Affordable Care Act could expand health insurance by threatening to punish uncooperative states.
[Editor's Note: States are already PUNISHED too much by the tyrannical use of the Commerce Clause and virtually ignoring the 10th Amendment! ]
“PLF continues to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare, and others do as well. It’s little wonder that the majority of the American people have never supported Obamacare and still do not support it,” Sandefur said. “But whether the judiciary or Congress acts first, it’s time for genuine reform in health care – reform that prioritizes free markets, puts consumers in charge instead of bureaucrats, and respects the limits of the Constitution.”
Dozens of House members have filed a brief in the case explaining the ban on tax measures starting the Senate was with reason.
“The primary dividing issue between the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 (also)was the question of how to resolve the method of representation in the upper chamber. The small states preferred to retain the equal representation they had enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation, while the large states wanted to shift the national legislature to a proportional representation of the American population. No disagreement threatened the success of the convention and the new Constitution more than this one. After a month of heated debate and threats of secession, the delegates finally agreed to the Great Compromise of 1787; a bicameral legislature with equal representation of states in the upper branch, and proportional representation of the nation in the lower branch. That Great Compromise was only made possible by agreement of both sides to restrict the upper branch from originating money bills,” their brief explained.
[Editor's Note: see proposed Constitutional Convention below. ]
Another challenge to Obamacare that remains in the works alleges it violates the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth amendment provisions on privacy.
Yet another case is suing the Obama administration for making arbitrary changes – outside of Congress – in the law.
Insurance Premium Increases
Federal Loans Wasted
[Editor's Note: a Constitutional Convention is required to reverse the damage to freedom and liberty since 1900. This Article V was ratified by the participants at America's founding Constitutional Convention as an alternate path for repairing damage to freedom and liberty, a path for the People to restore damage caused by our failed representatives in the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of a government designed to represent the wishes of We the People.
The States must "demand" a Convention and explicitly specify an agenda of:
laws to be repealed or modified,
Amendments to existing constitutional clauses that define the co-equal branches to further specify and define, and
new Amendments or statutes to be eventually ratified by States.
These Amendments should further specify and clarify the powers of the Legislature and Executive Branches. A good example is the definition of a "Bill".
A Bill should contain ONLY verbiage in regards to the topic of the future law. NO earmarks and NO unrelated sections or attacments.
Many past Bills sent to a president for signature contained unrelated but essential funding sections that rendered the Bill veto-proof when it warranted a veto.
CON-gress can override a veto if the Bill is deemed absolutely necessary by CON-gress.
If the Bill requires SPECIFICALLY related amendments, the CON-gress can "debate" (with its usual theater) and vote any new amendments.
The original text of the Constitution contains some very GENERAL clauses enabling both CON-gress and Executive branches to write laws and
regulations with their particular nuances expanding powers beyond intent. "Intent" may be gleaned from a complete understanding of
Federalist Papers.
An example of further specification and clarity for CON-gress should be a clear, very specific definition of the boundaries for the interstate Commerce Clause.
To restore freedom, liberty, and individuality - minimally these must be repealed:
Currently, even with computer-searching systems, the list of antiquated and/or obsolete statutes (and related regulations) is unwieldy.
These statutes must be invalidated unless there remains an applicable reason for retaining the law(s).
Aside from invalidating statutes, there are many regulations that are biased in favor of large enterprises (who buy support from bureaucrats)
at the expense of the competition, effectively repressing the Free Market. Any regulations not related to public safety that gives a financial advantage
to some companies over their smaller rivals must be rescinded to enable all companies with good consumer products to excel without burdensome regulations.
Additionally, the Convention should adopt for ratification at least these new Amendments or statute modifications:
clearly define and limit the role of government in regards to the term "general welfare",
Term Limits for CON-gress (12 years) including a 6 month limit on time residing in DC,
strict Prohibition of Lobbying (with a comprehensive definition of "lobbying"), and
a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop wreckless spending. During a CON-gressionally declared "war" (only after USA is attacked or attack is proven "imminent"),
deficit spending is permissible.
Restore America to its roots, i.e. Defense, State, Treasury, and Justice. Some Agencies are required like CIA and NSA, both respectively focused on defense against real foreign aggressors and not fictitious paranoid delusions of war mongers. Other agencies help where certain interstate communications are necessary. Most agencies like Agriculture, Education, DEA, IRS (eliminated with 16th Amendment) and many other listed here should be eliminated.
Restore the world Gold Standard with five contentious steps, and
Replace the IMF, World Bank, and Export-Import Bank with facilities that reflect the new Gold Standard, and
After decentralizing and economizing, if tax revenue is needed to fund all or part of the federal government, then implement the Fair Tax.
Regarding a Constitutional Convention itself, some of the available literature warns the reader about a possible "unstructured" and "mismanaged"
Convention that might propose and adopt amendments that could damage the Republic.
Possible, however, it is difficult to envisage how much more damage could done over what the L-E-J Cabal has already done.
