The Perversion of the Income Tax Laws, Page 2

On March 9, 1933, Mr. Roosevelt assembled Congress under the call of an "emergency". The Saturday Evening Post article entitled "The Hundred Days" found in the August 12, 1933 issue examined what happened during the session of Congress. In the second paragraph of the article, we read the following.

"When Congress assembled on March ninth, under an emergency call, no one knew what it was going to do, nor did it know itself what it was going to do, either at the beginning or day by day thereafter. It went from one step to another, with that kind of uncertain certainty peculiar to sleepwalking. It received the demands of the revolution serially in the form of pre-prepared laws, and enacted them with practically no debate and no drama. In the early morning of June sixteenth it adjourned. The entire life of the session had been one hundred days. That was all the time it took to erect a complete temporary dictatorship in the person of the President, standing for the popular will." ibid., pg. 5.

Note the fact that Congress was enacting "pre-prepared laws" during this one hundred day period. Who prepared these laws? This article goes further to show that all of this mass of law was written in the Executive branch of government by those associated with the President. They were not written by the people's representatives.

"The academic mentality wrote the laws and decrees, the President approved them, the Congress stamped them, and there was the spectacle of conservatives, liberals, radicals and demagogues walking in step toward something no one was sure of, moved by opposite reasons, some in the dark and some in a new light of their own making, invisible to the rest." ibid., pg. 7.

Those associated with the President were called the "Brain Trust". These were the people who were writing the laws, not Congress. This was in violation of Article I, § 1 of the Constitution.

"On the floor of the House one member exclaimed: 'In some cases bills have been passed before they were printed, before any copies were available even for the leaders of the House or members of the committees sponsoring them, without anyone knowing what they contained. These bills were passed under special rules which made the House of Representatives merely a rubber stamp to furnish the necessary legality to the desires of the executive branch of the Government." ibid., pg. 63.

Also, any members of Congress that objected to these proceedings were effectively silenced.

"The academic mentality, becoming aggressive as its authority increased, learned how to silence opposition. If a sound of protest came from any part of the old and vanishing laissez faire world there was a voice in Washington to say: 'Any opposition to this bill will only cause a worse one to pass in place of it. We who write these laws are neither radical nor conservative. We are doctors. We do not want Congress to go off the lot, for that would spill everything. But your opposition may easily provoke it beyond our control.' Thus a great deal of protest was silenced in private." ibid., pg. 63.

"To anyone who said such an act as this one or that one was unconstitutional and would be so held by the Supreme Court, an answer that became current was: 'Those who imagine the new order can be defeated by an appeal to the Supreme Court on the Constitution will be disappointed. Do they think the Government, having gone so far, would hesitate to give the Supreme Court a new mind?'" ibid., pg. 63.

Of course, stating that the Government would give the Supreme Court a "new mind" is but a more sophisticated manner of saying they intended to attack and/or pack the court if necessary. Let us now examine the enormous powers that Congress allowed the President to usurp during this one hundred day session in the spring of 1933. The article brings out the following.

2. To govern production, prices, profits, competition, wages and hours of labor;

3. To determine the economic policy of the country; that is to say, whether it shall be national or international;

6. To reapportion private wealth and income throughout the nation, in his own judgement;

7. The power to specifically reduce the gold value of the dollar one-half- or, that is to say, the power, simply by proclamation, to double the price of everything that is priced in dollars, and to have the value of every obligation payable in dollars, such as debts, bonds and mortgages, insurance policies, bank deposits. ibid., pg. 5.

In the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, 16 How. 393, Justice Campbell, in his concurring opinion, cited the following in a footnote found on page 743 of the Supreme Court Reporters:

"Were the President to be an angel instead of a man, I would not clothe him with this power."

Think of this. For the first time in the 150 years since the founding of our Constitutional Republic, the executive branch of government received an enormous transfer of legislative powers not allowed in the Constitution. One can search the Constitution in vain to try and find where the executive has the authority to exercise legislative powers. The framers of our Constitution saw fit not to give the executive branch of government legislative powers for the following reason.

"...there can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates..." The Federalist # 47, Madison.

The framers of our Constitution thought it to be essential to the preservation of Liberty to disallow the executive any legislative powers. Will we find out that this enormous transfer of legislative powers to the executive indeed has brought about a progressive march of the people to a system of Liberty of Regimentation. The free exercise of individual Liberty that had existed for 150 years was about to come to an end.

