I had a recent discussion with a friend who holds some radical views on certain topics. I address 3 specific claims that he made during our discussion.

Claim 1: Roads are completely funded by gas taxes

This claim is really neither here nor there. I believe claims such as this one are made as part of the larger claim that we shouldn’t have to pay income tax.

Now often this claim is not made in reference to any particular country, state, or province, so it it hard to address (because different countries will have different policies on things like this).

Based on the following links it appears that in the United States most of the Fuel tax is applied to the development of roads, but it is not clear whether or not this covers *all* road infrastructure. I have also included 2 links to the BC government website which show that the PST does contribute to the fund to pay for roads in addition to the motor fuel tax.

Since roads are built out of the general budget, it is very hard to track down exactly which monies have been applied to building roads. I consider the point moot as it doesn’t really matter whether the money for our roads come from income tax or gas taxes or both. They come from taxes one way or the other. Of course conservatives who are philosophically opposed to income tax might (certainly would) take a different position on the importance of this point.

http://www.sbr.gov.bc.ca/business/Consumer_Taxes/Provincial_Sales_Tax/about.htm
“… an important source of funding which is used to support British Columbia’s roads, schools, hospitals and other community services.”

http://www.sbr.gov.bc.ca/business/Consumer_Taxes/Motor_Fuel_Tax/mft.htm
“British Columbia’s Motor Fuel Tax is made up of two components: provincial and dedicated taxes. The provincial portion goes to general revenue and helps pay for a wide range of government programs, such as health care and education. The dedicated portion goes to the BC Transportation and Financing Authority, Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority and the BC Transportation Authority
to help finance transportation projects in various parts of the province.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax
“In the United States, the fuel tax receipts are often dedicated or hypothecated to transportation projects so that the fuel tax is considered by many a user fee. In other countries, the fuel tax is a source of general revenue.”

http://www.austincontrarian.com/austincontrarian/2009/05/do-roads-pay-for-themselves.html
“State motor fuel tax is collected from all over the state and goes into a single pool of revenue—about one quarter of which goes to fund education, and about three-quarters of which goes to the state’s highway fund, where it is spent on transportation uses and some non-transportation functions of government.

Then the state receives federal funds as the state’s share of the federal fuel tax; about 70 cents of every gas tax dollar Texans send to Washington comes back for road use.”

Claim 2: Income Tax Unconstitutional

I’ve heard this one a few different times from a few different people so I thought it might actually have legs. If you do a search on Google you’ll surely run across this short essay by a man who is convinced of the unconstitutionality of income tax:

http://www.prolognet.qc.ca/clyde/tax.htm
This author argues that income tax is unconstitutional and thus is illegal in Canada. He cites sections of the BNA (British North America Act) which he claims prohibits the fedreal government from imposing direct taxation on its individuals. He also cites the case of a deceased Manitoba resident named Gerry Hart, who allegedly avoided paying income tax for 50 years and won all of his 22 court cases against revenue Canada when they attempted to retrieve the money.

When I decided to look into the case of Gerry Hart, I found this page:

http://www.ownlife.com/tax/cases.htm

This page lists a number of court cases in Canadian history where individuals have attempted to fight income tax. In all cases, the courts upheld that the federal government CAN indeed charge income tax. In addition this page addressed the claims about Gerry Hart:

“the legend appeared in the Michael Journal, a somewhat religious newspaper produced in Quebec and distributed, for free, throughout Canada.

No case has been published which involved the making, by Gerry Hart or his company (Hart Electronics Limited), of a successful argument that the federal Income Tax Act is unconstitutional.”

So this claim appears to be a myth.

Claim 3: You don’t need a driver’s license or insurance to drive a car.

When the claim was made, the claimant did not know whether this was limited to a particular jurisdiction or if it was for any jurisdiction in the British Commonwealth. A little bit of Google searching has answered the question:

1. This is a debatable issue in the United States.
2. In Canada there is no debate.

In Canada it is clear that there no such “right to travel”. Driving is a privilege, NOT a right (http://fightyourtickets.ca/law/right-to-drive/): “Section 31. Driving a privilege:”

The United States situation is far more convoluted and it owes to its tumultuous history.

