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When someone mentions “slavery” we immediately think of black people being forced to work for free. If they do not work for us for free then we beat them with fists, whips, or threaten death. Sure the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, but I contend that slavery still continues today and with even greater fervency than it did in the past.
The 13th Amendment reads:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Definitions:
Slavery:
Peonage:
18 USC 1581: (a) Whoever holds or returns any person to a condition of peonage, or arrests any person with the intent of placing him in or returning him to a condition of peonage, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both. (link)
Forced Labor:
18 USC 1589: Whoever knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person— (1) by threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint against, that person or another person; (2) by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that, if the person did not perform such labor or services, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or (3) by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both. (link)
Involuntary Servitude:
18 USC 1584: Whoever knowingly and willfully holds to involuntary servitude or sells into any condition of involuntary servitude, any other person for any term, or brings within the United States any person so held, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both. (link)
So what the 13th Amendment outlaws is you forcing people to work for free for repayment of a debt. You cannot hold someone captive by phyiscal force, threats of physical force, or legal coercion to be bound into compulsory service against ones will. In Bailey v. Alabama 219 U.S. 219 (1911) it was decided by the Supreme Court that one could not be forced to refund money (link).
Later on in 1988 in the Supreme Court case of United States v. Kozminski it was decided that you could not place someone in [psychological] fear of involuntarily servitude. The Court held that, “[a] holding in involuntary servitude occurs when an individual coerces another into his service by improper or wrongful conduct that is intended to cause, and does cause, the other person to believe that he or she has no alternative but to perform labor.”
With this said, what does that make of the taxation scheme of America?
We are told that we must pay taxes. The good old saying of “Two things in life are certain, death and taxes” is familiar to many Americans. But, why are taxes so certain? If the 13th Amendment does not allow us to be forced into physical labor and the courts have ruled that you also cannot be forced to believe that you have no option of working against your will, then why is it that you are working against your will?
If you don’t think that you are enslaved, then try to tell the IRS or the government that you are not going to pay taxes anymore. They are going to threaten you with penalties, fees, court, levying on your paycheck, coming and taking your property, and lastly… putting you in prison. Back in the “slave days” if a salve said they were not going to work for free, they were beat. Today, if you say that you are not going to work for free, the IRS threatens and sends the dogs after you. Same thing but different methods of accomplishing the same thing – salvery.
In United States v. Warren, 772 F.2d 827, 833-834 (CA11 1985) the court specifically said, “Various forms of coercion may constitute a holding in involuntary servitude. The use, or threatened use, of physical force to create a climate of fear is the most grotesque example of such coercion.” (link)
Ask any American, do you fear the IRS and they will probably say “yes” or they will say “no, because I do everything they say.” I plea now to you, how is this not a “climate of fear”? Either you pay the government out of fear or you do whatever they say out of fear (i.e. highway robbery).
It is important to note at this point that I am not against taxation itself. But, I am against forced taxation. If you tell me that I must pay taxes on every dollar I earn, then how is that not slavery? Would it be any different if the government told you that you can keep 100% of whatever you make at Job A and then you have to come to Job B (government factory or something) and work for free? I contend, no. Just because the government does not force you to work in a certain location, them demanding a percentage of your earnings is still them forcing you to work for free – is it not? If you do not understand what the difference is between forced taxation (direct) and voluntary taxation (indirect), I suggest you read up on each and decide what type of taxation the Federal/State Income Tax really is. (Crash course: Direct taxation is a tax that you cannot avoid and essentially says, you are a human so pay it. Indirect taxation is a tax that you can avoid, such as a tax on liquor which you can circumvent by distilling your own, buying from someplace that does not have tax [Indian Resevervation maybe?], or simply by not buying liquor.).
If you disagree with me, then I’d be happy to entertain your thoughts. I’ve yet to find anyone that can rebutt my case above. Even if you feel that paying taxes is your duty then that still does not answer my question of whether or not taxation as it is now is slavery or not. The issue is, does the government force you to give them a cut of your labor pay otherwise they threaten you?
