A few weeks ago we published, “Before 1913 No One Paid Income Taxes, Tariffs Covered Everything.” Actually we have always had tariffs as the Constitution requires “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…” and, “The Congress shall have Power: To lay and collect Taxes, Duties Imposts and Excises…” with duties being a synonym for tariffs (Article I, Sections 7 and 8). But 124 years later, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, America replaced the tariff tax on countries selling their products in the United States as the primary source of revenue for the federal government with a forced income tax on its own residents. Today most paying are taxed a fourth of their income.
Canals, shown in red, were a major source of transportation in the Old Northwest 1820-1860. Two north south canals from Lake Erie traversed Ohio to the Ohio river continuing South to the Mississippi River then to the Gulf of America. The most famous of all the canals was the Erie Canal carrying goods from the Great Lakes to Buffalo, New York then 363 miles East to the Hudson River than South to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean. Commerce to and from New York City necessitated their going to skyscrapers to accommodate the traffic. Tariffs funded all this including the skyscrapers. There was no federal income tax until 1913. Americans kept all their earnings. The same was so of four transcontinental railroads that followed.
The first concern of the newly formed Republic was how it would fund itself differently than had their former British government, as an object of economic control which fed their rebellion. They passed the Tariff Act of 1789, “which levied duties on imported goods to raise revenue and protect American industries from foreign competition” (TRUMP’S TARIFFS Constitutional, or Executive Overreach?,”New American, March 24. 2025, p. 21-22). Such funded a series of canals in or through the Appalachian mountains, the most famous being the Erie Canal linking the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, 363 miles long in an unprecedentedly efficient waterway. We had four transcontinental railroads, the Civil War, and the Spanish American War. We had schools, colleges, subways, an army and navy. Tariffs funded the Industrial Revolution and Americans kept all their earnings which stimulated the economy.
Many believe this still realistic if we do three things. 1) Remove the trillions in waste and fraud identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk. 2) Require all federal spending to stay within the constitutional list Article I, Section 8. 3) Return to the tariff as our source of federal income excepting “unavoidable wars,” as George Washington admonished in his famous Farewell Address.
It was Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, that ushered in the fourth branch of government, the federal bureaucracy, that necessitated a gigantic federal budget. “Beginning with the New Deal, the entire complexion of the executive branch changed, as president Franklin D. Roosevelt effected an unprecedented revolution … a permanent entrenched, professional government bureaucracy to impose continuity.” He “set up a welter of new government agencies tasked with regulating every aspect of Americans’ lives, organs that could effectively legislate without the encumbrances of legislative process, and which were ‘apolitical’ – that is, unaccountable. All of this was accomplished by FDR via executive order, particularly during his fabled ‘First 100 Days,’ which featured an effusion of executive orders and proclamations without precedent, along with an enormous volume of enabling legislation passed by a supine Congress” (“President or King,” The New American, March 24, 2025, pp. 9-10).
Roosevelt created “69 new government regulatory agencies” now referred to as the alphabet soup agencies. No president changed the government and Constitution more in his first 100 days in office than he. It was indeed a bloodless revolution leaving us thereafter at the mercy of Big Government. Moreover, he put these —not under legislative branch authority but the executive—where they operated virtually “free of accountability….This sprawling regulatory regime, wholly illegitimate by any constitutional standard, has been inserted into the executive branch…[this] completely restructured the executive branch and redefined the powers of the presidency without even the formality of a constitutional amendment.” Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office established “an unprecedented executive power grab that utterly —and illicitly— transformed the entire federal government and laid the foundation of modern Big Government” (Ibid.).
Donald Trump emphasized the tariff in his first term and is presently making it ever more dominant in the economy today. With it he believes we can gradually end federal income taxes altogether—as was once the case for more than half of our history. He would also like to investigate and audit the Federal Reserve, with a view of removing it, which serves as an open-ended credit card for the Deep State allowing it to create money at will for its nefarious projects and purposes. The most visible consequence of it is inflation which destroys the value of everyones money especially retirees on fixed incomes and may prevent the young from ever owing a home of their own.
Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt virtually created the Big Government regulatory state wholly illegitimate by any constitutional standard. He created “69 new government regulatory agencies” and served four terms in office. He controlled the legislative and executive branches of government. The media and his party swooned over him. After him his own party supported a two term limitation on the office. If we ever had a dictator in office it was him. Ironically, President Trump is called by them a dictator for trying to undo his/their regulatory state. This makes Trump the only dictator in history advocating less government and taxes.
