Return of the Poll Tax - Obama, Reid and Pelosi's Democrat health care plan

November 6, 9:54 PMLA History ExaminerCharles Nichols

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the LA History Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

When the US Constitution was first adopted there was no Federal Income Tax.  The Federal government was fortunately limited in the amount of taxes it could take in.  One form of taxation was a tax on goods called an excise tax which is still in existence.  Another was the Poll tax which is a direct tax on individuals.

The Federal Income Tax was added to the US Constitution in 1913.  Everyone reading this who has ever had a job knows how it works so I won’t elaborate.  For you younger readers, it basically works this way.  The Federal government lets you keep a small amount of money that you earn and once you go above that amount they start taking increasingly larger percentages of what you make.

So if one doesn’t mind living in poverty, one can actually escape paying the income tax.

There is no escape from a Poll Tax.  A Poll Tax is a direct tax on individuals.  It fell out of use in 1802 but was revived after the Civil War by various states as a tax on voters.  If you did not pay the poll tax, you were not allowed to vote.  Some Southern states had exemptions for individuals (whites) who were voters prior to the end of the war.  Needless to say, former slaves and poor white voters who could not come up with the tax were prohibited from voting.

In 1964, the US Constitution was amended to prohibit the payment of a Poll Tax as a prerequisite for voting.

Unfortunately, Pelosi and the Democrats have taken the poll tax to new depths.  Every citizen of the United States, every man, woman and child will now have to pay a poll tax or risk going to jail for up to five years and a $250,000 fine – to be enforced by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service).

In other words, we Americans who choose not to comply, and take no overt actions of resistance, will go to sleep as citizens the night before the law takes effect and wake up the next morning as criminals.

If you don’t speak out against this injustice, or otherwise come to the attention of Obama’s tax collectors, you might get off with a year in prison and a $25,000 fine.

How much will this tax cost you?  According to the United States Congressional Budget Office, it will cost the average family with their 2.3 children $15,000 a year.

And unlike the income tax, the poor are not exempt from the tax.  Whatever you have heard to the contrary, not all poor people get free health care even today.  Millions of the poor have no health care except for what they receive at the county hospital emergency rooms.  Despite what you see on television, patients are not rushed through the emergency room.  I once visited the Los Angeles County ER and spent 17 hours observing their operation.  An elderly man who had a shotgun wound to the foot sat in a wheelchair the entire time I was there with what was left of his foot oozing fluids on the floor of the waiting area.  Another man who was a machinist had come in with a metal splinter in his eye, after waiting for nine hours to be seen, he finally left.  The waiting room must have had over 150 people in it, sitting on the floors and waiting in the hallway as doctors and nurses shuffled by.  The occasional police officer would stroll through the waiting room with his hand on his bully club, grinning from ear to ear.

That is what government run health care truly is.  If Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the Democrats have their way, it too will be your health care plan.

And it will only cost you $15,000 a year in additional taxes – or else.