You're Wrong! The 16th Amendment "IS" Constitutional, but it simply "does not" apply to...

The 16th Amendment is Constitutional and it “DOES NOT” apply to your Wage, Salary, Labor, or Tips, and never has!
Amendment 16 says: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration". This Amendment thus places this tax under the “Indirect Tax” classification of the Constitution.
The 16th Amendment is Constitutional because it does not tax your labor, salary, wages or tips. Those are the “sources” from which any income derived (made), would be taxable under that Amendment.
There is a clear distinction in the use of the words “FROM” and “ON” in that Amendment and the high Courts have made that distinction. The definition of Income doesn’t really matter. What the Congress “can” tax is what matters. The 16th Amendment states that the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, “FROM” whatever source derived, not “ON” whatever source derived. If the income tax was on your labor, then making labor would be income, but it’s not. Since the 16th Amendment and Title 26 (IRS Code) only tax income “FROM” your labor, you must first have labor and then derive income from that labor, like investing it in a CD, or savings account. The interest on that labor (the source), not the labor, would be income. Sounds completed but it’s not.
Here’s a perfect example. Just like a capital gains tax, the tax on a property purchased for $100,000 and sold for the same amount is zero. Why? No gain. The capital gains tax is not “ON” the property itself, it’s “FROM” the gain on the property. You see? The capital gains tax on a property purchased for $100,000 and sold for $150,000, has a capital gains tax of $50,000. No gain, no tax. So in this example the capital gains tax is just like the income tax, the tax is derived “FROM” the gain on the property, not “ON” the property itself. So the property in the above example is the same as the property being your labor. Your labor is not taxed, any gain from your labor is subject to the taxing power of the 16th Amendment.
It doesn’t matter what meaning is given to income. What matters is that, according to the 16th Amendment itself, the income tax is laid on all incomes “FROM” the source, not “ON” the source. I have listed 5 high appellate court cases, including the United States Supreme Court, which bears me out.
Now, go try and sell this argument to the government and see how far you get. Unfortunately, “might makes right” in this case. They have the might, so we lose a right. Or, do you feel like standing up for your rights yet?
_______________________________
Oliver v. Halstead, 86 S.E. Rep 2nd 859 (1955):
"There is a clear distinction between `profit' and `wages', or a compensation for labor. Compensation for labor (wages) cannot be regarded as profit within the meaning of the law. The word `profit', as ordinarily used, means the gain made upon any business or investment -- a different thing altogether from the mere compensation for labor."
Lucas v. Earl, 281 U.S. 111 (1930):
"The claim that salaries, wages, and compensation for personal services are to be taxed as an entirety and therefore must be returned by the individual who has performed the services which produce the gain is without support... it is not salaries, wages, or compensation for personal services that are to be included in gains, profits, and income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal services."
Conner v. U.S., 303 F Supp. 1187 (1969):
"... whatever may constitute income, therefore, must have the essential feature of gain to the recipient. This was true when the 16th Amendment became effective, it was true at the time of Eisner v. Macomber, it was true under Section 22(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1938, and it is likewise true under Section 61(a) of the I.R.S. Code of 1954. If there is not gain, there is not income ... CONGRESS HAS TAXED INCOME NOT COMPENSATION."
Edwards (vs) Keith, 231 F110, 113 (1916):
"The phraseology of form 1040 is somewhat obscure .... But it matters little what it does mean; the statute and the statute alone determines what is income to be taxed. It taxes only income "derived" from many different sources; one does not "derive income" by rendering services and charging for them... IRS cannot enlarge the scope of the statute."
Lauderdale Cemetary Assoc. v. Mathews, 345 PA 239; 47 A. 2d 277, 280 (1946):
"... reasonable compensation for labor or services rendered is not profit."

As Texas attracts California companies, will Texas be Californicated?

Years ago, road signs at the border proclaimed: “Welcome to Oregon, Now Go Home” and: “Don’t Californicate Oregon,” met California motorists as they crossed into Oregon. Those signs are long gone as the process of transforming Oregon into a liberal blue state, have been completed.
California’s Apple Computer recently announced that expanding their Texas presence will make them central Texas’s largest employer.

