Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

To: joseffy who wrote (86602)	6/28/2012 11:41:43 PM
From: Wayners	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89942

It's actually worse than that. The Feds have long been restricted from exercisinig general police powers that have been reserved to the States. Now based on the Roberts opinion, a penalty, e.g. a punishment for "criminal" behavior can now be punished by a tax...a power that the Feds have long had. See how this works? The Feds didn't have a means of say punishing somebody for say bringing a gun within 1000 ft of a school because they couldn't "tax" the offender and they couldn't punish the offender because the Supreme Court said that the Commerce Power doesn't cover it. Well NOW they CAN punish the offender by assessing a $10,000 tax to an offender and if you can't pay, you are a tax cheat and you go to jail for not paying the tax. See how that works? So now they have found a way around directly punishing somebody with jail for breaking a law that they couldn't make before because the law didn't cut the mustard under the commerce clause. Now they put that same person in jail for failure to pay the tax.