12-31-03

This is Bob Schulz’s response to an article by Claire Wolfe posted on her web site on December 19, 2003. Ms. Wolfe’s comments are in yellow.
 

Friday, December 19, 2003

WHAT IS IT WITH THE GIVE ME LIBERTY CONFERENCE, ANYWAY? Two months ago, Bob Schultz's We the People anti-income-tax group published a speakers lineup for the January 2004 GML conference that included every luminary but God. Walter Williams would be there. Charley Reese. Nat Hentoff. James Bovard. Ron Paul. Rep. Henry Hyde. Ambassador Joseph Richmond. Attorney Mark Lane. Constitutional scholar and Yale professor Akhil Reed Amar. Judge Roy Moore (of 10 Commandments fame). Alan Keyes. Journalist Bernard Goldberg. Joseph Farah. And -- get this! -- Mel Gibson.


Statement of the Facts
 

1. We published our (preliminary) agenda and began taking  registrations on November 20, 2003, NOT “two months” before Ms. Wolfe published her condemnatory article on Dec 19, 2003, i.e., we did not publish our (preliminary) agenda in October as Ms. Wolfe said we did.
 
2. The name is Schulz, not Schultz, as Ms. Wolfe reports.
   
3. Any reasonable person reviewing all the articles published on our web site will conclude we are
pro-constitution and anti-fraud, not “anti-income-tax” as Ms. Wolfe asserts.
   
4. The (preliminary) agenda we published on Nov 20, 2003 did NOT include “every luminary but God” as Ms. Wolfe asserts it did.  For instance, it did not include the Pope. Nor, with the exception of Alan Keyes, did it include any of the following luminaries that have been listed for the past six months as “invited” to speak at the C-PAC convention (also scheduled for Jan 22-24, 2004 in Arlington, VA). As of today, if you go to www.cpac.org and click on “Speakers” and then “Schedule” you get the following:
   
  CPAC 2004 invited speakers include

President George W. Bush
Vice President Dick Cheney
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Ann Coulter
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Alan Keyes
Senator Mitch McConnell
Majority Leader Delay
Governor Jeb Bush
Governor Bill Owens
Fred Barnes
Linda Chavez
Sam Donaldson
Bob Novak
Wayne LaPierre
Rep. Katherine Harris
Justice Clarence Thomas
David A. Keene
Ted Nugent
Ward Connerly
Phyllis Schlafly
David Horowitz
Daniel Pipes
Michelle Malkin
Steve Moore
Mona Charen
Senator George Allen
   
5. We did NOT invite any one by the name of Ambassador Joseph Richmond, as Ms. Wolfe asserts we did. We don’t know any such person. It is worth noting that Ms. Wolfe has done something honorable people do not do. She has altered the article she published on December 19, 2003. A visit to her website today has revealed the fact that she has removed the name Ambassador Joseph Richmond from the article. She didn’t post a correction, she altered the earlier article.

Claire Wolfe:

The little teeny caveat that these were "invited speakers" and "subject to change" was easy to miss. And it was rather beside the point to begin with. You might list one speaker with such a caveat if that speaker had said, "I'm really interested but not sure I can make it." No one with sense or honor would list a whole slate of invitees that way.

Statement of the Facts

 

6. Our use of the phrase “Preliminary Agenda*” and “*All speakers have been invited,” was NOT a “little teeny caveat” that was “easy to miss,” as Ms. Wolfe asserts it was. She obviously noticed it. We have NO information that anyone failed to notice that the speakers were merely invited. Instead, we have received many messages from people asking us to let them know as soon as possible which of the invited speakers have confirmed their attendance.
   
7. Contrary to Ms. Wolfe’s assertion, honorable people do exactly what we did. Honorable people decide, first, what they want their conventions to accomplish, even if that goal is as bold and courageous as ours (to bring the Petition Clause center stage in America, with the goal of promoting and defending its original intent – that is, if the servant government is taking over the house, infringing on our Rights and will not justify its behavior, the People have the Right to starve the servant).
 
  Then the honorable people do a careful search of the literature to determine who the most appropriate speakers might be, based on their prior public utterances, their demonstrated passion for individual liberty and their subject matter expertise.

Then the honorable people extend a written invitation to those potential speakers, providing them, in writing, with full information about the sponsor AND letting them see how the overall convention is to be structured, the purpose of each session, and who the other speakers are who have been invited to speak.

Honorable people disclose everything they know about the planned event – holding nothing back. This is what we did.

