The Revenue Act of 1932 enacted a "temporary" tax on gasoline. After passage the Senate Finance Committee reported, "It would be entirely appropriate, therefore, for this committee, which originated the federal gasoline tax as a temporary expedient, to recommend its repeal."
Not so fast. After $125 million in collections, politicians were intoxicated with this new stream of revenue and they retained the levy. Motorists who have paid more than $1 trillion in gas taxes since 1932 are somewhat familiar with the pricey vestiges of Congress' "temporary" tax.
The gas tax is not the only "temporary" tax hike from the Revenue Act of 1932. In response to massive budget deficits (only 4.6% of GDP, compared to more than 10% in 2009), Congress enacted 24 excise taxes, including the gas tax. Some of the measures, taxes on chewing gum, brewers' wort and malt, and toilet preparations, expired as scheduled. Others, the tire, sporting goods and firearms tax, were extended.
Today, every hunter pays the firearms tax, which includes shells and cartridges. This measure has cost taxpayers more than $2.8 billion (inflation adjusted) since its inception. The levy, like other manufacturers' excise taxes, was scheduled to expire in 1936, but Congress continued the tax.
The tax on sporting goods initially included cameras and lenses, but it is now limited to bows, arrows, and fishing equipment. (Congress appears to have it out for hunters and fisherman.) Taxpayers continue to pay millions for a tax that was scheduled to expire generations ago.
Finally, the Revenue Act of 1932 also instituted an excise tax on tires. Congress continues to collect the tax and Americans have paid more than $3.8 billion in 2010 dollars since 1932.
The granddaddy of the temporary tax zombies is the telephone excise tax. It was enacted in 1898 to finance the Spanish American War, and supposedly died in 2007, but the government is scheduled to collect $2.3 billion over the next five years. During its inglorious history as a revenue generator, taxpayers have paid $360 billion (inflation-adjusted) in telephone taxes.
This "temporary" tax was scheduled for repeal in 1990, but a $277 billion budget deficit prevented its expiration. In 2006, in response to legal challenges, the Treasury Department announced an end to the long-distance telephone tax. The government issued over $2 billion in phone tax refunds in 2007, but taxes on local service were not part of the government's refund, so a form of the tax persists.
Remember when the Commerce Clause challenge to the individual insurance mandate was dismissed by all serious and knowledgeable constitutional law professors and Nancy Pelosi as “frivolous”? Well, as Jonathan notes below, the administration is now apparently telling the New York Times that the individual insurance “requirement” and “penalty” is really an exercise of the Tax Power of Congress...So Much For the Commerce Clause Challenge to Individual Mandate Being “Frivolous”
Yes, everyone knows that George Bush recess-appointed John Bolton as U.N. ambassador. . .after a contentious Senate confirmation hearing.Read More
Obama's choice to head Medicare - the Leftist, socialist free-market hating Dr. Donald Berwick (Harvard) didn't even get a hearing because Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Finance Chairman, knew that a Berwick hearing could not have stood the light of day.
Dr. Berwick is now our Rationer-in-Chief. In a 2008 speech to Britain's National Health Service on the occasion of its 60th Anniversary Berwick said this:You could have protected the wealthy and the well, instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker, and that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must - must - redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition redistribution. Britain, you chose well.
Virginia, Utah, Idaho, and other states are fighting the federal healthcare law. Arizona is protecting its borders. Washington State, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are fighting cap-and-trade legislation. Eight states are standing up for gun rights. Twenty-five states have effectively blocked the 2005 Real ID Act…Did you know: only 23 percent of voters believe that "the federal government today has the consent of the governed."
How? Through nullification.
When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as that state is concerned.
Nullify Now! is a multi-city event tour focused on education and activism on a state level to say NO to unconstitutional federal “laws” – which, in reality, are not laws at all.
Every couple of years the same drearily predictable charade repeats itself. This time we’re really going to limit government! Or so they tell us. We on the Right then dutifully compose our letters to the editor, attend rallies, and vote for candidates without whom, we are breathlessly assured, we shall all revert instantly to barbarism. And no matter who wins, the federal government grows and grows. The Right gets a bunch of pretty speeches, and the Left gets the victories.
The passive approach of crossing our fingers and hoping Washington will follow the Constitution has not worked. The only surprising thing about it is that anyone could have expected it to work in the first place. It is long past time for those of us who want to confine the federal government to its constitutional limits to try something different.