There is considerable evidence that the Deep State, then called Internationalists, abandoned the tariff for their federal income tax and the open-ended credit system of the Federal Reserve or Central Bank. These hatched the same year, 1913. Trump’s America First Policy is a return to protectionism and a rejection of the past—even present— move toward globalism.
Trump believes that “America has been taken advantage of through unfair trade practices which have weakened America’s “manufacturing, led to job losses, and made the country too dependent on foreign suppliers—particularly China.” He would like “to reduce our reliance on foreign nations for essential goods.” (TRUMP’S TARIFFS, p. 22). He believes he can do this and restore the tariff as the nation’s majority source of income as it once was, leaving the people untaxed.
Some are critical, as am I, as the Constitution gives only Congress the “Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises”—not the president. But that authority too was transferred by FDR to the Executive Branch by his signing the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 (Ibid., p. 23). So Trump is not violating the Constitution by initiating tariffs as used by both parties for ninety years.
But that is a small issue next to Trump’s attempt to reveal and destroy the ‘secret combination’ now commonly called the Deep State and Congress seems unable to impeach even a single rogue judge. We’ll correct Mr. Trump later. Other than Kennedy and Reagan, Trump is the only president willing to take a bullet to remove the Deep State.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column # 820 `
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In March we learned that the CIA was linked to the JFK Assassination, in April that the FBI was linked to a secret plan to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president in 2016 and when once elected, thereafter overthrow him in a Coup d’état —treason. Both from top secret files kept by each intelligence organization but released by the executive orders of President Donald Trump: the first suppressed for 62 years, the second for most of nine years (John F. Kennedy Assassination Files Revealed “A State Within a State,” March 26, 2025, LibertyUnderFire.org). The objective was successful in 2020 when they came to power fraudulently. Both events were intended to remain permanently hidden.
These pictured: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have the most to worry from the, long suppressed, FBI Crossfire Hurricane Documents which reveal a secret plan to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president in 2016 and when once elected, thereafter overthrow him in a Coup d’état. Each has played a major role in the present Deep State hold on America.
The newly released FBI Crossfire Hurricane documents reveal Deep State treason. FBI Director Kash Patel sent members of Congress the released nearly 700 pages of declassified records called “Crossfire Hurricane” debunking the baseless Trump-Russia saga. The release was labeled the “Crossfire Hurricane Redacted Binder.” (“FBI Director Patel sends declassified Crossfire Hurricane docs on Russiagate scandal to Congress,” By John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy, Just the News, April 9, 2025). This was the “lost” binder the Biden FBI expected, but failed to find, in their Mar-A-Largo raid on Trump’s home August 9, 2022. These will be devastating to Dems.
There was no Trump/Russia collusion. From the beginning Trump insisted that all the Russian investigation documents be made public. “I have fully authorized the total declassification of any and all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American history, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No reductions!” Trump “tweeted in October, adding that all Russia Hoax Scandal information was declassified by me long ago” (“Trump declassifies binder of Russia investigation documents on eve of Biden inauguration,” Washington Examiner, by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department reporter, January 20, 2021).”
Trump had tried to “declassify the FBI’s Russiagate scandal records in the final days of his first term” but these efforts “were thwarted by his own Justice Department in January 2021.” Joe Biden was inaugurated January 20th. Christopher Wray remained as FBI Director and Merrick Garland became Attorney General. “These spent the next four years refusing to make the records public.” This, because it incriminated them. “The FBI’s investigation targeting both candidate and then-President Trump in 2016 and beyond began with ginned-up allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russian government, but Crossfire Hurricane was soon exposed as a Deep State plot by politicized intelligence and law enforcement agencies to target Trump.”
Trump’s January 2021 executive “order mentioned a binder of materials related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that the president said the Justice Department provided to the White House at his request on Dec. 30, 2020. “I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder,”‘ Trump wrote Jan. 19, 2021. “This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy.” They did not act.
Trump’s new executive order had to be reissued once back in office more than four years later, on March 25, 2025. It was entitled “Immediate Declassification of Materials Related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation” (Donald Trump, The White House, Presidential Memorandum). In it he “referenced the prior thwarted executive order in his final full day in office during his first term. ‘I have determined that all of the materials referenced in the Presidential Memorandum of January 19, 2021 are no longer classified,’” he wrote in announcing his second order.