Furthermore, if you agree with me then why are you continuing to be a slave – either by choice or by your silence. Is this what you want of your children, friends, and neighbors – to be enslaved in fear? Is it somehow OK for your government to enslave you instead of an individual? As I started out, slavery can no longer be considered just for black people – it is for everyone. You are living it now and have been for some time…
By Matt Cover (original here)
(CNSNews.com) – When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance–a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill–Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Pelosi’s press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.
The exchange with Speaker Pelosi on Thursday occurred as follows:
CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”
Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”
Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a ”serious question.”
“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”
Audio HERE.
Currently, each of the five health care overhaul proposals being considered in Congress would command every American adult to buy health insurance. Any person defying this mandate would be required to pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service.
In 1994, when the health care reform plan then being advanced by President Clinton called for mandating that all Americans buy health insurance, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office studed the issue and concluded:
“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
Later on Thursday, CNSNews.com followed up on the question, e-mailing written queries for the speaker to her Spokesman Elshami.
“Where specifically does the Constitution authorize Congress to force Americans to purchase a particular good or service such as health insurance?” CNSNews.com asked the speaker’s office.
“If it is the Speaker’s belief that there is a provision in the Constitution that does give Congress this power, does she believe the Constitution in any way limits the goods and services Congress can force an individual to purchase?” CNSNews.com asked. ”If so, what is that limit?”
Elshami responded by sending CNSNews.com a Sept. 16 press release from the Speaker’s office entitled, “Health Insurance Reform, Daily Mythbuster: ‘Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.’” The press release states that Congress has “broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production.”
The release further states: “On the shared responsibility requirement in the House health insurance reform bill, which operates like auto insurance in most states, individuals must either purchase coverage (and non-exempt employers must purchase coverage for their workers)—or pay a modest penalty for not doing so. The bill uses the tax code to provide a strong incentive for Americans to have insurance coverage and not pass their emergency health costs onto other Americans—but it allows them a way to pay their way out of that obligation. There is no constitutional problem with these provisions.”
So much for that damn pesky Constitution…
But there you have it, the Commerce Clause. Ha!
23
Oct
09
Fraud OK for us IRS says
Well, the IRS shows it’s true colors. “Fraud is OK in our house!”
(Original here)
Thousands of individuals claiming the first-time homebuyer’s $8,000 tax credit may have been attempting to scam the system, including purported four-year-olds and illegal immigrants, according to a watchdog report released on Thursday.
Nearly 74,000 individuals who claimed the tax credit did not appear to qualify for it, at a cost of half a billion to the government, the inspector general for tax administration for the U.S. Treasury Department said in a report to be delivered to lawmakers on Thursday.
“Some of our findings, while preliminary, are somewhat disturbing,” inspector general Russell George said in an interview. Among the most striking instances of fraud include four-year-olds, non-U.S. citizens and IRS employees inappropriately claiming the benefit, he said.
The report comes amid a heated debate about the popular credit, which the real estate and homebuilding industry is fiercely lobbying to protect. It expires at the end of November, and some say it simply doles out cash to those who would have purchased a home without it.
A subcommittee of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives will hear from IRS, IG and other officials at a hearing Thursday.
About 1.4 million tax returns have been filed to take advantage of the credit at a cost to the government of about $10 billion. Many powerful lawmakers want to extend it, including some that back broadening it to all homebuyers and doubling its benefit.
Extension in its current form would cost about a $1 billion a month. A proposal in the Senate to double the credit and extend it until June would cost about $17 billion.
In response to a report last week citing thousands not qualifying properly for the credit, the IRS said it intends to vigorously root out fraud in the program.
An IRS spokesman also said potential for fraud exists whenever a new refundable credit is put in place. The agency has opened 107,000 civil cases related to the credit and identified 167 criminal schemes. Also, they have selected thousands of returns for those claiming the credit for deeper audits.
The report finds that 582 taxpayers under the age of 18 claimed about $4 million using the credit, with the youngest being 4 years old.
It further faults the IRS for failing to take its advice that a third party be required to document an individual claiming the credit actually purchased a home.
The IRS refuted some of the findings of the IG, and argued for example that some findings are premature because some taxpayers may eventually purchase a home.
