Talk:Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution/Archive 3

message: Regarding the case of Knoblauch v. Commissioner, 749 F.2d 200, 85-1 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) paragr. 9109 (5th Cir. 1984), cited in the main article, some sources list the year of denial of certiorari as being in 1985 and others show it as being in 1986. I'll try to check on this later. Yours, Famspear 15:04, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cert. history on ''Knoblauch''

message: On 24 June 2006 I reverted material inserted that apparently was copied in large part from other web sites. See, e.g.
at http://www.ottoskinner.com/articles/Who_worded_16th.html
Yours, Famspear 22:41, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Greetings! A copyright violation with a few lines reworded is still a copyright violation. In any event, the statement that "if the amendment authorized a direct tax, it would cause one part of the Constitution to come into irreconcilable conflict with Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4" is pure idiocy on the part of its author. Virtually every amendment to the Constitution is irreconcilable with the portions of the Constitution which it alters, otherwise an amendment would not be needed at all; Congress could just pass a law having the effect sought by the amendment. After all, the Constitution originally recognized slavery, a position irreconcilable with the 13th Amendment prohibtion of Slavery. The Constitution once required Senators to be elected by their state legislatures, a provision irreconcilable with the direct election of Senators enacted by the Seventeenth Amendment. Also, the "rich soaking the rich" is nothing out of the ordinary - John Kerry is one of the wealthiest men in America, and the Kennedy clan has long held an enormous fortune; Franklin Delano Roosevelt had an immense fortune when he enacted massive wartime tax increase. The senior George Bush enacted a tax increase on the wealthy. Donald Trump has called for a 17% property tax against the wealthy, and Warren Buffet supports tax increases on the wealthy. Remember also, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed around the same time that Congress passed new antitrust laws forcing large corporations to dissolve and costing industry tycoons billions. Around the same time, Congress prohibited child labor, began regulating working conditions, strengthened unions, and held lengthy public investigations in which concentrations of wealth were portrayed as a base evil. So, there's your historical context. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear CFVertigo: Your second deletion of other people's comments from your talk page has been restored. Please stop removing other people's comments from this page. Thanks Famspear 04:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Greetings again - in answer to your question about "all this rambling about Donald Trump and Warren Buffet", the material you added suggests that Congress could not possibly have intended to tax incomes by passing an amend imposing a tax on incomes because some people asserted to have been involved in drafting the language were wealthy. Ergo, the argument is that wealth=opposition to tax increases, which can be empirically disproven both now and as of the time that the income tax was passed. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:58, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Revert possible copyright violations

message: [Copied from talk page for CFVertigo, and addressed to CFVertigo:] Dear fellow Wikipedia user: The materials you twice inserted into the above-referenced article were apparently copied and pasted from from other places on the internet. The materials are claimed to have been authored by a Mr. Otto Skinner and are found at, among other places, his web site at http://www.ottoskinner.com/articles/Who_worded_16th.html
These materials are presumptively subject to copyright, and probably should not be inserted into Wikipedia articles. Especially, they should not be inserted without attribution with respect to authorship (whether the actual author is Mr. Skinner or someone else).
Also, Mr. Skinner is a notorious publisher of Tax protester materials. Therefore, although his status as such does not necessarily disqualify him from being a source for materials, you should take care when citing to Mr. Skinner as a source for authority in tax law matters. Yours, Famspear 16:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Greetings! A copyright violation with a few lines reworded is still a copyright violation. In any event, the statement that "if the amendment authorized a direct tax, it would cause one part of the Constitution to come into irreconcilable conflict with Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4" is pure idiocy on the part of its author. Virtually every amendment to the Constitution is irreconcilable with the portions of the Constitution which it alters, otherwise an amendment would not be needed at all; Congress could just pass a law having the effect sought by the amendment. After all, the Constitution originally recognized slavery, a position irreconcilable with the 13th Amendment prohibtion of Slavery. The Constitution once required Senators to be elected by their state legislatures, a provision irreconcilable with the direct election of Senators enacted by the Seventeenth Amendment. Also, the "rich soaking the rich" is nothing out of the ordinary - John Kerry is one of the wealthiest men in America, and the Kennedy clan has long held an enormous fortune; Franklin Delano Roosevelt had an immense fortune when he enacted massive wartime tax increase. The senior George Bush enacted a tax increase on the wealthy. Donald Trump has called for a 17% property tax against the wealthy, and Warren Buffet supports tax increases on the wealthy. Remember also, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed around the same time that Congress passed new antitrust laws forcing large corporations to dissolve and costing industry tycoons billions. Around the same time, Congress prohibited child labor, began regulating working conditions, strengthened unions, and held lengthy public investigations in which concentrations of wealth were portrayed as a base evil. So, there's your historical context. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Materials deleted from article

