Defending the Truth

vharlow · 03-10-2007, 10:16 PM

America Freedom to Fascism Authorized version - Google Video

Everyone should see this video before it disappears. Media most likely won't ever broadcast this.

Katczinsky · 03-11-2007, 12:12 AM

Russo claims that the court's decisions that the 16th Amendment didn't confer any new taxation powers wasn't overturned is false. Among others, in Cheek v. United States, the argument of a tax protester was rejected by the Supreme Court and he was forced to repay all of the income taxes he evaded up to that point, and he was also sentenced jail time.

Essentially I've heard from the Supreme Court and others that the tax protester's contention that there is no income tax liability is derived from confusion in the shear complexity of the tax law itself, and is riddled with logical fallacies and misconceptions of the US legal system. But I also haven't had a clear cut quote from tax law that requires citizens to pay income tax either. All I've seen from the courts is just patronizing them telling them that they can't understand the complexity of the tax law, and they haven't given a clear cut explanation of how exactly people are legally liable to pay income taxes.

The chipping and the national ID cards, however, are definitely things to be concerned about.

indago · 03-11-2007, 10:09 AM

Katczinsky wrote:

Quote:

Russo claims that the court's decisions that the 16th Amendment didn't confer any new taxation powers wasn't overturned is false.

Pursuant to government Document No. 108-17, The Constitution of the United States of America, Analysis and Interpretation, under cases overruled, there is no support for your declaration that Cheek has overturned the Brushaber case.

Constitution Analysis

------------------------

Katczinsky · 03-12-2007, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by indago

Katczinsky wrote:

Pursuant to government Document No. 108-17, The Constitution of the United States of America, Analysis and Interpretation, under cases overruled, there is no support for your declaration that Cheek has overturned the Brushaber case.

Constitution Analysis

------------------------

Wait, Russo's documentary was very misleading. In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad the Supreme Court held that (1) The Sixteenth Amendment removes the requirement that income taxes (whether considered to be direct taxes or indirect taxes) be apportioned among the states according to population; (2) the Federal income tax statute does not violate the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the government taking property without due process of law; (3) the Federal income tax statute does not violate the uniformity clause of Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

It upheld the Revenue Act of 1913 and the income tax, NOT the other way around. So there wasn't anything to overturn in the first place.

Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

indago · 03-13-2007, 03:26 AM

Katczinsky wrote:

Quote:

Wait, Russo's documentary was very misleading.

I haven't seen "Russo's documentary", but I have read Madison's Notes on the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and some of the Congressional Record, and the Brushaber case, and other such cases.

Also:

Quote:

In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad the Supreme Court held that (1) The Sixteenth Amendment removes the requirement that income taxes (whether considered to be direct taxes or indirect taxes) be apportioned among the states according to population

Brushaber "held" no such thing. I wouldn't put much credence in Wikipedia. It has been very much discredited. Maybe you should actually read the opinion of the Court. Mr. Brushaber was a stockholder in the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and he filed the lawsuit to try to stop the company from paying the new "income tax" because if they did his dividends would be reduced.

The Solicitor General for the government, in an amicus curiae brief, had made the argument: "The Sixteenth Amendment removed the restriction of apportionment as to such income taxes as before were subject thereto." The Court, in their opinion, in which there was no dissent, and noting this "confusion", declared this to be an "erroneous assumption" on the part of the government, and "wholly without foundation". The Court declared that "it was settled that the provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation"; and that the amendment simply prohibited the income tax from being taken from the category of indirect taxation, and being placed into the category of a direct tax.

It was also explained that the Congress of the United States had no intention of destroying the two great classes of taxation by the wording of the Sixteenth Amendment, but placed an income tax into the category of taxation in which it inherently belonged; the indirect class, or excise, and because the tax is not apportioned, nor subject to the census or enumeration, it is an excise tax, a tax upon the exercise of privileges, such taxes not being subject to the condition of apportionment to the States.

indago · 06-26-2007, 09:56 AM

indago wrote:

Quote:

I wouldn't put much credence in Wikipedia. It has been very much discredited.