Under the law, the credit should be claimed after purchase.
The IRS has responded to some of the IG’s advice, including installing computer filters so those who filed for a home mortgage interest deduction could not also claim the first-time tax credit.
“The IRS is having a very mixed bag in terms of its implementation of this important tool to help the economy,” George said.
A 2008 law created a $7,500 tax credit for those who haven’t purchased a home in three years and who meet certain income limits, with the intention of jump starting the moribund housing market. A 2009 law boosted the credit to $8,000.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, want to extend the credit but the housing chief for the Obama administration on Tuesday expressed doubts the United States could afford to extend the credit.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said the administration would decide in coming weeks whether it backs an extension.
So my father has a loan that has been in default since 2002. It has bounced through multiple collection agencies. It has gone to court and they have agreed to garnish his paycheck.
But guess what. My dad does not make a steady paycheck and at that, not a very large paycheck. So, the garnishers stopped. To put it simply, those who are owed don’t have much to get from him.
Enter me. I call up this place and tell them I am possibly willing to take over the loan. I say that I want the entire history of the loan – ever since it was “born” all the way until now. They said they are not sure if they can get it. They get a bunch of information from me and see what “deal” I can get.
They come back and ask me how much I want to pay a month. I say, nothing until I can get the history like I originally asked for.
They asked again if I was the one that was taking over.
I told them, possibly, if I can get the history of the loan and work a deal.
They asked again how much I was going to pay.
I told them, look, this isn’t my loan. My name isn’t on the loan, I never signed for it and I can walk away at any time.
Then they come back and start telling me “well the loan was taken out on your behalf. You should pay it back.” It is true that the loan was taken out for me, but that still doesn’t negate the fact that I asked for the history of the loan and that I wanted to negotiate, not just start paying on a severely defaulted loan.
So I told them, “quit with the terrorist tactics.”
Then they had the nerve to come back and tell me that I was negating my duty and that I was just going to let my dad go into ruin…
… then I just hung up. Like I warned them, I don’t deal with terrorists.
These people are out of their minds. They have someone that is willing to start making a loan right. A loan that even garnishing has failed to repay. And I ask for just two small things – the account history and the negotiation terms. And they get evil on me and start trying to play with my emotions.
If that is the game, then have fun trying to collect from my father!
(Original here)
DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American—wallow….ing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn’t worried about the economic crisis. That’s because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.
His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He’s either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo’s blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he’s both. “When I lived with money, I was always lacking,” he writes. “Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present.”
On a warm day in early spring, I clamber along a set of red-rock cliffs to the mouth of his cave, where I find a note signed with a smiley face: CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE). From the outside, the place looks like a hollowed teardrop, about the size of an Amtrak bathroom, with enough space for a few pots that hang from the ceiling, a stove under a stone eave, big buckets full of beans and rice, a bed of blankets in the dirt, and not much else. Suelo’s been here for three years, and it smells like it.
Night falls, the stars wink, and after an hour, Suelo tramps up the cliff, mimicking a raven’s call—his salutation—a guttural, high-pitched caw. He’s lanky and tan; yesterday he rebuilt the entrance to his cave, hauling huge rocks to make a staircase. His hands are black with dirt, and his hair, which is going gray, looks like a bird’s nest, full of dust and twigs from scrambling in the underbrush on the canyon floor. Grinning, he presents the booty from one of his weekly rituals, scavenging on the streets of Moab: a wool hat and gloves, a winter jacket, and a white nylon belt, still wrapped in plastic, along with Carhartt pants and sandals, which he’s wearing. He’s also scrounged cans of tuna and turkey Spam and a honeycomb candle. All in all, a nice haul from the waste product of America. “You made it,” he says. I hand him a bag of apples and a block of cheese I bought at the supermarket, but the gift suddenly seems meager.
Suelo lights the candle and stokes a fire in the stove, which is an old blackened tin, the kind that Christmas cookies might come in. It’s hooked to a chain of soup cans segmented like a caterpillar and fitted to a hole in the rock. Soon smoke billows into the night and the cave is warm. I think of how John the Baptist survived on honey and locusts in the desert. Suelo, who keeps a copy of the Bible for bedtime reading, is satisfied with a few grasshoppers fried in his skillet.
