Obama To Wealthy Americans: Read My Lips, I WILL Raise Your Taxes! ["Majority Agree W/My Approach"]

Obama To Wealthy Americans: Read My Lips, I WILL Raise Your Taxes! By TOBY HARNDEN 9 November 2012

President Barack Obama has thrown down to gauntlet to Republican leaders, inviting them to the White House next week to discuss the so-called fiscal cliff but insisting any compromise will include higher taxes on the rich.

A crisis is looming at the end of the year is agreement cannot be reached on how to avoid falling over the cliff - a scheduled combination of tax increases and spending cuts due at the end of this year.

‘We can't just cut our way to prosperity,’ Obama said in an event in the East Room in the White House Friday staged with what aides described as ordinary middle-class Americans arranged behind him.

‘We're serious about reducing the deficit. We have to combine spending cuts with revenue, and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.’ While not using the word ‘mandate’, Obama all but insisted he had a mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy.

He flexed his political muscles, indicating he would use his enhanced power following his re-election in an electoral college landslide by strong-arming Republicans into raising taxes.

‘I’m not going to ask students and seniors and middle class families to pay down the entire deficit, while people like me making over $250,000 aren’t asked to pay a dime more in taxes. I’m not going to do that. ‘And I just want to point out, this was a central question during the election. It was debated over and over again. And on Tuesday night we found out that the majority of Americans agree with my approach.’

With one MAJOR contingency, taxing ONLY the rich is entirely justifiable from a historical perspective.

More specifically, noting that Thomas Jefferson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Jefferson had noted that, in his time, the federal government was financed entirely by taxes paid by the rich on imported goods.

"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied (emphasis added). … Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.

In fact, noting that many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were wealthy, George Washington being a Bill Gates of his time, I surmise that the same rich men who drafted the Constitution, were willing to obligate not only themselves, but also their rich friends and other rich Americans to bear the entire burden of paying for the federal government that the delegates were establishing to operate.

The MAJOR exception to the historical information above is the following. As I have posted elsewhere, Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues. In other words, Congress can lay taxes only for issues which it can justify under Section 8 of Article I, and minor federal goverment expenses mentioned in the Constitution.

In fact, I'm disturbed that regardless that Justice Roberts referenced Gibbons v. Ogden in the Obamacare opinion, he "overlooked" that Justice John Marshall had clarified in Gibbons that, not only is healthcare a 10th Amendmen protected state power issue, but that Marshall had also clarified in general that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues.

"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress (emphasis added)." --Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

So regardless that the federal government was once financed entirely from taxes that the rich paid for imported goods, the Supreme Court had also clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, issues which Congress cannot justify under Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution.

Note that the rich had a big incentive to use their influence to limit federal spending.

Finally, noting that most of the federal taxes that we are now paying are arguably illegal by Justice Marshall's clarification of Congress's limited power to lay taxes, there's no way that the rich today can uniquely bear the burden of paying for the feds to operate.

prepared to hear the definition of wealth change throughout the next 4 years,,for now it’s based on income,,,then it’s homeowners,,then it’s people who have a nest egg/retirement,,,then it’s people who own cars,,and people who own property,,,,,etc

Obama is playing the perpetual "envy" game. He really doesn't care if more taxes are actually raised or not as a result of the tax increases... and there never is an end in this game. When this increase doesn't close the deficit, and it won't, he'll prattle on about more "shared sacrifice".

Orwell encapsulated this political belief in this horrifying quote in "1984",

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."

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