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The DOJ Faces Reality, Even Though The IRS Won't: Both Cases Against Hendrickson Are Dismissed!
March, 2005: For the second and third time now, the U.S. Department of Justice has withdrawn its support from IRS efforts to suppress 'Cracking the Code- The Fascinating Truth About Taxation In America'. Earlier this week, U.S. attorneys representing the department formally abandoned efforts to enforce two more IRS summonses issued as part of a desperate effort by the agency to keep this transformational book out of the hands of the American public by means of injunctions. Even though the IRS won't face the reality that it has no legal means to accomplish this goal, the DOJ hasn't any choice.
The awkward reality that the IRS does face is that it has no legitimate dispute with the information in 'Cracking the Code-...'. Indeed, the government has been routinely acknowledging the accuracy of that information for well over a year now in the most telling possible fashion, by responding to readers who act upon what they learn with refunds of every penny withheld for federal taxes, including Social Security 'contributions'; the cancellation of liens and levies; and the wiping of even decades-old 'liabilities' off the books. As these responses, though required by law, are inconvenient to the agency's primary objective (which is to maximize the revenue taken into the federal treasury, period) the IRS is engaged in a protracted effort to hamper, discourage, and, if possible, forcibly halt my distribution of the book and the posting of related information on my website, losthorizons.com.
In furtherance of these corrupt purposes, a year ago (March, 2004) the IRS issued a summons for the usual "everything, including a DNA sample" about me and the company that processes orders for my book, Lost Horizons, under the pretext of an "abusive tax shelter promotion investigation", and with a declaration of its intention to seek injunctions (see more about that here). In June, the 'service' sought to enforce this summons through the district court. A month later, having been made aware of its true purpose, the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Michigan moved the court to dismiss the enforcement proceeding. After another two months during which the U.S. Attorney's post changed hands, the 'service' came back for another bite at the apple, again seeking to enforce the same summons. In the meantime, the IRS had also issued a summons to PayPal, the company that handles charge sales for me, seeking a list of everyone who had bought a copy of 'Cracking the Code-...' by that method. I petitioned the federal district court in Sacramento to quash that summons, and the government filed in opposition.
The DOJ, being accustomed to routine success against those targeted by the IRS, appears to have taken the legitimacy of the agency's case on faith to begin with. However, the department quickly came to understand that what it had been dragged into was anything but an ordinary situation. Whether for reasons of integrity or mere pragmatism, by December the department began asking for postponements, explaining that it needed time to try and reason with its client (the IRS). At the end of the second thirty-day postponement, attorneys for the department contacted my counsel at CIR, asking if I'd be willing to let both proceedings be dismissed without demanding costs. Realizing that as the information in 'Cracking the Code-...' spreads, the government is going to need every penny it can legitimately retain to help ease its transition from a swollen, arrogant Leviathan back to its proper Constitutional stature without burning up the brakes, I was agreeable.
This will not be the end of the IRS's efforts, of course. They'll try to prevent the derailment of the tax-and-spend gravy-train upon which Washington frolics until the bitter end. After all, the only alternative is to go out into the real world and find honest jobs. A pretext for another assault will quickly be contrived. At the same time, the inside-the-beltway crowd will scramble like madmen to either package up some marketable "tax reform" by which an alternative scheme can be fastened onto the people, or to fashion a new curtain behind which the old one can retreat once more into comforting darkness. But for the moment, the 'service' has been bumped back onto its behind, and in a big way: Seeking even just two dismissals in this manner constitutes a legal loss of the issues it was arguing "on the merits".
In the meantime, word spreads. Well over 1,000,000 documents chock-full-of-truth are downloaded from losthorizons.com every month by Americans fed up with governments that have forgotten that WE are the lawmakers, and when we wrote the Constitutions that gave them life, we meant what we said. Tens of thousands of copies of 'Cracking the Code-...' are in the hands of folks whose attitude toward book-burners is other than timidly cooperative; it can be found in libraries across America; in fact the book is even being read in Canada, throughout Europe, in Asia and Australia. It's a tiny start, in light of the magnitude of the task-- but today, at least, it's free to grow unhindered.
-Pete Hendrickson
P. S. The pragmatism that has motivated the DOJ in these matters may well involve nothing more than the certainty that it cannot prevail legally-- a consideration of only peripheral significance to the IRS, which finds its own purposes served simply by burdening me with the need to deal with these assaults. However, it is also possible that the "reasoning" the DOJ undertook with the IRS was to point out that to proceed with these legal actions had more downside than upside even from the perspective of the 'service' itself, due to the potential publicity for 'Cracking the Code-...'. I hope that those reading these words who are not comfortable with the idea of an agency of OUR government spending OUR money to suppress speech it finds inconvenient will help thwart that likely motivation by raising their own voices. |
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