Sonny Tufts
Member

To say that Nixon was the most popular President in US history based solely on his margin of victory in the popular vote is BS. If you look at the percentage of the popular vote of the winning candidate Nixon's second term (60.7%) comes behind Lyndon Johnson (61.1%) and FDR's second term (60.8%). Of course even that is misleading since it doesn't take into account all the people eligible to vote who didn't vote. Given that Nixon's opponent in 1972 was George McGovern, it's reasonable to assume that many didn't want to vote for either. Carlson makes it sounds as if Nixon and Agnew didn't do anything wrong and were simply forced out by the "Deep State". What hogwash.

You're delusional. I am not nor have I ever been a Democrat, and I would never join a party that had people like AOC, Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, or Elizabeth Warren in it. By the same token, I wouldn't join one that had creeps like Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Green, or George Santos in it, either.

If the GOP should hold anyone accountable, it's George Santos. But at least for the last seven years the GOP leadership has demonstrated that they believe power is more important than principle.

If this were true, then why should Congress have the discretion to vary the due date for the States to pay their shares? Why not just say that payment will be due by the end of the nation's fiscal year? You are also making the extremely dubious assumption that all state legislators will act rationally. I note you failed to address the fact that if a sufficient number of States paid on time they would receive a discount, thereby resulting in a deficit.

t have previously explained that this so-called "balanced budget" amendment would do no such thing. Section 4 allows Congress to set a date in the future by which the States are to pay their shares of the direct tax, thereby allowing Congress to do what it always does -- kick the can down the road and end up with a deficit. Even if every state comes up with their share of the tax, the discount will obviously result in a deficit. As a practical matter, however, it will nor be possible for all of the States to come up with their shares of the direct tax in the same fiscal year that Congress imposes it. Some legislatures don't meet annually, and it's a delusion to think that a State could decide how to raise its share of the tax and actually collect it in one year. The Founders' original tax plan was to give Congress the discretion to determine when and what to tax. There were only three restrictions on the taxing power spelled out in the original Constitution: direct taxes must be apportioned, duties, imposts, and excises must be geographically uniform, and Congress can't tax exports. The Supreme Court has added a fourth: Congress can't tax certain functions of a state or local government (this is the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine that is based upon the federalism structure under the Constitution). That's it. Given that 6 of the original 13 colonies had had some form of income tax it's absurd to think that the taxing power given to Congress in the Constitution wasn't broad enough to cover income taxes. Finally, the idea that the "original tax plan" didn't include the power to tax inheritances is nonsense, given that the first federal inheritance tax was imposed in 1797. See http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?516880-President-Trump-gives-up-on-tax-reform-and-embraces-income-tax-manipulation/page2&highlight=johnwk

But you claim that the State's sacrificing is done solely to preserve itself. Others could argue that it's done because what the perpetrator did was a crime and wrong and that he is being punished just as anyone else who had committed the same act would have been. The defense of sovereign immunity can be limited or eliminated entirely by the people through their elected representatives. This has already been done to some extent by the federal government and many states via legislation.

I think Derek Chauvin and the other cops convicted in the George Floyd case would take exception to your "without repercussion" claim.

If it was so understood and agreed it's puzzling why it wasn't spelled out in the Constitution. One reason may have been that to do so would have jeapordized the chances of ratification. Another, which the author seems to assume, is that the States already had the right to secede and there was no need to address it. But it can be argued that the States had already surrendered their sovereignty with respect to secession, since the Articles of Confederation provided that the union created by that instrument was to be perpetual. In other words, under the AOC no State could unilaterally secede. This undercuts the argument that the right to secede was retained by each State under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. The parties to the AOC did. Of course if all of the parties to a contract agree that it is no longer binding, then it isn't. And that's what happened to the AOC -- the States that were parties too it abandoned it and adopted the Constitution.