Journalist Noam Cohen wrote for the New York Times 21 February 2007:

Quote:

When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’s Japanese history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. The Jesuits were in “no position to aid a revolution,” he said; the few of them in Japan were in hiding.

He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.

Dr. Waters and other professors in the history department had begun noticing about a year ago that students were citing Wikipedia as a source in their papers. When confronted, many would say that their high school teachers had allowed the practice.

But the errors on the Japanese history test last semester were the last straw. At Dr. Waters’s urging, the Middlebury history department notified its students this month that Wikipedia could not be cited in papers or exams, and that students could not “point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors.”

With the move, Middlebury, in Vermont, jumped into a growing debate within journalism, the law and academia over what respect, if any, to give Wikipedia articles, written by hundreds of volunteers and subject to mistakes and sometimes deliberate falsehoods. Wikipedia itself has restricted the editing of some subjects, mostly because of repeated vandalism or disputes over what should be said.

Although Middlebury’s history department has banned Wikipedia in citations, it has not banned its use. Don Wyatt, the chairman of the department, said a total ban on Wikipedia would have been impractical, not to mention close-minded, because Wikipedia is simply too handy to expect students never to consult it.

At Middlebury, a discussion about the new policy is scheduled on campus on Monday, with speakers poised to defend and criticize using the site in research.

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and chairman emeritus of its foundation, said of the Middlebury policy, “I don’t consider it as a negative thing at all.”

He continued: “Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested — students shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn’t be citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either.

“If they had put out a statement not to read Wikipedia at all, I would be laughing. They might as well say don’t listen to rock ’n’ roll either.”

Indeed, the English-language version of the site had an estimated 38 million users in the United States in December, and can be hard to avoid while on the Internet. Google searches on such diverse subjects as historical figures like Confucius and concepts like torture give the Wikipedia entry the first listing.

In some colleges, it has become common for professors to assign students to create work that appears on Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia’s list of school and university projects, this spring the University of East Anglia in England and Oberlin College in Ohio will have students edit articles on topics being taught in courses on the Middle East and ancient Rome.

In December 2005, a Columbia professor, Henry Smith, had the graduate students in his seminar create a Japanese bibliography project, posted on Wikipedia, to describe and analyze resources like libraries, reference books and newspapers. With 16 contributors, including the professor, the project comprises dozens of articles, including 13 on different Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias.

In evaluations after the class, the students said that creating an encyclopedia taught them discipline in writing and put them in contact with experts who improved their work and whom, in some cases, they were later able to interview.

“Most were positive about the experience, especially the training in writing encyclopedia articles, which all of them came to realize is not an easy matter,” Professor Smith wrote in an e-mail message. “Many also retained their initial ambivalence about Wikipedia itself.”

The discussion raised by the Middlebury policy has been covered by student newspapers at the University of Pennsylvania and Tufts, among others. The Middlebury Campus, the student weekly, included an opinion article last week by Chandler Koglmeier that accused the history department of introducing “the beginnings of censorship.”

Other students call the move unnecessary. Keith Williams, a senior majoring in economics, said students “understand that Wikipedia is not a responsible source, that it hasn’t been thoroughly vetted.” Yet he said, “I personally use it all the time.”

Jason Mittell, an assistant professor of American studies and film and media culture at Middlebury, said he planned to take the pro-Wikipedia side in the campus debate. “The message that is being sent is that ultimately they see it as a threat to traditional knowledge,” he said. “I see it as an opportunity. What does that mean for traditional scholarship? Does traditional scholarship lose value?”

For his course “Media Technology and Cultural Change,” which began this month, Professor Mittell said he would require his students to create a Wikipedia entry as well as post a video on YouTube, create a podcast and produce a blog for the course.

Another Middlebury professor, Thomas Beyer, of the Russian department, said, “I guess I am not terribly impressed by anyone citing an encyclopedia as a reference point, but I am not against using it as a starting point.”

And yes, back at Wikipedia, the Jesuits are still credited as supporting the Shimabara Rebellion.

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