Other large California corporations say they are transferring all or part of their operations out of the once formerly golden state. California has been getting deluged with television ads from other states, particularly Texas, who invite them to set up shop in their business friendly environments.
Apple, Campbell Soup, Comcast, Chevron Oil, Google and countless others are just the public tip of the iceberg, as California is engulfed in an economic wildfire burning up its private sector with record high taxes and miles of government red tape.
But will Texas and other business friendly “red states” soon regret what they wished for as they woo California business to their fold?
California’s recessions of the 70’s-80’s saw an outflow of residents seeking jobs and more reasonable living conditions in neighboring states. These new residents established themselves and invited extended families and friends to join them.
Soon these new residents started to outnumber the native Oregonians/Washingtonians and Nevadans. These former “red or red leaning states” with a rural flavor, started to see a distinct transformation of demographics, especially in their larger cities and urban areas. Today these states are reliable blue, or blue leaning states, supplying Washington DC, with an unending stream of liberal politicians who impose their values on the rest of America.
Google, another California company that has had Al Gore as one their senior directors, is a huge consumer of electric energy. Ironically/hypocritically, Google been quietly shifting operations to more energy friendly states/countries; translated: Fossil fueled energy states. Recently Google announced it especially loved Irelands cool rainy climate, which they claim make it a more energy efficient location. Ireland’s energy sector is fueled mainly with fossil fuel.
Last month, George Lucas announced he had sold his Lucas Film operation to Disney for a whopping 4 billion. Lucas had finally given up his decade’s long/multi million dollar battle with environmental zealots of Marin County California to expand his facilities. Eventually these hundreds of jobs will be transferred out of Marin to friendlier business climates. California’s film industry is already producing many of its films out of state where they are being wooed w/large tax credits.
California’s new main export seems to be companies and jobs that it once used to attract like a magnet. But will this export of California prove detrimental to the very business friendly states that are attracting them?

Ed Farnan: An American with Irish roots living in California. Took an interest in politics when politics took an interest in me. Follow Ed on Twitter also catch his regular post on Irish Central

The Supreme Court decisions concerning the 16th Amendment

The Supreme Court is bound by the Constitution.  In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution grants jurisdiction to the federal government to regulate three areas of commerce:  “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” - in other words, foreign commerce, interstate commerce, and Indian commerce.   
          The 16th Amendment, the income tax, has been the subject of many Supreme Court decisions.  The IRS always cites to the Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916), to inform the public that the income tax was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court.  What the IRS doesn’t inform the public about Mr. Frank Brushaber, the central character in the Supreme Court case, is that he was a withholding agent for several foreign investors in the Union Pacific Railroad, acting as their fiduciary.
          The Supreme Court, obviously being aware of all of the pertinent details, ruled in the Brushaber case that the federal government always had the power to tax income as an excise tax and, therefore, the 16th Amendment is constitutional.
          The Supreme Court then ruled in the very next case it decided, Stanton v. Baltic Mining, 240 US 103 (1916), the following:  “… that by the previous ruling it was settled that the provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged and being placed in the category of direct taxation subject to apportionment by a consideration of the sources from which the income was derived…”.  The ”previous ruling” cited in the Stanton decision was referring to the Brushaber decision.
          A few years later the Supreme Court again ruled upon the 16th Amendment’s effect on the federal government’s power of taxation.  In Peck & Co. v. Lowe, 247 US 165 (1918), the Supreme Court stated, in part:  “The Sixteenth Amendment … does not extend the taxing power to new or excepted subjects …”.     
          The Supreme Court decisions above all inform everyone that no new power of taxation was granted to the federal government by the 16th Amendment.  These decisions all inform everyone that the federal government always had the power to tax income from the beginning.  Since no new power of taxation was granted to the federal government by the 16th Amendment and the federal government was held to always have had the power to tax income, then the revenue that’s being derived by the federal government from an income tax must come from one of the regulated commerce jurisdictions granted to the federal government by the Constitution – therefore, this revenue must come from foreign commerce, interstate commerce, or Indian commerce.  After all, generating income is a commercial activity.
          The Supreme Court ruled exactly that in Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189 (1920), where the Court stated the following:  “The 16th Amendment must be construed in connection with the taxing clauses of the original Constitution and the effect attributed to them before the Amendment was adopted.”.       
          By realizing that Mr. Frank Brushaber was a fiduciary for foreign investors in the Union Pacific Railroad, it becomes obvious that the revenue being derived by the federal government from the income tax must come from foreign commerce.
          After the Brushaber and Stanton Supreme Court decisions were rendered, the Treasury Department issued its own decision, Treasury Decision 2313 (TD 2313).  TD 2313 was issued to “collectors of internal revenue” and it stated that the Internal Revenue Form 1040 is to be used only by the fiduciary of a nonresident alien who has received interest from bonds and dividends on the stock of domestic (US) corporations on behalf of that nonresident alien.  This Treasury Decision, which was based upon the Supreme Court decisions, confirms the foreign commerce nature of the income tax.  
          The statutes that make up the Internal Revenue Code must, therefore, be read in mind with the above Supreme Court decisions as well as the following Supreme Court decision:
          “It is elementary law that every statute is to be read in the light of the Constitution.  However broad and general its language, it cannot be interpreted as extending beyond those matters which it was within the constitutional power of the legislature to reach.” – McCullough v. Com of Virginia, 172 U.S. 102 (1898).
          The Social Security scam was created to enslave free, sovereign Americans.  An American applying for a Social Security number has become a federal employee by joining a partnership (the Social Security number is the partnership number) that is attributing an undistributed dividend to that American as a partner in that partnership, said dividend being the link to foreign commerce that subjects that American to Treasury Decision 2313 and the requirement to file an Internal Revenue Form 1040.  The undistributed dividend, known as a patronage dividend within the Internal Revenue Code, is offset by the American’s foreign tax credit, FICA.
          The Internal Revenue Form 1040 has a large section titled “Tax and Credits”.  Within that area are various credits that can be claimed by attaching the corresponding form, for instance:  Form 2441 for credit for child and dependent care expenses, Schedule R for credit for the elderly or the disabled, Form 8863 for education credits, Form 5695 for residential energy credits, Form 8880 for retirement savings contributions, etc.  However, the foreign tax credit line states “Attach Form 1116 if required”.  It only states “if required” because the Form 1040 automatically is claiming a foreign tax credit, FICA.  FICA is a possession tax as stated at 26 USC Section 7655, and the possessions are treated as foreign countries (26 USC Section 865 and Section 872 for example).  This makes FICA a foreign tax and it is the credit that is used to offset the earnings represented by the undistributed patronage dividend.
          Social Security is the biggest fraud ever instituted – making a free, sovereign American nothing more than a subservient slave for the federal government.  The federal government (actually its owners, the international counterfeiters who have bankrupted the federal government) has had to contrive this incredible fraud in order to get around the bedrock of America – the Declaration of Independence which states that “all men are created equal”.  Since all men (and women) are created equal, no one American or group of Americans may initiate fraud or force against another American or group of Americans, including the government, which is simply made up of other Americans.  No one may convey a power to any government agent that that person does not have.  In other words, Americans can not vote to give a power to the government that Americans do not have to begin with.  The government and its owners, the international counterfeiters (the Federal Reserve) know that the government has no power over free, sovereign Americans.  The prohibition, the depression, and wars have all been masterfully engineered in order to get Americans to give up their sovereignty by enrolling in Social Security.
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Britain feels strain as austerity bites

