Requirement for Consent

A clearly analogous line of decisions is that interpreting provisions in the Constitution that also place limitations on the taxing power of government. See, e. g., U.S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 3 (restricting power of States to tax interstate commerce); 10, cl. 3 (prohibiting any state tax that operates "to impose a charge for the privilege of entering, trading in, or lying in a port." Clyde Mallory Lines v. Alabama ex rel. State Docks Comm'n, 296 U.S. 261, 265 -266 (1935)). These restrictions, like the implied state tax immunity, exist to protect constitutionally valued activity from the undue and perhaps destructive interference that could result from certain taxing measures. The restriction implicit in the Commerce Clause is designed to prohibit States from burdening the free flow of commerce, see generally Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Brady, 430 U.S. 274 (1977), whereas the prohibition against duties on the privilege of entering ports is intended specifically to guard against local hindrances to trade and commerce by vessels. See Packet Co. v. Keokuk, 95 U.S. 80, 85 (1877). Our decisions implementing these constitutional provisions have consistently recognized that the interests protected by these Clauses are not offended by revenue measures that operate only to compensate a government for benefits supplied. See, e. g., Clyde Mallory Lines v. Alabama, supra (flat fee charged each vessel entering port upheld because charge operated to defray cost of harbor policing); Evansville- Vanderburgh Airport Authority v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 405 U.S. 707 (1972) ($1 head tax on explaining commercial air passengers upheld under the Commerce Clause because designed to recoup cost of airport facilities). A governmental body has an obvious interest in making those who specifically benefit from its services pay the cost and, provided that the charge is structured to compensate the government for the benefit conferred, there can be no danger of the kind of interference [435 U.S. 444, 463] with constitutionally valued “A state may enter into contracts; but a state cannot, by contract or statute, surrender the execution, or a share in the execution, of any of its governmental powers either to a sister state or to the federal government, any more than the federal government can surrender the control of any of its governmental powers to a foreign nation. The power to tax is vital and fundamental, and, in the highest degree, governmental in character. Without it, the state could not exist. Fundamental also, and no less important, is the governmental power to expend the moneys realized from taxation, and exclusively to administer the laws in respect of the character of The people of the United States, by their Constitution, have affirmed a division of internal governmental powers between the federal government and the governments of the several states-committing to the first its powers by express grant and necessary implication; to the latter, or [301 U.S. 548, 611] to the people, by reservation, 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States.' The Constitution thus affirms the complete supremacy and independence of the state within the field of its powers. Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 295 , 56 S.Ct. 855, 865. The federal government has no more authority to invade that field than the state has to invade the exclusive field of national governmental powers; for, in the oft-repeated words of this court in Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700, 725, 'the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government.' The necessity of preserving each from every form of illegitimate intrusion or interference on the part of the other is so imperative as to require this court, when its judicial power is properly invoked, to view with a careful and discriminating eye any legislation challenged as constituting such an intrusion or interference. See South Carolina v. United States, the tax and the methods of laying and collecting it and expending the proceeds. activity that the Clauses were designed to prohibit. [Massachusetts v. United States, 435 U.S. 444 (1978)]

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The U.S. Supreme Court also agreed that one of the may consequences of the Social Security system was to break down the 22 separation of powers between the states and the federal government and allow the feds to coerce and intimidate the states. 23 This result alone ought be sufficient reason not to participate in the system: 24

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199 U.S. 437, 448 , 26 S.Ct. 110, 4 Ann.Cas. 737.

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By these various provisions of the act, the federal agencies are authorized to supervise and hamper the administrative powers of the state to a degree which not only does not comport with the dignity of a quasi- sovereign state-a matter with which we are not judicially concerned-but which deny to it that supremacy and freedom from external interference in respect of its affairs which the Constitution contemplates-a matter of very

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definite judicial concern. I refer to some, though by no means all, of the cases in point.

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In the License Cases, 5 How. 504, 588, Mr. Justice McLean said that the federal government was supreme within the scope of its delegated powers, and the state governments equally supreme in the exercise of the powers not delegated nor inhibited to them; that the states exercise their powers over everything connected with their social and internal condition; and that over these subjects the federal government had no power. 'They appertain to the State sovereignty as exclusively as powers exclusively delegated appertain to the general

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government.'

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In Tarble's Case, 13 Wall. 397, Mr. Justice Field, after pointing out that the general government and the state are separate and distinct sovereignties, acting separately and independently of each other within their respective spheres, said that, except in one particular, they stood in the same independent relation to each other

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Requirement for Consent

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Copyright Sovereignty Education and Defense Ministry, http://sedm.org Form 05.003, Rev. 7-23-2013

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