Homeland Security nabs Free Stater from home

[ArmedBear]

It's a Catch-22.

If we allow individuals to disrupt day-to-day government operations, that means we allow one person to impose his values on everyone. Some people have the values of Thomas Jefferson, but others are kindred spirits with Charles Manson. There must be some way to prevent tyranny by the criminally insane or dangerously egotistical.

Want to hunt deer in the middle of the city? Just have your friends stand in the way of the game wardens and city cops. Don't like war? Block the gates of the nearest base. Don't like private property? Stand around in the county land title office. Don't agree with capital punishment? Disrupt a murder case in court.

See where this could become a problem, in a nation filled with as many bored extremists as the USA? Some of them, I might even like. But some I would adamantly disagree with. That's why we are supposed to have a representative government; since we often don't appear to, THAT is where we need to apply our efforts.

I am in favor of civil disobedience, personally, but there are ethics to it. Perhaps I only believe in it as a personal value, like Thoreau. It really works a lot better when a lot of people just disregard intrusive laws, quietly. It works even better when we do our best to avoid paying fines, etc. The 55 MPH speed limit was an example. Widespread and deliberate, even organized, disregard of the law, finally led to its repeal.

 

[madmike]

As you've repeated, you're not going to join in any battle, even one which you may agree with, unless you think you're going to win upfront.

HIS battle is to get low-ranking IRS peons to "quit working for terrorist Bush."

This is not a practical battle, a winnable battle, or a relevant battle if won. By painting him as some kind of hero, you're wasting your time and diluting any real progress.

Interestingly, every time we (at my house) get audited, we get a larger refund. Most years, we don't actually pay ANY tax by the time my wife is done with the books, using THEIR RULES. The audit agency is charged with making sure our taxes are accurate, EVEN IF IT MEANS REFUNDING MORE MONEY TO TAXPAYERS. And they do this job at least $10,000 well, because that's how much ADDITIONAL refund we've gotten in the last ten years.

The relevant concerns about the IRS are:

due process
privacy
clarity of instructions
ability to call agents to account for their actions.

As far as I know, the courts have backed up citizens on EVERY SINGLE ONE of those issues. The gentleman in question is not trying to resolve those concerns.

Now the issue of whether or not taxes are a good thing: I believe we should have less. This is accomplished by VOTING FOR LEGISLATORS WHO CONTROL THE BUDGET, not the lackeys who collect it.

Oh, yes. Get some secretaries to quit. That will solve the problem.:banghead:

The final issue is, "is the IRS and federal income tax constitutional?" The courts say yes. SCOTUS has declined to overturn those decisions. Therefore, under the principles of our Constitution, they're legit.

By definition, the Constitution does not mean what you want it to mean. It means what the courts say it means. When SCOTUS speaks, you may pray to almighty God, because short of an amendment you will NEVER get past 3/4 of the states who need that Fed tax $$, there is no appeal.

Now, let's all get some photos of the scat-flinging monkey, chuckle and go back to work.

 

[c_yeager]

Unacceptable. The People OWN the government. Those are OUR buildings. The government has been allowed to give itself far too much power...now it protects itself from its owners?!

Your right they are OUR buildings, not his, not the freestater's. Everybody owns a piece of that building and the majority has ruled through their representatives that they dont want this sort of behavior in their building.

 

[Mannlicher]

I think Keene is a whack job, and needs to pick his battles with more care.

 

[Coronach]

Some of you really ought to reevaluate

Not at all. I tend to agree, in the general sense, with his POV (that the IRS is bloated, the tax code is needlesly byzantine, gov't spending is out of control, etc), without agreeing with the specifics (income tax as illegal, which I suspect he believes, that he has the 'right' to just amble inside the office, etc). However, just because I agree with him in principle does not mean that I think he was wronged by being arrested.

Is he performing a valuable service by protesting and being arrested for it? Sure. Was he wronged by the govt by being arrested? Not at all.

Mike

 

[Zrex]

Was he wronged by the govt by being arrested? Not at all.

Neither was Rosa Parks. They should have thrown her in Jail. She never should have sat in a white mans spot.

She should have "hired a few lawyers and prepared to pursue her issues through the courts for the next few decades. Or she could have organized a sit-in with a few thousand of his closest friends and get her picture in the paper again."

I wonder which method would have been most likely to get her some results?

 

[Coronach]

I agree. Rosa Parks was not wronged by being arrested. The law she violated was absurdly wrong. However, she went into it knowing full well that she would be arrested for breaking it. She had resolved herself to doing the time, so she went ahead and did the crime. There was also a remarkable lack of whinging afterwards on her part.

Mr. Keene has resolved himself to doing the crime and then bellyaching about doing the time he knew full well he could get. Whereas Rosa Parks demonstrated quite ably that the law was an ass, Mr. Keene seems to be doing the opposite. Add in the fact that income tax in general and the IRS in particular do not violate any of the principles of the US Constitution or its amendments as defined by Supreme Court decisions, not your own pet interpretation of the document, and this all seems to be a giant exercise in futility. Rosa Parks' fight centered on the 14th Amendment and how the realities of Plessy v Ferguson were at odds with it.

With what does Mr. Keene fight, exactly? The mere idea of income tax? Sorry, I don't think he's going to win that fight, nor do I think he should. If you do think he should win, that's fine. It's a free country. However, if he's going to do the crime, he needs to man up and do the time and stop bawling about it.

