Opinions

(originally launched into cyberspace on 05/31/2008)

A pet peeve of mine, as you may have noticed, is that so many
people decide what to believe based upon WHO said it, rather than
based upon whether it makes any sense, or whether there is any
evidence backing it up. The government takes advantage of such
intellectual laziness by relying heavily--almost completely, in
fact--upon declaring that "the courts have ruled against" any
arguments the government doesn't like.

As I've stated before, courts don't rule on anything. Courts cannot
think or talk. PEOPLE give opinions. For some reason, the opinions
of certain people (such as people who wear black dresses and refer
to themselves as "the court") are assumed by many to be inherently
valid--or at least worthy of more credence than the opinions of the
common rabble. Setting aside whether "judges" SHOULD be more
knowledgeable about the law, is there some reason why they
shouldn't be expected to provide a speck or two of EVIDENCE or
LOGIC to back up their stated opinions? Is any statement the gospel
truth just because it came out of their mouths (or out of their
clerks' word processors)?

Consider, for example, my own trial. In his instructions to the
jury, Judge Michael Baylson declared my legal conclusions regarding
the 861 evidence to be incorrect. He didn't bother to say anything,
or even give the slightest hint, about WHY they are wrong, or HOW
they are wrong. He didn't mention the substance of the issue at
all, or cite anything from the law in an attempt to refute it.
Instead, he simply trusted that the jurors would blindly accept his
"opinion" as valid and correct, simply because it came from him.
(In all trials these days, the judge tells the jury that they MUST
take his word for it when he tells them "what the law is"--which
isn't actually true, but I don't want to get into the issue of
"jury nullification" at the moment.)

So how much credence do the opinions of "judges" deserve? Again,
consider my trial as an example. Judge Baylson said very little
about tax law at all. Over the several-day trial, he probably spent
less than fifteen minutes in total talking about tax law. The few
opinions he did offer included the following claims (and his
statements are all directly quoted in my new book, "Kicking the
Dragon"):

1) The original Constitution did not authorize income taxes.

2) Congress' ability to tax incomes was created by the 16th
Amendment. (As an aside, Judge Baylson couldn't actually remember
which amendment it was, or when it was enacted.)

3) There was no federal income tax prior to the enactment of that
amendment.

So those are the "opinions" of a federal judge, which many would
assume to be authoritative and based upon a comprehensive knowledge
of federal law. Trouble is, all three statements are indisputably
WRONG. As the Supreme Court said in Stanton v. Baltic Mining,
Congress possessed the ability to tax incomes since the beginning
of the country (though there are, and have always been, limitations
upon that power). In the same case, the Supreme Court also stated
that the 16th Amendment "conferred no new power of taxation" upon
Congress, and in Peck v. Lowe, added that the 16th Amendment did
not extend the taxing power to any new or excepted subjects. And
finally, Congress DID enact federal income taxes in the 1860's and
through the 1890's, well before the 16th Amendment was enacted,
contrary to Judge Baylson's assertions. (At another point, while
interrupting and interfering with my explanation of my beliefs,
Judge Baylson firmly declared that the case of Peck v. Lowe had
"nothing whatsoever" to do with income taxes, despite the fact that
the case itself clearly shows that it is entirely about the 1913
federal income tax act.)

My trial, as well as my dealings with the IRS for years before,
gives numerous examples of federal bureaucrats, judges and others
spewing out one baseless assertion after another, backing them up
with NOTHING from the law, and willfully disregarding solid,
legally-binding evidence showing their opinions to be dead wrong.
And yet many people--including those in government and those on my
jury--STILL subscribe to the goofy idea that everyone ought to
defer to anyone claiming to be "authority," rather than looking at
any evidence for themselves.

There's a reason I refer to myself and others as "tax heretics":
because that is precisely how the powers that be treat us. They
feel no need (and have no ability) to refute our positions with
citations and argument; we are evil, you see, because we believe
something after those pretending to be "authority" have DECLARED
our conclusions to be incorrect. In other words, our beliefs have
been condemned as heresy, and so continuing to hold such beliefs is
unforgivable. If you think I'm exaggerating the way those in power
view things, read my book, which uses example after example of
their OWN words to show how delusional they truly are.

(You can pre-order your copy at http://www.kickingthedragon.com or
by sending $22 to the address below.)

Larken Rose
P.O. Box 653
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006

Trophy Denied or Delayed

(originally launched into cyberspace on 05/26/2008)

Dear Subscriber,

Well, it seems that the federal extortion machine won't be hanging
one of their most prizes trophy heads on the wall just yet. A judge
has just granted Wesley Snipes bail pending appeal, which means he
stays out while his conviction is appealed, which could take a year
or two, or more.

