Talk:Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution/Archive 4

message: I’m still trying to get the hang of where what goes and the tilde business. Sorry if I put things in the wrong place. I’m going to try it again. If someone moves this commentary please leave a note on my talk page as to where it went.
I would like to make a further comment about the comments by one bd2412 in June (below under “Materials deleted from article”) about amendments to the Constitution. He notes, for example, that the Seventeenth Amendment regarding the direct election of Senators comes into direct conflict with the original provision of the Constitution providing for State election of Senators. This conflict exists because the Seventeenth Amendment actually did alter (supersede) the original provision. However, the Sixteenth Amendment could not alter anything in Article 1 because the Sixteenth Amendment does not contain the term “direct tax” and Article 1 does not contain the term “income.” Therefore, the only possible connection between the two would have to be provided by the Supreme Court when interpreting how the new amendment would be applied. The Supreme Court did this in spades in Brushaber. The quote to which bd2412 derisively refers as being “pure idiocy on the part of its author” is from the Brushaber decision, and unequivocally holds that the Sixteenth Amendment does not allow an unapportioned direct tax. Repeating it in its entirety:
“But it clearly results that the proposition and the contentions [of the litigants, that the 16th Amendment authorized an unapportioned direct tax], if acceded to, would cause one provision of the Constitution to destroy another; that is, they would result in bringing the provisions of the Amendment exempting a direct tax from apportionment into irreconcilable conflict with the general requirement that all direct taxes be apportioned. Moreover, the tax authorized by the Amendment, being direct, would not come under the rule of uniformity applicable under the Constitution to other than direct taxes, and thus it would come to pass that the result of the Amendment would be to authorize a particular direct tax not subject either to apportionment or to the rule of geographical uniformity, thus giving power to impose a different tax in one state or states than was levied in another state or states. This result, instead of simplifying the situation and making clear the limitations on the taxing power, which obviously the Amendment must have been intended to accomplish, would create radical and destructive changes in our constitutional system and multiply confusion.”—Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, 240 U.S. 1, 12 (1916) 
The only “confusion” has been added by the Circuits. District and appellate court decisions to the contrary are merely the subjective opinions of overzealous judges, most of whom are dead by now, who have built on the previous errors of other overzealous judges, until all the Circuits are hopelessly enmeshed in Circuit law that bears no relationship to the holdings of the Supreme Court. So far the Supreme Court has turned a blind eye, possibly because the arguments it received were not framed in language that would have broad application. At any rate, the KISS principle applies here. The Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that Article 1 is controlling such that the Sixteenth Amendment is irrelevant as to whether any particular tax might be constitutional. Leaving the name of the tax out of the equation and examining only its effect on the one who is responsible for remitting its payment to the government will remove a huge amount of superfluous material from consideration, leaving only the Article 1 question: “Is this tax direct?” If so, it is prohibited. If not, it is allowed.Wixpositor 02:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Read in its entirity, the Brushaber Court is agreeing with my assessment. The quote above is not the conclusion of the Court, but the Court's restatement of the argument which it is rejecting. The Court basically says, 'here's what the taxpayer is putting forth as a reason not to pay the tax owed', recites that argument, then says 'here's why it's wrong'. Or, as the Court more artfully says, after reciting the above proposition, "let us by a demonstration of the error of the fundamental proposition as to the significance of the Amendment dispel the confusion necessarily arising from the arguments deduced from it." bd2412 T 04:07, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment on Constitutional Amendments