A previous PeacockWatch article, Our Great Tyranny Engine, explained how our federal government has gobbled up our liberty by creating a problem or crisis, and then passing more laws that require more government and more taxes to solve the crisis of their making. This is the basic design of that engine, but as with any engine, fuel is required to power it. That fuel for this engine is tax dollars, and the main provider of dollars to our government is our Federal Income Tax system.
This system not only creates the means to grow government, but worse, it gives the politicians almost unlimited power to barter away tax breaks and entitlements for campaign funds and votes. Indeed, our tax code is the big litter box when it comes to transactions between lobbyist and politicians.
The tax code is used for everything from social engineering to pitting people who pay taxes against people who do not, again, for political gain. The system is rapidly approaching a tipping point where the amount of people not paying taxes and/or deriving benefits from the government will exceed the numbers of people paying taxes and receiving very little direct benefit from government. This creates a perceived permanent majority for the party that is deemed to have provided the most benefits.
The tax code itself is hopelessly complex (even the IRS does not understand many parts of it), costly to maintain and enforce, and intrusive into the private lives of citizens. It has been abused by Presidents and politicians alike, having been used for retribution against political opposition. At its core, it punishes success and rewards failure.
Our tax code is all of the egregious things above, but first and foremost, it is the fuel for the engine designed to enslave us.
In 1903 Federal Government spending was a mere 6% of GDP. The 16th Amendment was enacted in 1913, authorizing the federal income tax. In the current fiscal year, spending is 45% of GDP, and climbing steeply in the out years of our current budget.
To maintain any semblance of liberty, and to strike at ever increasing federal power, this fuel must be cut off. Yet, even a smaller engine of government needs some fuel. If the income tax is repealed, it must be replaced with something that provides predictable fuel, but takes power out of the hands of the politicians.
Over the past several years there have been alternatives proposed to eliminate the federal income tax, perhaps the most popular being the “Fair Tax”, basically a flat rate consumption tax which would replace the income tax, social security, and medicare taxes. It has some popular support, but it will never see the light of day in our Congress, and very few politicians of either party will even take questions on it. Again, it is the source of their power over us. They will not cede this power, so it must be taken away.
Short of a bloody revolution, how can this be peacefully done? Randy E. Barnett, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University and author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, has some ideas on this.
In his Op/Ed piece (Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2009, “How the Tea Partiers can make Washington pay attention”, Professor Barnett says that the states must take back power from the Federal Government.
Tea Party Peaceful Assembly
The states have the power to call a Constitutional Convention by a vote of two-thirds of the states, and any law produced from such a convention could be passed into law by a three-quarters vote of the states. Such a move would be feared because its scope cannot be limited in advance. All things would be on the table. Yet, says Professor Barnett, “It is precisely the fear of a runaway convention that states can exploit to bring Congress to heel”. The state legislatures could petition Congress for a convention to propose a specific amendment. Congress could then avoid such a wide-open convention by proposing this specific amendment to the states before the number of state petitions reaches two-thirds.
What would this amendment be? It would be a proposal to repeal the 16th Amendment. Such a threat for a general convention has worked before, and resulted in the passing of the 17th Amendment, according to Professor Barnett.
The message here is that the states must take the lead in changing the direction of this country. In November, we may put conservatives back in charge of one or the other of our Congressional bodies, but can we forget what the GOP did when they were last in power? Both parties at the Federal level are the problem. Neither is the solution. The solution must begin at the state level.
Below are several charts that show the political make-up of the states as of October, 2009. The first is a chart that shows state senators (red is GOP, blue DEMS), and shows a lot more red than blue. The second is state representatives (white being evenly balanced). Again, there is a similar pattern.
State Senators (Source: Webfoot.com)
State Representatives (Source: Webfoot.com)
We need 34 states to vote for such an Amendment, and it would seem that the best agency to mobilize the electorate state by state would be the infant Tea Party Movement. This movement sprung from local roots, and before attacking the national level, it would appear that the best chance for success would be at the local level. After all, all politics are local.
The Tea Party Movement could also take a lesson from what has happened in Colorado between 2006 and the present. Colorado, for its entire history has been the reddest of states. In that year, Republicans held both Senate seats, five of seven congressional seats, the governor’s mansion, the offices of secretary of state and treasurer, and both houses of the state legislature. After the 2008 election, in one of the most stunning reversals of political fortune in American history, the exact opposite was true.
What caused this reversal? In 2006, three internet multi-millionaire’s who were dedicated progressives conspired to buy Colorado for their cause by using 501 C type organizations, enabled by the new campaign reform laws, to shape their message. With discipline and focus, they have pioneered a legal architecture designed to take advantage of the new campaign finance laws and an emerging breed of progressive donors who are willing to commit unprecedented resources to local races.
The interesting thing here is that very little has been written in the press on how this historic shift was engineered. Perhaps this is because that in Colorado the progressives feel they have found a formula to create permanent Democratic majorities across the nation.
Fortunately, this story has been captured in a new book, The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care), by Adam Schranger and Rob Witwer. The Tea Party Movement, who seems to be wrestling with strategies and organization, should begin with this book.
This is not to say that turning 34 states red will accomplish the constitutional strategy outlined above. Republican or Democrat, state politics has become the minor leagues where the ambitions are to advance to the big leagues of Washington DC. Somehow, the end objective of repealing the 16th Amendment needs to be uncalculated into the process of turning these states red.