It is also worth noting that we, and others, were not blind to the exciting possibilities of such an event, in terms of the potential for advancing the cause of freedom in America. What follows is a message that was posted, along with our Preliminary Agenda, on November 30, 2003, a few days after we posted our Preliminary Agenda, by a long-time Patriot (ICE) who is highly respected and has a large following. Notice his excitement AND his call for people to contact the INVITED speakers to get them to accept our invitations. He, like Ms. Wolfe certainly did NOT miss the asterisk and its meaning.
   
  Excerpt from the 11/30 "ICE" e-mail:
   
 

This preliminary agenda from WTP presents some truly exciting possibilities.  For those considering registering and making arrangements to attend, however, it should be pointed out that none of the big-name guests appear to have confirmed their attendance at this point.  I would urge each and every one of you to make every effort to contact these key public figures (starting with those listed below) and tell them how much their attendance at this Conference would mean to you and to our country.    ICE
 


alan@alankeyes.com for Alan Keyes
http://www.house.gov/hyde/ for Henry Hyde
rep.paul@mail.house.gov for Ron Paul
jfarah@worldnetdaily.com for Joe Farah
joseph@sobran.com for Joe Sobran
fff@fff.org attn: Jacob Hornberger
iol@fee.org attn: Editor Sheldon Richman
wwilliam@wpgate.gmu.edu for Walter Williams
gmark@andromeda.rutgers.edu for Gregory Mark, Rutgers Univ. Law Professor
akhil.amar@yale.edu for Akhil Reed Amar, Yale Law Professor
candrews@law.ua.edu for Carol Rice, Univ. of Alabama Law Professor
j-mcginnis@law.northwestern.edu for John McGinnis, Northwestern Law School Professor
jpfander@law.uiuc.edu for James Pfander University of Illinois College of Law
web@hillsdale.edu for Burton Folsom,Jr., Hillsdale College
 jbovard@his.com for James Bovard

(end excerpt) 
   
  ICE also wrote the following in a separate, 11/30/03 e-mail to Bob Schulz:
   
 

A couple of observations on this "preliminary agenda": If all these speakers/guests/panelists actually show up, it will be an absolute tour de force, a stunning frontal assault involving the type and number of public figures difficult for the Media to ignore -- exactly what has been lacking to date.

Claire Wolfe:

If you're a well-known person invited to speak at a public event, and an organizer begins publicizing your presence without even checking to see whether you're vaguely interested -- you would be pissed, seriously. You're being very cynically used for your PR value. And if you're a person thinking of paying money to attend the conference, you'd have even more right to be outraged. The applicable term is bait-and-switch.

Statement of the Facts
 

8. Ms. Wolfe has used a word used by people who have a crippled vocabulary. Besides that, she has shot from the hip without checking her facts. To put it simply, she does not know what she is talking about. We did not publicize anyone’s “presence without checking” to see if they were “vaguely interested.” Not only were we clearly publicizing “invited speakers,” not their “presence,” but we had determined what the potential speaker’s interest in attending might be by carefully reviewing his public record and posture on the issue(s) at hand AND in almost every case, contact was made directly with the potential speaker or, indirectly, with someone close to the potential speaker, BEFORE the invitations were sent and certainly BEFORE the agenda was posted.
   
9.

In the case of Mel Gibson, as with many of the other high profile invitees, contact was initially made on August 19, 2003 (even before our 11-page corporate brochure was printed). We sent a letter to Mr. Gibson at ICON in L.A. Within a few days Debbie Galloway called from Gibson’s office, asking for more information about the Foundation.  

Also in August, Devvy Kidd contacted Mr. Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, asking if he would like to speak at the convention. Devvy has known Hutton for a few years. Hutton immediately said yes and volunteered to hand deliver a copy of our invitation to his son, Mel*.  

Later, in October, Ms. Galloway called again to ask who else was speaking at the convention and how many people would be in the audience. All this happened long before the agenda was posted.  

Negotiations continued up until December 16 when Sarhad (Mr. Gibson’s right hand man) called. Sarhad very graciously informed Mrs. Kidd that, Mr. Gibson had personally read our brochure and all correspondence. However, due to his prior commitments and extremely heavy schedule related to the release of his new movie, The Passion of Christ, “Mel regrets that he cannot consider the invitation at this time.”

