June Meeting 6/16

285 Tea Party Meeting 6/16/11 Round Table - What Are They All About?

1 year anniversary next month - time for introspection
9/12 Group - Education group, teach the Constitution, but not activist enough - no goals for creating change

What does the 285 Corridor Tea Party expect to accomplish?
• All politics is local, get people involved, showing up at local meetings (school board, fire district, etc)
• Attend Caucuses - get people in there with Tea Party beliefs (starts process of electing leaders of political party - politics at grassroots level).
• Expand influence with Republican Party
• Oversight of government - get individuals to read each bill introduced, look for problems, help out elected representatives b/c they can’t read everything themselves

What does it stand for?
• Serve as conscience of Republican Party

Things to do:
• Education on how a caucus runs, what to expect - lessen frustration with process. The upcoming election will be the first that the Tea Party can really be involved - Dan Maes got nominated thanks to the Tea Party last time, but they were so new that they didn’t have experience vetting.
• Need to coordinate with Tea Party groups from around CO. Don’t want decisions made top-down, but bottom-up; not told what candidates they will have to vote for, but help pick them.
• Get individuals to read each bill introduced, to look for problems, help out elected representatives b/c they can’t read everything themselves
• Get volunteers to go door-to-door, personal phone calls in support of candidates
• Recruit people to become candidates. School boards good start - non-partisan, but they control how property taxes are spent. Next, Fire Boards.
•Candidate Endorsements?
• Tried to form subcommittees (eg Local politics, state politics, federal politics) but never got enough participation (only 2nd Amendment group).
• What else to try?


285 Corridor Tea Party has focused on bringing in speakers that had a message

Tonight: Taxation - Dave Knox, author of Revolution: A Revisionist’s Fiction
About getting back to the Constitution.

16th Amendment - income tax amendment, should be repealed (proposed 1909, ratified 1913). Go back to Federalist Papers, authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay. 16th Amendment divorced representation from taxation as specified in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution. Subsequent Case Law decisions solidified 16th Amendment interpretation.


Handout:
Alexander Hamilton - Federalist Papers 12, 21, 30 - 36 ( Http://www.foundingfathers.info/federal ... dindex.htm )

• Believed in “consumption taxes” - one pays for what one consumes
• Taxes require wealth, and wealth requires commerce
• Believed, above all else, in a strong and vigorous federal government capable of providing for the national defense. Federal revenue is limited only by the demands of national defense.
• “The amount to be contributed by each citizen will in a degree be at his own option, and can be regulated by an attention to his resources. The rich may be extravagant, the poor can be frugal; and private oppression may always be avoided by a judicious selection of objects proper for such impositions.”
• “It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, that is, an extension of the revenue.”
• Ultimately the limitations on taxation are left “...to the prudence and firmness of the people.”
• Believed in a national debt, called it a national treasure.

Constitution
Article 1, Section 7:
“All Bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”

Article 1, Section 8 (The Uniformity Clause):
“The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

Article 1, Section 9:
“No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

16th Amendment: (Proposed: 1909, Ratified 1913)
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

In plain language - the 16th Amendment extends Congress’ power of taxation so a direct income tax could be applied to wages, salaries, commissions (‘...from whatever source derived,’), without apportioning among the States.

Case Law
•Brushaber - 1916
•The federal income tax statute does not violate the Fifth Amendment’s protection against taking property without due process.
•The federal income tax statute does not violate Article 1, Section 8 (The Uniformity Clause above)
•Kerbaugh - 1926
•Income is defined as gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, including profit gained through sale or conversion of capital
•Glenshaw - 1955
•”Gross Income” is defined as ‘accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion.”
•Penn Mutual - 1960
•“Congress has the power to impose taxes generally, and if the particular imposition does not run afoul of any constitutional restrictions then the tax is lawful, call it what you will” (United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit)
•Murphy - 2006
•...the IRS, unlike the United States, may not be sued in its own name...”
•The taxpayer may, however, sue the Commissioner of Internal Revenue
•“Congress can...label a thing income and tax it, so long as it acts within constitutional authority...”



Those were my notes, feel free to add to what I missed, or correct me if I'm wrong!