The plaintiffs’ arguments in Moore v. United States have little basis in law — unless you think that a list of long-ago-discarded laissez-faire decisions from the early 20th century remain good law. And a decision favoring these plaintiffs could blow a huge hole in the federal budget. While no Warren-style wealth tax is on the books, the Moore plaintiffs do challenge an existing tax that is expected to raise $340 billion over the course of a decade.
But Republicans also hold six seats on the nation’s highest Court, so there is some risk that a majority of the justices will accept the plaintiffs’ dubious legal arguments. And if they do so, they could do considerable damage to the government’s ability to fund itself.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The specific details of this very complicated change to the US tax code are not especially important — although, for reasons discussed below, they could matter a great deal if the Moore plaintiffs prevail.
These three cases arguably mark the dawn of the Lochner era, which is named for a 1905 Supreme Court decision that imposed strict limits on both the federal government and the states’ power to enact laws seeking to improve workplace conditions for workers.
The plaintiffs in Moore are represented by Andrew Grossman, an adjunct scholar at the right-libertarian Cato Institute, and David Rivkin, a Republican lawyer known for defending torture during the George W. Bush administration, and for filing one of the first lawsuits claiming that Obamacare is unconstitutional.
Macomber, a 5-4 decision mostly joined by pro-Lochner justices, said that “enrichment through increase in value of capital investment is not income in any proper meaning of the term.” That conclusion closely tracks the reasoning of Pollock, which was supposed to have been overruled by the 16th Amendment.
The Moore plaintiffs’ approach will be familiar to anyone who has studied the Lochner era, the age when the Court routinely struck down laws, not because they violated the Constitution, but because five justices deemed them “unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.”
When Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, it used a process that imposed a $1 trillion cap on how much the bill could add to the budget deficit over the next decade.
The original article contains 3,086 words, the summary contains 255 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Do any of these fucken galaxy brains stop for a second to think what reality would be like the minute the government can’t fund itself? Because, I do, and I’m targeting their houses first.
Yes. That’s why they’re doing it. They want to destroy the government so they can convince us to replace it with the feudal society they have in mind. They think they have enough control over sufficient resources that they’ll be safe from any violence you might offer thanks to their private armies.
Strange, considering they have no skills and their money will become useless. How do they keep their guards from becoming warlords when the only thing between them and that title is an unworked body?
Control over food, housing, entertainment, and other non-monetary valuables. Then they can start printing their own script to pay their mercenary forces.
Killbots and nuclear dead man’s switches. Ruling from secret locations. Playing subordinates off each other. Offering them another faction to fight but tying their arm behind their back so they can’t ever win that fight. Putting someone no one wants to follow next in line of succession. Living in a fortress where someone in a security room can lock the whole place down to prevent any coup from establishing their power. Setting fake honeypot assassinations as traps so that no one is willing to risk not reporting real ones because anyone who hears about one and doesn’t report it gets executed. Threatening families and other loved ones if anyone steps out of line. Only trusting people that they have significant dirt on that will be released on the leader’s death so that people in positions to take him down know they’ll go down with him, so instead protect him from any who decide they are willing to go down.
Though the position will be tenuous, even with all of that.
IT people will be in the security people’s position for the killbots and dead man’s switches. Enemies can work together to take down a common enemy. Someone who suggests not tying their arms behind their back vs enemy faction could seize power. A coup could take out any in the line of succession they don’t like. Buddy in the security room would gain the power of IT/security people, or they could send in other assassins. The fake honeypot assassinations could serve as cover for a real one (if they report it, good job you passed the test! If they don’t and instead succeed in assassinating, good job, you got him!). Relying too much on threats to loved ones can leave you vulnerable to psychopaths that don’t care about anyone else, or those who don’t have anyone (not to mention group punishments tend to create more enemies). And relying on compromat might be risky in the age of fake news and deep fake videos.
“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” - Grover Norquist, Republican lobbyist
That sounds like some shit a dude with the name Grover would say. Is he also the monster at the end of this book?
If the book is titled “Imagine What America Would Look Like if a Single Shitbag Convinced Republicans to Vote Against Every Tax Increase for Thirty Years”, then yes, yes he is.
there’s literally a constitutional amendment saying congress can issue taxes however they want. The supreme court is so full of its own shit they think they can rewrite every law they don’t like.
That’s why they’ve been stacking the courts with conservative activists for so long, so they could get a majority that would go along with these paper-thin justifications for completely changing our society from the top down.
Well said.
The stated goal of “originalism” is to read the Constitution without interpretation.
Which would be bad enough, since it was written by a bunch of slavers without any input from women whatsoever.
But in reality it is impossible to read something (especially law) without interpretation; they simply start with the desired conclusion and look for any historical justification no matter how implausible.
But in reality it is impossible to read something (especially law) without interpretation
Some people might see that as a challenge, so I’d state it even more bluntly: reading is interpretation. Reading without interpretation is not just impossible; it’s an oxymoron.
Which amendment is that? Because the sixteenth amendment very specifically mentions taxes on income, not wealth.
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.
…How do you obtain wealth without income?
I assume that’s kindof the issue here. The wealth can’t of come from nowhere. It’s just 2nd grader loopholes.
There’s a very meaningful difference. Wealth is a function of the value of your stuff, which is determined by other people at large, not you, while $20 is $20, always.
A family who bought a rundown brownstone building in Brooklyn back in the 70s is now extremely wealthy, completely independent of income. Wealth can be obtained by other people simply deciding that your stuff is now more valuable than it was before, whether that be property, art, company shares, resources, or anything else. Money obtained by selling stuff generally is treated very differently than income, usually under capital gains taxes.
Article 1, section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises […]
Given that the 16th Amendment exists expressly in order to establish a federal income tax, it’s probably safe to say that this has not been understood as an unlimited power of taxation.
Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company is the relevant SCOTUS case, if you’re curious. The tl;dr is that Article I, 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.
states that revenues raised by a “direct tax”, which includes income taxes, from a given state must be proportional to that state’s population relative to the rest of the country. Income isn’t evenly distributed among the states, so income taxes violate this provision. That’s why the 16th amendment specifically exempts income taxes from that requirement:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on income, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
The basic idea was that, if Congress needed to raise a bunch of money for some large project, they can’t go targeting specific states for it.
Hmm. Maybe we shouldn’t ask wealthy people who take money from even wealthier “donors” to make decisions about how much we tax wealthy people.
They not even hiding it now. They control the court, so they control the law.
This is one issue where I get angry with the democrats. They could have stacked the courts a long ass time ago and prevented shit like this.
This is one issue where I get angry with the democrats. They could have stacked the courts a long ass time ago and prevented shit like this.
When? They pushed through candidates when they could, but they had to change the Senate rules during the Obama administration just to end Republican filibusters on non-controversial nominees. The news was all over both the backlog of empty seats and the need for Democrats to change the rules just to get what nominees they could past Republicans.
And of course, that ended once Republicans took the Senate.
They tried changing the rules, but were blocked by Manchin and Sinema. Were you asleep at the time?
Bad idea but fun to fantasize about: use some of those patriot act powers I assume exist to drag Republican Congress people off to detention centers because they’re enemy combatants. Suddenly Democratic super majority, fewer traitors in government, and an unbearably bad precedent set for the next time Republicans have power.
On the other hand, trump is probably going to try that kind of thing anyway.
On the other hand, trump is probably going to try that kind of thing anyway.
Correct. According to Project 2025, they’ll use an old provision in the Constitution to justify using the military to round up anyone who they deem a dissenter. I think there’s a later law that prohibits the deployment of troops on American soil, but they’re confident they’ll have the courts on their side.
