Healthcare Reform is a Tax Issue at heart

The power to tax is the power to enslave

"A slave is a person who does not own his own labor. . . An income tax is different from other taxes. An income tax gives government a claim to your labor, just as a slave owner had a claim to the slave's labor. A slave who withheld his labor was likely to be punished. He would be put on short rations or whipped. If one of us today withholds from the IRS, the punishment is more severe -- several years in prison."
"Tax Slaves Existing for Government", by Paul Craig Roberts (January 2, 2001)

This Health-Care Reform Might Tax Us to Death   Investors are going to get taxed. You are going to get taxed. It's that simple. The people without health insurance -- the very people whom this is supposed to help -- are going to get taxed too. And millions of them will be left without insurance (even though they have to pay higher taxes). . . . According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the top marginal federal-income tax rate will be 45%. If you take state taxes into account, it's off the charts. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, if you include state income taxes, people in 39 out of 50 states will be above the 50% tax rate.  ("Ahead of the Curve" by Donald Luskin, July 17, 2009)

Writs-of-asistance case, 1671
"Jeremiah Gridley . . . was acting as the king's attorney, and he opened the case with the king's arguments. . . .Which was more important, protecting the liberty of an individual or collecting the taxes effeciently? Gathering public money must take precedence." [page 21]

[James Otis represented the Boston merchants opposing the writs-of-assistance] "To John Adams, [James] Otis rose in the hall like a flame of fire . . . What was Otis' argument? He claimed to be doing nothing more than applying a lesson from the [legal] textbooks. Coke's compilation of English law in the previous century had often challenged the king's power and called upon judges to nullify any act that went against an Englishman's common rights, or against reason, or was repugnant or impossible to enforce. Otis took Coke as his authority and made a strong case that any law was void if it voilated England's constitution." [page 22]

"No other creature on earth [Otis argued] could legitimately challenge a man's right to his life, his liberty, and his property. That principle, that unalterable law, took precedence--here Otis was answering Gridley directly--even over the survival of the state." [page 23]
Patriots: the men who started the American Revolution, by A.J. Langguth (1988)

Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766

[William Pitt, speaking on the House of Commons floor] "Today's debate over [the repeal of the Stamp Act] was more important than anything the House had faced since it confirmed the Bill of Rights nearly a hundred years ago. In this present case, said Pitt, the colonists shared the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen. . . . America's assemblies had always possessed a constitutional right to give and to grant their own money. 'They would have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it.' Pitt said. He would never admit to the justice of taxing America internally, he added, until she enjoyed representation." [page 84-85] [Note: the colonists were NOT seeking representation.]

"'I have been charged,' [Pitt] began, 'with giving birth to sedition in America. I rejoice that America has resisted. . . . The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? But I desire to know when they were made slaves. . . . The Americans have . . . been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned?'" [page 85]

"During the debate over the repeal, Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania's agent in London, had gone to the Commons to answer any questions about the mood in the colonies. . . . A member asked whether British soldiers could enforce the Stamp Act. Franklin replied that they could not. 'What are they to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion. They may indeed make one.'" [page 86]
Patriots: the men who started the American Revolution, by A.J. Langguth (1988)