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126

L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 126, June 18, 2001
Cancel Dad's NRA Membership!

From: Daniel J. Boone <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 11:25 AM

The Church of Freedom:

Don't even say the word "Church" to me today. Grrr. All the major news networks keep running footage of some sort of celebratory service held at the former site of the Murragh federal building -- the choir sweetly singing "Hallelujah" in a field of concrete chairs is starting to piss me off.

What kind of pissant religion can claim to worship a god of love while simultaneously praising that god because a man has been strapped to a table by public servants and injected with poison? How can someone sing "Hallelujah" to the god who said "Thall shalt not kill" in celebration of the fact that our beneficent government just killed someone, no matter how good a reason one thinks there was for it? What in the name of Thor's goats' scrotum lice is there to celebrate about yet another government-sponsored and publicly-funded murder, in this age that has seen so many tens of millions? And, even if it had to be done, isn't there something just a bit sick about dressing up in white robes and singing "praise God" over and over again in a public park to celebrate the event? Didn't these cretins' mommies teach them that it's unseemly to gloat?

Church me no churches today. Feh.

-- Daniel

From: "Bob Schulz" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Dear Government, why won't you answer?
Date: Monday, June 11, 2001 9:26 PM

One man hungers. A nation prays.

As America watches.

On July 1, 2001, Bob Schulz, Chairman of the We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, will begin a fast which will continue until he dies or until IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti delivers to him a list of the government's experts who will meet on September 18, 2001, in a public forum, at the National Press Club in Washington DC, with tax law researchers from the tax honesty movement, to argue against the conclusions of those researchers.

This comes as a result of the government's continued evasion of opportunities the Foundation and others have provided to the government over the past two years to discuss the allegations of fraud and illegal operations of the income tax system. The allegations include the following: 1) in 1913, the 16th Amendment (the "income tax" Amendment) was fraudulently and illegally declared to be ratified by a lame-duck Secretary of State just days before leaving office; 2) there is NO LAW requiring most Americans to file a tax return, pay the federal income tax nor have the tax withheld from their earnings; 3) people who file a Form 1040 "voluntarily" waive their 5th Amendment right not to bear witness against themselves; 4) the IRS routinely violates citizens' 4th Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure, without a warrant issued by a court upon probable cause and supported by oath and affirmation; and 5) the IRS, as standard operating procedure, routinely violates citizens' due process rights in its administrative procedures and operates far outside the law.

On February 10, 1999, Joseph Banister, a Special Agent of the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS submitted his 95-page research report to his superiors in the San Jose office of the IRS. The report contained these allegations and supporting evidence and respectfully requested some answers. Mr. Banister was concerned that he was enforcing the Internal Revenue Code as though payment was compulsory, when his research showed it to be voluntary. Instead of answers, Mr. Banister was asked to resign!

This Foundation respectfully, and properly, invited the leaders of the Executive and Legislative branches to have their most knowledgeable experts on the subject participate in academic symposiums and conferences the Foundation sponsored at the National Press Club in July and November of 1999 and in April and June of 2000. We received no response, not even an acknowledgement of the receipt of the invitations!

On April 13, 2000, while a delegation of people representing all 50 states waited outside, Mr. Banister and Mr. Schulz, and a videographer, met in the White House with Jason Furman, the Executive Director of the National Economic Council. He accepted, for President Clinton, a Remonstrance on the subject, he promised to have the staff of the NEC and White House lawyers and historians review the evidence, and he expressed his agreement to have the government's experts participate with Mr. Banister and other tax law researchers in the June 29, 2000 conference the Foundation was arranging for that purpose. Mr. Banister and Mr. Schulz then proceeded to a meeting in the capitol with Dr. William Koetzle, representing Speaker Hastert's policy office, and then to a meeting with Keith Hennessey, Senator Lott's policy director. They accepted the Remonstrance for Mr. Hastert and Mr. Lott, promised to have the experts at the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee review the evidence, and expressed their agreement to have those experts participate in the upcoming June 29th conference. However, on June 2nd, Mr. Furman told Mr. Schulz, "The legality of the income tax is not a high priority item at the White House and we will not be participating in any conference on the subject." A similar response was received from Dr. Koetzle and Mr. Hennessey.