Mike

 

[Zrex]

However, if he's going to do the crime, he needs to man up and do the time and stop bawling about it.

I guess I am still trying to find anything to back up statements like this.

Where has he bawled about it? If anything, he stood in front of the judge and told the absolute truth, and that is what got him a stay in the grey bar motel until september.

Here is a quote from someone who witnessed the trial:

At each phase, the judge told Russ he could have a laywer if he wanted one, Russ declined. After each witness, the judge told Russ he had a constitutional right to question the witness. Russ asked (Police Inspector) Palmer if he'd quit his job, which was a nice touch. Didn't ask that of the ICE agent.

Does this sound like a guy who is bawling about what was hapening, or staying true to what he was trying to do?

 

[Coronach]

To reiterate:

The purose of being arrested for protest reasons is to call attention of the public to an unjust law via the enforcement of it, and force a change in it via public outcry. It is a time-honored tactic used by Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, and many others. It requires a law that is basically reviled by many but ignored by most, and it succeeds by shoving it in everyone's face until it is dealt with, or by becoming a clean case for a sympathetic judiciary.

The problem here is that even if he gets his message out, people are going to look at it and go, "Hmmm. Who cares?" Many people think taxes are too high, but very very few people think they should be outlawed. This is democracy in action. And the courts are not going to do him any favors, either.

Mike

 

[Coronach]

I guess I am still trying to find anything to back up statements like this.

If he is claiming he was wronged by being arrested, as he seems to be, he is crying about it. I do agree with you, however, that he sure is sticking to his guns.

Mike

Edit: To be very fair, it's possible that his publicists/supporters/allies are doing the crying, not him.

 

[Zrex]

Edit: To be very fair, it's possible that his publicists/supporters/allies are doing the crying, not him.

That is probably the case. I know I am doing alot of "crying". I know that if I walked into the local IRS office unannounced, I could hand 2 people a sheet of paper and leave and not be arrested.

He got arrested because of what his intent was. If he had different intentions, it would have been different. Like burning a flag. Are you respectfully destroying it, or are you desecrating it? <sorry Art - zrex>

 

[gc70]

Neither was Rosa Parks. They should have thrown her in Jail. She never should have sat in a white mans spot.

She should have "hired a few lawyers and prepared to pursue her issues through the courts for the next few decades. Or she could have organized a sit-in with a few thousand of his closest friends and get her picture in the paper again."

I wonder which method would have been most likely to get her some results?

Both.

Rosa Parks was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined. Civil rights groups helped coordinate a 382-day black boycott of the Montgomery bus system following her arrest. The civil rights groups had also intended to use her case as a federal test case, but later chose a different case (which they won in the Supreme Court) due to strategic reasons related to the specific charge in her case.

She didn't whine.

 

[JohnBT]

"I know that if I walked into the local IRS office unannounced, I could hand 2 people a sheet of paper and leave and not be arrested."

Carrying a pitchfork? Stop it, you're killing me.

John

 

[madmike]

In a not unrelated vein, I recall once (before email...this was postal mail activism) a group that sent me a flyer to wit:

"Ask your bank manager to sign the following:

This bank does not use the same bookkeeping method as if the bank steals your property and sells it back to you, yadda yadda...

If he won't sign this, he's admitting that the banking industry is fraudulent."

Now, I was only 22, but I could clearly see a couple of things:

A: no one with any brains is going to sign anything attesting to whether or not they have stolen something without consulting with an attorney, if they don't have to. And a bank manager doesn't have to. Certainly not from someone who is an obvious troublemaker.

2) the implication was that the bank was EVIL for paying the seller for your house, holding deed and accepting agreed upon payments and interest before signing the deed over, and

c} For arch-conservatives, the spiel sounded awfully fuzzy socialist. The bank should do all it does for FREE, as an entitlement. Right.

I really have to wonder about some people. They want all the benefits, but they want someone else to pay for them, and to be exempt from said payment.

I think I'll walk down to the Treasury and demand that I not have to pay for this guy when he's in jail. Someone else can pay for it.

 

[Zrex]

Carrying a pitchfork? Stop it, you're killing me.

Well, since he left it outside, whats the beef? I mean, if I had my 642 in my pocket and decided to leave it in the car or with my wife outside, whats the big deal?

 

[madmike]

Why would a pitchfork bother them? It's not as if deranged lunatics kill people with pitchforks. Why, I bet you're going to argue that we need guns against the risk of people with pitchforks.

 

[Ira Aten]

Quote:
"For a protest don't you need a permit?"



Not Constitutionally, because it is a God Given right. That is why they issued the written confirmation of his permit for all of us, in 1789and put a headline above it marking it with a No. I.

You can't get much higher permission on a "permit".

Problemd come up when an individual appears a CREDIBLE threat to the safety of others, or when law enforcement uses a bogus excuse of one being a CREDIBLE threat to safety, in order to carry out the political wishes and power of those in office.

 

[carebear]

If I'm in the lobby, and he doesn't try to cut in line (or just walks up to the clerk, hands the flyer and leaves) I don't have a problem with this Don Quixote in overalls going into the IRS.

If he starts yelling, distracting me from my month old copy of Time magazine, so I can't hear when my number is called, THEN we got problems.

Wait a minute.... What if the clerks actually do quit, before I can get my questions answered? There's no way I'm calling the 800 number and getting terminal hold.

Oh yeah, if that happens, somebody's definitely going to jail.