HE WASN’T ALWAYS THIS WAY. SUELO graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in anthropology, he thought about becoming a doctor, he held jobs, he had cash and a bank account. In 1987, after several years as an assistant lab technician in Colorado hospitals, he joined the Peace Corps and was posted to an Ecuadoran village high in the Andes. He was charged with monitoring the health of tribespeople in the area, teaching first aid and nutrition, and handing out medicine where needed; his proudest achievement was delivering three babies. The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields—quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils—for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn’t need, as Suelo describes it. They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. “It looked,” he says, “like money was impoverishing them.”
The experience was transformative,…. but Suelo needed another decade to fashion his response. He moved to Moab and worked at a women’s shelter for five years. He wanted to help people, but getting paid for it seemed dishonest—how real was help that demanded recompense? The answer lay, in part, in the Christianity of his childhood. In Suelo’s nascent philosophy, following Jesus meant adopting the hard life prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. “Giving up possessions, living beyond credit and debt,” Suelo explains on his blog, “freely giving and freely taking, forgiving all debts, owing nobody a thing, living and walking without guilt . . . grudge [or] judgment.” If grace was the goal, Suelo told himself, then it had to be grace in the classical sense, from the Latin gratia, meaning favor—and also, free.
By 1999, he was living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand—he had saved just enough money for the flight. From there, he made his way to India, where he found himself in good company among the sadhus, the revered ascetics who go penniless for their gods. Numbering as many as 5 million, the sadhus can be found wandering roads and forests across the subcontinent, seeking enlightenment in self-….abnegation. “I wanted to be a sadhu,” Suelo says. “But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A true test of faith would be to return to one of the most materialistic, money-….worshipping nations on earth and be a sadhu there. To be a vagabond in America, a bum, and make an art of it—the idea enchanted me.”
THERE ISN’T ENOUGH SPACE IN SUELO’S cave for two, so I sleep in the open, at the edge of a hundred-foot cliff. No worries about animals, he says. Though mountain lions drink from the stream, and bobcats hunt rabbits under the cottonwoods, the worst he’s experienced was a skunk that sprayed him in the face. Mice scurry over his body in the cave, and kissing bugs sometimes suck the blood from under his fingernails while he sleeps. He shrugs off these indignities. “After all, it’s their cave too,” he says. I hunker down near a nest of scorpions, which crawl up the canyon walls, ignoring me.
The morning ritual is simple and slow: a cup of sharp tea brewed from the needles of piñon and juniper trees, a swim in the cold emerald water where the creek pools in the red rock. Then, two naked cavemen lounging under the Utah sun. Around noon, we forage along the banks and under the cliffs, looking for the stuff of a stir-fry dinner. We find mustard plants among the rocks, the raw leaves as satisfying as cauliflower, and down in the cool of the creek—where Suelo gets his water and takes his baths (no soap for him) —we cull watercress in heads as big as supermarket lettuce, and on the bank we spot a lode of wild onions, with bulbs that pop clean from the soil. In leaner times, Suelo’s gatherings include ants, grubs, termites, lizards, and roadkill. He recently found a deer, freshly run over, and carved it up and boiled it. “The best venison of my life,” he says.
I tell him that living without money seems difficult. What about starvation? He’s never gone without a meal (friends in Moab sometimes feed him). What about getting deadly ill? It happened once, after eating a cactus he misidentified—h….e vomited, fell into a delirium, thought he was dying, even wrote a note for those who would find his corpse. But he got better. That it’s hard is exactly the point, he says. “Hardship is a good thing. We need the challenge. Our bodies need it. Our immune systems need it. My hardships are simple, right at hand—they’re manageable.” When I tell him about my rent back in New York—$2,400 a month—he shakes his head. What’s left unsaid is that I’m here writing about him to make money, for a magazine that depends for its survival on the advertising revenue of conspicuous consumption. As he prepares a cooking fire, Suelo tells me that years ago he had a neighbor in the canyon, an alcoholic who lived in a cave bigger than his. The old man would pan for gold in the stream and net enough cash each month to buy the beer that kept him drunk. Suelo considers the riches of our own forage. “What if we saw gold for what it is?” he says meditatively. “Gold is pretty but virtually useless. Somebody decided it has worth, and everybody accepted this decision. The natives in the Americas thought Europeans were insane because of their lust for such a useless yellow substance.”