At a cost of $252,000, the Foundation then published full-page educational messages in USA TODAY on July 7, 2000, February 16, 2001, March 2, 2001 and March 23, 2001, featuring the photographs and names of three of the principal tax law researchers and their allegations, three former IRS agents who have come to believe the researchers are correct, and five employers who have stopped withholding the income tax from the paychecks of their employees because they also have come to believe the researchers' allegations are correct.

On April 5, 2001, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing featuring large blow-ups of the Foundation's USA TODAY messages, mounted on easels. THE FOUNDATION WAS NOT ALLOWED TO TESTIFY AT THE HEARING. Two days prior to the hearing, Senator Grassley was quoted in the Saint Petersburg Times saying," We will not allow the We The People Foundation to testify at the hearing because their message will detract from the message we are trying to convey." The message the Committee conveyed was that those people who question the validity of the income tax laws are "tax cheats, schemers, scammers and cons. They must be kept off the Internet, and will be dealt with harshly!"

On April 9, 2001, hundreds of citizens from across the country gathered outside the main entrance of the IRS headquarters building. Three weeks earlier, on March 19th, a letter was delivered to IRS Commissioner Rossotti, letting him know that the citizens would be there and respectfully requesting that he address the group at 11:30 a.m., to let them know when his experts would be available to meet with the tax law researchers in a public forum to discuss the allegations. On April 9th, he refused to address the citizens, choosing instead to schedule an interview with a reporter from The New York Times at 11:30 that day. The Times' article ran on April 16th. In its first paragraph it said, "As a few protestors gathered in front of the Internal Revenue Service building on a warm April day, Charles O. Rossotti was cool and relaxed in his third-floor office, reflecting on his three and a half years running the agency."

On April 11, 2001 USA TODAY informed the Foundation of its decision to stop publishing the Foundation's full-page educational messages about these issues, and the government's failure to address them, because "the ads could be misleading." The Foundation offered to meet with USA TODAY's legal department to discuss the veracity of the Foundation's messages. They refused!

On May 2, 2001, the home and business of one of the employers who has stopped withholding was raided by scores of government agents, at gunpoint. As of this day, those agents have not provided a list of the charges. Nor have they specified the probable cause for the search warrant. They have, however, asked the judge who signed the warrant for 45 days to analyze the computer hard drives, papers and effects that were seized during the raid before they specify the charges and probable cause. The judge granted the request!

The tax law research provides a substantial amount of very credible evidence that since 1913 the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches have been cooperating to deprive the People of a large percentage of the fruits of their labor by enforcing laws and regulations that are prohibited by the Constitution and which do not exist under the Internal Revenue Code. The evidence shows that the Code and regulations have intentionally been written in such a deceptive way as to obscure and obfuscate so as to give citizens the false impression that they are required to pay.

As a result of the Foundation's four messages in USA TODAY, and its other educational efforts, a growing number of people are becoming familiar with the facts of this research and now realize that Congress is prohibited by the Constitution from requiring individual citizens of the fifty states to file and pay the income tax or a social security tax as they currently operate. More and more citizens now believe that it is precisely because of the absence of proper constitutional authority that Congress has not passed any law requiring most Americans to file and pay an income tax.

So far, the IRS has responded with armed raids and with increased threats and saber rattling, but with no attempts to discuss in a rational way the allegations about the laws and regulations.

Journalists from the dominant media, including David Cay Johnston of The New York Times, have responded as apologists for the IRS by portraying individuals and employers who question the legality of the federal income tax laws as "tax cheats," even though those individuals often have a history of intelligent, rational and professional attempts to get their federal representatives and IRS officials to answer legitimate questions about the legal authority of the IRS to force the collection of the federal income tax.

Obviously, the current situation must not continue.

