America didn’t always have an income tax. For most of U.S. history, the federal government ran without taking a cut of your paycheck – yet it still funded wars, built institutions, paid officials, and expanded across a continent.

So where did the money come from?

In this video, we break down the real pre-1913 revenue machine: the tariff system that turned ports into cash registers, the excise taxes hidden inside everyday goods, the “internal revenue” enforcement that targeted entire industries, and the stamp taxes that quietly made paperwork profitable. And then we show what changed in 1913 – why the system flipped, who pushed for it, and how the new model rewired American government forever.

If you’ve ever wondered how America functioned before income tax… this is the missing chapter.

A goin coin from the ninth century (Pictured) containing the image of John the Baptist may rewrite the history of Vikings in England

A shocking discovery has unearthed an apparent link between Vikings and the teachings of Jesus, rewriting what historians assumed about the spread of Christianity 1,200 years ago.

A person searching for possible treasure with a metal detector in the UK’s county of Norfolk recently found a small, incomplete gold coin which had been turned into a pendant. Continue reading →

There are times in the 27 years that I have maintained a series of websites, that the time goes by that I choose to republish and article that has something to SAY. The following was published July 15, 2002 on the original Federal Observer, in the category, ‘Village of the Damned‘ (so named for Hillary Clintons’ reference to “It takes a Village to raise a child.”) No thanks ma’am – leave our children in the hands of their parents. ~ Editor

Get your children OUT of the System – NOW

One must be careful in remembering better days. Memory presents an improving mirror, smoothing rough edges of rougher times, giving a warm glow to things that were less roseate when they happened. Like a good editor, it revises things for the better. Thus one recalls, or half-imagines, the idyllic boyhood in Mississippi, the favorite grove where one played in the slanting afternoon sunlight that probably wasn’t as golden as one recalls, with childhood companion who perhaps weren’t as admirable as they now seem. One forgets, or half forgets, the drunken parents and the poverty and hookworm. And so one must tread cautiously when pondering a past in which all things were better, cleaner, and purer. Yet…yet sometimes things were better, and sometimes things do decay. Sometimes a society does go from better to bad to worse. I wonder. Continue reading →

Daniel Boone escorting settlers though the Cumberland Gap. Painting by George Caleb Bingham, Washington University in St. Louis, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

One morning early last spring, my younger son and I were in an argument as I drove the boys to their respective schools. The subject was (in hindsight) entirely silly and unnecessary, but we both felt passionately about our positions and weren’t backing down. The argument continued right up until he got out of the car, which meant that (to the best of my recollection) for the only time during that entire school year, we didn’t say “I love you” to each other as he got out. I spent the remainder of the day paralyzed, unable to think about anything other than the possibility of a school shooting and of that angry drop-off being our last interaction.

Guns and gun culture in America have long been fraught and contested topics, subjects that quickly and potently divide us, issues that any public American Studies scholar addresses at his or her peril. I don’t expect to convert anyone to a radically different perspective than their starting point by writing about them here. But as stories of yet another school shooting unfold, I wanted to use my Considering History column to highlight a few histories that are, at the very least, relevant to engaging in these 21st century conversations. Continue reading →

PARIS (AP) — D-Day veteran ″Papa Jake″ Larson, who survived German gunfire on Normandy’s bluffs in 1944 and then garnered 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate World War II and his fallen comrades, has died at 102.

U.S. World War II veteran Jake M. Larson, 100, who landed at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, arrives for a remembrance ceremony at the Pegasus Bridge memorial in Benouville, Normandy, France, June 5, 2023. – REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

An animated speaker who charmed strangers young and old with his quick smile and generous hugs, the self-described country boy from Minnesota was “cracking jokes til the end,” his granddaughter wrote in announcing his death.

Tributes to him quickly filled his “Story Time with Papa Jake” TikTok account from across the United States, where he had been living in Lafayette, California. Towns around Normandy, still grateful to Allied forces who helped defeat the occupying Nazis in World War II, paid him homage too. Continue reading →

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                   Do you remember??? Do you BELIEVE that Anything has changed?

