Waiting for the Spark...

From The Daily Reckoning...

The great Yellowstone fire of 1988 awoke
the rangers to what "zero tolerance" had wrought. A small,
nondescript fire in June of that year, started by a
lightning bolt from a summer thunderstorm, inexplicably
grew to become a raging inferno. The destruction was
multiple orders of magnitude worse than anything ever seen
before. Prior to that year, the worst park fire on record
had consumed a mere 25,000 acres in 1886. This time, more
than 1.5 million acres burned.

The Forest Service has learned from the error of its ways,
and is now working feverishly to correct the problem.
Vigorous policies of deadwood culling, underbrush clearing
and 'controlled burns' are now under way. Yet the task is
akin to sweeping the Augean stables, and rangers admit
their efforts may prove too little, too late. The Forest
Service website offers this grim assessment:

"Today's forests, dense with green vegetation, may seem to
be beautiful, but in fact are deadly. Many forests are
choked with brush and dead trees that make catastrophic
fires a certainty."

What does this have to do with markets and finance, the
normal purview of this space? As it turns out, plenty.
There is another long-standing agency, established 1913,
that is dangerously addicted to "zero tolerance." It is
frighteningly easy to recast the rangers' warning in a
manner fit for the Federal Reserve:

Today's economy, flush with green liquidity, may seem to be
beautiful, but in fact is deadly. Many consumers / banks /
hedge funds are choked with leverage and debt burdens that
make catastrophic downturn a certainty.

As noted earlier, occasional low-intensity fires are Mother
Nature's cleansing agent—her way of maintaining a healthy
forest ecosystem. In an unmanipulated business cycle, the
same can be said of low-intensity recessions. A modest
downturn induces belt-tightening without stirring up panic.
Overextended consumers and businesses rein in their horns;
credit lines are reduced, optimism is scaled back, and
sobriety returns to the fore. A few businesses fail at the
margins, but the healthy enterprises survive. Risk is
reduced, capital is recycled, and new growth takes place.

Unfortunately, Greenspan has emulated the bad old ways of
the Forest Service prior to their Yellowstone awakening.
The Fed's zealous suppression of downturns over the years
has created a build-up of potentially catastrophic
proportions. Thanks to massive liquidity stimulus, business
operations that should have folded linger on. Credit lines
that should have been cut back are extended. Speculators
who should have tempered their bets are encouraged to
become more aggressive. Excessive reliance on easy credit
is mistaken for economic strength, and even bigger bets are
made.

More here...

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."
-- William Somerset Maughan, 1941

A Funny Thing Happened...

...during the week of the Larken Rose trial. The statists and the Tax Honesty Movement held their breath. Really! I usually get 100-120 messages a day from various tax forums. It went down to about 20 a day for the entire week. And when the week was through and the verdict announced, the tax fraudsters, like those over at Quatloos, were the same miserable miscreants that they were before the trial started and the Tax Honesty Movement gained strength and resolve from the experience.

Larken Rose is a hero, albeit an unlikely one. But aren't those the best kind? The stuff of legend? Don't take my word for it. Go to Doug Kenline's blog and see some of the comments people have made. Then go to the Trial Logs blog and read the comments there. What you will find are sentiments of undying support for Larken and Tessa.

Mixed in you will find snide little reminders of the lowlifes of humanity. Most of them are from tax industry specialists (yes, people who make money off of taxes; go figure) over at Quatloos ( I won't provide link, go look it up). These people have nothing better to say than personal attacks on Larken and people they disagree with in general. No comment on how professional or expert the prosecutor was (he wasn't). No word of the great fairness provided by the judge (he didn't). Just sick jokes about prison sex and incredible cries for us to just go along to get along. Pitiful.

But all of their taunts ring hollow, like a schoolyard bully trying to recover from getting popped in the mouth by one of his victims. He hadn't expected it and now he is not so sure of himself. You will find no intellectual debate on the merits of the case or the arguments made in court, from these people. You will only find the repeating mantra of "Do it because we say to do it." They say Tax Protestors are nuts, forgetting the fact that all of the founding fathers were Tax Protestors. If the choice is to be compared with people like those on Quatloos or the people who brought forth a grand experiment in freedom, I'll take the later, thank your very much.

Larken is home now. He sent the following email out...

As I'm sure most of you have heard by now, I was convicted on Friday of
five misdemeanor counts of "willful failure to file." I'm at home, with a
new federally-funded piece of fashionable jewelry (ankle bracelet).
Sentencing happens November 15.

I'm obviously not happy about being convicted, but I am more upset at the
missed opportunity. As I've said all along, my goal was not to avoid
trouble (obviously), but to expose what I believe is a monumental fraud.
Becaue of that, I had to do things the way I did (pro se, not looking for
procedural solutions, etc.), which put me at an even greater disadvantage.
An acquittal would have gotten public attention which would have helped a
lot. But it wasn't to be.

I'm sure a bunch of people who were there (and we packed the room) will be
giving their accounts of what occurred at the trial. Right now, as you
can probably imagine, I have a lot of things to take care of, so I'll cut
this message short. For now I'll just add this: I'm proud that I told the
truth, and stood up against a fraud. And of course, I'm upset that this
time around, doing the right thing didn't seem to accomplish much. But
hey, no one said resisting tyranny was easy.

Eventually I believe the audio recording of the entire trial will be
available. In my closing I explained how this trial was simply a really
big "baseball bat" designed to intimidate me into LYING about my beliefs
(i.e. "confessing" I owe the tax, when I know that I don't). I find it
sad that our "public servants" seem to think "government-via-baseball-bat"
is perfectly legitimate. Apparently the jury thought so too.