The question is: What can a free People do when faced with a government that has apparently stepped outside the boundary drawn around its taxing power by the Constitution and by its own laws, and refuses to justify its behavior, evades all requests by citizens to answer legitimate questions, and uses a heavy handed, steel-fisted approach to enforcing the income tax -- as though its payment by most Americans was compulsory when, in fact, most citizens apparently are not liable -- and when the dominant media will not allow the people to purchase space to tell their story?

Answer: We the People must educate one another about the discrepancies between the way the Constitution and the tax law are written and the operations of the IRS. Knowledge is power. Only a well-informed citizenry will bring the federal tax policies and programs back under the control of the People and their Constitution.

Education can take many forms.

Bob Schulz prays that his stand in defense of the Constitution and the rule of law, and his death, should it come to that, will help to educate citizens about the apparent discrepancy between the government's behavior in enforcing the federal tax laws and the legality of those laws, the government's recalcitrance and refusal to reconcile the discrepancy, and the importance of keeping the government within the boundaries the people have drawn around its power. His act should not be seen as one of frustration or despair, but as a measure of his devotion to our sacred constitutional principles for which so many others have laid down their lives.

On June 11, 2001, a letter will be delivered to President Bush, to the leaders of the Congress and to Commissioner Rossotti to inform them of Mr. Schulz's decision to do this. A copy of the letter can be viewed on the Foundation's web site at http://www.GiveMeLiberty.org/. Also on the web site are the Foundation's educational messages as published in USA TODAY and other educational materials on the subject.

Bob's motto is ACTA NON VERBA. His deed is part of an overall action plan put together by the Foundation under the heading of PROJECT TOTO, the goal of which is to develop a critical mass of citizens demanding answers to the questions of the tax law researchers, regarding the fraudulent and illegal operations of the federal income tax system.

For a discussion of PROJECT TOTO and what you can do to help, please visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.GiveMeLiberty.org/.

Bob Schulz
Chairman
We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, Inc.
2458 Ridge Road
Queensbury, NY 12804
(518) 656-3578 Phone
(518) 656-9724 Fax
[email protected]

From: "JACK JEROME" <[email protected]>
To: "John Taylor" <[email protected]>
Subject: Private property...perception or reality?
Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 8:32 PM

Howdy J. C.,

Thought I'd relate an insight that may be of interest to you and the Vox Populi that enjoy your production.

An old saying states "good fences make good neighbors", and this train of thought starts with a fence building project my wife and I are undertaking. We purchased a "fixer-upper" home and property just outside of Fredericksburg (affectionately called "parrallaxburg" by myself and some shooting friends), and are fencing in several acres of the property to better manage it. As part of my land crosses a power line right-of-way, it is already cleared and is ideal for livestock (i.e. my horse). Power lines are a magnet for birds, deer, and (regrettably) four wheel drive enthusiasts.

I have been, for several years, waging a losing battle (no shots having been fired), to keep 4wd'ers off the lines, as I harvest and bale the hay to feed my animal. If driven over repeatedly, I have found that the hay is unsuitable for consumption. Finally marshaling my funds, I have now undertaken fencing this area off. I felt that this was my right as a property owner, and I couldn't have been more mistaken.

During the pole dropping process, I had occasion to speak with a large number of my neighbors as they stopped on the private road that runs past my modest parcel. Although there were some positive comments about my fence (6 foot, 3 board type), the majority wondered why I was doing it! One gentleman stated that he was unaware that anyone owned the property at all! Others seemed to indicate (politely) that closing access to the power line was selfish. How could their children use their ATV's if they couldn't ride the lines?

Needless to say, I was taken a bit aback. I didn't feel selfish, I give of my time to various causes, I'm a responsible outdoorsman (I feel), so why the bad rap? So I did a little reading and research.

It turns out that this is a HOT BUTTON issue I was totally oblivious to. There's a major flap about private use of private lands all over the country.