For anyone who doesn't know, Mr. Snipes was convicted of three
misdemeanor "willful failure to file" charges, while being
acquitted of three OTHER failure to file charges, and a couple of
felonies. He was then sentenced to three years in prison--the
maximum he could possibly get for what he was convicted of.

I don't know what the appeal is based upon, but I can think of two
reasons he may have been granted bail pending appeal. The first is
that the judge, having seen a summary of the topics of appeal,
thinks that there is a decent chance that the appeal will be
successful.

The second is more complicated. A LOT of people are watching the
Wesley Snipes case. Imagine the reaction if Mr. Snipes had to go to
prison, serves a couple years, or maybe even ALL of his sentence,
only to then have his convictions overturned. Then tens of millions
of people would suddenly learn that if you're convicted and
imprisoned, and then the conviction is overturned, you get NO
compensation of any kind. "Oops, we stole a few years of your life,
based on a bogus conviction. Sorry about that."

If you don't know, my appeal is STILL pending, after I served my
year as a political prisoner, and have been out for well over a
year. If I had been given three years, like Mr. Snipes was, I would
be OUT already (due to "good time" and "halfway house" stuff), and
my appeal still hasn't been ruled on. Now, if that happens to you
or me, the public doesn't hear about it, and doesn't know about it.
But if it happened to Mr. Snipes, you can bet that it would make a
LOT of people pretty darn angry.

I actually hope it's the first reason: that the judge thinks the
chances of a reversal are pretty good. Incidentally, the government
would then have to decide whether to retry him just on those three
misdemeanor counts; because of the "double jeopardy" thing, they
couldn't try again for convictions on the other counts, for which
he was already acquitted.

Sincerely,

Larken Rose
http://www.kickingthedragon.com

False Confessions

(originally launched into cyberspace on 05/26/2008)

Back in history, authoritarian regimes would accuse dissidents of
crimes, and then torture them until they confessed. It was a lot
easier than trying to actually prove guilt using evidence and
reason. Plus, it was a fine way to punish trouble-makers who hadn't
actually committed any crimes, but who were making things
inconvenient for those in power.

Luckily, today we have a system of due process, rule by law, and a
fair administration of justice.

Actually, we don't. We still have a system that functions mainly by
forced confessions. Consider the fact that the vast majority of
cases are settled by "plea bargains"--most of those now in prison
never had their day in court. Whether or not the guy actually did
what he "confesses" to, a plea bargain is a coerced confession. It
is the control freaks saying, "We'll be nicer to you if you say
you're guilty, but we'll make things really bad if you make us have
to take you to trial, to actually try to PROVE your guilt." And
over 90% of the time, defendants accept the plea, and never go to
trial. Sometimes--and I know of a few cases personally--people
choose to plead guilty to something they DIDN'T do, rather than
facing the possibility of receiving a worse sentence if they go to
trial.

In my own case, the IRS only tried once to get me to plea bargain.
I think it was pretty obvious that that wasn't going to happen (the
phrase "when hell freezes over" came up). But that was not the end
of their attempts at getting a forced confession out of me. After
my conviction, at the sentencing hearing, the DOJ prosecutors were
having tantrums because I hadn't yet recanted my legal conclusions
regarding the income tax. Anyone at the trial knows that the
government produced absolutely NOTHING disputing my conclusions,
and thus didn't give me the slightest hint of a reason to doubt
those conclusions, and yet Shawn Noud (DOJ prosecutor) complained
that I was not properly "rehabilitated," because I hadn't yet
admitted that I was “wrong about any of the 861, [my] 861
position.” To his credit, Judge Baylson answered by saying that he
had never ordered me to say I was wrong, though he had "encouraged"
me to file back returns, take down my web sites, etc.

Here are the judge's own words, from what he said right after the
verdict in my case: “If you will reconsider your position, and you
will file the tax returns for the years you have not done so, and
enter into an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service for
payment of back taxes due, penalties and interest, I will take that
very much in your favor at the time of sentencing. If you refuse to
do so, that will also be a factor at the time of sentencing.” In
other words, if I would file back returns, reporting my income as
taxable (whether I believed it was or not), the punishment would be
lighter. I did. And if I hadn't done so, the punishment would have
been a lot worse, probably several YEARS worse. So I signed
returns, swearing that I thought I owed the tax, though I didn't.
In other words, those returns constituted coerced false confessions.

