(Click on the underlined text to jump to each feature. To
return, use your browser's "back" button. Please keep in mind that
many more items of interest are to be found between featured
articles, so your most profitable course is to scroll through the
whole page...)
Held Over: What's missing from all the 'Iran' stuff; a
bit of good journalism on the origin of ISIS; a very virtuous bill
introduced in the House; George Carlin is suitably honored; the NSA
shooting; a telling evasion in Doreen's re-trial; more...
it would mean the government's been concealing and
denying the truth for years
on end,
and everybody knows THAT would never happen...
(Edward Snowden, come home! It was all just a bad dream; there really is
No Such Agency!)
Do you
know someone truly steeped in the Kool-Aid?
I mean
someone who finds it easier to believe that the far-better-educated,
far-more-suspicious-of-government Americans of a hundred years ago were
complete morons who granted authority to the state to take whatever it
wished from themselves and their posterity than to imagine that they
themselves simply misunderstand the true nature of the income tax? Even
while knowing that their beliefs about the tax are derived entirely from
the representations of those who profit from those beliefs (like tax
bureaucrats and "tax professionals")?
Do you
know someone like that? Shake them awake with the latest (fourteenth)
edition of
CtC!
I'm delighted when anyone wishes to share what I have posted here with
others! Sharing this page is an important means of moving toward the
restoration of the rule of law-- PLEASE DO IT!! But I'd appreciate your
doing so by directing your friends here themselves, rather than by copying
and emailing the material.
***
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story to tell, please consider sharing your words and your wisdom with our
thousands of readers!
Click here to learn how.
Massachusetts Governor Condemns Armed Extremists Guard units
seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons
were ambushed on April 19 by the elements of a paramilitary
extremist faction. Military and law-enforcement sources
estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before
government forces were compelled to withdraw.
Speaking after the clash, the Massachusetts governor declared
that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens,
has links to the radical right wing tax protest movement. The
Governor blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism
directed against internal revenue offices. The governor
described the group's organizers as criminals, and issued an
executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual
who has interfered with the government's efforts to secure law
and order.
The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed widespread
refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed
assault weapons.
The governor issued a ban on military style weapons and
ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a
meeting earlier this month between government and military
leaders at which the governor authorized forcible confiscation
of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition
of anonymity, pointed out that none of these people would have
been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over
their weapons. Government troops initially succeeded in
confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition
elsewhere in the state.
However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in
Lexington met with resistance from heavily armed extremists who
had been tipped off regarding the government's plan. During an
intense standoff in Lexington's town park, National Guard
Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation,
ordered the armed group to surrender their weapons and return to
their homes.
The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly
fired by one of the right wing extremists. Eight civilians were
killed in the ensuing exchange.
Ironically, the local citizenry blamed the government forces
rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before
order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas
had descended upon the guard units. Col. Smith, finding his
forces over matched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.
The governor has called upon citizens to support the state and
national joint task force in its effort to restore law and
order. The governor also demanded the surrender of those
responsible for planning and leading the attack against
government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock,
who have been identified as the ring leaders of the extremist
faction, remain at large.
Also on this date: In 1933, FDR announces the
abandonment of the gold standard. In 1961, the Bay of Pigs
invasion effort is defeated. In 1993, the Clinton
administration firebombs a community in Waco, Texas, killing 81
American men, women and children. In 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah
federal building in Oklahoma City is partly destroyed by
explosives. In 2011, Fidel Castro resigns after 45 years in
office as head of Cuba's Communist Party Central Committee. In
2013, Tamerlan Tsarenev, alleged Boston Marathon bomber, is said
to have been killed in a shoot-out with police. Some reason
exists to be uncertain of the truth of this story.
Anniversaries of interest for
each day of this week will be found throughout the newsletter
below.
This is a must read, all the way through the call
to action, if you want to have any hope of preserving your
rights.
I have to begin by acknowledging Melissa
Siskind's powerful effort to make me look like a
terrible person. She is very skilled.
But I believe Ms. Siskind's studied
hostility is really just a tactic. I think she is
implementing the concept that “the best defense is a
strong offense”. Ms. Siskind wants to drive from
everyone's mind the fact that the verdict in my trial
was achieved, in part, by her astonishing lie to my jury
that
early government efforts against my husband were
just an audit.
With that lie my jury was misled about the
real background of events leading up to the production
of the unlawful orders I resisted. With that lie my jury
was given false cause to doubt my truthfulness. With
that lie my jury was given false cause to doubt the
legitimacy of my exhibits; and with that lie my jury was
given false cause to doubt one of the bases presented
for my good-faith conclusion that I was not under a duty
in regard to these orders, which rested on an accurate
picture of the sequence of events of which the issuance
of these orders was a part.
Under the influence of Siskind's lie I was
declared guilty. I have to say “declared” rather than
“found”, because due to a jury instruction Siskind
persuaded the court to deliver, it cannot be known that
a single juror found I had actually committed one or the
other acts with which I am charged, and neither charged
act can be taken as found by a unanimous jury. It seems
that engineering verdicts against innocent women is
another skill honed by Ms. Siskind.
Now Ms. Siskind hopes to continue her
streak. She means to keep everyone, and especially you,
Judge Roberts, from remembering her earlier lie, and
from thinking about the fact that whatever you do today
rests on the legitimacy of a verdict issued under the
influence of that lie.
Siskind hopes to distract you with more
bluster, misdirection and additional falsehoods into
disregarding the facts and acting instead on her
primitive, hind-brain proposition that it doesn't matter
that the government couldn't honestly prove me guilty as
charged, because I'm a terrible villain anyway, and
ought to be locked up on general principle.
The fact is Melissa Siskind doesn't know me
at all, and I am not the bad person she would like you
to imagine. I am just an American woman who believes she
has a right to control the content of her own
expressions, and a right to defend her own interests in
any legal contest-- even a tax-related legal contest.
I want to explain what I believe is the
legal dynamic of such contests, and what has been done
to me that has led us to this day.
Our legal system here in America is
designed to protect everyone's right to make claims,
rebut allegations and defend herself against the claims
of others. One of the key ways in which these paramount
goals are accomplished is by providing that no one can
be told what she must say in a legal contest.
I get to say my piece, and the other side
gets to says its piece. Each of us get to say, without
hindrance, intimidation or interference, whatever we
think serves to support our claims. If what is said by
the two sides is in disagreement, an appropriate and
duly-authorized agency or tribunal makes a determination
as to the outcome in accordance with the relevant
provisions of law.
No one, not even the government, gets to
pre-emptively evade the contest or control its outcome
by taking, or being given, control of what its opponents
say-- even if it really thinks what is being said or
might be said is wrong. Both sides must rely on the
strength of their own arguments to overcome those of
their opponent, and are prohibited from using strong-arm
tactics against each other. In fact, efforts to secure
favorable testimony in such a contest by threats or
coercion are crimes. Both sides must rely on the threat
of a prosecution for perjury as their protection against
deceit.
That's how it works, that's the only way it
can work, and that's the only way it is allowed to work
under our law here in America, where a declared purpose
of bringing the federal government into existence in the
first place is identified in the preamble to the United
States Constitution as being to “establish justice”. The
First Amendment to that Constitution says no one can be
told what to say, and the Fifth Amendment guarantees
everyone the right to due process.
In keeping with these principles,
prescriptions and proscriptions, not only is no organ of
government allowed to order any person to relinquish her
own claims, or to agree with another's, but none has any
plausible reason to do so-- at least, no reason that is
honest.
For me, though, eight years ago a judge
issued just such orders, at the request of a government
agency wanting to make claims to my property. I was
ordered by this judge to repudiate my own freely-made
testimony relevant to a couple of government claims and
to create sworn declarations of belief that would
instead validate the government's competing claims. In
another order I was told to refrain from disputing any
future government claims.
