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10 January 2004
Mr. Paul K. Harral
VP/Editorial Director
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
400 West 7th
Fort Worth, Texas 76102
Dear Mr. Harral:
I have followed your newspaper's online reports of the trial in your
community of Dick Simkanin and I commend Max Baker for his straightforward
and presumably accurate reporting of the events.
However, as a fellow journalist and editor I am very disappointed by the
sarcastic tenor of Dave Lieber's opinion column, "Bedford anti-tax advocate
is movement's new hero" (January 9, 2004), not to mention the lamentable
dearth of objectivity.
Mr. Lieber is certainly entitled to his opinion, a right he enjoys thanks to
the Constitution of the United States of America and its First Amendment. I
am sure he would scream loudly and long, and justly so, should the
government attempt to deny him the right of free speech. But what I cannot
understand is why he has chosen to exercise his right so prejudicially. I
refer, of course, to Mr. Lieber's incomprehensible silence while a clearly
biased federal judge allows the federal government to strip a respected
citizen of your State of his rights and liberty.
While I recognize that opinions are not subject to the same standards as
news stories, nevertheless, Mr. Lieber is entrusted by your paper with
frequent and regular opportunities to shape the opinions of the
Star-Telegram's readers and patrons. Journalistic integrity demands that
incumbent upon that privilege is a responsibility for Mr. Lieber to make
sure he has his facts straight. But, at least in the column in question, he
has clearly not done his homework about the facts disputed in the Simkanin
trial. He relies instead on insinuation and clever remarks and his skill as
a writer to dismiss Mr. Simkanin and his defenders as crackpots and
malcontents.
It seems, too, that Mr. Lieber has forgotten -- or perhaps never knew --
that the people are the true sovereigns in this nation, that all power
devolves from them to the States and then from the States to the United
States government. I refer him to Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419
(1793), widely regarded as one of the first great tests of the Supreme
Court's jurisprudence, wherein the panel flatly rules and declares, "[T]he
sovereignty of the nation is in the people of the nation, and the residuary
sovereignty of each State in the people of each State…"
Conversely, Mr. Lieber's inflammatory comment about "federal income-tax
haters, some of whom don't recognize the authority of the United States
government" leads us to believe that in fact he considers the federal
government to be our true sovereign. It is apparent by this remark and
others that Mr. Lieber feels the government is infallible, that it can do no
wrong and that its decisions and actions are always just and correct.
This raises the question: Who is paying Mr. Lieber's salary?
Is it the Star-Telegram?
Or is it the federal government?
I have studied tax law for more than three years and find nothing in the
United States Code that makes me or you liable to pay a tax on wages earned
by exercising our unalienable right of common occupation. I have done this
on my own, quite apart from any group which might be labeled a 'tax protest'
or 'tax honesty' group. As part of my research I have written the IRS
repeatedly, just as Dick Simkanin did, asking them to point out for me the
specific laws and regulations that supposedly require me to pay such taxes.
After all, they should know; should they not? Nevertheless, after three
years, I have received not one responsive answer.
In point of fact, over the last few years, thousands of citizens have
written to the IRS asking the same questions: What law requires me, as a
citizen of the United States of America, to pay a tax on my personal
earnings from domestic sources or to file a return?
To my knowledge, not one of those citizens has received a responsive answer.
Why not? If such a law exists, why shouldn't the IRS simply point it out and
end the discussion?
Here in Tennessee, there have been two recent trials in U. S. District
Courts of individuals who refused to file returns and who did not pay taxes
on substantial earnings. They are United States v. Lloyd R. Long
(1993) and United States v. Vernice Kuglin (2003). Long was charged
with multiple felony counts of Willful Failure to File. Kuglin was charged
with multiple felony counts of both Willful Failure to File and Income Tax
Evasion -- as a pilot for Federal Express, she had lucrative earnings of
nearly $1 million over a six-year period and did not pay taxes on one thin
dime. In both cases, the defendants were able to show they had written
several letters each to the IRS asking the Service to specify the laws that
supposedly made them liable to file returns and pay 'income taxes.' The
evidence proved the IRS was not responsive to either defendant, and after
lengthy deliberations their juries acquitted them on all counts.
The complete, official transcripts of both Long and Kuglin are
available online, free of charge. If you take the time and trouble to read
them, you will find, incredibly, that during the course of both trials, the
government failed to produce into evidence the law that it claims makes
every citizen liable to file a return and pay a tax on personal earnings. It
did not even attempt to do so.
