What is the Sixteenth Amendment?

Many people just take our income tax system for granted and assume that our taxation system has been with us since the founding of this country. Not true. We had an income tax initiated two or three times briefly before 1913 but it was quickly abolished quickly abolished. Prior to 1913, most of our taxes were raised by excise taxes, which are taxes on the purchase and sale of goods. But the year 1913 was a watershed year which changed our way of government from a true federalist system into a centralized system that has grown into mammoth proportions today. It was a plan that enlisted the odd alliance of international socialists and huge monied interests of the bankers. And the questionable passage of the Sixteenth Amendment was a cornerstone of that rape of our citizens' hard labor.

Our forefathers knew the dangers of centralized control and abhorred it. It had allowed kings and principalities to steal power from the voting people or from peons for centuries. They carefully framed our Constitution in order to put legal safeguards in play to prevent power brokers in our government from centralizing control and consolidating power away from the people in the various states. Our Constitution was specifically set up to give states the rights to nominate their own senators to represent them in the Federal forum. They specifically warned against taxation powers being granted based on income.

What our forebears created had never been done before, despite historical precedents from the French Revolution and common law included in the Magna Carta. But none of these precedents had incorporated safeguards against centralized control as did our Constitution. The framers did this by carefully crafting a separation of powers and a prohibition against levying any taxation on wages earned from the sweat of a man's brow. There are a lot of issues they dealt with in these turbulent times, but many, indeed most, boiled down to money issues because these men were astute enough to realize that money controlled countries and the people in them.

Jefferson and others were almost livid when they talked about taxation based on income. I quote just one of his statements on the banks - on a central bank, in particular:

"If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power of money should be taken from banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies." ~ Thomas Jefferson

In http://www.salestax.org/library/eddlem_taxation.html you can read about the thoughts of our forefathers regarding taxation. While the flames of the class wars were fanned by the populist and Democratic parties in the name of "economic justice," wealthy industrialists had their own visions of increased profits as a result of trade protection for their industries." Our Founding Fathers believed that the tariff system of taxation was the least burdensome and most fair to all citizens equally. The men who proposed and supported the initiation of a tax based on income used all sorts of arguments, the most prevalent one being that it would loosen the shackles of a tariff system and thus promote "free trade." But none of them admitted or even perhaps wanted to see the insidious nature of a system of graduated taxation that inevitably was doomed to grow into the monster it has become today. Under the Sixteenth Amendment taxation was able to be hidden behind the walls of Congress, who has used it to create wealth and favors to special interests. It has also damaged out ability to compete overseas since taxation on business has increased the price of all the goods that are sole. It was created by the insane alliance between the fear and class hatred of the many and the greed of the few. No bigger irony has ever impacted our nation to create such an immense travesty. None has surely ever been such an outrage to the good men who worked and sacrificed so much to ensure the futures of the children of this nation!

You can make up your own mind about the summations on this site. I can only repeat that when people cry "class war," it has been the ruination of entire countries and entire economies and that no class war is ever really won except by the elite who control the machinery and system of government. While the rich may be "punished" are seldom helped. It was class war that drove the Soviets to build their empire of mass executions and economic and political slavery for all but the Communist bureaucrats. Pol Pot ran a class war in Cambodia and look at the atrocities that were committed in its name. Our forebears worked hard to give us a system in which each man could rise in accordance with the sweat of his brow. The irony is that now we're truly engulfed in a global economy from which there's no exit. Our income tax system is more now than ever an integral fiber in this global network of massive corporations and their power. To ignore our system of taxation in this scenario is to be either plain stupid to the core or just to be feathering one's own political nest.

Passage of the Sixteenth amendment was inextricably linked with the formation of the private Federal Reserve, which was given authority over the entire banking system of our country-the power to control rates, to curb or precipitate inflation, to produce incentives for massive interference in global affairs.

In the following site, http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd142.htm, Devvy Kidd talks about the plan to create the private Federal Reserve, which was passed in the same year, and explains how both the Sixteenth Amendment and the creation of the Fed were completely tied together. Both were measures to ensure massive centralized control over the money and wealth of the young country and to strike a fatal blow to the Republican type of government our forebears envisioned.

In 1913, a thoroughly corrupted and largely ignorant Congress passed the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Act. Charles A Lindberg, Sr., (elected to Congress 1909-1916.) said at the time: "This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this Act the invisible government by the Money Powers, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigations, will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on depressions will be scientifically created."

In order to have a feeding artery to supply these blood suckers, the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was declared ratified even though it clearly was not. We know that not a penny of your money stolen under a law that doesn't exist funds a single function of the federal government - it all goes to pay down the congressionally created national debt. The Congress can simply borrow from the Feds whatever they need and more fiat money is created at the Treasury and loaned out at an interest rate determined by the Fed. According to Bill Benson and many others, the Thirteenth Amendment was never legally passed, but was foisted on a sleeping public by fraud at the highest levels.

http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/new/theman.asp. The income tax of 1894 had been invalidated by the Supreme Court ruling of 1895 that declared it unconstitutional. How did the proponents of the income tax, then, plot to get around this? They simply proposed an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

How the Fed Scam actually works is unbelievable, according to Devy Kidd, a non-partisan activist who has fought her whole life against centralized control of our Federalist government by any factions. She has a passionate interest in the horrid record of the IRS on attacks on citizens and its "Gestapo" tactics, which have been in place for decades.

Bill Benson found that "a total of 11 states failed to vote on the amendment, 33 changed the language of the amendment and Minnesota sent in nothing. If the process of the adoption of the amendment is subjected to strict legal scrutiny the amendment was adopted by none."

The then Secretary of State, Philander Knox, on February, 1913, "issued a proclamation claiming that 38 states had ratified the amendment, including Kentucky, California and Oklahoma. But, as previously shown, Kentucky had rejected the amendment, California had not voted on it, and Oklahoma wanted something entirely different."

According to the wording in our Constitution 'No capitation, or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the Census of Enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken.' In those two sentences our forefathers bound the hands of Congress to violate the liberty and freedom of the American people. How? - by making it utterly impossible to levy a tax on income, and thus, labor. The Constitution specifically states that any direct tax be levied directly in proportion to the number of people and not upon what they produced. This was stated this way in order to prevent taxation based on what a man earns or receives. These two sentences state quite emphatically and clearly the rights of every single man to retain the fruits of his labor himself and not be taxed on them.

That taxes are to be levied for the general welfare of the people has also been perverted. This clause of the Constitution has been misused. America functioned very well without an income tax throughout the history of this Republic. Funding without a direct tax is found is Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution since 1787. It provides that Congress pass a legislative bill for tax money to be paid by each state in proportion to its population. This is the proper and Constitutional funding for a limited form of Republican government. To continue on the path of this massive and unconstitutional spending will bring a final and massive collapse of the economy. Make no mistake about it.

In summary, I'll just end by saying that the income tax system, I truly believe, has helped nobody but has only enriched the coffers of a huge banking elite and politicians while filling our Treasury with worthless paper not backed by a real commodity. It has Not leveled the playing field. It has, instead, enabled the very wealthy citizens to sheild their income through machinations built into the system-resources available to only the very wealthy. It helped Theresa Heinz Kerry pay only a pittance in income tax. It has sheltered the vast fortunes of people like Teddy Kennedy, who screams class warfare all over the floor of Congress. It hides the immense hypocrisy of those elite who use it to enlist the support of the masses while feathering their own nests quite handsomely. The damage that this Amendment did to our country is almost immeasurable and it is so important for people to be aware of it.