The absurd pretext used to justify these
plainly illegal orders was that I was only being told to
say what was “correct”, as though my rights to control
my own expressions and advocate for my own interests
evaporate whenever some government official decides my
expressions and advocacy are “incorrect”. This is
ridiculous, and it is wrong-- my rights are not subject
to the whims of officialdom in this fashion.
Further, I was NOT simply being told to say
what Nancy Edmunds decided was “correct”-- I was being
ordered to say that I
BELIEVED what Nancy Edmunds decided was
“correct”-- or really, what my government opponent
simply TOLD Nancy Edmunds was “correct”, even though no
government official, from the Secretary of the Treasury
to a lowly IRS worker, had been willing to sign off on
the government's assertions under any risk of penalty
for being untruthful. Robert Metcalfe, the DOJ attorney
who asked Nancy Edmunds to make me say I believed
these assertions, had to resort to an unsigned,
self-declaredly “informal” IRS examination report as his
pretended evidence that the government itself believed
this nonsense.
Nonetheless, without even so much as a
single hearing of any kind, Nancy Edmunds ordered me to
say I believed what she herself had no reason whatever
to believe to be true, at the government's mere request,
and over my objections and formal, sworn dispute of all
its allegations of fact and law. As requested, Edmunds
ordered me to say I believe that my earnings are of a
taxable sort, suitable to declare to be “income” as that
term is meant in tax law.
But I don't
believe this. In fact, I know full well that it isn't
true, just as the government knows full well that it
isn't true, as is unambiguously proven by no government
official being willing to declare it as a personal
belief over a signature.
That a government official CAN make such a
declaration is why government control of speech such as
I am accused of criminally resisting is fundamentally
and grotesquely wrong as a matter of law and principle.
It is also why there is NEVER,
EVER a legitimate
government interest or necessity requiring or justifying
this ugly mechanism for its fulfillment. It's this
simple: If the government believes something is correct
and needs to be said, it can have one of its own
officials say it. In regard to the matters involved in
this case, there is actually a statute that says not
only that such a declaration MUST be made by a
government official, but that when one is, that
declaration is good and sufficient for all legal
purposes.
If what that official swears to is then
deemed to be correct by the proper authority-- say,
Judge Nancy Edmunds, perhaps-- and what I say is deemed
to be incorrect, then that decision can be enforced
without any declaration of agreement or belief being
needed from me.
Thus, the orders sought by the government
and issued by Edmunds are neither necessary nor proper,
both of which standards must be met, as specified at 26
USC 7402(a), for her to be authorized under law to issue
any kind of injunction. Even if the orders Edmunds
issued to me were not specifically prohibited by the
First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, they
would still not be within her lawful power to make.
Of course, beyond the creepily sick
proposition that I was just being ordered to say what
was “correct”-- however fraudulently and unlawfully--
there was another pretext given by the government in
asking Judge Edmunds' to issue her orders. This was the
even more creepy and downright scary argument that my
being forced to say I believe what the government wanted
would discourage other Americans from making claims of
their own which the government dislikes.
Needless to say, the government
self-servingly characterizes such disfavored claims as
"false". Part of its elaborate pretense in the lawsuit
brought in Edmunds' court is the phony assertion that my
husband's book
Cracking the Code argues that only federal,
state and local government workers are subject to the
income tax, and the equally phony assertion that claims
like mine on my freely-made tax returns are based on
this falsely ascribed and patently false and frivolous
notion.
But you know what? I characterize
the government's
assertions as "false", just as do the many thousands of
other Americans making claims the government hopes to
chill by attacking me-- and
unlike Nancy Edmunds, we've actually read the
book. Sorting out who is right in each case is why we
have a legal system, and keeping that legal system real
and legitimate is why our First and Fifth Amendment
proscriptions and prescriptions prohibit efforts by the
government to evade its requirements by ordering people
to say what it wants to hear through the means of
cooperative judges, or attempting to chill inconvenient
speech in advance by means of such orders.
Here is how the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals put this in Beaty v. United States, 937
F.2d 288:
“A central tenet of our republic--a
characteristic that separates us from totalitarian
regimes throughout the world--is that the government and
private citizens resolve disputes on an equal playing
field in the courts. When citizens face the government
in the federal courts, the job of the judge is to apply
the law, not to bolster the government’s case.”
Everyone in this room knows this. Everyone
in this room knows the government's call to Nancy
Edmunds to issue her orders to me was wrong and
lawless-- as are the orders themselves-- and that the
pretense of a legitimate government interest in chilling
the free expression of other Americans was even more
broadly and darkly criminal. It does not speak well of
Nancy Edmunds that she didn't refer Mr. Metcalfe for
prosecution upon being presented with his demand and its
revealing justifications.
Here today, those speaking for the
government are making the same demented, un-American and
Constitution-defying argument. They advise you to
sentence me harshly as a “deterrent”. But a deterrent to
what?
It can't be as a deterrent to resisting
government-requested orders from a court dictating what
they must say they believe to be true and correct. No
such orders have ever been issued to anyone in American
history before this was done to my husband and me, and
none have never been issued since. No surprise-- orders
of this sort are ILLEGAL.
Therefore, what the government must mean is
to deter other Americans from testifying freely and
honestly on their own tax forms, or anywhere else they
are asked or expected to say what they believe to be
true and correct, or have a need to make claims on their
own behalf or assert and defend their interests in a
legal contest. Thus, the government's call for a harsh
sentence is a call upon this court to use a sentence
upon me to commit a crime against the speech, conscience
and due process rights of other Americans-- indeed, all
Americans.
I note that whoever spoke for the
government in its response to my sentencing memorandum
also made much of the fact that one of my supporters
started a petition on my behalf a few weeks ago. The
government says those who have signed the petition are
examples of Americans needing to be deterred by the
sentence you issue today. I suppose the government
attorneys here also feel that the good people behind me
[and filling the hallway outside] need to be deterred
from exercising THEIR rights, too.
Frankly, those who have signed that
petition, and those here today, are examples of the
millions of Americans who need to be reassured by what
you do today that their rights will be respected by
public officials, and that their courts recognize that
it is efforts to chill their exercise of speech and due
process rights that are criminal, not resistance to such
efforts.
Here is what the person who started that
petition has as its “mission statement”:
“We, the undersigned citizens of
America, are concerned for the security of our rights,
seeing them threatened by the attack on those of our
sister, Doreen Hendrickson. Doreen is plainly being
punished by the United States for exercising her rights
of speech and conscience, and her right to due process
of law in any legal contest between herself and the
United States, whether that contest concerns tax matters
or otherwise.
We call upon our public servant, federal
district court judge Victoria Roberts, to abandon this
violation of Doreen's rights and to exercise her
authority under the federal rules to arrest this
judgment, dismiss the indictment under which Doreen was
tried, or otherwise vacate and dispose of the lawless
charges and proceedings against Doreen.”
I don't know anything about whether the
remedies being asked for in those words are available at
this point, but for the record, I echo them now.
I also ask you to understand that all of
the petition signers, and all the folks here today, and
all the many tens of thousands who are following this
case and will continue to do so are Americans who, in
their own study of the law, have concluded that what
Judge Edmunds did is wrong and unlawful, and that what I
have done is not.
All these good Americans are not alone,
either. They are joined by others who may not be
following this case today, but have already staked out
their positions very plainly.
Let's start with the real heavyweight
experts:
“Congress shall make no law abridging the
freedom of speech”; and “No person shall be deprived of
life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”
Now here's the United States Supreme Court
in Armstrong v. Manzo, 380 U.S. 545, explaining
the meaning of “due process of law”:
“A fundamental requirement of due process
is “the opportunity to be heard.” Grannis v. Ordean,
234 U.S. 385, 394. It is an opportunity which must be
granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful
manner.”
In Flaim v. Med. Coll. of Ohio, 418
F.3d 629, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals says:
“Notice and an opportunity to be heard
remain the most basic requirements of due process.”
