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To: Joseph S. Lione who wrote (101053)	3/19/2000 12:33:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 186894

OTOTOTOT It's very complicated and the judges who have written on the subject do not write very clearly. First is the problem of what is a tax. A tax is an exaction (taking) taken for the use of the government. Legal taxes are legal exactions, i.e. they are takings under due process of law, and cannot be complained of under the 5th and 14th Amendments. Similarly fees, taken under some legitimate enumerated or implied power (e.g. Commerce Clause), for the benefit of some and the detriment of others are also legal exactions if all of the legal niceties have been observed. I think the Supreme Court believes that those taxes intended to finance the provision of the general welfare authorized elsewhere under enumerated or implied powers are legal and cannot be challenged under Section 8 which gives Congress plenary powers to impose taxes for either the common defense or the general welfare. It is obvious, at least to me, that Congress does not have the power to lay taxes to pay for something that is justified by some appeal to the general welfare that is not also justified by some part of the Constitution. That is something that is very important in considering Social Security reform. There is no legal connection between Social Security benefits, and paying FICA taxes. If one has paid a lifetime of FICA taxes and yet is not permitted benefits, that is just tough. If one can prove that he met conditions of eligibility yet taxes were never paid on his behalf, he gets the benefits anyway. For instance, one proves he was treated as a contractor even though he was actually and employee who never paid self-employment tax, he can get benefits based on his employment. If you look at the law, the Federal government cannot tax the earnings of State employees, but it contracts with the State to collect the taxes and give them to the U.S. goverment. The U.S. government, in turn, includes the State employment in its benefit calculations. It's all a mess, anyway. I conclude that the government can get away with anything that it can find 5 elderly people on the bench to approve, and that almost any decent lawyer can twist words to make anything appear either constitutional or unconstitutional as his fee appears. I am sure they all are honorable men.

To: Joseph S. Lione who wrote (101053)	3/19/2000 1:50:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

OT - Constitution I would like to post a clarification since someone else is continuing the discussion. nihil said that I agreed that the Supreme Court justices decide what the government is allowed to do. I absolutely do not. While this may be true when the bench is packed with Judicial Activists, this is not their task. Rather, their task is to rule on what the Constitution says the government is allowed to do. There is a subtle but extremely important difference here. After all, if the Constitution was intended to be this extremely flexible document that only meant whatever the justices and politicians wanted it to mean then there'd be no need for a complicated and difficult method of amending it. The height of the bar that an amendment has to clear in order to pass is a clear indication of how serious an undertaking the framers considered changing the Constitution's meaning was.