Posts Tagged ‘Downsize D.C.’

Dangerous vote due this week ACT NOW‏

November 4, 2009

From Downsize D.C. see sidebar for a link.

We want to thank the staff at Reason magazine for drawing attention to a great Denver Post column by David Harsanyi.

We’re going to crib from it for today’s action item.

Please send a letter to Congress opposing the 1,900-page healthcare bill.

Here’s what I wrote in my personal comments (my Senators will receive a copy too so they can know how I feel about this):

I object to the 1,900-page House healthcare bill precisely because it’s 1,900 pages long. That’s too much complexity.

I object because the word “regulation” appears in this bill 181 times, “tax” is there 214 times, and “fees” is used 103 times. I hate these words and I won’t feel too good about you either if you inflict them on me.

I object because you’re not going to read this bill before you vote on it, or sit with the federal code to look up and read all the parts of existing law that the bill will change.

I object because the bill will require federal bureaucrats to write hundreds, or even thousands of pages of regulations to fill in the details, and because I’ll have to pay for lawyers and accountants, either directly or indirectly, to interpret and comply with this mess.

I object because many of my healthcare choices will be dictated by a “Health Choices Commissioner” and an “Inspector General for the Health Choices Administration.” I won’t be able to elect or fire either of these people, and I do not want them in my life.

I object because this bill costs too much, and because you’re hiding the true cost in a variety of fraudulent ways.

I object because this bill contains numerous Trojan Horses that will eventually kill free market healthcare in favor of complete government control.

I object because it is increasingly clear to me that my supposed representatives really represent their own party leadership first, special interest lobbyists second, and me not at all.

Please stop to consider that this bill will be imposed on me at the point of a policeman’s gun. If I do not want to pay for it, or comply with it, armed men will eventually knock on my door to force me to submit. Do not do this too me!

If you pass this bill, or anything like it, I will never forgive you.

END OF SAMPLE LETTER

You can send your letter to Congress here.

Please take additional steps to spread the word, recruit more DC Downsizers, and increase the heat on Congress:

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Immigration, Law, mysandry, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 2 Comments »

Whatever happened to “presumed innocent?”

October 1, 2009

“While few would argue that criminals ought to be able to keep the proceeds of their crimes, civil forfeiture allows the government to seize and keep property without actually having to prove a crime was committed in the first place. . . . Proceeds from civil forfeiture at the state and local level usually go back to the police departments and prosecutors’ offices, giving them a clear and unmistakable incentive to seize as much property as often as possible.” – Radley Balko

The government wants to seize the home of a widowed cancer survivor. She hasn’t been charged with any crime, but her now-dead husband once grew marijuana on their property. He used it to ease his chronic pain. Under federal civil asset forfeiture law, that might be enough for the government to take this woman’s home.

Such outrages are nothing new in the War on Drugs, but we’re seeing more abuses as criminal law becomes increasingly federalized. For instance, federal agents are now exploiting the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act to seize bank accounts and computers.

The leader of a new Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering task force admits that unlike criminal cases where the suspect is presumed innocent until proved guilty, in civil asset forfeiture cases . . .

* if you lose property to an asset forfeiture seizure you must prove your innocence in order to get it back
* you have no 5th amendment protections — even your silence can be used against you

Civil asset forfeiture is also alive and well at the local level, where police steal money from citizens in order to pay for new equipment.

Under Illinois law, the state can withhold cash, cars, or other property for six months without even a preliminary hearing! Under the law, three innocent people had to wait over a year to get their cars back. They, along with three innocent people who had money stolen from them, have argued the Constitutionality of the Illinois law.

The “good” news is that this law will be argued in the Supreme Court this month in Alvarez v. Smith.

The bad news is that the most positive outcome is likely to be only a reduction of the time you must wait before a preliminary hearing. The Court isn’t expected to strike down the law, even though civil asset forfeiture proceedings clearly violate the 14th Amendment provision that no state “can deprive any person of . . . property, without due process of law.”

Congress can do what the Court will not. Tell your representatives to abolish Civil Asset Forfeiture using our Educate the Powerful System.

Use your personal comments to mention the example of the widow who may lose her home because her now dead husband grew marijuana that he used to ease his pain from cancer.

You can send your message here.