“Opportunity to be heard” means an
opportunity to be heard saying what
I
want said, not what my government opponent wants to hear
said. Plainly, an injunction telling me I will be
punished for saying things the government doesn't want
said on a tax form by which I testify and make my claims
in a contest over who gets ownership of my money is a
violation of my rights, and so is an injunction telling
me that I must say what my opponent wishes said on such
forms.
Here is the Supreme Court on the freedom of
expression issue in Agency for Int’l Development v.
Alliance for Open Society Int’l, Inc., 133 S. Ct.
2321, a case decided just a month before I was arrested
for exercising my speech rights:
“It is, however, a basic First Amendment
principle that “freedom of speech prohibits the
government from telling people what they must say.” ...
“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle
that each person should decide for himself or herself
the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression,
consideration, and adherence.” ... “The government may
not . . . compel the endorsement of ideas that it
approves.”.
“[W]e cannot improve upon what Justice
Jackson wrote for the Court 70 years ago: “If there is
any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it
is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what
shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or
other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by
word or act their faith therein.””
And here is how the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals puts it in Newsom v. Morris, 888 F.2d
371:
“[E]ven minimal infringement upon First
Amendment values constitutes irreparable injury...”
and
“[D]irect retaliation by the state for
having exercised First Amendment freedoms in the past is
particularly proscribed by the First Amendment.”
Doesn't that last line bring things right
home? What is happening here today is the government
asking you, Judge Roberts, to retaliate against me for
exercising my First Amendment freedoms by expressing
myself as I felt was right and true in the course of
exercising my Fifth Amendment right to due process. That
is exactly the retaliation that the Sixth Circuit says
is “particularly proscribed by the First
Amendment”.
So, am I missing something? Didn't every
government official in this room-- including these
government attorneys who are urging you to engage in
this retaliation, and to “do it hard” so as to put a
proper fear of the same treatment into all of these
other people here, and those around the country who have
signed that petition, and everyone else who is following
this case-- didn't you all take oaths to uphold and
defend the Constitution by which the Sixth Circuit says
this punishment of me today is
particularly proscribed?
Nancy Edmunds issued orders at the
government's request abridging my First Amendment
freedoms.
I have been declared by a jury (or at least
part of a jury, but only maybe, really, since it may be
that not a single juror found that I did one or the
other of these things) to have resisted those orders by
exercising my First Amendment freedoms by way of
expressing myself freely on my 2008 tax return, and
failing to express myself with government-dictated words
repudiating my freely-made 2002 and 2003 returns.
Now we are here today with the government
asking that I be punished for those exercises of my
First Amendment freedoms.
Is this not a particularly proscribed
direct retaliation for my exercise of First Amendment
freedoms?
Does not “particularly proscribed” mean,
“not allowed”, as in “no one, including anyone here
today, is allowed to punish me for refusing to let my
speech be controlled by the government and refusing to
abandon my right to due process”?
I don't claim to be a legal expert, but I'm
not stupid, either, and yet I do not understand how I
can lawfully have been put through what I have suffered
already, much less anything further.
Judge Roberts, you are aware that I take
issue with many aspects of my trial and the way its
outcome was achieved. I have detailed a number of those
issues in post-trial motions, and alluded to others. I
expect vindication in the appellate court and I think
you have to acknowledge that I have good reason for that
expectation. In light of this fact, for me to suffer
punishment prior to having my opportunity to be
vindicated by the appellate court would be a profound
injustice.
For that reason, and for all the technical
reasons that Mr. Cedrone has detailed in my sentencing
memorandum and here in person today why it would be
proper and appropriate even if no appeal were intended,
I ask you to exercise your discretion here today with
the lightest of hands.
SO, THAT SURELY LED to a merely nominal,
non-custodial sentence, pending the appeal and disposal of the
demented, grossly un-American and plainly un-constitutional idea
that anyone can be ordered, over her objection, to write
government-dictated words and sign them with a sworn declaration
that they are her own words, right?
'Fraid not.
First the packed courtroom (with spill-over into
the hall-- thanks SO MUCH to
everyone that came!) was treated to a twenty-minute reading of
scripted lies and calumnies about Doreen in which the "CtC says
only federal employees are subject to the tax" strawman was
carefully repeated over and over, leaving any listener who knows
better to wonder if George Orwell himself was exhumed to work on
the thing, and to marvel at how desperate the "ignorance tax"
schemers are to sustain and spread that fictional pretext for
disparagement.
During this screed, Doreen's steadfast refusal to
waive her rights and bow to "authority" was literally described
as "dangerous to the community", and the deliberate intention of
using a harsh sentence on her to chill others from exercising
their own rights of speech and due process was openly
articulated.
Doreen was then sentenced to 18 months in prison,
to begin in 60 days... or only in 30 if she has not, by then,
submitted the illegally-ordered perjurious "amended returns" the
government is SO revealingly-desperate to get by any means
necessary.
SO, HERE'S MY CALL TO ACTION, PEOPLE. This renewed,
and now even more pointed assault on the speech, conscience and
due process (not to mention self-incrimination) rights is
exactly the kind of federal government violation of the law for
which Jefferson and Madison advocated interposition by the
states.
All our rights are worthy of defense, of course,
but those being trampled here, and in this fashion, are
particularly so, even without consideration of the fact that the
assault is being undertaken to protect the continued viability
of an inherently exploitive, now outright fraudulent
tax-collection scheme which is at this point itself crossing
into unconstitutionality.
As written, the income tax is entirely
Constitutional. But when what is now a sustained, illegal
assault on the truth is launched in order to keep its limited
scope successfully concealed and to preserve its systematic mis-application,
the thing begins to become unconstitutional in substance even
while remaining Constitutional in form.
Thus, we are faced here with a complex,
multi-faceted power-play by the feds against the people's law
such that the states, by the agency of which the federal
government was created, and which are the countervailing and
chief supervisory powers against it in our governmental
structure, should step in and defend Doreen (and thereby, all of
us) from this outrage.
Our governor here in Michigan is a republican named
Rick Snyder. Various ways of contacting him can be found
here. Please use them and urge Gov. Snyder to step in and
protect Doreen from the effort to violate her rights. The
Michigan Attorney General is Bill Schuette. He can be contacted
as indicated
here.
UPDATE: It's very
important that everyone use his or her own words in
communicating with these folks. But this
communiqué to Governor Rick Snyder (using Snyder's webpage
"contact form") was sent to me right after I posted this
article, and I am sharing it as a fine example of what I think
is the right tone and focus on the point in responding to this
call for action:
I chose this category [law and
public safety] because the public can never be safe if
government is not restrained by the rule of law.
I am specifically referring to Doreen Hendrickson's
predicament : NO PERSON can be legally compelled to sign
a government form under the penalty of perjury with
facts which that person does not believe are true.
PERIOD.
The State of Michigan must not allow the federal
government to so curtail the due process of law and the
first amendment so as to be able to imprison Mrs.
Hendrickson. To allow this is not merely a travesty of
justice in the matter of US v Doreen Hendrickson, it is
the abandonment of the rule of law for all the people,
in every state of the union and you, sir, have the
opportunity and duty to prevent it.
Very sincerely yours,
Tim Richardson
Non-Michiganders' own home-state officials should
be equally interested, by the way-- they, too are supposed to be
ensuring that the feds stay within the set boundaries. Further,
the chill meant to be accomplished by the assault on Doreen is
aimed at everyone living in every state of the union.
BY THE WAY, it's interesting to note that the
charade of judicial process here was particularly-plainly
nothing more than that. On Monday last week, the judge in the
case asked both sides to submit supplemental sentencing
memoranda taking consideration of a sentencing guidelines
section she decided might be apropos. She indicated that she was
prepared to continue the sentencing date so as to allow for
proper jobs on these supplements:
Both sides were agreeable:
And then I'm guessing somebody at headquarters got
wind of this and somebody else got her marching orders:
Gotta have this little show trial wrapped-up ready
for the just-before-"tax day" PR campaign, yes?