British households are facing financial strain

LONDON (CNNMoney)

Millions of Britons are facing a bleak holiday season worried about falling incomes and how to repay debt, as economic reports raise questions about whether the country's austerity measures can restore growth.

A survey released Monday showed 43% of households expect their finances to deteriorate in 2013, compared with only 24% who expect an improvement.

"The vast majority of households anticipate that their financial well-being will either worsen or stagnate next year," said Tim Moore, senior economist at financial data provider Markit, which compiled the report.
"With three-quarters of all households not expecting any improvement in their finances, the latest survey suggests that domestic consumer demand will remain under pressure in the near term -- especially since inflation perceptions remain elevated and job insecurities are prevalent across the U.K."
Related: Europe's Debt Crisis
Britain has stuck fast to its austerity program of spending cuts and tax hikes, despite evidence that the economy will shrink this year. The government said earlier in December that the belt tightening would have to continue into 2018, which is a year longer than expected.
While the U.K. economy started to grow again in the third quarter of 2012, the rate was revised down on Friday to 0.9% from 1.0%. Reports show that most of Britain's growth this year was due to one-off factors such as the London Olympics.
National output remains about 3% below pre-recession levels, with many economists expecting the world's sixth biggest economy to contract slightly again in the fourth quarter.
Related: UK growth slowing as Europe weakens
The British government is also struggling to bring down borrowing. Figures released Friday show the U.K. budget deficit stood at £17.5 billion in November, compared with about £16.3 billion a year ago.
Spending cuts, falling incomes, inflation and the legacy of debt are combining to squeeze millions of households, with many Britons no better off than they were over a decade ago.
In a recent report, independent researchers at the Resolution Foundation said they had identified 3.6 million households as "debt loaded". These households were spending more than a quarter of their income on secured and unsecured debt repayments, displaying high levels of concern about their debt, and lacking any wiggle room in the face of future financial shocks.
"Widespread pessimistic expectations for finances in 2013 are a reminder that the underlying situation is that household finances are under severe strain from lower incomes and higher living costs," Markit's Moore said.
At its most extreme, the impact is forcing many more British families to seek food handouts this Christmas. The Trussell Trust, which oversees a network of more than 250 food banks, expects to feed 15,000 people over the holiday period -- almost twice as many as last year.