But it gets worse. Mr. Noud then complained that, if I wasn't
forced to say my legal conclusions were incorrect, I might later
say that I “was forced to file tax returns.” So not only did he
want a forced confession; he wanted me to be forced to NOT SAY that
it was a forced confession. Of COURSE I was coerced into filing tax
returns. Anyone with a brain cell could see that. But, like the
inquisitors of the past, the DOJ thugs wanted me to confess to
something that wasn't true, and then wanted to coerce me into
saying that I WASN'T coerced. (Incidentally, that is an essential
element of all plea bargains, too: the one being coerced to sign
the plea has to sign a thing saying he wasn't coerced into it.)

Obviously some at the DOJ have the exact same mentality as the
inquisitors during the Spanish Inquisition: You should recant your
beliefs, not because we provided any evidence of logic to counter
your beliefs (which we can't do), but because we HURT you. Think
I'm exaggerating? Try this on for size:

Floyd Miller, the lead prosecutor in my case and in Tessa's case,
openly admitted that if Tessa would do a plea bargain, he didn't
expect her to do any jail time, and wouldn't ASK for any. But when
she refused to do that--when she wouldn't plead guilty to something
she hadn't done--Mr. Miller's response was, "This is war!" So,
based on the DOJ's own comments, my wife did NOT spend a month in
prison for committing any alleged crime; she spent a month in
prison for NOT FALSELY CONFESSING.

Does anyone still think the "Department of Justice" gives a damn
about justice? Again, in my case alone (and mine was only one among
many, and not even the worst) the actual evidence demolishes all
the rhetoric about "rule of law," "due process," and systems of
"justice," and reveals the feds for what they are: lawless,
dishonest, power-happy thugs. In fact, as I've said before, the
number of ways in which the feds lied and cheated in my case alone
could fill a book--and did.

If you want your own copy of the complete story, with all the
evidence of government wrongdoing you could possibly want, you can
order my new book online from the http://www.kickingthedragon.com
web site, or by sending $22 to the address shown below. (Orders
will be filled in the order they were received, once the books come
back from the printers, which should be in just a couple weeks.)

Larken Rose
P.O. Box 653
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006

(P.S. A couple people have suggested that a few of my recent
messages were really thin-veiled attempts to get you to buy my new
book, "Kicking the Dragon (Confessions of a Tax Heretic)." I
apologize if anyone thought there was a veil. Just to make it
perfectly clear: I want you to buy my book. Furthermore, I want my
family to make some money off of it--maybe even enough to
eventually break even from our ongoing extortion by the feds.
However, I also want people to think that anything they buy from me
is well worth the price, and this book is no exception.)

Double Standard

(originally launched into cyberspace on 05/23/2008)

Sometimes prosecutors mistakenly prosecute innocent people. And
sometimes they INTENTIONALLY prosecute those they KNOW aren't
guilty. One indication of whether the latter is the case is how
many ways the prosecution lies and cheats in order to get a
conviction. Well, in my case, the number of ways they did it could
fill a book--and, in fact, DID fill a book, and a rather
substantial book at that.

In addition to lying, mischaracterizing facts, demonizing the
accused, and other dishonest tricks, unscrupulous prosecutors (like
the ones handling my case, Floyd Miller and Shawn Noud) also work
hard to make sure that no one is allowed to say the TRUTH in court,
as it may interfere with their lies.

At my trial, the government's entire case was that people OTHER
than me (federal bureaucrats and some lower court judges) had
asserted that my conclusions, or similar conclusions, were
incorrect. Therefore, the jury was supposed to assume that it was
literally IMPOSSIBLE for me to believe my conclusions, because some
people had "told" me that I was wrong. The first thing the
prosecutors said to the jury about me sums it up nicely:

“This is a case about a man who knew the law, who defied the law.
The defendant, Larken Rose, failed to file tax returns for five
years, even after receiving, time and time again, notice from the
IRS that he had a duty to file his return and pay taxes.”

So, according to them, it was impossible for me to believe in the
861 evidence, because other people had ASSERTED that I owed the
tax. Aside from the fundamental lunacy of that argument, there is
another problem with it: What about all the people who told me that
my conclusions were CORRECT? When several former IRS employees and
a former federal prosecutor, not to mention dozens of attorneys and
CPAs, "told" me I was RIGHT, didn't that count for anything?

Apparently not. At trial I was forbidden from talking about other
people, including people who had been feds, AGREEING with my
conclusions, and forbidden from playing recordings of radio shows
on which I appeared with such people. Why? Because, accordingly to
Judge Michael Baylson, “what other people believe is not relevant
as to the defendant’s willfulness.” I guess what he meant was that
it's irrelevant when other people AGREE with me, but perfectly
relevant when people DISAGREE with me--which was the government's
ENTIRE case. So, you see, when someone from the IRS says "You're
wrong," that is somehow proof of my guilt, but when someone from
the IRS says "Holy smokes, you're RIGHT!," that's utterly
irrelevant and the jury shouldn't be allowed to hear about it.