PLEASE MAKE THOSE CALLS, and make some noise about
this. If we all (this means you)
steadily and diligently
inject truth into the narrative and rebut the government spin on this,
and keep the focus on the rights-violations that are the real
substance of this story, we can avert a great evil from being
committed on one woman, and protect all our rights from the
erosion represented by this pernicious crime.
UPDATE: Shortly after this story was posted, Tony
Jackson, a serious warrior-for-the-truth living in Ohio, shared
a letter he had immediately written to his U.S. congressman
demanding attention to this outrage. I think this is a great
parallel action everyone can also take that has good promise of
being helpful in a couple of different ways.
BY THE WAY, II: AS POSTED IN last week's
Mid-Edition Update, a new video concerning the assault on
Doreen's rights and on everyone's rule of law has been posted.
This film was put together by David Schied, a court-watcher
local to Doreen and me who became aware of her case and asked to
do an interview for a series he produces called 'RICO Busters',
which is focused on bad behavior in the federal courts. The
interview is supplemented by some additional footage David had
shot previously shot while Doreen and I were addressing a group
of local activists about the case.
David graciously made the film available to me, and
I have edited out as much of the series-specific material as
possible in order to post a very focused version, which can be
accessed here.
I'm sure everyone will find it interesting, and I
expect everyone will find it very disturbing. I hope everyone
will help it go viral.
HERE IS THE PETITION by which everyone can stand up and
be counted as an American man or woman who disagrees with the
idea that a federal court can deprive someone of speech,
conscience and due process rights to suit the convenience and
corruption of the state.
BY THE WAY, III: If by chance you are not already
familiar with the backstory leading up to what is being done to
Doreen, please see
this.
BY THE WAY IV: If you are a lawyer with experience
prosecuting violations like the ones being committed against
Doreen here (and me, too), whether on a civil or criminal basis,
please contact me with your thoughts about how to frame the
issues and proceed with actions against the various malefactors
here in either federal or state court.
from Amazing Spider-Man #537
"A free people claim their rights as derived from
the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief
magistrate"
America's Only Hope Lies In Spreading The
Truth About The Tax
Reliance on the courts, the political process or the
timely conversion of the masses to an ideology of freedom by punditry
and educational programs are pipe-dreams.
I was amused (in a grim sort of way) at the irony of
a recent column by a self-described libertarian pundit, titled, 'Conservative
Blindness on Iran'. The writer chastises the neo-con nut-case
community for a mote in its eye while blithely putting the beam in his
own on display.
The hypocritical column critiques neo-con pundits for their deliberate
refusal to see deeper than the 1979 embassy hostage-taking when
writing about the boogieman-du-jour, Iran. But immediately after
pouring a little well-deserved scorn on his targets for treating a
willful blindness to any facts which put the national-security state
in the wrong as a principle of "patriotism", the columnist declares
(emphasis added):
"Of course, such principles don’t apply to
libertarians. Not only are we not reluctant to acknowledge that the
national-security state has engaged in horrific wrongdoing since its
inception, we would dismantle this Cold War dinosaur and
restore a constitutionally limited republic to our land."
Really? When are you planning to start, friend?
There being no advice to his readers to learn
CtC's revelations about the state's real taxing structure and
authority, this writer's fine intentions are as bankable as those of
any cheap political hack-- meaning not worth the paper on which they
are printed. Like those political hacks, the writer hopes to be judged
solely by those professed good intentions, with his ongoing financial support of
the state he loves to denounce, and his failure to actually help
restrain and dismantle it or introduce his readers to the means by
which this can be done, both conveniently overlooked.
HERE'S THE THING, my fine-talking friend (and every other mere and
motionless gripe-monger and critic of the empire): talk is cheap, and worse than
pointless. Talking about how bad things are without acting to fix them
does nothing but foster a delusional sense that the problem is being
attended-to while in fact, all that is happening is that precious time
and narrowing opportunities are passing away.
We've had this explained to us by better men than me. For
example, last Monday was the 240th anniversary of Patrick
Henry's rightly celebrated, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"
speech. How glorious and inspiring are those seven ringing words!
But as inspiring of high feeling as those seven ringing
words can be, today we would be better off paying attention to those
which preceded them in Henry's famous oration. Let's remember that what
prompted Henry's speech was the inclination of many in his native
Virginia to just keep talking about the frightening darkness that was approaching,
rather than doing what was really needed-- shutting-up and putting-up.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope
with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will
it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally
disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?
Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we
acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our
backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies
shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a
proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our
power.
This fine-talking columnist and any other writer or commentator that
criticizes the state or warns darkly of how bad things are getting, or
declares his resolve in favor of restoring the limited government
under the rule of law bequeathed to us by the Founders but does not
end his or her comments with a direction to
losthorizons.com or
Cracking the Codeis a hypocrite.
Such folks refuse to match their deeds to their
words. They condemn the rogue state but don't accompany their
implicit (or sometimes explicit) exhortations to action against
the threat with information on the one and only way effective
action can be taken short of taking up arms.
NOTHING BUT
CtC AND THE TRUTH IT REVEALS WILL DO THE JOB.
Don't get me wrong. I take a backseat to no one in my admiration and
appreciation for Edward Snowden, William Binney, Thomas Drake and the
various other whistleblowers who have revealed to the world the
systematic violation of the Fourth Amendment committed by the United
States (by which I mean the government unit that goes by that name). I
feel the same abiding affection for those who revealed and
alerted us all to any and every other evil committed by the
state.
Nor do I stint in my admiration and appreciation for the handful of
actual journalists plying that noble profession in the USA and
elsewhere, the members of which can be recognized by their
uncompromising presentation and coverage of the revelations of Snowden
and all the others. But all that admiration and appreciation notwithstanding,
all those revelations and all that coverage are going to do
no immediate good.
Revealing these violations empowers Americans and others to know
what's being done to them, and to scream and sue and politic about
them. But it has not and will not compel the violators (whose compatriots
and enablers and co-conspirators run the courts in which the suits are
brought and the political process in which the screaming and
politicking is done) to do anything different.
The fact is, revelations of these violations are merely road-markers identifying yet more
clearly the path down which we are going at an increasingly alarming
pace.
BUT THERE IS A
REVELATION which DOES promise to actually
be a solution, not just a highlighting of the problem. This revelation empowers individual Americans to do all
that needs to be done, with no reliance on a highly-unlikely sudden
embrace of virtue by the very malefactors whose evil needs to be
rectified.
The revelation of which I speak is the simple, powerful,
unambiguous truth about the income tax.
The truth about the tax is so plainly-evident and
thoroughly-supported by every possible authority that anyone spending
as little as two hours reading through
this paper will irrevocably know it and understand it. That truth
is so unmistakable once an accurate presentation has been taken in
that it can never again be forgotten or misunderstood, and it
inescapably compels right behavior from everyone who comes to know it
(except those whose agenda is advanced by violation of the law).
One of the
key aspects of the tax that comes to be understood by that reading is
that its application under the law is entirely within the control of
each individual, rather than being an externally-imposed extraction.
Those who learn the liberating truth about the tax
discover that most of them have actually been simply hood-winked into
agreeing to the otherwise improper application of the tax to their
earnings and wealth. All their working lives they've been saying "Yes"
to being taxed to feed Leviathan, when they could have been saying
"No" and retaining control over the use and disposition of their
hard-earned property.
In practical terms suited to the context of this
observation, this means that while most anyone reading about Edward
Snowden's revelations will get righteously pissed and paranoid but
have no recourse for anything further, that same person, upon reading
CtC's revelations, will promptly cut the NSA's funding, and do so as
part of a larger, comprehensive withdrawal of consent to Leviathan's
illegal excesses in what is actually a meaningful manner.
In fact, that withdrawal of fuel and consent supporting Leviathan is
the implementation of the Framers' Constitutional provision of a "Smithian"
invisible hand by which each person's attention to his own
self-interest automatically and organically provides for the
well-being of society overall. The Founding generation was
far-sighted, and knew that it is the nature of states to metastasize
into a grave threat like the one confronting us today if not checked
by individual Americans acting from outside the errant institutional
structure.