Trump “This [the Crossfire Hurricane Documents] will put everything in the public eye.” To the press, “You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see.” Then asks, “Is anybody going to look?” To a newsperson directly in the room, “What about you? You going to look?” Then adds, “Frankly the FBI should be ashamed of themselves and so should the Department of Justice. And so should Biden.”
The truth is Trump was spied upon. John Solomon of Just the News, Aprill 11, 2025, disclosed that one confidential human source, George Papadopoulos, received $1.2 million collectively from the FBI for over 13 years as a spy. Who paid for the spying? The FBI out of your tax dollars. Jim Ferguson is more blunt. “This wasn’t about ‘Russia.’ ’This wasn’t about ‘collusion.’ This was about: political espionage, character assassination, [and] taking down Trump by any means necessary… Trump’s campaign [was] spied upon. And the Deep State walks away untouched. What this means: the FBI didn’t investigate Trump. The FBI targeted Trump. They paid informants. They planted lies. They weaponized the intelligence community against a sitting U.S. president. The swamp isn’t just real. IT’S DOCUMENTED. And now 700 pages PROVE IT. The Russia Hoax wasn’t just a scam. IT WAS TREASON!! Time for the truth. Time for accountability. Time for justice” (Jim Ferguson, “The FBI’s DIRTY SECRETS ARE OUT – 700 pages UNREDACTED. Just the News, April 12, 2025).
For fun Drama Smith asked Gork, an AI assistance program, to scan the Crossfire Hurricane documents and “tell me which laws were broken and by whom.” This is what was received, “Falsification of Evidence (18 U.S.C. 1001) Who: Kevin Clinesmith. FIZA Abuse (50 U.S.C. 1801 at seq.) Who: James Comey, Andrew Mc Cabe. Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights (18 U.S.C. 241). Who: James Comey, Andrew Mc Cabe, Peter Strzok, Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS. False Statements to Federal Authorities (18 U.S.C. 1001) Who: Christopher Steele. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. 371) Who: Steele, Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, DNC/Clinton campaign officials. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. 371). Who: DNC, Clinton Campaign, Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Intelligence Community (ICA Authorities ) etc.” (X22 Report, Ep. 3617b, April 12, 2025, 41:30).
Former FBI agent Lisa Page’s, chilling admission is proving prophetic, “If they start digging deep, we are screwed” (Ibid. 42:28). Newly released FBI Crossfire Hurricane Documents reveal treason.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column # 819. F
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Saigon fell 50 years ago this week on April 30, 1975 when U.S. Army Huey helicopters lifted off the roof of the American embassy the last remnants of our presence in South Vietnam ending a 14-year humiliating defeat. North Vietnam, a 3rd world nation, had defeated the greatest power on earth and rubbed this humiliation in America’s face by renaming Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City after the brutal communist victor. This, in a war that respected Senator Strom Thurmond, Armed Services Committee member, insisted ,“We could have been in and out of Vietnam in 4-6 months” (Cong. Record, June 6, 1975, p. S 9905). Thirty million people were lost to communism. Why?
Communist Viet Cong troops descend on the Capitol of Saigon taking complete control of it April 30, 1975, fifty years ago this week. The evacuation of around 7,000 South Vietnamese and Americans over two days preceded this, many fleeing before the invaders. Only 2,000 found refuge on the U.S. Midway stationed offshore. America was defined as the only enemy and only 1 of 4 signatories of the disastrous Vietnam Treaty signed January 24 1973 required to leave Vietnam. The other Treaty signatories were South Vietnam, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong shown in this photo coming in to take final control of South Vietnam.
Millions of Vietnamese and 58,281 Americans had died in the futile war to save them from the communist invasion and captivity. More millions died after we left. Subsequent investigations document our having left behind up to 1,205 prisoners of war. We soothed our conscience with movies like Rambo depicting what we should have done but did not.
Those who could not flee the following retribution were sent to reeducations camps for indoctrination. “As many as two million people fled Vietnam on boats. Anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 died” as they set sail on leaky boats for any country that would pluck them out of the water (“Vietnam 50 Years Later, Americans Are Still Paying for Vietnam War,” New American, April 28, 2025, pp. 6-11). They were called the boat people.
It was not our soldiers fault. The JFK files, recently released, revealed the CIA as a “State within a state” and most responsible for the Kennedy assassination (“John F. Kennedy, Assassination Files Reveals ‘A State Within a State’, ” LibertyUnderFire.org, March 26, 2025). President Kennedy learned quickly that there existed another force to reckon with besides just the legislative and judicial branches—a real shadow government known today as the Deep State, but then as the CIA and/or the Eastern Establishment.
