Aaron Russo's "America Freedom to Fascism" is worth watching, but I think you have to take it with a grain of salt. It does bring up a lot of interesting points, many that I already was aware of and some that I wasn't aware of. However, I really have to regard this as a "chop piece." A lot of quotes and pieces of interviews are taken out of context. You will often see a video clip of the interviewer asking a question, and then a totally separate video clip of what appears to be the person being interviewed providing a shocking answer. If you listen carefully, you can tell that the interviewee was not answering the interviewer's question and the Q&A was purposely patched together in a way to support the position of the video. Even though Aaron Russo claims he is just looking for answers, it appears that he already started with a view on the subject and created this as a propaganda piece to get more people behind his cause.

Don't misunderstand my own position. I have no love for the IRS and I have studied a bit about the 16th Amendment and do believe that it was never properly ratified. For that reason and others, I do believe the income tax stands on dubious legal grounds.

I think it is a waste of time trying to prove that the income tax is illegal. A number of cases were brought before the Supreme Court trying to show that the Vietnam War was an illegal war because the President never went before the Congress to ask for a Declaration of War. The Supreme Court's response was always the same: they weren't going to touch that with a ten foot pole. The Supreme Court commented that the Congress has the power to end the war any time they wanted. Since they didn't chose to end the war, then they were giving default approval to continue the war.

If the people, through their representatives in Congress, don't like the current tax system, then they should change it or end it. I don't like the current tax system and I do contribute to groups that work toward changing it and support candidates that propose major overhauls of the tax system. I think that is the way to get things changed.

If you tell most people that there is no law that requires you to pay income taxes, they are just going to think you are a nut. There are very few people that are aware or even care about the lack of legal basis to the tax system. I think spending energy trying to convince everyone there is no legal basis requiring anyone to pay taxes is a waste of time and effort and that same time and effort could be better spent on revising the tax system.

People are people and politicians are politicians. Even if you convince everyone that the income tax is not legal, they would just go put a brand new tax system in place. It would be much more difficult trying to convince everyone that taxes are unnecessary than the current tax system has no legal basis.

Even if you convinced everyone that there is no legal basis to the current income tax system, I think you would just get the response: "Oops! We forgot to pass a law to collect taxes. Let's pass a law so we can collect taxes." One way or another, there is going to be a tax system. So, why don't we just work at trying to change our tax system to the way we want it to be rather than running around trying to prove to everyone that the current tax system has no basis in law.

Even the video admits that there are various tax systems that are legal under our constitution. So, people should just put their time and effort to get the laws changed to be in compliance with our constitution rather than running around seeming like nuts telling everyone: "The IRS had no right to force you to file your income taxes."

Then, I have another major problem with the video. The video likes taxing corporate income but not individual income. A red flag goes up for me when I hear this and I think the video really has a secret socialist agenda. Talk about unfair taxes!

A corporation is a fictitious individual. Why is that? Because there is no such living being as a corporation. A corporation does not pay taxes, even though it files a tax return and sends money to the government. Where does the corporation get the money to pay its taxes? From us! We think we are paying $4.95 for a widget. Little do we realize that $1.95 or more of that is going to the government is taxes. The corporation just adds whatever taxes they pay into the price of what they sell and passes it on to the consumer.

This is very dishonest by the government. It hikes the price of everything that you purchase and hides how much you are paying in taxes. Why not let the corporation just sell that item for $3.00 and add $1.95 in sales tax so we can all see just how much the government really is ripping us off! Talk about fodder for creating a rebellion!

That brings up another point. How about if the government totally gets rid of the personal income tax? Sounds great, doesn't it? Instead, the government will just tax your employer the same amount that is being withheld from your paycheck now. You don't pay the tax. Your employer does. You get your full gross paycheck and none of it goes to taxes. Instead, your employer gets taxed the amount that used to get withheld from your paycheck.

Even the video said it is legal to tax corporations. So, this sounds like it would be a legal tax. But after paying all these taxes, the corporation will have to cut costs to remain competitive in the market. The corporation could just cut your wages by the amount they have to pay in tax for you, which is exactly what they would do. So, in reality, you are still paying the tax! Only now, everything is invisible to you. You don't see how much you are paying. Instead of being all angry about how much the government is taxing you, you are angry about how little your employer is paying you.

Don't think this isn't the way government would like to do things. They already do it with Social Security Taxes and a number of other taxes. The Government says that you pay half the Social Security Tax and your employer (a "corporation") pays the other half. This is pure nonsense to fool the people! Every employer knows that this entire tax is allocated to the cost of the employee. When the corporation figures how much it costs to have you work for them, they include all the taxes they have to pay to the government, both what is withheld from your paycheck and what they have to match. Those matching taxes are YOUR money! It makes no difference whether the corporation pays that money to you or the government. Either way, it costs the corporation the same amount to have you work for it.

But the government loves this system. How often do you hear any employees complaining about their matching taxes being too high? The employees just figure it's the corporations money going to pay those taxes, and don't care about it. The corporation just figures it's really the employees' money going to pay those taxes, and they don't care about it either. Thus, the government walks off with all the matching taxes and nobody cares about it!

The only fair thing to do is to TOTALLY ELIMINATE all corporate taxes. Each person should be taxed directly so that each of us can see exactly what the government is taking from us. With so many hidden taxes already paid through corporations, that is when you will see a rebellion: when it is finally obvious to everyone just how much the government is taking from them.

The video advocates only taxing corporations and not individuals. This is a pure formula for letting the government hide all the taxes and taking complete control of everything. That is the last thing that I want!