And if you give it a moment's thought, you'll understand
how powerful a solution the Framers provided for us. Consider the
effect of 10 million Americans saying "No" instead of "Yes" on their
tax returns next month because they have learned they never should
have been saying "Yes" in the first place. That WILL actually make a
difference-- hugely, meaningfully, and right now!
No amount of journalism about this abuse or that usurpation will do
the same, or will do anything at all except inflict upon the American
people a will-sapping sense of despair.
I WANT TO REPEAT AND EMPHASIZE for those not yet knowing the
truth about the tax: The individual control over the application
of the tax to which I have referred IS the law. This is NOT a
matter of how I think taxes ought to work in America, or the
application of some "rights" doctrine by which I argue that the
tax law should be read in some particular way contrary to how
the government reads it.
The law only reads one way
,
and the government reads it exactly the same way I read it. The
misapplication happens not by disagreement over what the law
says, but by simple exploitation of the fact that YOU haven't
ever read the law at all, and it has been constructed in a way
to allow that ignorance to be used against you, with your
unwitting cooperation.
As a consequence, revealing the truth about the tax simply enables
American men and women to act knowledgeably in accordance with
the law, and informs them of the fact that their prior ignorance
has been ruthlessly exploited to their great harm for all their
working lives. Serendipitously, coming to understand the tax
also provides a deep and liberating education in federal law and
the real legal relationship of citizen and state generally.
The revelations of
CtC don't call for a revolution. They simply call for a
restoration of the law by knowledgeable action fully within and
respectful of the existing legal structure, in which every
American can enthusiastically participate with no qualms or
trepidations.
It's really this simple: All that is necessary to restore limited
government and the law in America is for enough Americans to
learn the truth about the income tax. At the same time, nothing
else will do.
***
THE STATE WHOSE LAWLESS PRACTICES AND AMBITIONS
will be reined-in once enough Americans come to know the
truth about the tax is very conscious of this reality. This is
why its efforts to suppress
CtC-- the sole
and exclusively-complete and accurate presentation of the truth
about the tax-- have even gone so far as unprecedented
government-sought court orders commanding that my wife and I
pretend to repudiate our sworn tax-return testimony and replace
it with government-dictated disavowals of what
CtC
reveals.
By itself this should answer any doubt anyone
reading this might harbor about all that I have said here. This
deep a step into the swamp would never be taken except in direst
need.
To put it another way, you can tell when you're
right over the target by the heaviness of the defensive flak.
CtC
is drawing a flak-attack such as nothing else ever has, because
it IS the one and only stake poised right over the vampire's
heart, needing only enough Americans to pile on and drive it
home.
I know how surreal this is, and how difficult to
credit. With all the sturm und drang on so many issues
reverberating in the media and on everyone's radar-screens, the
idea that there should be a superbug able to take down the
monster, and that this little chunk of information from this
obscure source should be it, seems impossible.
But while it may seem impossible to you, every act by the state
makes clear that IT doesn't think it impossible at all; quite
the contrary.
After all, what else has prompted an explicit
government campaign to misrepresent the content of a book (as
shown
here and
here)?
What
else has prompted the state to seek
plainly unconstitutional court orders such as those
mentioned above, one deliberately
adopting as a "judicial finding" the government's
misrepresentation of that book (and purporting to take control,
by prior restraint, of sworn declarations of belief on tax
forms), and the other commanding the book's author to replace
his research-based conclusions about the suitability of his
earnings for reporting on a tax return with contrary
declarations dictated by the government, to create the
appearance that the author had repudiated his research?
The ONLY thing that could prompt these
extraordinary, completely unprecedented events is the
correctness of all that
CtC says, and the state's recognition of its superbug
status.
After all, iIf
CtC were wrong (and therefore not the threat to ongoing
state lawlessness that it is), there wouldn't be a campaign to
discourage and suppress the book. I simply wouldn't have those
refunds to post. Those refunds never would have happened, and certainly
even if a few
inexplicably "slipped through some
crack" at first they would have ended many years ago, after the
first few hundred at most.
There'd be no effort to make me appear to have
repudiated
CtC-- none would be needed. It would be more than
enough that I would have nothing to show in its support, and
that all the thousands of readers who have independently tested
my research and analysis with their own would be reporting its
errors.
There'd be no misrepresentation of
CtC by
government officials. Those officials would have no need to pretend that
the book says what it does
not, so as to create a false pretext for declaring it
wrong.
There would be no carefully-nurtured
troll-campaign
planted on the internet and within the "tax honesty" movement
steadily pumping out dis-information about
CtC. After all, why
bother with such things if the book were wrong, or not the
super-weapon for liberty and restraint of the state that I say
it is?
And rightnow is the time to use it,
because like Patrick Henry said, we only grow weaker and more in
peril the longer we wait.
ACT ON BEHALF OF THE LAW,
NOW. If you haven't already
put your education about the tax and the law to use, do it
now. If you haven't already
gotten that education,
get it now.
Do all you can to
be in Detroit on April 9 to show support for Doreen
and for your rights and the rule of law, and to show opposition
to lawlessness and corruption. See location and time info at the
end of these comments.
Burn into your brain now
recognition that anyone who tells himself that it can't be as
simple as
CtC is in denial of the facts in front of his own
nose.
Burn into your brain now
that anyone who lies quietly in the weeds for fear of being
noticed by enemies of the truth and the law is thereby conceding
victory to those enemies.
Burn into your brain now
that anyone who seeks to distract his fellows from
CtC is a
collaborator, wittingly or unwittingly, with the enemies of
liberty and the Founders' republic.
Burn into your brain now
that anyone who gripe-mongers without referring his audience to
the solution of
CtC is a hypocrite.
Burn into your brain now
that anyone who calls himself or herself an advocate of "tax
honesty" who doesn't direct his website visitors and everyone
else with whom he has influence to
losthorizons.com and
CtC--
the exclusive sources of actual liberating truth about the tax,
endlessly proven accurate in
even the most challenging circumstances and on
tens of thousands of occasions and by the
equally-unprecedented judicial evasions and distortions
mentioned above-- really isn't.
WHEN YOU LOOK AROUND at what's going on in America
today, you should be scared. But what you should be scared of is
that you have been letting precious time slip away without
having exerted your utmost to strengthen and deploy the solution
that lies right at hand, while you still are able to do so.
A few weeks ago I quoted William O. Douglas on this
page, who said,
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does
oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where
everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such
twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however
slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
I was soft-pedaling with that quote.
There is no "slight" change in the air for us to be aware of--
the fact is, darkness is already well upon us. It only seems
otherwise to those not looking closely because the land is
filled with bonfires in which our rights, the Constitution and
the rule of law generally are being burned away.
Wake to the peril; wake to the remedy.
Act.
NOW.
PEOPLE!! I ask each of you to take a moment
RIGHT NOW and email Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras,
urging them to take notice of what gets posted on these
pages every week. Maybe hearing from all of the thousands
upon thousands of Americans and others around the world who
get these newsletters, all demanding the attention of these
journalists to the same subject will bump one or both of
them into waking to this hugely-important story.
By the way, there is a little cracking in the ice:
this article on Doreen's ordeal appeared in the Pontiac
Tribune Tuesday, March 17;
and
this
excellent special letter to the editor on the same subject
appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Strike now for more of the same everywhere you can
think of, and by way of the emails to Greenwald and Poitras,
while the iron is heating up, people!
P. S. There is a petition on Doreen's behalf
waiting for YOUR SIGNATURE and for your sharing with others.
Find it
here.
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
-Mohandas Gandhi
***
NEW! Orders of twelve or more books now come with a free DVD
containing six informative and inspiring videos-- 112 minutes in
all. Click
here for the details.
Ignorance of the true nature of the "income" tax
has gagged, gutted and seduced-into-disgrace America's
ministerial community. This must change.
You're a
passenger on a riverboat that relies on regular
contributions of fuel from the passengers to
keep moving forward. You see an unsurvivable
waterfall ahead, and note a
soon-to-be-irresistible current growing stronger
each day. What does common sense suggest?
