Electoral Reform

[Occhidiangela]

I don't think this notion of "status" has any legal weight whatsoever. Any American lawyers or jurists care to correct me on that?

Actually, it does, and we have had court cases for the last ten years addressing this. The Affirmative Action programs are being challenged on just those grounds, the most common challenge being about admission to Universities in a number of states. The mechanism behind this status is based on rather Old Testament thinking: visit upon the grandchildren the sins of their grandfathers and great grandfathers, by assigning a remediation status in selected cases, based on ethnicity. My daughter is not eligible for about 2/3d's of the scholarships easily available here in Corpus Christi and Texas because I did not lie and claim that I am of Mexican or Hispanic heritage. Her status as an Anglo precludes her being considered. (Other programs are means based, and we make enough to qualify for very small grants, which I have directed her to apply for.)

As to some of the red herrings already netted, I don't think homosexuals have yet achieved that "special victim status", but rather are currently working to redress the special status of straights/breeders that they feel does not accrue to them on the legal front in marriage.

Both "status" matters are related to the Fourteenth amendment.

The sixteenth amendment does indeed change, fundamentally, the original prohibition against a head tax. Article I Section VIII grants to the Congress the authority to enact statutes to enable them to act, within the bounds of the constitution, to put into practice the general powers enumerated to them. So, the income tax is legal, all arguments against, and hair splitting over the word "income," noted.

Amendments can be repealed, as the Prohibition was repealed. The sixteenth could be repealed. Kandrathe's suggestion that head tax be replaced by a consumption tax is a model similar to what I saw in Italy. The IVA was about 19%, and Italy had as fine a collection fo tax dodgers as I ever saw. :lol: My state, Texas, has no income tax, but has property and sales tax.

Property Tax is an area, completely unrelated to income, where property owners and "haves" are soaked by local governments in what is well framed by many libertarians as "legal theft" by the mob.

Basically, we all vote ourselves a share of your property.

Coming up with a fair tax system is not a trivial undertaking. Some of the simplistic arguments made in favor of such are sadly only a millimetre deep. (Hey, I used metric! :w00t: )

Occhi