Everyone will be mad at the corporations for high prices and low wages. Meanwhile, the government will get off Scott free taking as much money from everyone as they can get. Let's get some sunshine on just how much the government is taking from us. The only way the government should be able to collect taxes is for each of us to individually have to sit down and write a check to the government.

When we see how big that check is that we have to write each year, you are going to see the biggest tax protest ever! The government will never get the people to consent to pay that much money and it will have to cut back spending to just the most essential, for just those purposes that government was created.

But to do this, you have to get rid of ALL HIDDEN TAXES! That means no corporate taxes. You can't tax a fictitious individual. It just gets passed on to real individuals.

For this reason, I do not like the position taken by the video that they would like to abolish individual taxes but are just fine with corporate taxes. Do they want the government to hide all taxes from us?

I also don't like the video's position on the Federal Reserve System. One moment they are telling us that we shouldn't trust government. The next moment, they are willing to trust the government to regulate our money instead of a group of private individuals. Which is it?

A lot of propaganda tries to tell us that "We are the government." You know that really isn't true. There are so many of us that we have to select a small group of people to represent us when it comes to making and changing laws. The people that represent us are politicians. Politicians have a lot of power and thus these representative positions tend to attract people that are power hungry. They might not all be power hungry, but I'm sure it is always a majority of them that are power hungry. I think even most of those that have good intentions and otherwise good values, are still power hungry. I know lots of people with good intentions and good values, but they don't run for office. They are not attracted to being in a position of power. Thus, political office tends to attract those of us that like the position of power, even those that try to approach these positions with good intentions.

Thus, we are not the government. The government is a group of politicians. You know this intuitively. And don't say: "But they represent us because we elected them." You only get to chose from a short list of power hungry individuals. If they didn't like the position of power, they wouldn't be running for election in the first place! Thus, no matter who you vote for, you are going to end up with a government run by a bunch of power hungry politicians.

Do you want to trust a bunch of power hungry politicians to control the value of your money? All through history it has been shown that those in power could not be trusted with the value of your money. It is too easy for them to just print more of it to buy your votes, to finance wars, to do whatever they want with the money. You don't notice it is them doing it because they take nothing from you. The value of your money just goes down and down and down, even though they haven't taken anything from you!

Time and time again, governments have shown they will print and spend money until the currency of the nation is totally worthless. Do you want to trust the government with the value of your money?

If the Federal Reserve is truly in control of our government behind the scenes and is working at controlling the governments of the world, then they deserve our applause!

Yes, I'm sure the Federal Reserve is made up of a number of secret wealthy bankers. They don't want to see the value of their wealth vanish. If they have secretly taken control of the money of the nation to stop the government from destroying the value of our money, then I am all in favor of that!

It is in their own interest to try to hold the line and preserve the value of money. From what I see, they have done a very good job of this. It isn't perfect. There are many complex pressures on the value of labor and goods that cause prices and wages to wander. But, with the little trust I have in the government to safeguard the value of our money, I'm certain the Federal Reserve has done a better job than a bunch of power hungry politicians would ever have done.

I look at the Federal Reserve as a group of wealthy bankers who want to stay wealthy and would like the rest of us to also be wealthier. Huh? Why do I say this?

If you are a businessman, do you want everyone to be poorer or wealthier? If everyone is poor, nobody can afford to buy anything from you. Before you know it, you will be poor too!

But, if everyone is wealthier, they can afford to buy from you. The wealthier they get, the more they can afford to buy from you. The higher the standard of living is in your community, in your country, in your world, the more you will sell and the wealthier you will get!

These wealthy bankers that make up the Federal Reserve have massive investments, billions of dollars, invested throughout the world. They want to maintain their wealth and they want to get wealthier. They can only do this in a stable world where their investments are safe and everyone continues to improve their standard of living so they can continue to purchase more and more.

Thus, these wealthy bankers want everyone to have a better living standard and be able to buy more. That will increase their profits and increase their wealth.

I trust the private wealthy individuals that run the Federal Reserve far more than a bunch of power hungry politicians. If the Federal Reserve really does work behind the scenes, controlling our money, preventing our power hungry politicians from wrecking our economy no matter what their political persuasion, then more power to them! I'm on their side!

I understand a little about the Federal Reserve. I understand how it tries to keep the quantity of money in line with the amount of goods and services in the economy. I understand how it adjusts interests rates to try to prevent inflation, which is too much money chasing after too few goods. They aren't perfect in figuring out where to set the interest rates or how much money to print, but I'm certain they are doing a far better just than a bunch of power hungry politicians would do.

The Federal Reserve attempts to preserve the value of money. They try to make sure their isn't too much, which would cause inflation, or too little, which would needlessly slow down the growth of the economy. They adjust interest rates in part to also try to keep the flow of money that is already in the economy within reasonable bounds.

If a bunch of power hungry politicians were in charge of the money supply and interest rates, they could make themselves look real good to the voters for a while, before everything collapsed around them. That is what has happened every time we have allowed governments to control the banking system.

Would using gold and silver backing be better than leaving it up to a number of individuals to control the money supply? I don't know. This is an academic area that I haven't studied that much. One of the big objections to using precious metals to back the money supply is that it would cause the money supply to grow to slow to accommodate the rate of growth of the economy. This would slow down economic growth and place an unnecessary drag on the growth of wealth for everyone. I don't know if this is true or not and is probably something that I will study in the future.

In the end, I think we are better off trusting a group of wealthy private individuals who will just get wealthier if they help us all get wealthier to preserve the value of our money through the Federal Reserve System than to trust a bunch of power hungry politicians with our banking system. We already have too much evidence of how their spending is out of control and how they are running the government into bankruptcy.