Illuminating anniversaries of this week:
April 20- In 1861,
Robert E. Lee resigns his United States Army commission and
devotes himself to the defense of Virginia. In 1912, Tiger
Stadium in Detroit and Fenway Park in Boston open for business.
In 1916, the Chicago Cubs play their first game at Wrigley
Field. In 1918, the Red Baron shoots down his 79th and 80th
dogfight opponents, his last before being killed himself the
next day. In 1999, two students kill or wound 37 unarmed
students and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado.
SUPPOSE YOU WENT OUT TO YOUR MAILBOX one afternoon and found
a notice from Sears, Roebuck & Co. instructing "all
employees" to report to the nearest company office for a
staff meeting the next day.
Would you go?
If you DON'T work for Sears?
It’d be pretty stupid to go to the
meeting if you don't work for Sears, wouldn't it?
So, when you're presented with a notice from
the United States government instructing "all employees" to
do this or that, why would you do whatever it says, if you
DON'T work for the United States government?
***
HOW ABOUT YOU BUSINESS OWNERS? Suppose you
found a notice from Sears in your mailbox one day declaring
that "anyone to whom any employees report", and anyone who
paid any contractors for services rendered or paid any
dividends to stockholders, is to send information on all
salaries and other payments made during the past year to the
main office.
Would you send Sears such a list?
If your company is NOT a division
of Sears?
It'd be pretty stupid to send in
such a list if your company isn't a division of Sears,
wouldn't it?
So, when you're presented with such a notice
from United States government, why would you do what it
says, if you're NOT a division of the United States
government?
***
NOW, SUPPOSE YOU FOUND A NOTICE in your mailbox
alerting you to the fact that someone has sent an affidavit
to the Sears accounting department claiming that you were
paid $50,000 by Sears last year-- and the Sears accounting
department is going to debit your Sears charge account for
what they figure your Christmas Club contribution, health
insurance premium, retirement plan matching contribution,
reserved parking space fee, and/or sundry other
employee/contractor/investor-related expenses add up to.
Would you go to your local Sears store and pick
up one of the "affidavit acknowledgment/correction/rebuttal
forms" published by its accounting department, put $50,000
on the "amount paid to you by Sears" line on the form, spend
10.7 hours over a weekend figuring out how to take advantage
of Sears company policy for reducing the related expenses
for which Sears wants to charge you, and then sign the form
and send it in-- feeling pretty good about how you reduced
the hit that your Sears account is going to take?
Would you do all that?
If you HADN'T gotten paid by Sears?
It’d be pretty stupid to do all
that if you hadn't actually been paid by Sears, wouldn't it?
SO, IF SOMEBODY SENDS YOU A COPY of an
affidavit they've given to the IRS or a state tax agency on
which they claim that you've been paid as a
federally-connected person last year-- such as a W-2, 1099
or K-1, which are only used to report such payments-- and it
isn't actually true, why would you respond as though it is?
Why wouldn't you use the IRS or state tax agency's
"affidavit acknowledgment/correction/rebuttal forms" to
correct, or rebut, the erroneous affidavit, both of which
are among the primary functions of such forms?
It’d be pretty stupid to do
anything else, wouldn’t it?
I'VE HEARD FROM A FEW FOLKS wanting an article
concerning the new "Obamacare" tax line appearing on this
year's 1040s. I don't really believe this is needed, since I
think the instructions and forms are very sufficiently
self-explanatory, as they usually are.
Nonetheless, for everyone's convenience, I will
post here what are, in my opinion, the relevant portions of those
forms and instructions for most
educated filers. (Each
person must go through the forms and instructions on his or
her own, though, because each is responsible for his or her
conclusions.)
Here is the line on a 1040:
Here is the relevant portion of the 1040
instruction booklet:
Here is the first relevant portion of the Form
8965 instructions:
...and the second (be sure to read the
"TIP"...):
...and the third:
...and the fourth:
And here is the relevant portion of the Form
8965:
You'll have observed that everything hinges on
"requirement to file", which hinges on having received more
than the relevant exemption amount of "income" (the
gainful exercise of federal privilege)...
DON'T FORGET THE COMPREHENSIVE DISCUSSION of "Obamacare"
found
here; and be a good neighbor and share all the
educating, liberating information you have with family,
friends, acquaintances and anybody you know of that is upset
with what they mistakenly imagine the "Obamacare" tax to be.
April 21- In 1836,
Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat Mexican
General Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto. In 1944,
France recognizes the right of women to vote. In 1975, Nguyen
Van Thieu, President of South Vietnam, flees Saigon. In 1989,
100,000 students fill Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.
Time, unfortunately, is on the side of the
well-funded disinformation specialists
Are You Having Trouble Spreading The
Word?
SKEPTICISM (SOMETIMES INVOKED BY FEAR) IS TO BE
EXPECTED when you're trying to explain to someone that
everything they've been encouraged their whole lives to
believe about something as entrenched and significant as the
income tax is basically nonsense. So here's a way to help
cut through the resistance:
Ask your listener how he or she would react if
you were to show an announcement from the Commissioner of
Internal Revenue admitting that the tax doesn't apply to the
earnings of most Americans and is misapplied most of the
time because people don't understand how it works? Or how
about if you showed a ruling from the Supreme Court saying
the same?
Now you just have to explain that
you're going to show exactly those things-- but because
the state really doesn't want people to know this, these
things haven't been said quite as forthrightly as we would
all wish. It's going to take a bit more work to take these
admissions in than is sufficient for just reading a press
release. But it'll be worth the effort...
IF YOU'RE NOT SPREADING THIS LINK with every bit of
energy you can, to school libraries, homeschool
families and community groups, your neighbors, your
family members, your pastors and
co-congregationalists, journalists, lawyers, CPAs,
members of congress, tax-agency workers, Wikipedia,
Anonymous, WikiLeaks, the Tax Foundation, everyone
in the "tax honesty" movement, the 9/11 truth
movement, other activist movements and everyone
else,
you have only yourself to blame for your
troubles with the tax, and a whole lot else of which
you might complain. It's on you.
WRITE A NICE, FRIENDLY AND BRIEF introductory note
explaining what will be seen at the link-- cryptic
is bad; excited is good-- and then send this WMI
(weapon of mass instruction) far and wide.
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the
harder I work, the more I have of it."
A teacher asked
her 6th grade class how many of them were fans of Big Government.
Not really knowing what a Big Government fan is, but wanting to be liked by
the
teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for TJ.
The teacher asked TJ why he has decided to be different...again.
TJ said, "Because I'm not a fan of Big Government."
The teacher asked, "Why aren't you a fan of Big Government?"
TJ said, "Because I'm a libertarian."
The teacher asked him why he's a libertarian. TJ answered, "Well,
my Dad's a libertarian and my Mom's a libertarian, so I'm a libertarian."
Annoyed by this answer, the teacher asked, "If your dad were a moron and
your mom were an idiot, what would that make you?"
With a big smile, TJ replied, "That would make me a fan of Big
Government."
Real Americans don't accommodate fog, lies and a sliding scale of
adherence to the rule of law. Real American men and women stand up for the
truth and the law, come what may, knowing that it is only by setting the bar
at the top and enforcing it, come what may, that liberties are secured.
ONLY ONE THING WILL WIN YOU YOUR LIBERTY:
Spreading the truth. Accordingly, I've assembled
outreach resources into a new, dedicated page. Find it
here, and please, USE THESE TOOLS!! I can't
do this all by myself.
"In a time of
universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary
act."
April 22- In 1509,
Henry VIII takes the throne of England. In 1898, the United
States Navy initiates a blockade of Cuban ports in an opening
move of the Spanish-American War. In 1912, Pravda begins
publication in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2000, federal agents
seize six-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez from his
relatives in Miami in order to return him to the island prison.
*****
Test Your
"Income" Tax IQ!
