According to a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, in 2011 the United States suffered over 1.1 million fraudulent income tax returns, and gave away over $3.3 Billion in bogus refunds. One address in Lansing, Michigan was used for 2,137 fake returns, and netted over $3 million. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in the way in which our government squanders our money for us. The truth is, our government has gotten too big for the lackadaisical bureaucracy to control it.
How did this happen? It started nearly 100 years ago. It is your fault and mine, and our forebears; for allowing our Congress to keep wrestling from us our power to control our own destiny. You may not agree with me, but please just listen to a few of my suggestions as to where we went wrong.
If 1913 could be erased from the history books, our world would be a better place. It was that year in which it was proclaimed that we, the people, had approved Congress’ 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, allowing the government for the first time to collect taxes on individual income. Prior to that, the government existed off excise taxes, tariffs, and custom duties. There was no way financially for it to become the big bureaucracy and financial burden it has become. The amendment was sold to the guileless public on the basis it would only be charged on the wealthy—3% maximum on all those making over $800 per year. Now, it is largely only the hard working middle class who bear this burden. The biggest lie ever told, “I am from the US government and I am here to help you.”
In 1913, it was also proclaimed that we the people had approved the 17th Amendment, allowing for US Senators to be elected by a vote of the electorate, replacing the original system of each state’s legislators electing their two US Senators. You may see this as a great blow for the voters of the nation, But, what may have seemed like a good idea, was in fact the end of the individual states sovereign rights as states, and the end of any power an individual state had in Washington, DC. As J. B. Williams says, “Prior to 1913, in Congress, the House represented the electorate of voters, and the Senate represented the individual sovereign states. This change allowed the Congress to abuse the “Supremacy Clause” of original Article VI, Clause 2; to run wild over every sovereign state in the nation. The states are now fiscal dependents of the federal government, and the federal government is a twenty-trillion-pound ape trampling through the rose garden of American life. Nobody seems to have any clue how to rein it all in”. All semblance of any real power of the individual state against the Federal government has been eviscerated.
In 1913, Congress also codified the “Creature from Jekyll Island”, which had been created by the nation’s biggest bankers at their millionaire’s retreat off the Georgia coast. It allowed them to create and own the Federal Reserve Bank, which would be the government’s central bank, with the ability to create money out of thin air, by buying debt obligations of the government. President Andrew Jackson (bless his philandering, Indian hating heart) was the only President to ever pay off the US debt, and in 1836, he closed the US Bank, a former attempt at central banking, and gave the money back to the individual states.
There are other years which should live in infamy as it relates to our individual freedom, and we will cover them in future articles.

Printed in the September 27, 2012 edition