A recent issue of Sky and Telescope ran a tongue-in-cheek letter from a gentleman who purchased wooded property just to cut all the trees down so he could observe the night sky un-obstructed. This brought about a wave of letters, people furious that someone could be so selfish. The letters pined on about displaced and dead wildlife, erosion problems, and affects on the local water table. Calling it chainsaw astronomy (a new one to me) letter after letter lambasted this guy. The editors stepped in and told the readership, heh heh only kidding. But so what if he wasn't?

Can we all soon expect citizens banding together to determine use of the land we all have sweated blood to own? Heck, it's bad enough that I have to apply for a permit just to build a decent sized barn on my own property. Any Libertarian would have a problem with that. Magazines and broadcast media have clocked in on the subject of "private property" too.

Fox News has attacked the subject of eminent domain statutes that allow the government to acquire fee simple ownership of lands. Regular readers of TLE have read Vin's articles on same. Outdoor Life magazine has given some shrift to shrinking private ownership of open lands. Local county governments have taxed farmers and landowners into becoming condo owners. Four Wheel and Off-road magazine has documented quarrels between landowners and ATV'ers (I don't belive for a minute that a horse destroys property quicker than an ATV).

If there's a point to this rant, it's the following. Will we let our property be subject to laws AND majority rule? How much land is too much open space? Can landowners expect to petition to government and local neighbors on how he-she will use their own property? I hope not, but I feel a rip-tide coming.

Peace out, Jack

From: "Curt Howland" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Letter to E.J.Totty (and editor)
Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 5:03 AM

Dear TLE, and E.J., I read with some amusement your letter in the June 6th Libertarian Enterprise, about the "hazard" of "open source", specifically how it's akin to "communism".

Have you ever actually read the open source license? If someone volunatarily puts their "blood, sweat and tears", the software that they wrote, into the "open source" license, it means that anyone who subsequently uses that software and makes changes to it cannot sell the resulting code without providing the source code and allowing anyone further down the chain to make whatever changes they see fit.

Imagine that, being given an unlimited license to use, modify and distribute my property, so long as you allow anyone who gets it from you to do the same.

If you don't want to give that same right of use to the people who buy your software, don't use the "open source" software as your source.

It's that simple.

If you can tell me how having the choice not to use, or pay for, a service you don't want is akin to "communist", I'd love to hear it.

I'm sure that there will always be a place for closed source programs, share-ware, subscription, open source, even free-source "direct to the public domain".

What Microsoft calls a "cancer" is that the "open source" license doesn't let them use and profit from other peoples work without admiting to it. Which is the more "communistic"?

Curt-
[email protected]

From: "jjodle" <[email protected]>
To: "John Taylor" [email protected]
Subject: SB 890
Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 11:46 AM

Dear John:

Senator John McCain continues to demonstrate his utter uselessness as a Senator from Arizona and an American with his continue support for such insane legislation as the Gun-show loophole bill - SB 890.

Here is what Alan Korwin has to say about what this monstorsity contains: http://www.gunlaws.com/McCainLieberman.htm

GUN-SHOW BILL IS NOT WHAT THEY SAY

Re: S. 890, The McCain-Lieberman Bill: "Gun Show Loophole Closing and Gun Law Enforcement Act of 2001."

by Alan Korwin, Author Gun Laws of America

Mass media publicity on the newly proposed gun-show bill is grossly inaccurate.

The bill has almost nothing to do with what you've probably heard so far. The so-called "gun-show loophole" headlines are a minor detail and basically obscure what the bill really does.

I've just finished studying the eight pages of legalese. Here is it what it calls for:

1. Unprecedented federal control over gun shows nationwide -- perfectly legal gun shows become strictly outlawed without prior federal approval, licensing and registration of each show;

2. Centralized federal licensing and registration of every gun-show promoter in the nation;

3. Centralized federal registration of every vendor -- including non-gun vendors -- at any gun show in the country. In order for me to sell my BOOKS at a gun show I'll have to pre-register and prove who I am, or face arrest; a private individual looking to sell a single gun would be treated as a vendor under this law and must be registered even if the gun isn't sold;