   
10. In the case of Judge Moore, contact was originally made on August 19, 2003, when Devvy sent a letter to Judge Moore at the Alabama Supreme Court. Wendy (in Judge Moore’s office at the courthouse) called Devvy to say they had received the invitation and Judge Moore had it on his desk. Devvy and Wendy went on to exchange phone calls and mail. It was difficult to get a commitment from Judge Moore during all the political shenanigans related to the efforts to remove the block of granite with the etching of the ten commandments.  In one of those mailings to Judge Moore, Devvy sent a copy of the full-page ad we published in the Montgomery newspaper at a cost of about $9,000.

Eventually, Wendy told Devvy that the folks at the Foundation for Moral Law had come to handle Judge Moore’s schedule. She told Devvy to contact Jessica Attaberrie at the Foundation.  Devvy did that. Devvy was then put in contact with Ben Dupre at the Foundation for Moral Law.  

On October 3, 2003, Devvy met and spoke briefly to Judge Moore at a speaking event sponsored by the Institute on the Constitution. Judge Moore did recognize Devvy’s name during the brief encounter, but that was not the setting to discuss his schedule.

Devvy enlisted the support of Don Dwyer, a delegate to the Maryland State Legislature and a long time friend of WTP’s. Devvy was told to work with Drew Dill at the Foundation. On 11/18 Devvy spoke to Drew Dill. Due to the continued tumultuous situation with Judge Moore and his legal battles down in Montgomery, Mr. Drew still could not give us a definitive answer regarding the convention.

Then, on 11/26, we were able to get a clearer picture of Judge Moore's situation. He was losing his job and income. Devvy contacted Wes Yoder at the Ambassador Speaking Bureau at the guidance from Drew Hill who had informed Devvy that Moore was now being represented for speaking engagements by that company. Devvy was contacted by Wes Yoder from the Ambassador’s Speaker’s Bureau, in Nashville. Yoder told Devvy that he did not get the paperwork regarding our January 04 convention. Devvy resent the invitation.

On December 5, 2003, Yoder called Devvy to inform her that Moore could not be a part of our convention due to another commitment.  However, we have learned Judge Moore will be speaking on Saturday, Jan 24, 2004, at 4 PM, in Lancaster*, Pennsylvania, at a meeting hosted by the Constitution Party of Pennsylvania* (Howard Phillips will be in attendance*). Because Lancaster is only a few hour drive from Arlington, and we wanted Judge Moore to speak at our banquet Friday night, and Alan Keyes has agreed to speak at our convention on Friday and would be leaving for Valley Forge on Saturday morning, Bob Schulz called and spoke to Howard Phillips, who agreed to intercede on our behalf with Judge Moore. Finally, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who has agreed to speak at our convention, also agreed to intercede on our behalf with Judge Moore. We don’t yet know the outcome, but discussions are continuing.
   
11. In the case of many of the other speakers, an email was sent or a phone call was placed to the potential speaker to let him know about the planned convention and our interest in having him as a featured speaker and to ask for his mailing address so we could send a written invitation and a brochure. If the party was at all interested, we received the mailing address and an invitation was sent BEFORE we posted the name of the invited speaker.
   
12. The following is a copy of a response received from James Bovard, BEFORE we posted the agenda, demonstrating his initial interest:
   

Devvy:


Thanks for thinking of me.
Mailing address is
(redacted*)

all the best,
Jim

 

   
13. The following is evidence that Jacob Hornberger was initially interested. It is an e-mail sent to David Zuniga on November 26, 2003 (AFTER Hornberger received our invitation and BEFORE we published our preliminary agenda). Zuniga is the President of Sterling Education. He had written to Hornberger to encourage Hornberger to accept our invitation to speak at our conference. Bumper is Hornberger’s nickname.
   
 

David, 

Thanks for the email--good to hear from you. 

We have published a great book entitled "Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax" by Sheldon Richman. It can be purchased at amazon or on our website: http://www.fff.org/books/0964044781.asp   While we call for the abolition of the income tax, the issue of whether a person should stop paying his taxes falls outside the mission statement of The Future of Freedom Foundation.  

I just received the invitation to speak at that conference--still mulling it over. 

If you are not subscribing to our FFF Email Update, I hope you'll consider doing so: http://www.fff.org/whatsNew/index.asp  Of course, in addition to the income tax issue, we advance the broad range of libertarian issues (drug war, foreign policy, immigration, trade, public schooling, etc.) 

Best regards and thanks for touching base! 

Bumper
   
14. My contacts with Constitutional scholar Amar began early last summer after I read his Yale Law Review Article, “The Constitution as a Bill of Rights.” I called and spoke to Professor Amar. I told him about our plans for a convention and my interest in having him speak, along with others who have published articles on the Right to Petition government for a Redress of Grievances.  He said the idea was intriguing and would look forward to receiving an invitation. Note: While Ms. Wolfe did not mention them, we have invited other constitutional scholars to speak at the convention. As with Amar, they have all published Law Review Journal articles on the Petition Clause and I have been in contact with them all since early last summer.
   