Kennedy opposed the CIA’s Bay Of Pigs invasion of Cuba and wanted America’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War. He had argued “If the American people do not want to use American troops to remove a Communist regime 90 miles away from our coast, how can I ask them to use troops to remove a Communist regime 9,000 miles away?” In 1963 Kennedy signed the National Security Action Memorandum 263 to begin the phaseout in Vietnam which implemented plans to withdraw 1,000 US military personnel by the end of 1963. Other withdrawals would come after the 1964 election and follow. Forty-two days after Kennedy signed this document initiating a withdrawal, he was assassinated” (“Why the Deep State Assassination of John F. Kennedy?” Dec. 6, 2023, LibertyUnderFire.org . He had also promised, “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind,” but they got to him before he got to them.
If the CIA controlled foreign policy before the assassination they controlled it after as well under Lyndon Baines Johnson and throughout the Vietnam War. A lot of money and power is gained during war, the longer the more—especially by the military industrial complex—as President Eisenhower forewarned. Instead of withdrawal, recruitment was amplified from Kennedy’s 16,000 to Johnson’s 184,000 troops.
It is ludicrous that a government would create restrictions on it’s military that would virtually leave them fighting with one hand tied behind their back. And yet that is exactly what our CIA shadow government did. According to U.S. News and World Report, June 30, 1975 citing the then just released formally top secret, “Rules of Engagement for the Vietnam War” our men had to fight under horrendous conditions not imposed from the enemy but from our own State Department (Cong. Record June 6, 1975, pp. S9897-S9904. View in full “Vietnam’s Rules of Engagement,” Freemen Report, Sept. 15, 1975).
“As many as two million people fled Vietnam on boats. Anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 died” as they set sail on leaky boats for any country that would pluck them out of the water. The boat people faced danger and hardship from pirates, overcrowded boats, and storms. The great majority of them were settled in developed countries, more than half in the United States and most of the remainder in France, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
What follows are some of those rules. On-ground assaults in urban areas “known to shelter enemy forces generally had to be preceded by loud-speaker warnings and leaflet drops.” Our troops could return fire “only when the enemy was positively identified and in close contact. Sniper and mortar fire were not counted as ‘contact’ unless ‘such fire interferes with the scheme of maneuver or is inflicting casualties or damage to equipment.’” Only flat-trajectory weapons (rifles, machine guns, grenades and recoilless rifles) could be used in civilian-populated areas, which largely exposed our men, and “then only if there was a specific, identifiable target.” Obviously on the ground, U. S superiority in firepower was deliberately not exploited.
Nor was it in the air. Pilots were not allowed to fire where they thought the enemy was hidden—even when fired upon—until they were “sure the strike would be positively oriented against the source.” And in many areas there was the nightmare of getting approval at higher levels even if you spotted the enemy or you were taking ground fire. The chain of command often went through the “province chief, district chief, sector commander and a battalion or higher command” which by the time this was completed, the enemy had disappeared. Enemy airfields were off limits if a “plane with a third nation’s markings was present.” Dams, locks, dikes and targets within 11 1/2 miles of the enemy’s major cities were “banned without prior approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” (Ibid.). Good luck on that one.
Perhaps the most detrimental rule imposed on our men dealt with where the blame would lie for mistakes. “The final decision on engagement will be at the discretion of the senior tactical commander present.” Present meant in the field and made commanders there very cautious because it “removed responsibility from the top leadership if anything went wrong…” These rules actually aided the enemy, and it is because of them that this 14-year-long-war lasted so long —from our first sending ‘advisors’ under President John F. Kennedy to the evacuation of Saigon ending the war under President Gerald Ford.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column #818.
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As a nation under the U.S. Constitution we are 236 years old. The first 124 of these years we had no federal income tax and handled our national expenses quite well, most of those years without a national debt. Today most are assessed a fifth to a fourth of their gross income. Prior to 1913 we kept what is now taken from us. We first advocated a return to this system on Dec. 13 2013,“Blows to Liberty 100 Years Ago Still Impact You” (LibertyUnderFire.org).
The then existing Deep State, then called Internationalist, prompted this. They wanted this financial “water faucet” that they could turn on at will. They could purchase anything—even people. They created a private corporation, the Federal Reserve, and pushed for the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which now funded the government from the taxpayer, an internal source, rather than by tariffs from other countries, an external source.