4. Centralized federal registration of EVERY PERSON who attends a gun show in America, whether or not they make purchases of anything at all -- you won't be allowed in without registering;

5. Centralized collection of "any other information" on gun-show attendees, as determined solely by the Secretary of the Treasury;

6. Imprisonment for attending a gun show and failing to give up any information required by regulations of the Secretary of the Treasury;

7. Imprisonment of any gun-show promoter who fails to register a single vendor;

8. Imprisonment of gun-show promoters who cannot prove they notified every person attending a gun show of the new rules, and obtained from attendees any information the Secretary of the Treasury mandates by regulation;

9. Centralized collection of "any other information" the Secretary of the Treasury decides, by regulation, is necessary on vendors, attendees, and the gun show itself;

10. Submission by gun-show promoters of vendor registration logs a) 30 days before any gun show, and b) additional submission of updated vendor registration logs 72 hours before any gun show, and c) additional submission of vendor registration logs within five days of the close of any gun show, under penalty of arrest and imprisonment for non-compliance;

11. Identification of vendors only by use of federally approved photo ID that may include use of a social security number, electronically encoded data, or "biometric identifiers" such as fingerprint, voice print, retina scan, iris scan, or similar (as defined under 18 USC 1028(d)(2));

12. Creation of a new license (in addition to a gun-show-promoter license), similar to FFLs, for individuals who want access to the NICS national background check system for facilitating gun-show sales for private citizens;

13. Regulations to be issued by the Secretary of the Treasury on the procedures, data collections, methods and implementation of the entire process to federally control gun shows, in addition to the requirements made by the proposed statute; such regulations will not be known, drafted or even suggested, until after the McCain-Lieberman law is enacted;

14. The proposed bill also puts pressure on state governments to make at least 95% of their law enforcement records for the past 30 years openly available to the federal government; and

  • makes unlimited funds available for the states to comply with these federal goals;

  • requires annual federal review of states' compliance;

  • increases penalties (up to ten years imprisonment) for record-keeping violations;

  • grants states permission to make even more restrictive requirements without being out of compliance with these new federal laws (and by implication, puts states that resist these rules in federal trouble);

  • provides hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for more law enforcement under numerous programs including project Exile and others;

  • hires 200 more Federal BATF Agents;

  • provides $10 million to the National Institute for Justice to give out for research on "technologies that limit the use of a gun to the owner"; and

  • provides for annual reports (in great detail) by the Attorney General to Congress on whether the Brady law is working;

15. Enlargement of the federal bureaucracy and appropriation from taxpayers of "such funds as are necessary" to license, register and monitor an estimated ten million non-criminals who attend the thousands of gun shows held annually in America; and

16. Oh yes, I almost forgot about the so-called "loophole" part the media is so excited about -- the McCain-Lieberman bill will make an honest private citizen a criminal for transferring a gun to another honest private citizen, without first registering the transfer with, and getting permission from, the federal government (represented by the FBI at its data complex in Clarksburg, West Virginia).

Transfer or possession of a firearm to or by a criminal (a "federally prohibited possessor") is completely unaffected by the McCain-Lieberman "loophole" bill, so I guess it's accurate to characterize it as a loophole bill.

To sum up: Perfectly legal gun sales -- with no victims or criminal activity of any kind -- are outlawed at gun shows by the McCain-Lieberman bill, unless the sale is pre-registered with the federal government; real crimes are totally unaffected; and your friends in the federal government take over full control of gun shows -- which have been previously free of government infringement for more than 200 years.

Please write your local news outlet and politely request a correction.

Permission to circulate or use any or all of this report is granted, provided my credit and contact information is included.

Alan Korwin, Author Gun Laws of America

Bloomfield Press
4718 E. Cactus #440
Phoenix, AZ 85032
602-996-4020
[email protected]
http://www.gunlaws.com
"We publish the gun laws."

And the insanity continues,

James J Odle
[email protected]

[See also the uncanny similarity to the bill being pimped in North Carolina, fully supported by the traitorous Necrotic Republicans Association ... article appears below. -ed.]

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