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The Constitutional Power...

The Constitutional Power...

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I have just completed an overwhelming and comprehensive investigation into one of the most consequential questions an American can ask:WHERE DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GET THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWER TO IMPOSE THE INCOME-TAX SYSTEM WE EXPERIENCE TODAY UPON THE ORDINARY LABOR AND EARNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?Most Americans have never seriously examined that question.We are simply born into the system.We work. Money is withheld. Employers report our earnings. We file returns. The IRS assesses and collects. And behind that system stands the enormous enforcement power of the federal government.After generations of this, the system feels inevitable.But there is an enormous difference between saying:THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXERCISES THIS POWERand proving:THE CONSTITUTION ACTUALLY DELEGATED THIS POWER.That distinction is the subject of my new book—and of what may be the most important video series I have ever created.I approached this investigation differently.I did not begin with the Internal Revenue Code and assume Congress possessed whatever constitutional authority was necessary to enact it.I did not begin with the IRS and assume that because the government enforces the system, the constitutional authority behind it must exist.I STARTED AT THE BEGINNING.The Constitution.A Constitution that created a federal government of limited, delegated and enumerated powers.Then I followed the evidence forward for more than two hundred years.And what I found should shock the conscience of the American people.THE CONSTITUTIONAL BRIDGE WAS NOT THERE AT THE FOUNDING.Then came the Civil War income taxes.CONGRESS ASSERTED BROADER POWER. BUT A STATUTE CANNOT CREATE THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWER NECESSARY TO SUSTAIN ITSELF.Then came Springer.The Supreme Court classified the tax.BUT CLASSIFICATION IS NOT CONSTITUTIONAL DELEGATION.Then came the Sixteenth Amendment—the event almost everyone has been taught settled the question.But the Supreme Court subsequently said the Amendment conferred “no new power of taxation.”Think about the significance of that.If the Sixteenth Amendment created no new taxing power, then the constitutional power being exercised afterward had to exist beforehand.SO WHERE WAS IT?Then came Flint, preserving the critical distinction between the subject of a tax and the measure used to calculate it.Then Macomber, examining source, derivation, gain and income.Then, in 1937, came Justice Cardozo and Steward Machine.And there we encounter one of the most important transformations in the entire story: an excise reaching activity pursued “as of common right.”CARDOZO DID NOT DISCOVER A MISSING CLAUSE IN THE CONSTITUTION.HE CONSTRUCTED A JUDICIAL BRIDGE ACROSS THE GAP.Then came World War II.Millions of additional Americans were swept into the income-tax system.Exemptions fell.The Victory Tax appeared.Withholding became embedded in ordinary employment.Private employers became collection intermediaries for the federal government.The war eventually ended.THE MASS TAX RELATIONSHIP DID NOT.Then came Glenshaw Glass and a broader operative conception of income.And around all of this grew an enormous administrative structure:Withholding.Reporting.Taxpayer identification.Annual filing.Assessments.Penalties.Liens.Levies.Prosecution.And ultimately, imprisonment.Generation after generation inherited that structure until the existence of the system itself began to feel like proof of its constitutional legitimacy.IT ISN’T.And that is the story this series is going to tell.CONGRESS ASSERTED THE POWER.COURTS EXPANDED THE DOCTRINE.WAR EXPANDED THE POPULATION.WITHHOLDING BUILT THE COLLECTION ARCHITECTURE.DEFINITIONS EXPANDED THE OPERATIVE MEANING.ADMINISTRATION NORMALIZED THE RELATIONSHIP.ENFORCEMENT ENTRENCHED IT.But none of those things, standing alone or accumulated together, is constitutional delegation.And that brings us back to the question at the center of everything:WHERE IS THE CONSTITUTIONAL BRIDGE?Through the Liberty Dialogues, and with extensive use of ChatGPT as an analytical tool, I forced this question backward through the entire chain:AUTHORITY.JURISDICTION.STATUS.NEXUS.OBLIGATION.ENFORCEMENT.And I forced the analysis to confront something conventional reasoning too easily allows us to overlook:THE MODERN SYSTEM CANNOT BECOME THE CONSTITUTIONAL SOURCE OF THE POWER NECESSARY TO JUSTIFY THE MODERN SYSTEM.The government cannot say:We enforce it, therefore the obligation exists.The obligation exists, therefore jurisdiction exists.Jurisdiction exists, therefore the constitutional authority must exist.That turns constitutional government upside down.AUTHORITY COMES FIRST.And that is why this series matters far beyond taxation.Because if a government created with limited powers can expand those powers through legislation, judicial interpretation, emergency, administrative necessity and institutional repetition—and then point to the resulting system as proof that it possessed the power all along—then we are ...
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