President Trump announced he will release 80,000 pages of unredacted files Tuesday about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, after promising on the campaign trail to declassify the documents.

“While we’re here, I thought it would be appropriate – we are, tomorrow, announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files. So, people have been waiting for decades for this, and I’ve instructed my people … lots of different people, [Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard, that they must be released tomorrow,” the president told reporters while touring the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

“You got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything. I said, ‘just don’t redact, you can’t redact,’” the president said, adding it will be about 80,000 pages that he described as “interesting.”

He said he has “heard about them” when asked if he has seen what’s in the files; he added, “I’m not doing summaries, you’ll write your own summary.” Continue reading →

So many volunteering for suicide… for what?

When someone is willing to give up his or her life to strike back at a perceived enemy for vengeance, we might write them off as just a loose nut who went over the edge. When either an organized group, or cells of radical believers in some religion or cause, begin recruiting numbers of individuals who allegedly are willing to blow themselves up the media labels them “terrorists” and that seems to explain their behavior, but in fact, it confuses the issue. We first have to define a terrorist, then we need to know what common bond these people have that enables them to willingly make the supreme sacrifice for their beliefs. For the general media, the answer is simple: label them “Islamic radicals” and that is all the explanation that is needed – the boys are headed for a grand afterlife with Allah. Continue reading →

I was born in ’48 and would go back without a second thought.

I don`t like the world today! Take me back to the ‘Nam – I was at greater piece in my 21 months during the War. ~ Editor

February 5, 2012 – What we are seeing in the world today is those that would like to rule the world creating worldwide anarchy. Just stop to think about it. Going back to what they called the “Arab Spring” ad you will see what I mean. What are these uprisings other than anarchy? They do not like the ruler at the time so they take to the streets as a mob. The United States and other countries ask the leader to step down and foment the mobs in those countries.

Where there have been elections the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over. Where the military has taken over in certain countries to make the transition, the anarchists are not satisfied that they are moving fast enough. The mobs take to the streets again, supported by the U.S. and others that want a one world government. They feel that if enough of these countries fall into anarchy, they can step in and bring the government into the one world government. Continue reading →

Given that we have just gone through another year of a Presidential election – I felt that it would be interesting to go back into our history and see how a young John F. Kennedy dealt with the issue in 1956. Was he right? Was he wrong? Only the future will tell! ~ Editor

Calls to abolish the electoral college are all the rage these days, but they aren’t new. One such attempt in 1956 was thwarted with the help of a Democratic senator from Massachusetts — a young John F. Kennedy.

The Senate was debating Senate Joint Resolution 31 on March 20, 1956, a “follow-up to what was originally labeled the Lodge-Gossett proposal,” author and law professor Robert Hardaway told The Daily Caller. Continue reading →

As we remember one of our great President’s – and we have been recently covering the harsh history of the United Nations on our 29 year old daily broadcast this month through our 2002 six hour series, “Dawn of the Dead“, I have made the decision to publish the following video. Enjoy, and remember… ~ Editor

March 10, 2014 ~ There are times when I cannot determine who is more stupid – politicians and their enforcers of unconstitutional acts, or the people that allow them to deny us our God-given right of free will; our inherent, inalienable rights of freedom – seemingly a forgotten concept.

In regard to politicians, Lenin called these wannabes within towns, cities, and states “useful idiots”. Why such a description? Well, it is because that is exactly what officials and their enforcers are. Continue reading →

June 24, 2012 ~ In one of the most shocking articles that the New York Times has ever put out, a New York Times reporter has openly admitted that virtually every major mainstream news organization allows government bureaucrats and campaign officials to censor their stories. For example, almost every major news organization in the country has agreed to submit virtually all quotes from anyone involved in the Obama campaign or the Romney campaign to gatekeepers for “quote approval” before they will be published. If the gatekeeper in the Obama campaign does not want a certain quote to get out, the American people will not see it, and the same thing applies to the Romney campaign. Continue reading →