15. I could go on, but the point is clearly made. With the exception of Charlie Reece and Bernard Goldberg (virtually impossible to contact them, except in writing first) and Ron Paul and Henry Hyde (always a requirement of their schedulers that one START with a written request), we made contact with all potential speakers or their staffs (and had at least a “vague interest” from them) BEFORE we sent the invitations and before we listed them as invited speakers on our preliminary agenda.
   

Claire Wolfe:

I notice they've gradually been removing "speakers" over time. Bovard is gone (at his request). But Mel Gibson and all those others are still listed. A month before the conference, there's still absolutely no way of telling how many of the famous individuals being offered as bait will be there. I'll bet most of them don't know they're being advertised as speakers.

Statement of the Facts
 

   
16. Instead of expressing disappointment over the departure of any of the speakers from what is designed to be a watershed event in terms of restoring our Constitution, Ms. Wolfe has now become flippant and loses all remaining credibility. She is now willing to “bet most of the invited speakers don’t even know they’re being advertised as speakers.” The claim is blatantly untrue. She knew absolutely nothing about the process we have been going through.
   
17. As a matter of fact, as argued above, every invited speaker received a copy of the agenda along with our written invitation BEFORE we posted the agenda. Ms. Wolfe had absolutely no justification for making such an outlandish claim. She never called or spoke to any of us here at WTP in an effort to find out the facts. Why not?
   
18. Yes, and most unfortunately, Bovard is “gone.” So is Williams. But let’s look at the facts surrounding their decisions not to attend the convention.

Following Jim Bovard’s 11/22/03 note to Devvy (see #12 above), Bryan Rusch sent the following note to Bovard on 11/30/03:

I noticed that the We The People Foundation has you listed as a speaker/guest at their January event [http://www.givemeliberty.org/convention/AGENDA.htm].
 
Will you really be in attendance?
 
Wishing you a tax-free day,
Bryan Rusch
Tax Freedom 101 Manager
email:  bryan@taxfreedom101.com
web site:  http://www.taxfreedom101.com
Office: 877-285-2104

   
19. In fact, Bryan Rusch apparently sent the same message to each and every one of our invited speakers, as listed by ICE in his 11/30/03 message (see # 7 above). However, instead of encouraging the potential speaker to accept our invitation because of what it would mean to our country, Mr. Rusch merely provided each speaker with a link to our agenda and asked if they were “really” going to be there.
   
20. In fact, Mr. Rusch is part of the Save-a-Patriot Fellowship organization, the principals of which derive their income from selling services and products to individuals who want to stop paying the taxes that are tied to their earnings. SAPF is on record as being opposed to WTP’s aggressive defense of the 1st Amendment’s Petition Clause in demanding answers from the government to our questions regarding the origin and enforcement of the income tax. The reason SAPF is opposed to what we are doing is that to the extent we may be successful in ending the fraudulent income tax, SAPF will be out of the business they are now in.
   
21. Getting back to Bovard’s departure, following his receipt of Rusch’s message on 11/30/03, Bovard sent the following to Rusch:

From: Jim Bovard [mailto:jbovard@his.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 9:28 PM
To: taxfree@taxfreedom101.com
Subject: Re: WTP Foundation Has You Listed as a Speaker/Guest

Bryan Rusch:
Thanks for the heads-up on their schedule.

Someone from WTP contacted me and said they would be sending an invitation.   I have not received it.  I have certainly not indicated a willingness to speak.   I know several of the other listed speakers and have sent them copies of their listed events.

At the top of the schedule - it mentions something about 'preliminary' and an asterisk - and at the bottom of the page - mentions -
"* All speakers have been invited.
Panel sessions and times are fixed."

The usual practice is to put an asterisk next to a spe! aker's name who has been invited and not yet responded positively or negatively.

I will follow-up on this.

all the best,
Jim Bovard
 http://www.jimbovard.com
 

22. Bovard then sent WTP the following message on    December 9, 2003:

Dear Mr. Schulz:

Please remove my name from the list of speakers and invited speakers for the January WTP conference. 