China on alert for Japanese fighter jets over East China Sea

BEIJING -- China is on alert after Japan dispatched fighter jets to airspace over the East China Sea, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Hua Chunying made the remarks at a daily news briefing. Media reports say Japan's Air Self-Defense Force sent F-15 fighter jets to the area on Saturday to intercept a Chinese marine surveillance plane bound for the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.
"As far as I know, China's marine surveillance plane you mentioned has been conducting routine patrols in airspace over the East China Sea," she said in response to a journalist's question.
"The Chinese side is highly concerned with, and alert to, Japan sending the Air Self-Defense Force jets," said the spokeswoman, adding that China had lodged solemn representations to Japan over the issue.
"The Chinese side will pay close attention to Japan's intentions," she added.

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載滿觀光客‧緬甸客機迫降斷開2死11傷

飛機從中部斷開，造成2人死亡，11人受傷。
蒲甘航空公司表示，這架機齡老舊的福克式100型飛機由瓦城起飛，飛往撣邦海霍機場，在距機場 3公里處緊急迫降。這處機場是通往緬甸熱門旅遊勝地茵麗湖的門戶。緬甸政府近年推動系統改革措施，打開門戶，吸引大批遊客湧入觀光，但最新的空難事件讓人 質疑緬甸新興的旅遊業及航空業的安全標準。

 

   
  迫降於稻田的飛機機身斷開及遭大火吞噬。（圖：法新社）

緬甸信息部在官網表示，飛機在濃霧中迫降，卻撞及機尾而起火。但有匿名官員告訴法新社，飛機在飛行途中引擎著火，在機場附近緊急迫降時，機身從中間斷裂。一名準備接機的當地導遊說：“火幾乎燒了整架飛機。”
緬甸民航局副局長說：“機上當時有71名乘客，只有1人喪生，非常罕見。”緬甸當局已對今次空難事件展開調查。航空公司稱已找到黑盒，將查明事故原因。
機上有71人，其中51人是外國旅客。蒲甘航空表示，有4位外籍遊客受傷，包括2名美國人、1名台灣人及1名法國人。
撞上摩哆車1死
較早前，信息部指機上死者年僅11歲，但航空公司後來澄清，死者是一名導遊。另外，飛機迫降時撞上機場附近街道的1輛摩哆車，造成1人喪生。航空公司起初表示，這次事件是緊急降落，但後來改口：“飛機在距海霍機場約1.6公里處降低高度時撞上電纜，迫降在稻田。”
但據英國廣播公司（BBC）引述航空公司代表報導，認為飛機駕駛員在濃霧中判斷失誤，將公路當成機場跑道。

Say Goodbye To The Good Life

The Economic Collapse – by Michael
Will this be the last normal holiday season that Americans ever experience?  To many Americans, such a notion would be absolutely inconceivable.  After all, in the affluent areas of the country restaurants and malls are absolutely packed.  Beautiful holiday decorations are seemingly everywhere this time of the year and children all over the United States are breathlessly awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus.

Even though poverty is exploding to unprecedented levels, most families will still have mountains of presents under their Christmas trees.  Of course a whole lot of those presents were purchased with credit cards, but people don’t like to talk about that.  It kind of spoils the illusion.
Sadly, the truth is that our entire economy is a giant illusion.  The extreme prosperity that we have been enjoying has been fueled by debt, and any future prosperity that we will experience is completely dependent on our ability to go into even more debt.  The total amount of debt in our economy is almost 10 times larger than it was just 30 years ago, but we don’t like to think about that too much.
Most Americans are way too busy living the good life to be bothered with “doom and gloom”.  Well, get ready to say goodbye to normal.  As history has shown us, no financial bubble lasts forever, and time is rapidly running out for us.
You know that the hour is late when even mainstream news sources start publishing articles with titles such as this: “Will 2013 Mark the Beginning of American Decline?”
That article appeared on Bloomberg.com the other day, and it was written by Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.  He is convinced that a day of reckoning is coming for U.S. government finances, and he seems resigned to the fact that we will not be ready when that day arrives…

“Sooner or later, it will be America’s turn to fall out of favor with investors and to see its own interest rates rise. It is hard to know when that day will come, or precisely what pressures the country will face.
Let me only venture one forecast: We will not be ready.”

