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Volitzar

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Posts: 1,740

Re:
Tom Cryer Debut LIVE radio show Attorney that
beat the IRS legally and teaches U

« Reply #1 on: October 18,
2008, 01:14:54 PM »

An article I've been hanging on to.

This is my absolute favorite
anti-income-tax argument. Most claims that Americans aren't required to
pay income tax rely on legal interpretations so tortured only a tax
resister could possibly believe them. But the Ohio thing has just enough
plausibility to give even sane people pause.

It all started when Ohio was preparing to
celebrate the 150th anniversary of its admission to the Union in 1953.
Researchers looking for the original statehood documents discovered
there'd been a little oversight. While Congress had approved Ohio's
boundaries and constitution, it had never passed a resolution formally
admitting the future land of the Buckeyes. Technically, therefore, Ohio
was not a state.

Predictably, when this came to light it was
the subject of much merriment. One senator joshingly
suggested that his colleagues from Ohio were drawing federal paychecks
under false pretenses.

But Ohio congressman George Bender thought
it was no laughing matter. He introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio
to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803. At a special session at the
old state capital in Chillicothe the Ohio state legislature approved a
new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington on horseback.
Congress subsequently passed a joint resolution, and President
Eisenhower, after a few more jokes, signed it on August 7, 1953.

But then the tax resisters got to work.
They argued that since Ohio wasn't officially a state until 1953, its
ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1911 was invalid, and thus Congress
had no authority to enact an income tax.

Baloney, argued rational folk. A sufficient number of states voted for
ratification even if you don't count Ohio.

OK, said the resisters, but the proposed
amendment had been introduced to Congress by the administration of
William H. Taft. Taft had been born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857. The
Constitution requires that presidents be natural-born citizens of the
United States. Since Ohio was not a state in 1857, Taft was not a
natural-born citizen, could not legally be president, and could not
legally introduce the 16th Amendment. (Presumably one would also have
problems with anything done by presidents Grant, Hayes, Garfield, B.
Harrison, McKinley, and Harding, who were also born in Ohio.)

Get off it, the rationalists replied. The
1953 resolution retroactively admitted Ohio as of 1803, thereby rendering
all subsequent events copacetic.

Uh-uh, said the resisters. The constitution
says the Congress shall make no ex post facto law. That means no
retroactive admissions to statehood.

Uh, we'll get back to you on that, said the
rationalists.

A call to the IRS elicited the following official statement: "The
courts have . . . rejected claims that the Sixteenth Amendment . . . was
not properly ratified. . . . In Porth v. Brodrick, 214 F.2d 925 (10th Circuit 1954), the court
dismissed an attack on the Sixteenth Amendment as being 'clearly
unsubstantial and without merit,' as well as 'far
fetched and frivolous.'"

Just one problem. The Porth
decision didn't specifically address the Ohio argument. It just sort of
spluttered that attacks on the 16th Amendment were stupid.

OK, they're stupid. But great matters have
turned on seemingly sillier points of law. It's not like the Ohio
argument couldn't have been defeated on the merits. One suspects that
from a legal standpoint "ex post facto" doesn't mean exactly
the same thing as "retroactive." And of course the weight of
150 years of history, during which time everyone thought Ohio had been
properly admitted, ought to count for something.

I'm not defending the crackpots. But if
you're a parent you recognize that "because I said so" isn't
much of an argument. Guess it's different if you're a judge.

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