Gbenga Akinnagbe, star of HBO’s “The Wire” and Fox’s “24″ argued that Hollywood is “very similar to Congress. We get these rules and regulations that benefit one class because we have a Congress full of millionaires. That’s pretty much how Hollywood tends to work.”

Akinnagbe was referencing the Hollywood sub that Oprah Winfrey’s Selma received. Why is it liberals want equality except when it comes to taxation? A liberal’s conception of equality is a form of forced equality which means taking from the haves and giving to the have nots, except, of course, in the NBA.

In tonight’s State of the union Address, President Obama will call for higher taxes so the government can redistribute billions of dollars to people who did not earn any of it. He’ll call for this additional government theft in the name of “equality.”

Unfortunately, the 16^th Amendment gave the Federal Government the authority and power to tax every citizen, and the courts have expanded that power. Here’s the wording of our nation’s most insidious Amendment:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

The people who voted for the Amendment were told that only the rich would be taxed.

Note that there is no provision in this amendment that gives Congress the right to apply this power unequally in the form of progressive tax rates. In looking over all the Constitution’s amendments, I don’t see an unequal distribution of any freedom.

Equality before the law, and the Constitution is the “the supreme law of the land,” requires that no one should be treated in an unequal way, and that includes unequal tax rates. The law applies to every citizen equally, except, it seems, when it comes to the 16^th Amendment.

Does the First Amendment parcel out its freedoms in percentages? Doesn’t every person have the same right to speak, write, and assemble, even when people with more money have more access to the means to speak out?

The same is true of the Second Amendment. Everybody has a right to “keep and bear arms” at the same rate. Rich people and poor people have a right to purchase as many guns as they want. Because the rich can afford more guns does not mean that they have to pay more for those guns.

The quartering of troops is similarly equal in the distribution that “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

The same is true about the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments. Read them over and try to apply the percentage differences to them like Congress and the President do with the 16^th Amendment.

The 8^th Amendment might apply in the case of increased percentages regarding taxation because the practice could be considered as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Liberals regard taxation at ever higher rates as punitive. High taxes are designed to punish the rich. Sen. Rand Paul notes the law of diminishing returns on raising taxes. Taxation is not about increased revenue: “You may not get any more revenue. You may not get any more economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’”

A progressive income tax is “cruel and unusual punishment.” It taxes some people at a higher rate, thus punishing them for making more money. In essence, they are working as slaves for the State, and there’s an Amendment against that as well. The 13^th Amendment is clear:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Someone who is taxed unequally by the government is being punished, not for a crime, but because he or she makes a certain amount of money. The fact that a person works for that money, and that money is taken from that person, progressive taxation is a form of “involuntary servitude.”

The 14th Amendment could also apply. No State “shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The key phrases are “equal protection” and “due process of law.” “Due process” has reference to criminal acts.

Constitutionally and morally our government is not permitted to treat people in an unequal manner. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice John Marshall Harlan argued the following in his “Great Dissent”:

“[I]n view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”

The rich are considered a “class” in American politics. Liberals speak of “class warfare” on a regular basis. Why is the class of rich people treated unequally when it comes to legislative law? The taxation of income at unequal levels deprives people of liberty and property.

All we need now is some lawyer or group of lawyers to make this point in the courts. We need to have the same fortitude as those who have worked for decades to overturn racial discrimination.