Page 12 - the NOISE APril 2013

The poet Geoffrey Chaucer said, “April is the cruelest month.” April is also when people commit harakiri en masse: tax month in the United States. It’s a time of unbridled giving and a true Christmas holiday for bankers. The Tax Honesty Movement was created when individuals, many former Internal Revenue Service agents, decided to take a closer look at the tax system that was stealing from America’s labor force. At the heart of the movement and the We the People Foundation that unites them, is the question: “Is there a law requiring Americans to pay income tax?”
The history behind this question and the answer may not be so shocking, in light of the 2008 bank bailout. The real controversy demonstrates a banking system that’s controlled our economy from this country’s humble beginnings, and our culpability is simply one of connecting the dots.
The Tax Honesty Movement created a $50,000 challenge and placed an ad in newspapers asking anyone, including IRS agents, to show the law that “requires an American citizen to file a 1040 form.” Many IRS agents took the challenge seriously. They tried to put to rest the notion that it’s illegal to collect income taxes, and to earn the $50,000.
Sherry Peel Jackson, a former IRS agent, quit her job when she couldn’t “find a law requiring a citizen to pay income taxes on his labor.” Joe Banister, an IRS Criminal Investigator, found that the agency he was working for “was violating the law and violating people’s rights and so I [was] asked [to] tender my resignation.” John Turner, an IRS agent, said: “Of course there’s a law.” He researched the question and when he found out months later there was “no statute that made it a law to pay taxes,” he resigned. And so it went.
What is the history of this illegal income tax that collected $927.2 billion in 2005 from the American people? Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said: “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” And this quote ironically coincides with the sinister words of private banker Mayer Rothschild: “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” In 1913, bankers like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Paul Warburg, among others, bribed Senators to pass the “Federal Reserve Act” without the required Constitutional amendment during Christmas break when most Senators were at
home with their families.
Secretary of State, Philander Knox lied to
the American public, claiming that the 16th Amendment was ratified by the states, when it was not. The bankers knew this money would end up in their pockets and from that time on, Americans have believed there was a tax on their labor. That is how the unconstitutional “Federal Reserve Act” came into existence. Woodrow Wilson signed this silent coup de tat. Bankers understood implicitly, the 16th Amendment allowed the government to tax your labor and collect your money for banks. So, who works for whom?
US District Judge James C. Fox stated: “If you examined the 16th Amendment carefully, you would find that a sufficient number of states never ratified that amendment.” And because it was passed with stealth in the middle of the night and it was never reported on, it has been passed down from generation to generation as fact.
“The only thing one can be sure of is death and taxes.” This juxtaposition is a telling one. One is a fact and the other a fantasy, but when repeated enough, it becomes a truth. Even the New York Times on January 25, 1916, stated: “In substance, the court holds that the 16th Amendment did not empower the Federal Government to levy a new tax.” And many legal cases including Supreme Court case, Coppage v. Kansas 236 US1, 14 (1914) ruled: “Chief among such contracts is that of personal employment by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property.” Many people believe and the court has so ruled that a man’s labor is his private property and therefore not taxable, as it is “exchanged” for money.
How did this arrangement become co-opted, bait and switched, to mean you exchange your personal labor and compensate private banks for the privilege of working? What is a direct tax and what is an indirect tax and how does the income tax differ from both of these?
According to the US Constitution, “A direct tax needs to be apportioned equally to the people,” while an indirect tax must be the same throughout all the states and can be avoided (like a cigarette tax or gasoline tax). But the income tax, applied as it is now, does not meet the definition of direct or indirect tax. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed the “Grace Commission” who found that “100% of our income tax dollar
is gone to the interest on the national debt (the banks) before a penny of it reaches the American public.”
So, it’s not apportioned and not avoidable, and therefore unconstitutional! “Americans expect their salvation from government, but it will be the most dangerous threat they face in their lives,” stated James Bovard, author of Lost Rights. The implication being that we put our trust in public servants who serve private interests. We now have over 300 lobbyists for each member of Congress. And these powerful forces have agendas that determine policy favorable to those corporations employing the lobbyist. The Supreme Court has backed these rulings in the Citizens United case, which is anything but unifying for citizens. Individual Americans don’t exercise “the pull” afforded them in this “government by consent,” because the tables are lopsided in favor of money dictating what elected officials can and will listen to while in political chambers.
Here is a partial list of taxes we presently pay: building permit tax, capital gains tax, automobile registration tax, federal unemployment tax, gas tax (42¢ a gallon,) hunting license tax, IRS interest tax, inventory tax, local income tax, liquor tax, marriage tax, cigarette tax, property tax, real estate tax, social security tax, sales tax, school tax, toll booth tax, telephone tax (8 total), utility tax, vehicle tax, worker’s compensation tax, and many, many more and the FEDERAL INCOME TAX. Ouch!
On August 31, 2005, Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the government does not have to answer the American people’s questions about tax law, even though it is guaranteed by the First Amendment, which underlines the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Judge Sullivan said: “Government does not have to show the law that it enforces.” And mainstream media did not report this.
Authoritarian governments throughout history have used similar tactics without explaining to the populations who cede it power. As we claim to be a representative republic with democratic overtones, it should be a chilling moment when we recognize our government — the government we elect — is helping the banking system bankrupt the people.
Mussolini said: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, because
it’s the perfect blending of corporation and state.”Transference of wealth is how to divide and conquer a people. We are no longer a rich nation, as our resources and manufacturing have been off-shored to help transnational corporations avoid paying employees a living wage. These corporations also avoid paying taxes. Ninety-three percent of the business Microsoft Corporation claims is offshore, so it avoids paying taxes “legally.” Four of the last five years Enron existed as a company, it paid no taxes and one year it received a $250,000,000 rebate. It paid less taxes than you.
Income taxes were constitutionally created for corporations. The definition of income in the Constitution was given in the Eisner v. McCumber case and it turned on “gains and profits made from some activity.” And the Supreme Court ruled that “income is not wages or labor but is gains from corporate activity.” And the Supreme Court also stated: “Your labor is your private property.” How did an income tax designed to hold corporations accountable get switched onto the American public’s labor?
In 2005, the same year the illegal tax collected $927.2 billion from the American people, the legal corporate income tax was only $278.3 billion and yet corporations earned far more money than their laborers. This disparity is growing each year. If just 19 of the top 60 corporations paid their full share of taxes, the United States would cover the $85 billion shortfall Congress is currently debating. They’ll cut our services to manage this disparity, and the top 19 corporations become more important than 308 million Americans. Why don’t we question a system designed to profit the few and bankrupt the many?
What are the far-reaching implications of this illegal tax system, if this is just one of the many illegal “laws” designed to help the prosperous? Constitutional law was at one time important to the security of the nation. Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution states that only “Congress shall have the power to tax,” but “income tax” was not even a term advocated or alluded to by the Founding Fathers, and in fact many Constitutionalists maintain these philosophers would have been appalled at its very suggestion, for the American Revolution was fought to thwart this perceived power from the King of England.
Later, in section 9, clause 4, “There can be no direct tax without it being proportioned to the public.” And the income tax is a direct tax given “directly” to the banks and not apportioned equally to the people. Facts are stubborn things.
Each tax season we forfeit our year-long labor and pay the banks for the privilege of being alive. And that’s why “April is the cruelest month”!
For more on this topic, check out freedomtofacism.com or watch the full- length film Freedom to Fascism by Aaron Russo on YouTube.
| Bob Reynolds is a local filmmaker and coffee shop regular. bob699669@hotmail.com
12 • APRIL 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
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