And don’t forget to share this message with your friends:

http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/whatever-happened-to-quot-presumed-innocent-quot

Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.

James Wilson
Assistant Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org

Now then, what was that saying about absolute power?

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »

Legal Tender: IRS Thuggery

August 27, 2009

Seems that the good folks that brought you the thuggery at the BATFE are onto another method of suppressing liberty and freedom. They cannot follow their own rule of law so they go after American’s to vent their anger and frustration. Downsize D.C. exposes this latest outrage from the people that brought you Ruby Ridge, and the Waco holocaust. Read on…

Quote of the Day: The government called three accountants to testify. The defense asked each one, “What is the proper way to calculate income for purposes of the Internal Revenue Code if you are paid in a gold coin that has a $50 face value on it?” All three of them responded, “I do not know; I’ll have to research that.” — Mike Zigler, reporting on the 2007 case against Robert Kahre that ended in a hung jury

Subject: How can legal tender be illegal?

Robert Kahre is facing up to 296 years in prison. His crime? He hired workers on mutually-agreed terms, and paid them in gold and silver dollars rather than in Federal Reserve dollars.

First, some background . . .

* The face value of the U.S. Mint’s gold and silver coins are legal tender, meaning they must be accepted in payment of debt
* But a Gold Eagle coin that has “$50” printed on it is legal tender only up to $50, while its gold content is worth about $1,000 in Federal Reserve notes
* No law or IRS regulation requires that receivers of Gold Eagles and other U.S. Mint coins must report the market value of the coins instead of the legal tender value

After extensively researching the issue, Kahre . . .

* hired workers as independent contractors, so he would not pay the payroll tax for their labor
* paid them in gold and silver coins, whose face value – that is, legal tender value – was so low that the workers legally didn’t have to report it as income to the IRS

For instance, if a worker was annually paid in gold coins with a legal tender face value of $2,000, the market value of the gold content in those coins could be $40,000, but only the legal tender face value of $2,000 would theoretically count as taxable income. That face value of $2,000 is low enough to be non-reportable to the IRS. But . . .

Even though the coins Kahre used were legal tender, the Justice Department alleged that Kahre’s system was a fraudulent, tax-evading scam.

We agree with Jacob Hornberger who asserts that the federal government’s prosecution of Kahre is self-contradictory . . .

* if you owe $100 in taxes and pay with gold coins with face values totalling $100, the IRS will accept the payment as $100; it could then sell the coins on the market for twenty times that amount and keep the difference. The government will accept your payment as “legal tender.”
* but if YOU receive gold coins from someone else in a private transaction, the IRS says you must report the market value of the coins, not the face value. That is, YOU CANNOT TREAT THE COINS AS LEGAL TENDER.

The government fears that if more people took the law at its word and behaved like Kahre . . .

* people would demand payment in the Mint’s gold and silver coins and have far fewer reportable “dollars” in income, meaning fewer people would pay income taxes
* the market would soon prefer the coins produced by the Treasury Department’s Mint that are regulated by law – not the inflated dollars created by order of the independent Federal Reserve Board
* good money (gold and silver) would drive out the bad (paper Federal Reserve Notes and electronic keyboard strokes), whereas the federal government needs inflated, deficit-driven money to pay for its endless wars, failed welfare schemes, and expanding police state

No wonder the government views Kahre as a threat, and is willing to made a mockery of its own legal tender laws to destroy him!

DownsizeDC.org, however, believes Kahre was on to something. That’s why we endorse the “Honest Money Act,” which would repeal the legal tender law that gives the Federal Reserve a monopoly over the money supply. This bill, along with the “Tax-Free Gold Act” and the “Free Competition in Currency Act,” is a plank in our End the Inflation Tax Campaign.

Repealing the legal tender law would foster the creation of HONEST free market money, and protect people from the Federal Reserve’s endless onslaught of legalized counterfeiting, which constantly reduces the value of your money.

Tell Congress to pass the bills in our End the Inflation Tax Campaign.

Use your personal comments to mention the hypocrisy involved in the Kahre case. If the feds are going to make it a crime to FOLLOW the legal tender law, then that’s just one more argument for repealing it. You can send your message here.

Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.

James Wilson
Assistant to the President
DownsizeDC.org

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »