An important part of Section 9:
"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
"No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken." (This was changed by the 16th Amendment, which generally allows the government to tax REGARDLESS of enumeration, thereby permitting a graduated tax and guaranteeing an unlimited and unfair system of taxation.)"
The first part mentioned concerning Bills of Attainder or ex post facto laws simply means Congress may never pass any "retroactive" law, as the current Congress attempted to do when they tried to pass a retroactive punishment for "Wall Street execs" who received huge bonuses. In short, a law can only stand from the point in time at which it is passed. Laws may not be passed "after the fact."
The second part of this concerns taxation. The founders wanted to insure that any taxation should be equal throughout - that every individual carries their own weight and finds a way to pay their own fair share. This was not just about fairness; it was about the very heart of the backbone of any Republic - self-reliance and personal responsibility.
In 1913, progressives took over the government and passed a Constitutional Amendment that would allow the government unlimted taxing authority, and to use taxation in unfair ways. The overall purpose was to insure that the progressive agenda could be moved forward, which could not happen under a "direct tax" tied to the head count. The progressives wanted huge amounts of money for funding social agendas, which meant they had to penalize richer individuals with punitive taxes that they could never hope to lay onto the average working stiff. To move toward socialism, a graduated tax and the power to assess taxes without regard to equality was essential. In other words, you simply cannot redistribute the wealth until you have a means by which to take the wealth from those who have it.
Incidentally, as will be seen in a later post, the same people who passed this amendment for the income tax also created the Federal Reserve, in the same year - 1913. As we will see later, this was no coincidence. In one fell swoop, progressives destroyed two critical parts of the Constitution - that taxes be equal, and that only the government can coin or print money. Now the printing of money was in the hands of the bankers, not the government. You will learn why they did this, and how it started the mess we now find ourselves in today.
Bear in mind that in Section 8, it states, - Powers of Congress
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States"
What this says in plain English is that the government, regardless of HOW it taxes, may only collect taxes for a few very specific purposes, such as the Common Defense and the General Welfare (not individual welfare, or payments to certain special interests or groups). Whenever Congress apportions taxes for any purpose not cited in the Constitution, it is violating the law of the land - and the persons voting to do so are in violation of their oath of office to uphold the Constitution, since the 10th Amendment emphatically prohibits the government from taking or exercising any powers not expressly given to it under the Constitution. In other words, most of the taxes the government collects are spent or distributed illegally, in direct violation of the Consitution. The Constitution prohibits the government from paying for entitlements of any and every kind.
While most will agree it is necessary to help the less fortunate, the point is that it is not the the government's job to do so. It is the job of families, churches and communities, and until the government used their high-handed methods of taking over that responsibility, that task was taken care of effectively by the local methods.
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