The time has come to revisit nullification, the quintessentially American mode of resistance against federal lawlessness that Thomas Jefferson urged as an essential ingredient of our political system. In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Jefferson insisted that the states needed a way to defend themselves against unconstitutional exercises of power by the federal government. Jefferson’s fear was that if the federal government had a monopoly on defining the scope of its own powers, it would be constantly discovering new ones. Likewise, James Madison urged in the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 that the states were “duty bound to resist” when the federal government violated the Constitution. (The reader will not be surprised to learn that Bill Clinton held no White House soiree in honor of the two hundredth anniversary of these documents in 1998.)
These principles were used for honorable purposes throughout antebellum American history. Virginia and Kentucky used them on behalf of free speech. The New England states employed them against unconstitutional searches and seizures. Numerous northern states used them against fugitive slave laws, provisions of which they considered unconstitutional notwithstanding the Constitution’s fugitive-slave clause. More than six decades after Jefferson penned the immortal words of the Kentucky Resolutions, the legislature of Wisconsin quoted them word for word in defense of its defiance of such laws.
Do American schoolchildren read about any of this? The question answers itself. They are about as likely to read that I, Tom Woods, am the king of England.
But all of a sudden, out of the clear blue, nullification is back. Fiscal conservatives and civil libertarians joined hands in 2005 to oppose the REAL ID Act, which involved the centralization and standardization of identification procedures. They had no idea how successful they would be. Two dozen states pledged to defy the law. Stung by this degree of resistance, the federal government gave up trying to enforce the Act.
Now, states are banding together to devise resistance measures against Obamacare, cap and trade, and a whole raft of constitutionally offensive legislation. Several states have already instituted Firearms Freedom Acts, which pledge the state to prevent the enforcement of federal gun regulations when the guns in question have never entered interstate commerce. (Color me skeptical that the recent Supreme Court decision means Americans’ Second Amendment rights are safe forever.)
So far, most conservative radio and television hosts have shied away from the issue. That’s a shame, to be sure, but it doesn’t change much. The Tea Party folks are going to nullify with or without them. Within six months these same media personalities will be huffing and puffing to catch up with what has been going on right under their noses.
But you, dear reader, ought to get in on the ground floor. The Tenth Amendment Center, for example, is sponsoring a tour of America called Nullify Now! (NullifyNow.com), which will bring these important ideas to major American cities and force them back into the American political discussion where they belong. My new book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, gives you all the ammunition you need to understand and defend nullification as an essential defense mechanism for a free people.
And my “Interview with a Zombie” YouTube video shows you how the mainstream media will handle the issue, and how we should respond.
The rebirth of nullification is not welcome news to everyone. MSNBC and the New York Times do not want us to say or do these things. They like the situation just the way it is: we make lots of noise, and they rack up the victories. They are happy if we persist in the same failed and flawed strategy that has gotten us exactly nowhere. I for one would prefer not to give them the satisfaction.
It’s fine to hold conferences, write letters to the editor, and sign petitions. But at some point it becomes morally (and practically) necessary to do more than just wring our hands about the behavior of the federal government. At some point we in our states must say: we are not going to do it. Never did I suspect that the American people would grow angry and politically aware enough to put these great principles back on the table. Ideas I once covered as a historian I am now discussing as a commentator on current events. This is the healthiest development in American politics I have seen in my life. Everyone reading these words owes it to the cause of freedom to be a part of it. We have been played for fools long enough.
Editor’s Note:
Take the time to explore Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.
Mike P.
Mr. Woods' most recent book is Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
(Regnery) and Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse
(RCP)- Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has a hard time answering why we can not seal the southern border:
Well, um, it’s, uh, it is, you know — look, uh, look there is secure and there is seal and sometimes I think in Washington, D.C. people use the terms interchangeably. You can not seal a border. You can not seal the Tuscon sector, you can’t seal this sector(actual transcript, um’s and uh’s included -ed.)
(Video here)
...It involves one of those cloud-borne Himalayan intellects of liberalism, Professor Larry Tribe, the Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at one of the most prestigious law schools in the United States. Tribe is the legal giant who is always a bridesmaid but never a bride for the Supremes.Barack Hussein Einstein at Harvard
And yea verily, the Professor met and held converse with The Blessed Lightworker Himself back in the nineties. The story doesn't say if they were both stoned out of their minds when they got together, but it's the only explanation I can think of. What happened is so weird and so discreditable to all concerned that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Still, nobody in the liberal media seems to get the joke...which tells you a lot...
Mosqueing the workplace
1. Greeley CO and Grand Island, Nebraska: JB Swift meat packing plants. Muslims get special break times. Non-Muslims protested because of the inconvenience caused to them.