message: You removed material warning you about copyright violations not only from your own talk page, but also from the talk page of the relevant article.  This is not considered good behavior and could result in your being blocked.  Please don't do that again.  Robert A.West (Talk) 03:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear CFVertigo: Your second deletion of other people's comments from your talk page has been restored. Please stop removing other people's comments from this page. Thanks Famspear 04:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Greetings again - in answer to your question about "all this rambling about Donald Trump and Warren Buffet", the material you added suggests that Congress could not possibly have intended to tax incomes by passing an amend imposing a tax on incomes because some people asserted to have been involved in drafting the language were wealthy. Ergo, the argument is that wealth=opposition to tax increases, which can be empirically disproven both now and as of the time that the income tax was passed. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:58, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please do not remove other people's comments. [addressed to CFVertigo]

message: On 26 June 2006, I made an edit to a reference in the article that the U.S. Supreme Court in Brushaber "upheld" the Sixteenth Amendment. It is true that the Court "upheld" the Amendment in the general sense that a court "upholds" any provision of the U.S. Constitution when interpreting that provision. However, the Court in Brushaber did NOT technically "rule" that the Sixteenth Amendment was valid. The Court ruled that the income tax statute in question was valid under the Constitution as amended by the Sixteenth Amendment. Technically, a court of law "rules" on -- or "decides" -- only those issues that the parties actually litigate (only the issues that the parties actually argue about before the Court). Mr. Frank Brushaber technically never contended that the Amendment was invalid. The courts have indeed RULED many times that the Sixteenth Amendment is a valid part of the U.S. Constitution, but those rulings were rendered in other cases -- where the parties actually fought about that particular issue. Just a little legal hair-splitting! Yours, Famspear 16:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What exactly was "upheld" in the Brushaber case: a little hair-splitting exercise

message: I think this section should also contain information on the 861 evidence.  Thoughts Morphh 12:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good call - Guess I wasn't thinking that one through. :-)  Morphh 14:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Controversy

message: Dear fellow editors: I have noticed that almost all the tax protester information in this article has been duplicated at Tax protester arguments. Therefore, I have now moved the rest of the material to the tax protester arguments article, and simply deleted it here, with a cross reference to the other article, which itself may be further broken down into separate articles soon (due to the size). Hopefully this will reduce some of the duplication in this area. Yours, Famspear 21:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tax protest material moved

message: Dear fellow editors: This particular article has a very narrow scope: an amendment to the United States Constitution that removed the requirement, if any, that taxes on income from whatever source derived -- which had already been authorized under the Constitution -- be apportioned among the states according to population. The section on "arguments against taxation" is in my view much broader and would work much better in the article on Income tax or Income tax in the United States or some other article that covers imposition of taxes in a more general way. Any thoughts? Famspear 22:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have moved the section on Arguments against taxation to the article on Income tax in the United States. Yours, Famspear 02:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Arguments against taxation

message: Dear editors: I have made some edits to the material introduced by another editor with respect to the Murphy case and the constitutionality of section 104(a)(2) as applied to damages received for emotional distress, etc. For some reason my PACER link to the court's opinion isn't working this morning (23 August 2006). Also, as of this morning the August 22nd Murphy decision has not yet posted on the CCH website. So, right now I am relying on the text of the opinion as linked by my fellow editor. Yours, Famspear 15:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Murphy case