He sautés the watercress, mustard leaves, and wild onions, mixing in fresh almonds he picked from a friend’s orchard and ghee made from Dumpster-dived butter, and we eat out of his soot-caked pans. From the perch on the cliff, the life of the sadhu seems reasonable. But I don’t want to live in a cave. I like indoor plumbing (Suelo squats). I like electricity. Still, there’s an obvious beauty in the simplicity of subsistence. It’s an un-American notion these days. We don’t revere our ascetics, and we dismiss the idea that money could be some kind of consensual delusion. For most of us, it’s as real as the next house payment. Suelo doesn’t take public assistance or use food stamps, but he does survive in part on our reality, the discarded surfeit of the money system that he denounces—a system, as it happens, that recently looked like it was headed for the cliff.
Suelo is 48, and he doesn’t exactly have a 401(k). “I’ll do what creatures have been doing for millions of years for retirement,” he says. “Why is it sad that I die in the canyon and not in the geriatric ward well-insured? I have great faith in the power of natural selection. And one day, I will be selected out.” Until then, think of him like the raven, cleaning up the carcasses the rest of us leave behind.
20
Sep
09
Ron Paul Finally Gets to Talk
Finally, someone gives Ron Paul the respect that he deserves. All people on this clip seem to be educated and willing to accept truths that Paul speaks. The only thing that I would change about Ron Paul’s speech is him dogging out “Conservatives.” Ron Paul himself is a conservative (or a traditionalist) so he can’t be tossing that word to the negative like he did. I think what he meant was the Republicans of today. Or maybe not? Enjoy in either case!
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=24999
Your hard work in this historic movement to Audit the Fed continues to pay off!
Thanks to the thousands of Campaign for Liberty members who have tirelessly dedicated themselves to spreading the word, gathering petitions, and putting continuous pressure on Congress by calling, writing, and faxing, Congressman Ron Paul informed C4L today that House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank has officially agreed to hold hearings on HR 1207! The hearings are tentatively scheduled for Friday, September 25 at 9:00 am.
Your efforts have resulted in Washington’s most secretive institution having to defend itself before the media, the American people, and now at a House hearing specifically focused on transparency.
This exciting victory is only one more achievement in a battle that we must see through until the end.
Contact your representative and senators and urge them to cosponsor HR 1207/S 604 if they have not yet done so. If they signed on, tell them it is imperative that Audit the Fed receive a standalone, up or down vote on its own merits. Full transparency in our nation’s monetary system is too important to be a minor footnote in yet another massive Washington bill, and C4L will vigorously oppose any attempts to include HR 1207 in a regulatory reform package that increases the Fed’s power over our economy and lives.
Less than a year ago, a thorough audit of the Federal Reserve wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Now, we have the support of seventy five percent of the American people, almost two thirds of the House of Representatives, nearly a quarter of the Senate, and an official hearing before the House Financial Services Committee!
There will be more exciting information to follow soon, but I wanted you to know right away. Now is the time to turn the heat up even more.
Together, we will finish this fight!
Now we will see if Barney will actually do anything about this or play his normal games.
Conservatives donate with their hearts. Liberals donate through taxation of the rich.
22
Aug
09
America’s Socialized Health Care
Health-care systems in most developed nations are in financial trouble. Health benefits are being cut back because of exploding costs. Degenerative illnesses such as diabetes and cancer are at epidemic levels in spite of new drugs and treatments. While doctors, politicians, and insurers blame each other, they rarely mention the real problem.
Skyrocketing costs are due to the structure of health care in all these nations. All are mainly socialized, including America’s. This means they operate as top-down bureaucracies, out of touch with people’s real needs. Almost no market forces are allowed to operate for rational decision-making and cost control. Continue reading ‘America’s Socialized Health Care’
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