And then, as if that double standard wasn't patently absurd enough,
the prosecution used the opportunity to deceive the jury even more.
For example, the lead prosecutor in my case, Floyd Miller, whined
to the jury that I thought I was the “only person in the
continental [huh?] United States who has ever made an accurate
determination of what is in the Internal Revenue Code.” So, after
making sure I wasn't ALLOWED to talk about all the people who had
agreed with my conclusions, he implied that NO ONE agreed with
them, and that I was the only one who held those beliefs. (He also
ignored the fact that I had already repeatedly testified that I'm
not even the one who "discovered" the 861 evidence.)

This pattern of suppressing evidence, and then using the lack of
evidence as proof of something, continued throughout the trial. For
example, I was also forbidden from talking about the campaign we
did targeting around 600 H&R Block offices with questions about the
861 evidence. I called Peter McCandless as a witness to talk about
that, since he had organized the campaign, but he wasn't allowed to
discuss what we had asked, or what the response (or lack of
response) was.

And then Floyd Miller, that paragon of dishonesty, made it a point
to stress to the jury how, though they heard me talking about
reading the law and stuff, they never heard me say “that I went to
an accountant, or a tax lawyer, or H&R Block for that matter, here
in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, to test the validity of my
beliefs. Not once.” Yeah, they never heard me say that, because,
with the help of the judge, Mr. Miller had made sure that I wasn't
ALLOWED to say that. So the DOJ suppressed exculpatory evidence,
and then cited the LACK of that evidence as proof of my guilt.
Sound fair?

(For the whole story in all its gruesome detail, pre-order your
copy of "Kicking the Dragon (Confessions of a Tax Heretic)" by
sending $22 to the address below, or by ordering online at
. Once the books are available,
probably in the first week of June, orders will be filled in the
order they were received.)

Sincerely,

Larken Rose
P.O. Box 653
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006

Kicking the Dragon

(originally launched into cyberspace on 05/21/2008)

Dear Subscriber,

It's been a long time coming, but the complete story of my
adventures with the federal leviathan is now in book form. The book
is called "Kicking the Dragon (Confessions of a Tax Heretic)," and
almost all of was written while in prison. It tells the whole
absurd story, from the first time I ever heard of "Section 861,"
through my administrative meetings with the IRS, the letter-writing
campaigns, my inviting the feds to prosecute me, getting raided by
the IRS, and up through my trial, and much more. If you think you
know the whole story, you might know half of it. Even those who
have been following the tale since the beginning will learn things
they never knew before. (Incidentally, I've heard several bizarre
and highly inaccurate claims about what actually happened at my
trial. The book goes into great detail, with lots of direct quotes
from all sides, showing the truth--which is even more bizarre than
the false rumors.)

This is not some quickly thrown-together rant, but a thoroughly
documented factual account, allowing the federal extortionists to
be judged by their own words. I had lots of time on my hands
throughout 2006 (during my term as a political prisoner), and took
the opportunity to collect, review and organize a massive amount of
documentation (thousands of pages), from which I selected a wide
array of juicy tidbits and anecdotes illustrating just what "our"
government has become.

It doesn't really matter how much (if anything) you know about the
861 issue itself, or what your opinion is of my legal "argument."
The legal issue itself is not the focus of the book; the story
surrounding it is. (However, as a bonus, an updated version of my
"Taxable Income" report is included in its entirety as an appendix
in the book.) Anyone who reads the story, regardless of what he
thinks of me or my conclusions, will be hit by the inescapable fact
that there is something horribly wrong in the American system of
justice and due process.

The first thousand copies of the book are being printed right now.
The web site is already up and taking pre-orders. Once the books
are ready, which should be in about three weeks, the orders will be
filled in the order they were received. I'm telling this list about
the book before I advertise it anywhere else, to give you guys a
head start. So, to get in at the front of the line and reserve your
copy, go to:

http://www.kickingthedragon.com

Or, if you prefer, you can send $22 ($18 for the book plus $4 for
shipping and handling) via check or money order (or cash, if you
dare) to:

Larken Rose
P.O. Box 653
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006

In the coming days, I'll be sending this list a few snippets from
the book, to give you a taste of just how bizarre the whole story
was. (For example, internal IRS memos obtained through the
"discovery" process prior to our trials openly admitted that the
Examination division of the IRS "does not want Tessa David & Larken
Rose to actually file tax returns." How's that for weird?) In fact,
if, after reading the entire book, you can honestly say "I already
knew all of that," or if you can say "Nothing about what the
government did seems fishy to me," I'll give you your money back.

Sincerely,

Larken Rose
http://www.larkenrose.com