Other analysts are far more pessimistic.  For example, the following is what Gerald Celente said about the “bond bubble” during a recent interview with King World News…

Eric King: “Gerald, I wanted to take a look at this upcoming issue you have coming out. (In here it says,) ‘Bonds Away! The bond bomb is ready to explode … threatening to make the real estate and dot-com bubbles, and even the Great Recession, look like market corrections.’ Can you talk about that?”
Celente: “Yes. This piece is being penned by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan. And he is convinced that the bond bubble is about to burst. This cannot continue to go on the way it is. Everyone knows that the whole game is rigged, and so is this….”
“The whole game is rigged. It’s ready to go down, and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts believes it’s ‘Bonds Away’ in 2013 as the bond bubble explodes and brings about a financial disaster even worse than the Great Depression.”
Eric King: “He’s saying here it’s a road to financial collapse that we are going to head down when this thing bursts.”
Celente: “It is. Because the whole world is being propped up by these phony bonds and it’s going to collapse. It has to happen. Interest rates are going to start going up, and when they do the bond bubble explodes. You cannot keep interest rates at zero for this amount of time and expect anything other than disaster to follow.”

For much more on all this, you can listen to another excellent interview with Gerald Celente right here.
Our politicians just assume that we will be able to borrow trillions upon trillions of dollars far into the future at super low interest rates, but that is a very dangerous assumption.
As I noted the other day, the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt was 2.534 percent at the end of November.  If that number just rose to where it was about a decade earlier we would be in a massive amount of trouble.
Back in the year 2000, the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt was 6.638 percent.  If we were at that level today, the U.S. government would be paying out more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.
But our politicians just keep borrowing and spending as if we could do this forever.
From the time that George Washington was inaugurated (1789) to the time that George W. Bush was inaugurated (2001), the U.S. government accumulated about 5.7 trillion dollars of debt.
During the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about 5.7 trillion dollars of debt.
How can anyone support this kind of insanity?
You can see an excellent video demonstrating the vastness of our national debt right here.  In the end, all of this debt will absolutely destroy the U.S. dollar, our economic system and the bright futures that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.
As if all of that was not enough to be concerned about, there is also the threat that Wall Street could implode at any time.  Most Americans have no idea that Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino in the history of the world.  The “too big to fail” banks are the ringleaders, and the derivatives bubble hangs over our financial system like a “sword of Damocles” that could fall at virtually any moment.
Everything will remain fine as long as the spiral of derivatives that our bankers have constructed remains perfectly balanced.  But if something happens and it becomes unbalanced and starts to collapse, the consequences could be unlike anything we have ever seen before.
A recent Zero Hedge article entitled “1000x Systemic Leverage: $600 Trillion In Gross Derivatives ‘Backed’ By $600 Billion In Collateral” detailed how there is barely any collateral backing up the hundreds of trillions of dollars of derivatives that are out there…

But a bigger question is what is the actual collateral backing this gargantuan market which is about 10 times greater than the world’s combined GDP, because as the “derivative” name implies all this exposure is backed on some dedicated, real assets, somewhere. Luckily, the IMF recently released a discussion note titled “Shadow Banking: Economics and Policy” where quietly hidden in one of the appendices it answers precisely this critical question. The bottom line: $600 trillion in gross notional derivatives backed by a tiny $600 billion in real assets: a whopping 0.1% margin requirement! Surely nothing can possibly go wrong with this amount of unprecedented 1000x systemic leverage.

Our entire economy has become a giant pyramid of debt, risk and leverage.  At some point there is going to be a giant crash.  When that happens, people are going to become very desperate.
When people become very desperate, they often accept “solutions” that they were not willing to consider previously.
We need to learn some lessons from history.  This is exactly the kind of thing that happened back in the 1930s.
For example, an elderly woman named Kitty Werthmann is telling audiences what life was like in Austria back in the late 1930s…

“In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25 percent inflation and 25 percent bank loan interest rates.”
“Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.”

The Austrian people were really hurting and they were desperate for answers.  When Hitler came to them with “solutions”, they were ready to embrace him with open arms…

“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.”

“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.”"Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.”
“We were overjoyed,” remembers Kitty, “and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.”

Sadly, America is already starting to go down the same path in many ways.  If you doubt this, you can read the rest of her accountright here.
Right now, things are still relatively good in America.  Yes, there are a whole host of economic numbers that look really bad, but what we are experiencing right now is nothing compared to the horrific economic pain that is coming.
When our economy finally crashes, nobody is going to be able to press a button and restore things to how they were previously.  We will be told that we have to “adjust” and consider “new solutions” to our “new challenges”.  Someday we will look back on the good life that we were enjoying in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and wish that we could go back to those days.
So enjoy the relative peacefulness and prosperity of these times while you still can.  A horrific economic collapse is on the way, and once it strikes none of our lives will ever be the same.