message: Please note: the Ads run by We The People Foundation are not subject to copyright as the author's have released it into the public domain.  --Jimb0b 18:36, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: We The People Foundation Full Page Ads

message: The wikipedia article contains the claim; "The amendment was ratified by 38 states in all..." yet the information presented is not citied by any sources listed on the page. Where is the verification to this claim? I think you need to cite the actual documents of the states being represented before you can claim this. Verifiability is crucial to wikipedia!!! --Jimb0b 18:41, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And there was already a source: the Emory University School of Law website which covers the ratification details of all the amendments.  Robert A.West (Talk) 07:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ratification Process

message: DO NO REVERT THE PAGE WITHOUT; VALID REASONING, DISCUSSION ON TALK PAGES!!   Thank you!--Jimb0b 20:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The claims were already adequately covered in that article.  At a certain point, the detail becomes eye-glazing, as well as tending to give it undue weight as against the court cases debunking the arguments, which are the consensus opinion of experts. Robert A.West (Talk) 07:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: REVERTING PAGES WITHOUT VALID JUSTIFICATION

message: I removed the following statement, " Assuming 48 states in existence: Ohio represents 79% ratification. Without Ohio, representation for ratification is still 77%," on the basis that it violates the prohibition on original research.  Putting together verifiable facts to create a new argument not contained in the sources, even if it is a good argument, is not acceptable in Wikipedia.  So far as I can tell, the courts never raised this point, probably because they never felt they had to.  Robert A.West (Talk) 22:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: OR removed

message: An anonymous contributer added the following on November 142006:
:The Sixteenth Amendment does not contain an enabling clause. The Ammendment [sic.] gives no powers to Congress to enforce this article.
This argument is patently absurd. The Sixteenth Amendment by its own terms grants a specific power to Congress—the power to tax incomes without apportionment. It is ridiculous to argue that an enumerated power is unenforceable because the Constitution does not enumerate a power to enforce that power. Extended logically, this would render all grants of power unenforceable—if a grant of power requires an enabling clause for it to be enforceable, then the enabling clauses themselves must require enabling clauses (and those enabling clauses must require enabling clauses, and so on, and so on), since they are grants of power themselves. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 23:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet another unsourced claim added 

message: On 14 November 2006, an anonymous user at IP 156.33.137.41 made some unsourced changes to the list of states ratifying the Sixteenth Amendment. I have checked the U.S. House of Representatives web site, the Emory University Law School web site, a hard copy of the U.S. Constitution as published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, and various other sources, and I have found no support for the changes made by IP 156.33.137.41. I have therefore removed the changes, and have put some of the remaining information in a footnote. Yours, Famspear 19:51, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See the footnote for the Sixteenth Amendment in the online version of The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation published at FindLaw's web site. That lists the ratification dates for Delaware, Wyoming, New Jersey, and Vermont. FindLaw's document is based on the 1992 Senate edition of that document (United States Senate, Doc. # 103–6, 103rd Congress, First Session, 1992). The 1992 edition is available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/browse1992.html; other editions are available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 20:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Identification of states ratifying the Amendment

message: An anonymous user at IP 71.242.238.121 inserted the following commentary in the article:
::A sufficient number of states never ratified the 16th Amendment. Check out the documentary "America" from Freedom to Fascism". Who controls "Wikipedia" anyway? It seems to be nothing but a collection of "mainstream" misunderstandings.
This is typical tax protester rhetoric. Aside from being totally incorrect, this material is unverifiable and non-neutral POV for purposes of Wikipedia, and does not belong in an article. The only "misunderstanding" in evidence here is that of the anonymous user. For more information on the substance of the commentary, see America: From Freedom to Fascism; Tax protester constitutional arguments. No one person "controls" Wikipedia. Please refer to the Wikipedia pages on Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research. Yours, Famspear 15:30, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unsourced commentary moved from article to talk page