CtC Warrior
SanDiegoScott has put together a great little 20-question quiz
to test your knowledge of the law regarding the United States
"income" tax. Test yourself, test your friends and family!
Test your accountant and tax attorney, and help them learn the
liberating truth!!
Kick Open The Door To Liberty: What Are We
Waiting For?
by John Whitehead
“The greatness of America lies in the right to protest
for right.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
Everything this nation once stood for is being turned
on its head.
Free speech, religious expression, privacy, due
process, bodily integrity, the sanctity of human life, the
sovereignty of the family, individuality, the right to self-defense,
protection against police abuses, representative government, private
property, human rights—the very ideals that once made this nation
great—have become casualties of a politically correct, misguided,
materialistic, amoral, militaristic culture.
Indeed, I’m having a hard time reconciling the America
I know and love with the America being depicted in the daily news
headlines, where corruption, cronyism and abuse have taken
precedence over the rights of the citizenry and the rule of law.
What kind of country do we live in where it’s
acceptable for police to shoot unarmed citizens, for homeowners to
be jailed for having overgrown lawns (a Texas homeowner was actually
sentenced to 17 days in jail and fined $1700 for having an overgrown
lawn), for kids to be tasered and pepper sprayed for acting like
kids at school (many are left with health problems ranging from
comas and asthma to cardiac arrest), and for local governments to
rake in hefty profits under the guise of traffic safety (NPR reports
that police departments across the country continue to require
quotas for arrests and tickets, a practice that is illegal but in
effect)?
Why should we Americans have to put up with the
government listening in on our phone calls, spying on our emails,
subjecting us to roadside strip searches, and generally holding our
freedoms hostage in exchange for some phantom promises of security?
First of all, wouldn't it be nice if a guy with a bully
pulpit like John Whitehead actually knew about Doreen's ordeal-- a
far more egregious assault on speech and due process rights than any
he mentions-- and actually knew about CtC and the solution it
offers, and about the community of CtC-educated activist Americans
who are actually doing something about all that he warns against?
How about making it so?
Now consider this:
Aren't you REALLY, REALLY glad YOU'VE
had the fortitude and clarity of vision to do
the only thing that will actually make a
difference by taking control of how much of YOUR WEALTH facilitates
government
misbehavior?
Now ask yourself this: Have I really done
all that I can to
urge everyone I
know to also stand up and act in the only way that will really bring
about change in my lifetime?
Even as ardent a statist as Abraham
Lincoln, in announcing his willingness to burn the Southern states to the ground in order to
keep them paying the tariff for the benefit of Northern interests in
his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, paid at least lip
service to the Founders design of leaving control over the fuel
available to feed the fires Washington wants to light in the hands
of the individual citizenry when he said, "Doing this I deem to
be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, unless my
rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite
means..."
"Peter Hendrickson has done it again! 'Upholding The
Law' does for individual liberties what 'Cracking the Code' did
for tax law compliance: exposes the reader to the unalienable
truth!"
-Jesse Herron, Bill Of Rights Press, Fort Collins, Colorado
HELD OVER: What's missing from all the 'Iran' stuff; a good bit of
journalism on the origin of ISIS; a very virtuous bill introduced in
the House; George Carlin is suitably honored; the NSA shooting; a telling evasion in Doreen's re-trial;
more...
THERE'S BEEN A LOT GOING ON LATELY concerning Iran. We've got the
"negotiations" over how much of its lunch-money Iran needs to
hand over to avoid getting a beating from the US; there's the
infamous
"47-senator threat letter"; there's the latest installment of Bibi
Netanyahu's nut-case rants about Iran-- a country that hasn't
even seized its easy chance to wreak vengeance on the former
Iraqi leadership responsible for killing nearly a million
Iranians in the 1980s-- as a threat to world
security, and so on.
Through it all, I've been struck by the fact that the
conversation never includes anything about where the United
States gets the right to tell the Iranian people what they have
to do if
they don't want to get knee-capped. Am I alone in being bothered by
this? (By the way, a good history of the modern Middle East--
particularly focused on Iran-- through 1991 can be found
here.)
***
Ben Swann delivers some good journalism on the origin of "ISIS"
***
A VERY VIRTUOUS BILL HAS BEEN INTRODUCED IN THE HOUSE by Reps
Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) Accurately titled
the 'Surveillance
State Repeal Act', this proposed legislation would roll back
Fourth Amendment shredding to pre-'USA PATRIOT Act' days, even
including the mandated destruction of much of the data illegally
collected under the current law-breaking regime.
As reported by 'The Hill':
The bill would completely repeal the Patriot Act, the
sweeping national security law passed in the days after Sept. 11,
2001, as well as the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, another spying law
that the NSA has used to justify collecting vast swaths of people's
communications through the Internet.
It would also reform the secretive court that
oversees the nation’s spying powers, prevent the government from
forcing tech companies to create “backdoors” into their devices and
create additional protections for whistleblowers.
“Really, what we need are new whistleblower
protections so that the next Edward Snowden doesn’t have to go to
Russia or Hong Kong or whatever the case may be just for disclosing
this,” Massie said.
Of course, as also reported by 'The Hill':
The bill is likely to be a nonstarter for leaders in
Congress, who have been worried that even much milder reforms to the
nation’s spying laws would tragically handicap the nation’s ability
to fight terrorists. A similar bill was introduced in 2013 but
failed to gain any movement in the House.
Reference is given to
this story about Speaker John Boehner's claim that the
illegal surveillance foiled plots directed at or endangering him
personally and his using that as his reasons for supporting
massive, systematic warrantless violations of the rights of
hundreds of millions of other people in direct disregard of the
Constitution to which he took an oath of fealty.
'THE HILL' IS DOUBTLESS CORRECT that "the leadership" will do
all possible to scuttle this rare good legislative effort.
SCREAM to your congresscritter demanding co-sponsorship and
all other support anyway. You've got nothing to lose by trying,
and while the political process isn't going to be an enduring or
satisfying avenue to restoration of the republic until the state
has been stripped of its ability to command resources at will,
it is good that everyone be reminded at all opportunities that
the American people take their rights and the rule of law
seriously.
***
GEORGE CARLIN, ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST stand-up
philosophers, has been posthumously honored with a portrait at the
Smithsonian Museum's National Portrait Gallery. Here's a little
something to remember him by:
***
I COULDN'T HELP BUT CRACK A WRY SMILE when I read an
official comment about the two guys that ran the gauntlet of firing
police and guards at the NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland, on
Monday, March 30. Per the Associated Press story that ran in my
local paper Tuesday, "An FBI spokeswoman said that the incident was
not believed to be linked to terrorism."
Up to that point the idea that it could have been
"terrorism" (in the sense meant by that official comment) hadn't
crossed my mind even remotely. All I had imagined was two Americans
who had gotten angry past the breaking point about having their
Fourth Amendment rights routinely violated...
***
SINCE LAST JULY I HAVE BEEN CONTINUALLY
CATALOGING the seemingly endless illegalities resorted-to by
prosecutor and court in their struggle to engineer a guilty verdict
of my wife Doreen for the non-crime of resisting a blatantly
unlawful court order as part of the ignorance-tax-addict State's
desperate effort to suppress
CtC. As is true of virtually every State effort to resist or
attack
CtC,
those perpetrated against Doreen in this proceeding actually have
the effect of emphasizing the truth of what the State wishes nobody
knew, 'cause lying and cheating are only needed when attacking the
truth.
This week I had occasion to excerpt and highlight a
portion of the trial transcript recording both the lead prosecutor--
a DOJ Tax Division specialist-- and the judge herself explicitly
misrepresenting to the jury the words of 26 USC § 6020(b).
Those words of 26 USC § 6020(b) are, verbatim:
"If any person fails to make any return required by
any internal revenue law or regulation made thereunder at the time
prescribed therefor, or makes, willfully or otherwise, a false or
fraudulent return, the Secretary shall make such return from his own
knowledge and from such information as he can obtain through
testimony or otherwise.
