Quote:
The measure is illuminating. It explicitly rejects the position, and the principles, of the original Republican Party.
Members of the Republican Party invented the U.S. income tax during the Civil War, and they created the precursor to the IRS to collect it. To find money to fight the war, they raised tariffs on common products but immediately turned to the novel idea of an income tax, and a graduated one at that, to make sure that “the burdens will be more equalized on all classes of the community, more especially on those who are able to bear them,” as Senator William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME) put it.
Justin Smith Morrill (R-VT) agreed. “The weight [of] taxation must be distributed equally,” he said, “Not upon each man an equal amount, but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.”
The Republicans then quite deliberately constructed a national system for collecting the new taxes. In the midst of the Civil War, they urged their colleagues to imagine what would happen if a disloyal state were permitted to manage the collection itself.
I'm afraid I have never seen a time when so many are so intent on embarrassing themselves with public masturbation---santos is looking to be not so bad after all :doh:
