• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

The World Health Organization calls for decriminalization of most drugs

What has been "thrown open to wide ranging interpretations to suit whoever is in power?" Certainly not the expansive view of the Taxing power which has been pretty consistently applied since the 1930's.

For the last time: merely allowing tax funds to go to something that can be construed as the "general welfare" does not otherwise validate an unconstitutional provision (i.e. it's not unconstitutional for tax dollars to go towards the NSA but it is almost certainly a 4th Amendment violation for the NSA to go through my cell phone records without probable cause EVEN WITH the tax dollars going towards the NSA). These are two distinctly different legal questions - you seem to continue to muddle the two and treat them interchangeably.
 
RChildress107 said:
how would you interpret the phrase "provide for the general welfare"?

You seem to be conflating the government's power to tax (absolutely constitutional, theoretically up to rates of 100%) and the power to spend tax revenue however it pleases (restrained by numerous provisions in the constitution).

You may have legitimate points about how the government is spending tax revenue, either from a policy or constitutional standpoint, but those points do nothing to bolster an argument that because of irresponsible or illegal spending the government for some reason loses its ability to tax you.
Click to expand...

I realize that because of the 16th amendment the federal government can tax my income. I think it is wrong, but I know it is constitutional. We have argued over what is a legitimate function of government for which they can tax me. If they can interpret "general welfare" as anything they deem it to be, why can't they also interpret other provisions of the Constitution to suit themselves? Once you decide that you can just reinterpret to suit whoever wants some new power, I don't see these other provisions as forever being narrowly interpreted. The Constitution will just "live and breathe" to permit all the things 923 mentioned and more besides.
 
tjcmd said:
I realize that because of the 16th amendment the federal government can tax my income. I think it is wrong, but I know it is constitutional. We have argued over what is a legitimate function of government for which they can tax me. If they can interpret "general welfare" as anything they deem it to be, why can't they also interpret other provisions of the Constitution to suit themselves? Once you decide that you can just reinterpret to suit whoever wants some new power, I don't see these other provisions as forever being narrowly interpreted. The Constitution will just "live and breathe" to permit all the things 923 mentioned and more besides.
Click to expand...

What portions of the Constitution can be construed to permit overt 4th Amendment violations by the NSA?
 
tjcmd said:
It apparently doesn't really limit those methods, either. It has been thrown open to wide ranging interpretations to suit whoever is in power. That is the danger. Right now maybe you think there are limits but they can be reinterpreted in ways that do not suit you.
Click to expand...

We live in a representative democracy, dude. Your remedy is to elect people that will take the laws in a direction that "suits you". If 51% of the population doesn't agree with that direction, tough shit. If you don't like it, move to Somalia.
 
tjcmd said:
I realize that because of the 16th amendment the federal government can tax my income. I think it is wrong, but I know it is constitutional. We have argued over what is a legitimate function of government for which they can tax me. If they can interpret "general welfare" as anything they deem it to be, why can't they also interpret other provisions of the Constitution to suit themselves? Once you decide that you can just reinterpret to suit whoever wants some new power, I don't see these other provisions as forever being narrowly interpreted. The Constitution will just "live and breathe" to permit all the things 923 mentioned and more besides.
Click to expand...

Oh so you just don't get how taxes work? That explains it.

The government doesn't have to specify what it's taxing you for. It just taxes you. It takes your money because it needs revenue to function. In theory, even if the only legitimate government function was national defense, the government could tax you at a rate of 100% and spend all of that money on building IronMan.

Basically as long as there is any legitimate government function (which I'm sure even you would agree exists) then the government has an absolute power to tax you as much as it pleases. There is no restriction on this power.

You can argue all you want over whether the government is spending tax revenue on legitimate or constitutional purposes or functions, but the result of that argument will never be that the government loses its constitutional authority to tax you.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
What portions of the Constitution can be construed to permit overt 4th Amendment violations by the NSA?
Click to expand...

I am not a lawyer, but I can sure imagine FISA courts getting a little lax. Maybe Lois Lerner needs a little detail on the sex lives of women who head local tea parties to blackmail them into submission and she decides that some of them are foreign agents. I would not have believed 20 years ago that government agents could demand my papers for a domestic airline trip. If the Constitution is open to liberal interpretation you can't assume that any liberty will endure.
 
tjcmd said:
I am not a lawyer, but I can sure imagine FISA courts getting a little lax. Maybe Lois Lerner needs a little detail on the sex lives of women who head local tea parties to blackmail them into submission and she decides that some of them are foreign agents. I would not have believed 20 years ago that government agents could demand my papers for a domestic airline trip. If the Constitution is open to liberal interpretation you can't assume that any liberty will endure.
Click to expand...

Look if you want to have a practical conversation about the constitutionality of agencies and whatnot within the purview of the 4th Amendment then I'm sure people will be more than happy to indulge you, but don't come in here with these bullshit broad strokes like the bolded above where you then can't actually provide facts to support your outlandishly oversweeping characterizations.
 
RChildress107 said:
Oh so you just don't get how taxes work? That explains it.

The government doesn't have to specify what it's taxing you for. It just taxes you. It takes your money because it needs revenue to function. In theory, even if the only legitimate government function was national defense, the government could tax you at a rate of 100% and spend all of that money on building IronMan.