If you do a search on Google for “Right to travel” you’ll discover a slough of websites that are run by “patiots” and “freedom fighters”. You’ll almost always find that these sites are linked to, or contain information about, conspiracy theories such as the NWO or FEMA death camps. All of these sites are showing the same information and citing the same sources to argue that Driving is a right that is protected under the constitution of the United states (under the section of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness) as a right and not a privilege. They all cite a number of court cases to support their point, but the main court case that gives this position legs is the supreme court case Thompson vs. Smith, 154 SE 579 where they quote:
“The Right of the Citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, either by horse drawn carriage or by automobile, is not a mere privilege which a city can prohibit or permit at will, but a common Right which he has under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

If you dig you can even find a pre-filled afidavit on which you can fill in your name and state to present to the court to declare that you don’t need to have a driver’s license in order to drive. (http://wgns.net/LegalResearch/PDF/AFFIDAVITS/Aff-RighttoTravel.pdf)

Now this has not been tested in court recently (as far as I can tell in the past 60 years) so I would suspect that these arguments would hold any water in a court these days. There was a case in 1986 where someone tried to argue similarly and lost (http://www.stormfront.org/forum/sitemap/index.php/t-18216.html – 03/27/86 The City of Spokane, v. Julie Anne Port), but the ameteur commentators insist that she simply made mistakes in her arguments.

I could not find any reputable sources that even commented on the issue. This yahoo answers thread (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825104610AA0HxeH) contained a decent response:

“This question gets asked and asked and asked here. There are also many many many court opionions that have addressed what you have asked. The Constitution does not address flying planes without a license or hacking into someone’s computer. Doesn’t mean you can though. The Constitution is a guideline that is continually interpreted by the Supreme Court.

You have a legal right to drive. On the cases you list, you gloss over statements the court makes like may not prohibit AT WILL or WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. State and federal government cannot deprive you of the right to drive “just becase”. They can, however, enact laws that protect the rights of every driver on the road – like making sure a 5 year old isn’t behind the wheel, or that someone who is legally blind is not behind the wheel, or requiring licenses and registrations so that if you are in an accident there is a way for you to seek reimbursement, to put up toll booths to pay for road construction, to ensure that cars being driven have passed inspection so that wheels don’t come flying off cars, to put up traffic signals so there is order to traffic flow, etc.

As you present in Boggs – “statutes that violate…..common right and common reason are null and void”. It is obviously common right and common reason to set up a system to regulate traffic and drivers. It is not a violation of this right to require that you stop at stop signs, drive at reasonable speeds, lose your license for driving while intoxicated, etc. If states did not require this, other people on the road would be deprived of “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.”

Any reasonable person must realize that licenses are important for public safety. This is one major reason for the disagreements between the left and the right in the states. Many from the south are fixated on individual rights to the exclusion of consideration to how those rights affect others. That is where these types of bogus arguments come from. I mean, really!

Refernces:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/39244

http://www.landrights.com/The%20Charles%20Sprinkler%20File.htm

http://wgns.net/LegalResearch/PDF/AFFIDAVITS/Aff-RighttoTravel.pdf
This one is particularly entertaining:

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/sitemap/index.php/t-18216.html
(03/27/86 The City of Spokane, v. Julie Anne Port)

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825104610AA0HxeH
“This question gets asked and asked and asked here. There are also many many many court opionions that have addressed what you have asked. The Constitution does not address flying planes without a license or hacking into someone’s computer. Doesn’t mean you can though. The Constitution is a guideline that is continually interpreted by the Supreme Court.

You have a legal right to drive. On the cases you list, you gloss over statements the court makes like may not prohibit AT WILL or WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. State and federal government cannot deprive you of the right to drive “just becase”. They can, however, enact laws that protect the rights of every driver on the road – like making sure a 5 year old isn’t behind the wheel, or that someone who is legally blind is not behind the wheel, or requiring licenses and registrations so that if you are in an accident there is a way for you to seek reimbursement, to put up toll booths to pay for road construction, to ensure that cars being driven have passed inspection so that wheels don’t come flying off cars, to put up traffic signals so there is order to traffic flow, etc.

As you present in Boggs – “statutes that violate…..common right and common reason are null and void”. It is obviously common right and common reason to set up a system to regulate traffic and drivers. It is not a violation of this right to require that you stop at stop signs, drive at reasonable speeds, lose your license for driving while intoxicated, etc. If states did not require this, other people on the road would be deprived of “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.”

http://www.uslawbooks.com/travel/travelcites.htm

http://www.bcrevolution.ca/bc_court_of_appeal.htm
http://fightyourtickets.ca/law/right-to-drive/