What would you spend it on were it not taken from you? Normally not on the basics such as food, housing, and utilities as they likely are covered in what you are allowed to retain. You would spend the extra fourth of your salary on hundreds of items that are made by others as well as services you might like. This not only would enrich your life but it would provide jobs for others making those items or providing those services.
Would you spend it more wisely than the federal government? Likely! Most of the money taken from you by the federal government is spent on perpetual war, foreign aid, grants to privileged portions of our society, and endless unconstitutional subsidized programs; the last two of which basically take the money of those who produce and redistribute it to those who do not. Even some non-tax payers get income tax refunds as we have reported—so corrupt is the system.
Of course, those receiving and benefiting from these programs will defend them. But the fact remains that tax monies provide largely government jobs, which are almost entirely consumption jobs (jobs that consume the production of society but produce little consumable). Such jobs cannot produce for public consumption a potato, a carton of milk, or even a can of hair spray. They bring another person to the table to eat, but not another to produce something to eat.
What largely brought about the vast give-away programs of the Twentieth Century was the now 112-year-old 16th Amendment—the federal income tax. All three 1912 presidential candidates Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, their respective parties, and the then existing Deep State, then called Internationalist, did this to us. They wanted this financial “water faucet” that they could turn on at will. They could purchase anything—even people.
Prior to 1913 the federal government remained mostly faithful to her grants of power in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which left them with only four powers: 1) to tax, 2) pay the debts, 3) provide for the general welfare and 4) provide for the common defense. Because the federal government has the inclination to grow their authority the last two power grants, general welfare and common defense, each had eight qualifiers to harness them more fully. Outside these qualifiers the federal government had no power to tax or spend—still doesn’t.
General welfare then meant everyone equally (general) as opposed to “specific welfare” or “privileged welfare” as it is today, targeting those to forfeit and those to receive monies. The Constitution did not deny states, counties, or cities from having such programs, only the federal government. But politicians soon learned that the more they promised to the people, from the money of others, the easier it was to get elected and stay elected.
The problem with the federal government going off the list and funding things clearly not on it was that each time they did so the stronger the inclination to do so again. One minor departure begets another until one notices that what the federal government does has little or no relationship to the list in the Constitution. I ask my students what would happen if they took one lollypop to kindergarten and gave it to one child? What would the others say? Where is mine? Try taking away long provided benefits from a privileged welfare group, as for example food stamps, and see how popular you are with that voting group in the next election.
So why does the government now need a fourth of everything you make and it is still not enough? Answer, because we went off the listed powers of the Constitution and every departure required more taxpayer funding. The solution to less tax is less government. A side benefit is more freedom. The productive classes would not be hurt as might be supposed. Seldom do they qualify for the federally subsidized programs anyway. The fourth taken from the productive classes would be spent by them creating a plethora of jobs for those who wished to work and give them no excuse not to. The cycle of dependency would be drastically reduced. The federal government would no longer be an enabler to those not working. States would decide for themselves what assistance programs they could afford and generate with some states offering more and others less as the Tenth Amendment mandates.
One side benefit of tariffs is that it stimulates domestic production and industries giving them an advantage.
I have a friend who freely admits that he became a Democrat as a young man because they offered more. His departure from the Constitution began with that choice. The Democrat Party since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has always offered more freebies, confiscated from the “haves” and redistributed to the “have nots” to paraphrase Karl Marx and his socialist ideology.
So, how did we cover the expenses of the federal government—even wars—our first 124 years? Products coming into the country were assessed a fee to market in the U.S. called a tariff. We got product producers in other countries to cover our national expenses and thus we were able to spend on ourselves every cent of what the federal government now takes, which inadvertently stimulated the economy. No one should be able to argue that our present approximately $36 trillion national debt (up from $20 trillion just 8 years ago) is fair, has really worked for any of us, and is a better plan. It also enslaves our posterity who is required to pay it back amplified with interest charges, enabling us to bask in the sunshine of fake prosperity. Imagine what you could purchase annually with the money confiscated from you in federal taxes.
To protect prosperity and the Constitution for all, three things must happen. 1) We must identify and remove all waste and fraud in the present government identified by DOGE with ALL excess money from cancelled contracts to immediately be returned to liquidate the national debt. 2) We must remove the 16th Amendment and restore the tariff as our source of financing the federal government as it was our first 124 years. 3) We must return to Article I, Section 8 and the listed powers of government with ALL expenditures specifically tied to one of those powers. Yes this will hurt for a time, all surgeries do, otherwise we eventually self destruct as a free people.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column # 817
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