March 23, 2015
By: Kelly Diamond, Publisher
I cannot be the only person in the United States who has asked themselves – with regards to many government activities – “Is this really legal?!”
Not that legality has anything to do with morality or what’s right and wrong, but it does have something to do with what’s allowable by the state. While I have asked that question more than I care to and often rhetorically, I’m beginning to wonder if the answer to it is really and quite simply: “NO!”
Two of the biggest government rackets in America are traffic tickets and income taxes. Sure, politicians run on a platform of being on the side of the little guy. A 75,000 page tax code and a pile of regulations even regulators cannot keep up with is hardly a demonstration of being on anyone’s side but tyranny, however. And where the income tax misses us, we are dinged later through corporate taxes (passed on to the consumer).
It has been argued that the state lottery is the poor man’s tax. A special state exception is made for the state to offer this “hope” tied to extraordinary odds in the name of educational funding. Preying on the uneducated to fund the education of others has to be one of the most confounding “noble” ideas ever borne out of the state!
But that’s not the worst of it, nor are you shocked to read it. The real rackets are income taxes and traffic citations. Unlike the lottery which is voluntary, income taxes and traffic citations tend to lasso us in, and the grounds upon which they do so are shaky at best.
Some folks realized this, decided to look a little deeper into the legality of these things, and uncovered some facts that are quite surprising.
I’m in no way offering legal advice here. But I AM asking any and all individuals to look into these matters and decide for themselves if they make sense. The term “legalese” is often used to describe the garbled nonsense lawyers and judges use to argue a case. It sounds a LOT like English, and syntactically they are identical. But semantically, they share very little overlap.
The general semantics of English is rather broad. There is considerable latitude given for implicatures and entailments both of which are tied to meaning. But when it comes to “legalese”, the definitions and meanings are very narrow. Entailments are restricted and implicatures are left to the interpretation of courts in rulings.
In the case of traffic citations, for example, the term “driving” is not what you and I know to be “driving”. In English, I say, “I’m driving to the store!” and everyone understands it to mean I am getting into my car and going to the store. In “legalese”, however, when I say I’m “driving”, it entails that I’m doing so with a commercial purpose, not a private one. That makes all the difference in the world, too, as most road and traffic laws – including registration and licensing – is for commercial purposes, not private operation of a vehicle.
I’m not well versed enough to even offer the entire legal argument here, but there are people who have done the research, tested it on themselves, and now drive around without plates or a license and never worry about traffic tickets. Eddie Craig, host of RuleofLawRadio.com, is among them.
It sounds crazy, since the general public has become so accustomed to simply accepting these citations as par for the course when taking their car out, but the reality is, it is a lie by omission on the part of the state. They play off of the assumption that you will accept the charges leveled against you and therefore, pay to play. This is a HUGE source of revenue for local and city governments. And after doing some of the reading myself, the term “road pirate” seems more appropriate than ever when referring to a highway patrol officer.
Again, I recommend that you research this for yourself and learn the nuances. All I can do is provide resources. Upon reading them myself, I could not help but conclude that the majority of Americans are being ripped off! I suggest you start here. The website isn’t flashy or particularly well built, but all the information and links therein are snapshots of actual court transcripts that can easily be cross referenced with public record.
A similar discovery was found by Pete Hendrickson – author of “Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth about Taxation in America” — when it came to the income tax. This is another thing with which most Americans go along. I’m no exception. But once you know that the definitions of the law are FAR narrower than the common English definitions, then you realize that perhaps these laws don’t apply to you either. Much like the traffic laws don’t apply to free individuals simply going about their business, income taxes don’t always apply to your wages.
He and his wife discovered that based on the wording of the law and existing case law that if they filed their taxes a bit differently, they would be eligible to receive 100% of their taxes back. Not only have theybeen doing just that for years, they have helped countless others reclaim their rightful earnings. Millions of dollars (which seems like small change perhaps to a government operating in the trillions) have been returned back to the private sector because of this book.
I haven’t read the book. In fact, I only just heard of it. But there is something absolutely intriguing about the amount of legal attention this couple in particular has received over their filings since the book’s release in 2003. Both Pete and his wife Doreen have filed their taxes in direct accordance with the Internal Revenue Code, however, this has upset the Department of Justice and a Federal District Court Judge by the name of Nancy Edmunds.
Judge Edmunds went so far as to order Doreen Hendrickson to perjure herself under threat of contempt, asking her to sign a statement recanting her earlier statement that everything she did when filing her taxes was to the best of her knowledge truthful and legal!
They have suppressed any evidence she could provide in her defense.
If ignorance of the law is not an excuse to violate it, then likewise the knowledge of the law is not an excuse to take advantage of the citizenry. Moreover, the enlightenment of the masses is not an invitation for persecution, but rather a respect for the very law that is meant to provide order and protection to the people who live under it.
It’s sad that the relationship between citizen and government has become a cumbersome game of cat and mouse; but if that is the game, learning the rules is one way to claim small victories. Sometimes playing by the rules leaves you beating them at their own game.
Offshore and corporate structures is only a couple in a long line of various strategies to protect yourself. It takes the same approach: playing by their rules, and winning. There are options that help you reclaim your liberty and protect you and your property from needless seizures. This revolution is about information. The more you have, the better off you will be.