Sincerely,
Jim Bovard 

  It’s safe to assume that Rusch’s damaging e-mail message to Bovard, dated November 30, 2003, got to Bovard at a time when he had not yet received our invitation in the mail or did not realize he had received it. Tragically, Bovard apparently sent a (negative) message to “several of the other listed speakers” with the intention to “follow up on this.” If SAPF’s intent was to undermine WTP’s “stunning frontal assault” in defense of our unalienable Rights, they were succeeding.
   

23.Claire Wolfe:

Now, for five days, We the People has had an article at the top of their Web site proclaiming " 2nd Amendment Battle Leaders Come To The GML 2004 National Conference." They claim their Second Amendment panel will be moderated by columnist Joseph Sobran and will include Larry Pratt of GOA, Angel Shamaya of KeepandBearArms.com, And JPFO's Aaron Zelman, among others. And there are no "invited speaker/subject to change" asterisks after their names.Well, I haven't asked the rest of those folks, but I know for sure that Aaron Zelman never committed to attend the conference -- and has told We the People twice to remove his name.
 

Statement of the Facts
 

24. I posted the article after speaking with Angel Shamaya, Aaron Zelman, Larry Pratt, Peter Mancus and Joe Sobran and after sending by overnight delivery a written invitation with one of our brochures. All but Mr. Zelman unequivocally accepted our invitation to attend the convention as speakers/panelists. During my phone conversation with Mr. Zelman he initially expressed his opposition to attend due to some health problems, but also due to his fear of having the plane shot down “because some people hate me so much.”

As the conversation continued, Mr. Zelman agreed that the train would be an acceptable option. We just didn’t know if it was a day trip or an overnight trip. My distinct recollection of how we ended the conversation was that he would probably attend, but if he couldn’t maybe Richard Stevens could attend in his place. I told Mr. Zelman I would call Mr. Stevens and invite him to attend, along with Mr. Zelman. It’s possible I misconstrued the results of the conversation with Mr. Zelman, but I don’t think I did. If I did, I apologize.

   
25. The Second Amendment panel has not yet been added to the Convention Agenda on our web site. If it had been, and if Mr. Zelman had been listed, we would have immediately removed him after receiving word that he would not be a speaker. What Ms. Wolfe fails to understand is we do not and will not go back to an article we posted on an earlier date and alter it. What Ms. Wolfe should be looking at is the official convention agenda, which does have a link near the top of our home page. She should have noticed at the time of her article last Friday that Mr. Zelman’s name did not appear. She should also have noticed that the link to the official agenda has been broken for days now. We are about to post an update to the agenda, showing the addition of the 2nd Amendment panel and other structural changes, the names of all the confirmed speakers and the names of the speakers that are still undecided.
   

Claire Wolfe:

I believe in tax resistance. I believe the income tax is both theft and slavery. I believe all taxation is morally wrong and the income tax is one of the worst of the lot. I believe the beast of tyranny won't die until we starve it to death by withdrawing what it feeds on -- tax money.

26. Ms. Wolfe believes excise taxes (authorized by Article 1 of the Constitution) are morally wrong. WTP disagrees, of course. However, WTP agrees any tax on an individual’s labor is unconstitutional and morally wrong.

Claire Wolfe:

But I've mostly stayed away from the organized "tax protest" movement because 1) the arcane legal theories on which it relies completely miss the essentials of the matter, 2) the arcane legal theories on which it relies are mostly wrong, 3) the arcane legal theories on which it relies will get you in unnecessary trouble even if they're absolutely, 100 percent correct, and 4) the movement is full of scam artists and it's sometimes impossible to distinguish the sincere, correct crusader from the sleazeball.

27. Ms. Wolfe here talks about the “tax protest” movement. She does not refer to, and obviously knows nothing about, the “tax honesty movement,” of which WTP is a leader. Otherwise there are no specifics here to comment on.

Claire Wolfe:

Bob Schultz has always looked to me like one of the sincere ones. His hunger strikes and bold attempts to gain public hearings from the fedgov have seemed real, even if -- pardon the pun -- fruitless. But listing speakers who've never even given an interested sniff to your invitation is sleazy. And continuing to list them after they've said no is deceptive, dishonest, manipulative, and fraudulent.

28. When I receive notice from an invited speaker that he is not able or willing to attend, I pass the word to our IT person, whose job it is to make the change. I believe he has been fairly timely with the necessary changes.
   
29. Until a few days ago I had never heard of Claire Wolfe. Except for this article I have not read anything she has written.  I have no idea what her convictions are or whether she has any courage to advance any of her convictions.  I have no idea who she talks to or what her motive was for writing such an erroneous and mean-spirited piece as this.
   

     * = minor corrections/changes made on 1/1/04