Any return so made and subscribed by the Secretary
shall be prima facie good and sufficient for all legal purposes."
Holding that verbatim text of the statute in their own
hands, the DOJ prosecutor and the judge in turn, instead declared it
to say... well, what you can see for yourself
here.
Having reminded myself of this calculated evasion, I am
inclined to remind all of you of the significance of what the
government meant to obscure and evade with these "mis-statements". I
have a write-up on the subject
here (including, among other things, a significant backdoor
admission by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals).
***
I HEARD A STORY earlier this week about an
anti-statist-quo political activist who fell prey to what is
described as an entrapment scheme and has been put on ice for a
couple of days. The information given to me was very sketchy, but to
the degree that I understand it, this story serves as a micro-view
of the big, ugly picture of a resource-rich, unbridled state. So,
I'll do my best with what I know...
It seems that a fellow named Steven Dean is a candidate
for sheriff of a county in Utah, but has a felony in his past.
Somehow Dean let himself be gotten onto a gun-range by a couple of
local law enforcement officers, who then promptly turned around and
served as witnesses to Dean's handling of a firearm for which he was
then arrested.
As so often is contrived in matters like these,
the arrest took place on Friday evening. This provides for a couple
of (likely visitorless) days of imprisonment before Dean can be seen
by a magistrate and released, which otherwise would happen within
hours.
If this was, in fact, an entrapment, and timed for
maximum inconvenience, it was corrupt, certainly, even if the
exercise of corruption required a lot of cooperation from the
target. But there's a big-picture take-away, too.
A casual little abuse of power to harass and smear a
political opponent-- however disturbing on its own-- is an example
of what can and does happen when the state and its wealth-sharing
subdivisions are allowed to become fat and sassy. This happens when
institutions have managed to take control of their own access to
resources, in direct contrast with
how things were and should be, and can easily be again.
SAY, HAVE YOU EVER GIVEN ANY THOUGHT to
what will happen when 30 million other Americans-- or even just 3
million-- learn what you
know about the "income" tax and begin following your example of
acting to protect your own interests and uphold the law?
April 23- In 1968,
students protesting the Viet Nam war take over the
administration buildings at Columbia University. In 1985,
Coca-Cola changes to the "New Coke". The fit of madness passes
within a few months and use of the old formula is resumed. In
1988, Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' is bumped from the
Billboard 200 for the first time after 741 consecutive weeks on
the chart.
[Y]ou really need to familiarize yourself with Pete
Hendrickson's absolutely magnificent work at his website and in
his book(s). He has, brilliantly and lucidly, "cracked the
code" regarding the federal income EXCISE tax(es)."
-Mark C. Phillips, JD
"...I find your work fascinatingly simple to understand."
-Jerry Arnowitz, JD
"Your book is a masterpiece!"
-Michael Carver, JD
"Received your book yesterday. Started reading at 11
PM, finished at 4 AM." "I have 16 feet (literally 16'
4.5") of documents supporting just about everything in your
book." "Your book should be required reading for every lawyer
before being admitted to any Bar." "I hope you sell a
million of them."
-John O'Neil Green, JD
“Thanks again for your efforts, Pete. They mean an awful lot
to a lot of people.” “…as an attorney, I am humbled by your
knowledge and ability in navigating the law. THANK YOU for
your hard work and sacrifice.”
-Eric Smithers, JD
"I am an attorney and want to give a testimonial to your
book, which I find to be compelling. I am exercising these
rights for myself and my adult children. I'm even considering
making this my new avenue of law practice."
Nancy "Ana" Garner, JD
Learn what these colleagues already know, then step forward and
become part of a coordinated, mutually-supportive squadron
focused on developing strategy and deploying the law in
courtrooms across the country. There's a lot of suing that
needs doing right now.
Are you ready for a challenge that'll put some real meaning
behind all the effort you went through to get your credentials?
Send me an email.
Have You Taken
A Military, Law Enforcement or Public Office Oath To Uphold And Defend The
Constitution?
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen
from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to
keep the Government from falling into error."/p>
-United States Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson
MMore Than Two Thirds Of The Several States That Collect "Income" Taxes
Have Now Acknowledged The Truth About The Law As Revealed In
CtC, And Have
Issued Complete Refunds Accordingly! See The Following Chart...
Illuminating anniversaries of this week:/p>
April 24- In 1184 BC,
the people of Troy are fooled by avarice into being the means of
their own undoing. Presented with a magnificent giant wooden
statue of a horse, the Trojans bring it within their city's
walls. When night falls, Greek warriors hidden within the
statue slip out and open the gates of their enemy's stronghold,
allowing their fellows who waited outside to pour in and conquer
formerly impregnable Troy. In 1800, President John Adams signs
legislation appropriating $5,000 to establish a library of "such
books as may be necessary for the use of Congress". Now
occupying three large buildings holding well over 32 million
books and counting-- none of which circulate to the public, and
the vast, vast majority of which never have been used by any
Congressman and never will be-- and with an annual budget of
over $600 million and a staff of more than 3,600, the Library of
Congress is a fine example of a cancerous federal boondoggle...
In 1916, the phase of the Irish rebellion known as "The Easter
Risings" begins. In 1970, China puts its first satellite into
orbit. In 1990, the Hubble Space telescope is launched into
orbit; and Gruinard Island, Scotland, the test site of
weaponized anthrax by the British government during World War
II, is declared safe after 48 years of quarantine.
Warrior David
Larson shares this beautiful little farce, wryly observing that,
"Depositors have "..not lost one penny.." - OK we could agree on that simple
statement ..how about the purchasing power of
that same penny 'not lost'?"
April 25- In 1846, a U.S. patrol excursion
across the Texas border into Mexico precipitates the
Mexican-American War. In 1859, ground is broken for the Suez
Canal. In 1898, the United States declares war on Spain, using
the pretext of the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine in a
Cuban harbor. The war resulted in U.S. claims of ownership of
the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, and a more limited
sovereignty over Cuba. In 1916, Britain declares martial law in
Ireland in response to the Easter Uprisings. In 1953, the
structure of DNA is described. In 1961, the integrated circuit
is patented. In 1983, Pioneer 10, launched March 2, 1972,
passes the orbit of Pluto.
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We
seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that
feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget
that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel
Adams, Architect of the First American Revolution
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Hendrickson is also a widely-read essayist on matters of
politics, public policy and law; many of these works are
collected in his second book, ‘Upholding
the Law And Other Observations’. He is a member of
Mensa; an
award-winning artist; and has paid his dues as a youth
soccer coach. He is a long-time political activist as
well, and has served as co-chair and platform convention
delegate of Michigan’s largest county Libertarian Party
organization; as a consultant to the National Right to Work
Foundation and Citizens for a Sound Economy; as a member of the
Heartland Institute; and as a member of the International
Society for Individual Liberty. He is a frequent
radio-show guest on stations across the country.
Hendrickson's business career has included nearly a
decade-and-a-half at the leading edge of the renewable-energy
industry, both as Director of Purchasing and Materials
Management and member of the R&D board at Starpak Energy
Systems, the mid-west's then-largest solar heating and
energy-recovery-and re-utilization company; and as founder and
president of AFJ Inc., a high-efficiency lighting design,
manufacture and installation firm.
Beginning in the mid-1990s and continuing for the twelve years
before his present full-time focus on the restoration of the
rule of law in America, Hendrickson directed purchasing
activities for the $84 million-a-year multi-family-housing
division of the Farmington Hills, Michigan branch of Edward Rose
and Sons, with responsibility for 18,000+ apartments, direct
supervision of 35 technicians and agents, and incidental
authority over several hundred divisional workers. He also
ran the division's 10 cable television earth-station and
distribution systems in four states, and designed and
administered the company's website.
On
rather the other end of the spectrum, amidst these more mundane
pursuits Hendrickson co-founded and was the primary creative
force behind a small
board- and
card-game company that enjoyed a modest success for several
years.
Hendrickson makes his home in southeast Michigan, with his wife
and two children. He is currently working on his next
book.