The tremendous transfer of legislative powers was only supposed to be temporary. However, we will find out that this was not the case. Today, we still see the executive branch of government exercising legislative powers and executive power has been further enhanced by other declared "emergencies" by Presidents Truman and Nixon. (see: Emergency Powers Statutes).

It is hard to believe that one group of political figures would suddenly come along and violate their oath of office in mass. There was absolutely no authority given Congress in the Constitution that would allow them to surrender their essential legislative functions to the executive. There was also no constitutional authority vested in the executive to exercise legislative powers. The oath to support the Constitution became something worse than solemn mockery.

"Why otherwise does it direct the judges to take an oath to support it? This oath certainly applies in an especial manner to their conduct in their official character. How immoral to impose it on them, if they were to be used as instruments, and the knowing instruments, for what the swear to support!

"The oath of office, too, imposed by the legislature, is completely demonstrative of the legislative opinion on this subject. It is in these words: 'I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich; and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent on me, according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the constitution and the laws of the United States'.

"Why does a judge swear to discharge his duties agreeably to the constitution of the United States, if that constitution forms no rule for his government- if it is closed upon him, and cannot be inspected by him?

"If such be the real state of things, this is worse than solemn mockery. To prescribe, or to take this oath, becomes equally a crime." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 180.

The Saturday Evening Post of September 8 & 15, 1934 printed two powerful articles by former President Herbert Hoover in defense of Liberty. They are entitled "The Challenge to Liberty" (Sept. 8) and "Consequences to Liberty of Regimentation" (Sept. 15). Mr. Hoover was no doubt a staunch defender the Constitution and the Liberties that the framers sought to secure for the people. He saw that the governmental system that was being put into place was beginning to regiment the exercise of individual Liberty and would only worsen with time as the people were continually subjected to a self-feeding bureaucracy under executive control. Mr. Hoover concluded his article on "The Consequences to Liberty of Regimentation" with these words.

"The spark of liberty in the mind and spirit of man cannot be long extinguished; it will break into flames that will destroy every coercion which seeks to limit it." ibid., pg. 89.

The stage is now set. The ensuing years after 1933 will see the perversion of the income tax laws, the regimentation of individual Liberty, the grave damage done to the independence of the federal judiciary, and a government functioning in a de-facto capacity in violation of the Constitution.

The opening statement of the article entitled "The Challenge to Liberty" of former President Herbert Hoover in the Sept. 8, 1934 issue of The Saturday Evening Post states the following:

"For the first time in two generations the American people are faced with the primary issue of humanity and all government- the issue of human liberty." ibid., pg. 5.

His opening statement in his Sept. 15, 1934 article entitled "Consequences to Liberty of Regimentation" states the following:

"The most gigantic step morally, spiritually, economically, and governmentally that a nation can take is to shift its fundamental philosophic and social ideas. The entry upon such a movement presents the most fateful moment in the history of a people." ibid., pg. 5.

The opening statements by Mr. Hoover in these two articles clearly shows that something significant was happening at this point in our history. The way that the federal government was functioning upon the people was rapidly changing. Mr. Hoover saw this threat to Liberty and felt it was his duty to come forward and present his case to the people in these two articles. In his Sept. 8 article he stated:

"Over a period of twenty years I have been honored by my country with positions where contention with the forces of social disintegration was my continued duty. I should be untrue to that service did I not raise my voice in protest, not at reform, but at the threat of the eclipse of liberty." ibid., pg. 6.

Just what is Liberty? What were the liberties that the framers of our Constitution sought to secure the people from encroachment by government? In Mr. Hoover's Sept. 8 & 15 articles, he brought these issues to bear.

"Who may define liberty? It is far more than independence of a nation. It is not a catalogue of political 'rights'. Liberty is a thing of the spirit- to be free to worship, to think, to hold opinions, and to speak without fear- free to challenge wrong and oppression with surety of justice. Liberty conceives that the mind and spirit of men can be free only if the individual is free to choose his own calling, to develop his talents, to win and keep a home sacred from intrusion, to rear children in orderly security. It holds he must be free to earn, to spend, to save, honestly to accumulate property that may give protection in old age and to loved ones.

"It holds, both in principle and in world experience, that these intellectual and spiritual freedoms cannot thrive except where there are also these economic freedoms. It insists equally upon protections to all these freedoms, or there is no liberty." (Sept. 8 art., pg. 5.)