2. DELL Computers: Nashville. In February 2005, thirty-one Muslims working at the Nashville, Tennessee plant of the computer firm Dell walked off the job after they were denied permission to leave their workstations and pray. Dell fired the Muslim workers, but CAIR took up their cause and began to pressure Dell to change its practices in order to accommodate Islamic prayer during the workday. Dell quickly caved. Within a month the corporation had agreed to reinstate the employees who had walked out, give them back pay, and allow them time on the job for Islamic prayer. Dell also agreed to give its managers training in accommodating Muslim demands in the workplace.
3. TARGET: in March 2007 Muslim cashiers at some Target store outlets in Minneapolis began to refuse to ring up pork products, causing delays as they had other cashiers handle the untouchable items or even told customers to ring them up themselves. Target Corporation finally opted for the path of least resistance, offering to allow the Muslim cashiers to wear gloves while operating the cash register, so as to avoid touching any of the offending pork, or to shift the recalcitrant, pork-hating cashiers to other jobs within the store.
4. FIRED for EATING BACON: Lina Morales, who for ten months held a job at Rising Star, a telecoms company in Florida. One fateful day in 2004 she was eating a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at work, and was summarily fired for violating a company rule against eating pork products on company premises. However, Morales said that she had never agreed to comply by any such rule, and indeed, “When I got hired there, they said we don’t care what religion you are.”
Special accommodation for Muslims:
5. In September 2007, the Indianapolis Airport announced that, as part of a $1.07 billion terminal renovation scheduled to be completed by November 2008, footbaths would be installed in a restroom used by cab drivers -- so that the drivers, almost all Muslims, could easily perform the rituals required before Islamic prayers. The floor-level sinks, which cost $400-600 each, would be financed through airport revenue. An airport spokesman, David Dawson, insisted, “These facilities are for everybody’s use.”
In schools:
6. In 2007 a public school, the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, announced plans to construct full preparation facilities for Islamic prayer – despite having prohibited a coffee cart from playing Christmas carols on campus the previous year. New York University followed suit in October 2007, as have many other public colleges and universities. Seventeen universities have announced plans to install footbaths, including Boston University, George Washington University and Temple University. And all of this is going on at the instigation of the MSA -- a Muslim Brotherhood organization.
7. Ridgeland School District 122 – comprising five schools in Oak Lawn, Illinois – blazed a trail when it banned pork from school cafeterias, so as to avoid offending Muslim students. (The possibility that non-Muslim students might be offended by having to conform their eating habits to Islamic dietary regulations was apparently not considered.) The pork ban even included Jell-O, since gelatin is made from pork products.
8. In San Diego’s Carver Elementary School, when over one hundred Somali Muslim students enrolled after a charter school closed in 2006, school officials scheduled breaks so that Muslim students could pray during school time, and even introduced sex-segregated classes to conform to Islamic sensibilities. Pork, of course, vanished from the school cafeteria, and Arabic classes were added to the curriculum. Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, “In effect, Carver administrators have carved out a school within a school expressly for Muslims, elevating them above Christian and Jewish students. They’ve had 15 minutes of instruction time taken away from them, so Muslims can roll out their prayer mats. It amounts to a special privilege afforded a specific religion, which plainly does not have our best interests at heart.”
Sharia finance
Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dow Jones, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank, Lloyd’s, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Standard & Poors have created “Sharia Advisory Boards,” staffed with Islamic clerics and scholars, in order to help them bring their financial practices into line with Islamic norms – so as to attract Muslim investors and help Muslims in the West find ways to avoid breaking Islamic law in their financial transactions.
A journalist who has exhaustively documented Sharia finance initiatives, Alyssa A. Lappen, reported that “among the perils of shari’a finance, according to a January [2008] analysis by Moody’s Investors Service are: A central role in investment decisions for shari’a scholars who are actually Islamic clerics; investors being forced to accept weak positions; short track records of major investors; multiple complex asset types; risky interest rates and new ventures; plus a lack of transparency combined with corporate management and risk control in the hosting Third World countries.”
Bill Whittle tells us how NASA provided inspiration for himself and America, even though it is a government run program, recently relegated from space exploration to Muslim outreach. Don't fret. The private sector is filling the void left in space by the Obama adminstration. Can the individual succeed where the federal government has failed?One Small Misstep for a Man, One Giant Leap for Private Enterprise
Alias Barack Obama: a lie is born: The greatest identity fraud in history Paperback – July 10, 2012
