William Howard Taft broke up more trusts that any other president. In total, he broke up somewhere between 85-95 trusts, but it wasn't always for the best. Many of the trusts that Taft broke up, were good trusts. He broke up trusts that kept the country running, such as mail companies. The only way that we could rapidly and easily get things across the country, or across town. His goal was to break up all trusts, not just bad ones. That is how he broke up so many trusts, because most of the other presidents only went towards the bad trusts, such as Standard Oil.
While it is necessary to break up a large majority of the trusts, he shouldn't have gone after all of them. We need some trusts, such as companies that run parcel services and other things that are now government run. Taft also tried to break up J.P. Morgan's Steel company, but failed to do so.
The 16th Amendment to the Constitution states: “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.” This is saying that the government can place taxes on peoples way of making money whenever they want. It doesn’t matter how we make money, the government has the right to take part of it. They can also do it without being approved by the states. The Amendment was ratified to the Constitution on February 3, 1913.
I believe that it is a good idea to have the ability to tax when it is needed. I don’t think that the government should have to raise taxes on everybody just so they can spend more money. I feel that it should be used so if the government has hard times, they tax the people to get back money they lost and not used to make the deficit even larger.
"William Howard Taft." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. <http://www.history.com/topics/william-howard-taft>.
"American Experience: TV's Most-watched History Series." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/presidents-taft/>.
"Sixteenth Amendment." The Free Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. <http://www.legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/16th+Amendment>.
Comments
Good but a bit brief overall.