"Perhaps not one in a hundred thousand of our people knows the detailed list of liberties our forefathers insisted upon, or the development of them since, but never a day goes by that every man and woman does not instinctively rely upon these liberties." (Sept. 15 art., pg. 88.)

Consider the statement from the Sept. 15 article that perhaps only one in a hundred thousand people know the detailed list of liberties our forefathers insisted upon. What does this mean? It means that the vast majority of the people are ignorant of the fact that they have many of these liberties, even though they may instinctively rely upon them. What we have seen over the past six decades is a government preying upon the ignorance of the common people. Mr. Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post made reference to this fact in his January 25, 1936 editorial entitled "Politics and Popular Delusions".

"If there is anything more injurious to a country than the capitalization and exploitation of ignorance, it has yet to be revealed. Ignorance is bad enough by itself, but when it is used by designing politicians to secure position and power, or to retain them, it becomes cruelty. The remark applies to those who make promises of sharing the wealth and extravagant pension schemes. Each assurance of this kind is bound to prove a bitter disappointment, and the victims, who are so easily imposed upon, will find themselves worse off than they were before." ibid., pg. 22.

Note that Mr. Lorimer stated that the capitalization and exploitation of ignorance had yet to be revealed in 1936. Today, it has been revealed. At the time Mr. Hoover wrote his two articles in 1934, the individual who did nothing more than provide his/her labor had the full benefits of the fruits of that labor. Today, the individual who labors is deprived of around 30% of those fruits through income taxation, thereby binding them to servitude.

"The high tenet of this philosophy is that liberty is an endowment from the Creator to every individual man and woman upon which no power, whether economic or political, can encroach, and not even the Government may deny. And herein it challenges all other philosophies of society and government; for all others, both before and since, insist that the individual has no such unalienable rights, that he is but a servant of the state. Their insistence is that liberty is not a God-given right; that the state is the master of the man. Liberalism holds that man is master of the state, not the servant; that the sole purpose of government is to nurture and assure these liberties. Herein is the widest divergence of social and governmental concepts known to mankind. No man long holds his freedom under a government which is the master of men's liberties, and that government cannot exist or continue unless it be of despotic powers. The whole of human experience has shown that." ibid., pg. 5.

Mr. Hoover saw that the federal government was moving towards a system which would deny individual liberty in favor of whatever the state decreed to be essential to the good of the whole society. The first step toward such a system of regimentation would be centralization of power in the Executive.

"The first step of economic regimentation is a vast centralization of power in the Executive. Without tedious recitation of the acts of the Congress delegating powers over the people to the Executive or his assistants, and omitting relief and regulatory acts, the powers which have been assumed include the following:

"To debase the coin and set its value; to inflate the currency; to buy and sell gold and silver; to buy Government bonds, other securities and foreign exchange; to seize private stocks of gold at a price fixed by the Government- in effect giving the Executive the power to 'manage' the currency;

"To levy sales taxes on food, clothing, and upon goods competitive to them- the processing tax- at such times and in such amounts as the executive may determine;

"To expend enormous sums from the appropriations for public works, relief and agriculture upon projects not announced to the Congress at the time appropriations were made;

"To create corporations for a wide variety of business activities, heretofore the exclusive field of private enterprise;

"To install services and to manufacture commodities in competition with citizens;

"To buy and sell commodities, to fix minimum prices for industries or dealers; to fix handling charges and therefore profits; to eliminate unfair trade practices;

"To allot the amount of production to individual farms and factories and the character of goods they shall produce; to destroy commodities; to fix stocks of commodities to be on hand;

"To estop expansion or development of industries or of specific plant and equipment;

"To organize administrative organizations outside the Civil Service requirements;

"To raise and lower the tariffs and to discriminate between nations in their application;

"To abrogate certain governmental contracts without compensation or review by the courts;

"To enforce most of these powers, where they effect the individual, by fine and imprisonment through prosecution in the courts, with a further reserved authority in many trades through license, to deprive them of their business and livelihood without any appeal to the courts." ibid., pp. 6-7.

Such enormous powers the executive branch of government usurped in the spring of 1933! But wait, it gets even better than this! In Mr. Hoover's Sept. 15 article we can see what the executive is going to do with these enormous powers unconstitutionally delegated by Congress.

"It is advocated now that many of the emergency measures shall be 'consolidated' and made 'permanent'. We should therefore earnestly and dispassionately examine what the pattern of this transformation of the economic, social, and governmental system is to be, and what the ultimate effect of its continuance would be upon our national life." ibid., pg. 5.

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