If the Convention's agenda and rules of order strictly prohibit violation of the rules and enable a vote on unlisted Amendments AFTER all others are adopted,
then the Convention will be properly structured and managed. ]
[Editor's Note: what I have dubbed the "Legislative-Executive-Judicial Cabal" which the American People have caused by ignoring the generational transition from our Constitutional Republic to what now is, in effect, an "elected" dictatorship. Never mind who is elected. Never mind which bogus party is in power. The superficial, theatrically staged, choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM. We the People still lose more freedom after every "emergency" or unnoticeably when CON-gress passes another general, open-ended law that enables the Executive (dictator) and its unaccountable agencies to formulate more freedom-restricting regulations (200 pages a day get posted to the Federal Register). The "Dictator's" agencies (police force) continue to pile-up more weapons to squelch uprising(s) when the People finally realize and understand their tyrannical government.
Currently, CONgress is just a group of socialists, progressives, and faux-conservatives (career politicians) that, on a daily basis, ignores the Constitution, many of their own past statutes, and cedes their responsibilities to the president ("elected" dictator). A comparison to the history of Rome becomes more and more credible with the Executive and its "featherbedded" lackeys gaining more power while CONgress sits back all fat-dumb-and-happy.
CONgress has made recent efforts to expose State Dept. failures in Benghazi (inept political leader), Fast-and-Furious gun-running (criminal AG), IRS 1st amendment violations, gov't union Veterans Administration fraud, and whining about Obama(Reid)-killer-Care, but these efforts are mostly politics as usual. Most "citizens" will forget about these infringements from our unaccountable, uncontrollable Executive branch with its tyrannical agencies staffed by socialist unions that extort "juicy" contracts from the "elected" dictatorship.
Most positions in the federal government whether elected, appointed, or hired are nominal, make-work jobs (confidentially) designed merely to grow government, bilk money from private businesses and citizens, and eventually fully transform America into a totalitarian state. When this happens, CONgress will have destroyed the economy and the country by their negligence and counter-liberty policies, and it will be almost impossible to Restore America. The 'Restore America' list is only a beginning too.]
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison, Federalist Paper 47, Friday, February 1, 1788
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
Those who seek out positions of power tend to be paranoid, hypocritical wimps. Consider the issue of firearms. Politicians have many thousands of mercenaries (soldiers and "law enforcers") wielding all sort of deadly weapons--guns, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. Yet those same politicians pee themselves at the thought of the rabble owning semi-automatic rifles. From their twisted, elitist perspective, it's perfectly fine for them to swipe many billions of dollars from their subjects to spend on all manner of armaments, but if YOU want to possess a rifle, they think you should have to ask their permission, and register it, and make sure they always know what you own.
They also expect to be allowed to do things in secret, while claiming the right to spy on you and everyone else. As far as they are concerned, it's none of your business what they do, or what weapons they have, but it is their business to know everything that you do and everything that you have. Of course, they will pretend that their goal is to protect you from the "criminal element," but you'd have to be pretty dense to actually believe that. Why do you suppose they mostly whine about civilians having weapons that:
are used in only a tiny percentage of actual crime, and;
are the most effective types of weapon for resisting "government"
aggression?
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. People who gravitate towards political office think they have the right to rule you. That's the job they applied for. And, of course, extorting you and bossing you around could be rather more difficult if you are better armed than their enforcers. So they hand out machine guns to their mindless thugs, but have tantrums about you having a 30-round magazine.
A new Congress has been seated, and it brings the prospect of perhaps, maybe, potentially, in a possible way doing something about the runaway federal deficits. And in other news, several New York area bridges are for sale, which you can acquire at a bargain price.
Excessive Spending Destroys!
Feds Have a Spending Problem — DO NOT RAISE THE CEILING!
Feds Have a Sewage Problem!
Becky Gerritson: "...government is out of control!" and "...our representative government has failed us."
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.
Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.
The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.
According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.
So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.
John Adams said, “Without [term limits] every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey”. That being said, here are some of the reasons we believe our country needs Term Limits.
Term Limits can help break the cycle of corruption in Congress. Case studies show that the longer an individual stays in office, the more likely they are to stop serving the public and begin serving their own interests.
Term Limits will encourage regular citizens to run for office. Presently, there is a 94% re-election rate in the House and 83% in the Senate. Because of name recognition, and usually the advantage of money, it can be easy to stay in office. Without legitimate competition, what is the incentive for a member of Congress to serve the public? Furthermore, it is almost a lost cause for the average citizen to try to campaign against current members of Congress.
Term Limits will break the power special interest groups have in Congress.
Term Limits will force politicians to think about the impact of their legislation because they will be returning to their communities shortly to live under the laws they enacted.
Term Limits will bring diversity of people and fresh ideas to Congress.
[Editor's Note: If you want to get rich, i.e. advance from a low paying government bureaucrat job on the local or state level, THEN GET ELECTED TO THE US CONGRESS (House or Senate). Once you're elected, it's easy to steal from your campaign contributions or the Congressional budget allocated to your seat and staff. You can go on a government-funded junket with 'lavishly' paid expenses. The list of ways to steal from the government while in office is inexhaustible. There are only a few Congressmen who left Congress just wealthy instead of a multi-millionaire. Of course, there are several who arrived in Congress as multi-millionaires and don't need to steal from the government.]