Again, an intellectually honest individual must ask, why not?
A win by the government in either case would have settled the issue once
and for all, and after Long one would think they surely would have
been prepared for Kuglin. All that would have been required to
convict in either case was to cite the controlling law, and yet twice the
government failed to support its position with that critical evidence. As
Franklin Roosevelt once observed, nothing that happens in politics is
accidental, so one must presume that the government's failure to cite the
law in either of these two highly political cases was no accident.
I have met Lloyd Long in person and I can tell you that to this day he does
not file and that he does not pay taxes on his personal earnings. If the law
requires him to do otherwise, why has the IRS not continued to prosecute him
for these supposed offenses and forced him to comply? Lloyd is not hiding
out; he owns a successful small business and his phone number is listed.
The answer and the truth is simple and inescapable, yet most people --
including Mr. Lieber -- cannot grasp it: under Title 26 of the United States
Code only a relative handful of people are "made liable" to pay income tax
on their personal earnings. These people do not include citizens of the
United States of America whose earnings are primarily from domestic sources.
This is not mere opinion; this is documentable fact. But don't take my word
for it; the law is available for anyone with the intelligence and the
inclination to study and learn the truth for themselves. It's too bad that
group didn't include Mr. Lieber and, by association, the Star-Telegram.
Here, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the government is
correct when it asserts there is nothing unconstitutional about Title 26,
commonly known as the Internal Revenue Code, and that any argument to the
contrary is frivolous. What the government is not saying, however, is that
the Code is exceedingly difficult to comprehend, almost always misapplied
and that the public is laboring under a misconception about just who is and
who is not "made liable" by it. None of this is accidental and it is
exceedingly naive to believe otherwise. Remember, the IRS itself
acknowledges that it relies on the "voluntary compliance" of taxpayers and
so, by happy coincidence, it cannot be held accountable if one mistakenly
believes he is a taxpayer and 'volunteers' to pay. Furthermore, thanks to
our representatives' and our governments' lust for money and power, the IRS
has no incentive and no mandate to educate the people as to the true and
correct application of the tax laws.
So, then, since the Internal Revenue Code is indeed constitutional, exactly
who are the people who are "made liable" to pay 'income taxes'? I'll
give you a hint: GW wants to grant amnesty to about 10 million of them.
The issues raised by so-called 'tax protestors' or 'tax honesty' supporters
have little or nothing to do with finances. Simkanin is an excellent example
of this. A man who had a successful business and once led a reasonably
affluent lifestyle, he has essentially thrown it all away in the name of
truth and freedom. Freedom is all Dick Simkanin wanted but now, obviously,
it will be unjustly denied him. There is some consolation, though; by taking
a stand for his principles, the name Simkanin takes its rightful position
alongside the names of other great American tax protesters, like Adams,
Hancock, Hale, Henry, Jefferson and Washington.
In closing, I'd like to lay down two challenges to the Star-Telegram,
or for that matter any citizen who may read this letter:
First, if you can show me in Title 26 of the United States Code the law that
requires me to pay a tax on my personal earnings, I will get on a Southwest
smoker to Fort Worth and buy you and your spouse the best steak dinner in
town.
Second, write the IRS and ask them the same question. If you get a
responsive answer -- one that identifies the law in question by title,
chapter and part of the Code -- then that steak dinner is also yours.
I was born in Texas, and I love it and Fort Worth and steak, too. But I'm
confident I won't be enjoying the pleasures of any one of them as a result
of having just thrown down those two gauntlets.
Now more than ever our rights and our freedom are in grave peril. This
threat is not and never was posed by al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein -- or any
other external power, for that matter. No, the principle threat to the
freedom of Americans is contained solely within the borders of the District
of Columbia, and the seat of its power is found in Washington at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. It is our duty as patriots to protect our nation from
the threat which resides there.
Newspapers like the Star-Telegram are America's last line of peaceful
defense against federal tyranny. Let us hope and fervently pray they will
have the courage to avoid the easy temptation of parroting the government
line and return instead to the fine tradition of investigative journalism
that is truly the sword the First Amendment protects our right to wield.
There can be no more important issue with which to begin than this one, and
I hope you will accept the both the challenge and the responsibility.
With sincere regards,
Anthony E. Smith
Editor-in-Chief
Private Air Magazine
6135 Airways Boulevard
Suite One Thousand
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37421
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Tel: 423.485.4738
Fax: 423.899.6393
Cell: 423.718.3843
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