Pete Hendrickson (@LostHorizons)

Let's Celebrate Some Victories By The Good Guys! ...and push back some of the darkness. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS of the system of government established by America's Founders and Framers is its discipline over the federal government's access to resources. This discipline is imposed in large part by two key factors relating to each of the classes of taxation permitted under the US Constitution. One of those factors is that all capitations and other direct taxes are made very politically-sensitive in their imposition (and effectively restricted to no more than can be borne by the poorest states) via the apportionment mechanism. The other disciplining factor is that all other permitted taxes are indirect imposts, excises and duties. Such taxes are subject to the control of individual citizens, each of whom decides how much engagement in excise-taxable activity will be undertaken, if any (a discipline that extends to the several states, insofar as they participate in income taxation). As Hamilton put it in Federalist 21: "Imposts, excises, and, in general, all duties upon articles of consumption, may be compared to a fluid, which will, in time, find its level with the means of paying them. The amount to be contributed by each citizen will in a degree be at his own option, and can be regulated by an attention to his resources." It is by virtue of this disciplinary structure that the United States can be kept secure on the sovereign people's leash-- bound down from mischief, as Jefferson put it, by the chains of the Constitution. Today, we're going to celebrate a new batch of American patriots who are doing this critically-important work. Continued: https://losthorizons.com/N/206.htm#2