Basically as long as there is any legitimate government function (which I'm sure even you would agree exists) then the government has an absolute power to tax you as much as it pleases. There is no restriction on this power.

You can argue all you want over whether the government is spending tax revenue on legitimate or constitutional purposes or functions, but the result of that argument will never be that the government loses its constitutional authority to tax you.
Click to expand...

Maybe you don't understand how taxes work. The federal government can tax me at whatever rate it chooses. But at some point the revenue decreases because the economy is wrecked by confiscatory taxes. There is a theoretical limit to government's ability to raise income by taxation. It is quite reasonable to ask whether the use of tax money are legitimate functions of government. I don't expect them to stop taxing me.
 
tjcmd said:
Maybe you don't understand how taxes work. The federal government can tax me at whatever rate it chooses. But at some point the revenue decreases because the economy is wrecked by confiscatory taxes. There is a theoretical limit to government's ability to raise income by taxation. It is quite reasonable to ask whether the use of tax money are legitimate functions of government. I don't expect them to stop taxing me.
Click to expand...

It's reasonable to debate where taxes are allocated, but I don't think that's the same thing as asking if the uses of tax money are "legitimate functions of government" implying that the government is overstepping their constitutional or legal bounds in levying taxes.

Your position seems to be that you disagree with the 16th Amendment and that since income taxes would be unconstitutional without the 16th Amendment then we should pursue this Ayn Rand wet dream to its logical conclusion by holding to an extremely narrow view of the Spending Clause which would overturn 75 years of law by the courts.
 
It's funny to me that the right will go balls to the wall for the right to give unlimited amounts of money toward helping people get elected to run the government but works even harder to not pay the money needed to run the government.
 
PhDeac said:
It's funny to me that the right will go balls to the wall for the right to give unlimited amounts of money toward helping people get elected to run the government but works even harder to not pay the money needed to run the government.
Click to expand...

The more power the government has the more people are willing to spend to control that power. If you are an insurance company and the government is getting ready to spend trillions for the "general welfare" you will spend a lot to get your share of that trillions.
 
So people who want less government are spending all this money on elections in order to control expanding government power?
 
tjcmd said:
The more power the government has the more people are willing to spend to control that power. If you are an insurance company and the government is getting ready to spend trillions for the "general welfare" you will spend a lot to get your share of that trillions.
Click to expand...

Now this I agree with completely. That said, plenty of countries have figured out how to do big government democracy with a lot less corruption and influence peddling than the US. Free speech does not have to equal freedom to spend all the cash you want to buy votes. Our system of campaign finance is little more than a highly advanced system of extortion and bribery. It's sad.

PhDeac said:
So people who say they want less government are spending all this money on elections in order to control expanding government power?
Click to expand...

FIFY. But in fairness to tjcmd, who appears to be a libertarian purist, there is a big difference between his position and that of the Republican Party with all its PACs and Super-PACS and so forth - they like big government just fine, as long as it diverts taxpayer money to big corporations, religious schools, and the defense industry.
 
tjcmd said:
Maybe you don't understand how taxes work. The federal government can tax me at whatever rate it chooses. But at some point the revenue decreases because the economy is wrecked by confiscatory taxes. There is a theoretical limit to government's ability to raise income by taxation. It is quite reasonable to ask whether the use of tax money are legitimate functions of government. I don't expect them to stop taxing me.
Click to expand...

But not a constitutional one, which was my point.

tjcmd said:
This is an important point. If I come over to your house and tell you to give me $5 while I hold a gun to your head, you would call that stealing. But if I tell you that I am from the IRS it is all of a sudden your "societal obligation" to give me the $5. This is where we fundamentally disagree. I think it is legalized theft and should be used very, very sparingly only for the constitutional functions of government whereas you seem to think that because it is legal it is moral and can be used to finance things like the war on drugs or financing both sides in a war between two foreign countries.
Click to expand...

tjcmd said:
Well it certainly is not a strange view. But if you are ok with taxing for one unconstitutional purpose you will find yourself being taxed for other unconstitutional purposes with which you don't necessarily agree. Much better to use your resources voluntarily so you can direct them where you want them to go rather than having them usurped for, say, killing innocent children.
Click to expand...

You seem to be operating under the belief that if the gov't spends 10% of its revenue doing unconstitutional things that means that 10% of what they took from you was an unconstitutional taking. That belief is false.
 
RChildress107 said:
You seem to be operating under the belief that if the gov't spends 10% of its revenue doing unconstitutional things that means that 10% of what they took from you was an unconstitutional taking. That belief is false.
Click to expand...

I don't think it is unconstitutional. I just think it is legalized, constitutional theft if they take my income and then use it for unconstitutional purposes. I am sure that you are correct that they can take whatever they want.
 
I think legalized theft is somewhat oxymoronic but that's a linguistics/semantics debate that doesn't really go towards substance other than showing that despite the fact that you keep saying you don't think it's unconstitutional or illegal you continue to use a word that connotes illegality.
 
I swear people like tjcmd should be forced to abstain from all political discourse until they have read the Federalist Papers, especially #51.

This current "The Founding Fathers intended" bullshit couldn't be more skewed from the what the Founding Fathers actually did intend if they had just made it up out of whole cloth. It's insane.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top