Three pieces written in disgust at the Democrats’ latest presdential debate. (Full columns embedded in linked headlines.)
Elizabeth Warren’s three worst debate moments. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was exposed in Tuesday night’s debate as the petty, patronizing, petulant poseur she really is. Pundit after pundit is declaring her a debate loser, and they are right. Yet, she may still be the leader of the Democratic field, for want of a stronger alternative.
Here, then, is an annotated list of Warren’s three worst moments….
Memo to Democrats: a wealth tax is unconstitutional. Democratic presidential candidates pushing a “wealth tax” are pushing policy that’s not only unwise, but almost certainly unconstitutional.
Article I, section 9 of the Constitution says that “no capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” What this originally meant is that federal taxes could not be enacted directly on individuals as individuals, but only in proportion to the total population of each state.
The Sixteenth Amendment modified this original restriction, but only somewhat. It allowed for a tax on income. It did not, however, allow other direct taxes. By almost all understandings, a tax on assets is exactly the sort of “direct tax” prohibited by Article I, Section 9.
Liberal theorists in recent years have argued that this understanding of unconstitutionality is wrongheaded, but in doing so, they grasp at straws. Even they acknowledge that the most recent case that addressed this, Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan, goes against them. They just say the decision is wrong.
In other words, even though the ordinary language of the Constitution indicates that a wealth tax would be unconstitutional, and even though the relevant Supreme Court precedent says would it be unconstitutional, they want to construct a convoluted argument that the court is wrong and the Constitution doesn’t really mean what it says….
Jailing opioid executives is a sickening idea. It is bad enough that the Democratic presidential candidates want to make pharmaceutical companies pay billions of dollars in punishment for the opioid epidemic. It is far worse, both tyrannical and against the spirit of the Constitution, to say the company executives should be criminally tried and imprisoned.
It is the Democratic candidates, not the executives, who are sick….