Sincerely,


Larken Rose
larken@taxableincome.net
http://www.861.info
http://www.theft-by-deception.com

What a guy!!! What a hero!!! And don't you believe this is over either...


Ken Evans, who attended the trial and provided comment at Trial Logs, sent out the following press release today...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information contact:

Ken Evans
873 East Baltimore Pike #464

Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

610-636-4407
kevans@dca.net
www.reasons2vote.com


_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________

For release: August 13, 2005
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________


The Truth About The Trial of Larken Rose


_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________


The trial of Larken Rose concluded on August 12, 2005 and its resulting guilty verdict prove one thing very clearly … the depths to which some individuals in our own government have sunk and the lengths to which those individuals will go to keep Americans from learning the truth about the misapplication of the federal income tax code.



Consider the following:



During a pre-trial hearing dealing with what evidence could be admitted at trial, presiding Judge Michael Baylson made clear that Mr. Rose’s political views are irrelevant and not to be discussed. Yet, what did lead prosecuting attorney, Floyd Miller, repeat throughout the trial and focus on during his final statement? He emphasized nothing greater than Mr. Rose’s political views.



The judge also made an interesting ‘about face’ from the beginning to the end of the trial. On the first day of proceedings, while explaining to the jury that they should not read anything about the case outside the courtroom, Judge Baylson stated, “It’s unlikely that you’ll hear anything about this trial on the TV or in the news.” However, during his concluding statement while thanking the jury he stated, with emphasis, “This was a very important case for the government.” He then paused and almost as an afterthought added, “and also for Mr. Rose.”



If the Judge knew that this case was of massive importance to the government, why would he assume at the outset that it wouldn’t be widely reported by the TV or news? And interesting contradiction, don't you think?



Even more disturbing was the fact that prior to the defendant and the public being informed of the verdict, a New York Times reporter, David Cay Johnson, long known to misrepresent the underlying facts of this issue, was personally escorted by the Courtroom Deputy to do a private interview with the two alternate jurors behind the locked doors of the courtroom.



How was this special treatment obtained by Mr. Johnson, who was not observed at the trial prior to its final day? What was discussed during this restricted rendezvous? No mention of this meeting occurs in Mr. Johnson’s article which was published in today’s New York Times.



Why also, after permitting the New York Times reporter to do a private interview, did the judge attempt to prohibit anyone else from speaking with the jurors by sealing the courtroom for several minutes after the verdict, effectively holding the entire remaining gallery captive while the jury was allowed to scurry out of the building?



Those that attended the trial know that several IRS agents attempted to portray the proper application of Section 861 on the witness stand as nothing more than a section of law by which ‘wealthy individuals’ who have both foreign and domestic income avoid double taxation. In spite of the fact that the title of Section 861 is "Income from Sources Within the United States." In contrast, the New York Times article published today by Mr. Johnson claims the exact opposite. Mr. Johnson claims that Section 861 itself shows the wages of the average American to be taxable. It is impossible for both of these claims to be correct and further demonstrates the deliberate obfuscation surrounding the proper application of this section of law.



The prosecution's witnesses made other deliberate misrepresentations during the trial. The worst of which was the claim that every court that has examined the issue of the proper application of Section 861 of the Internal Revenue Code has found claims related to its application to be frivolous. This was repeated by the judge himself. The opposing reality is that there has not yet been one single federal court ruling to correctly characterize the position taken by Mr. Rose. In previous cases, either the legal argument was incorrectly presented, deliberately mischaracterized by the government, or utterly ignored by the courts.



The most blatant case of court's refusing to address the issue when properly presented is the refund lawsuit brought by the author of this article. In 2003, a refund lawsuit was brought wherein the proper application of Section 861 was the primary issue of contention. Not only did the court refuse to address it, but the Department of Justice, representing the government, disobeyed a direct instruction from the court to answer Interrogatories that would have gotten to the very heart of the matter. Even more unsettling is that a Motion to Compel answers to those Interrogatories was filed but never showed up on the court docket. It mysteriously disappeared from existence!



If ever there were an opportunity for the federal judiciary or the Department of Justice to demonstrate any alleged fallacy of The 861 Evidence, this was it. But attorneys for the Department of Justice along with a federal judge himself simply could not do so.



True Americans recognize the tribute due Mr. Rose, who, like John Hancock before him pledged his life, his fortune and his sacred honor in defiance of tyranny and deliberately drew the ire of the ‘powers that be’ so that all could be free. While the document to which John Hancock boldly signed his name is revered throughout America, Mr. Rose's "Declaration," namely his "Please Prosecute Me" challenge, was disallowed into evidence as hearsay. It is a bitter irony, that Mr. Rose has been persecuted and unjustly convicted for trying to defend the rights of the very jurors who decided his case.


The unfortunate and incorrect verdict in this case, while devastating to the personal life of Mr. Rose, will do nothing to change the underlying truth that the Internal Revenue Code and its Regulations hold the disturbing truth of the greatest financial fraud in history. These are discussed in detail at www.861.info and www.theft-by-deception.com .

So a Funny thing happend on the way to tyranny,... it seems that there are a few more stones in the road than the tyrants had thought. And some of them are mighty big stones, indeed.


"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."
-- James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

Not Guilty!!!

That is what the verdict should have been today. Larken Rose was convicted of five counts of "Willful Failure to File". He was not allowed to show the law. The prosecutor declared the Internal Revenue Manual excerpts to be hearsay, and the judge[sic] backed him up. The judge[sic] made error after error concerning the 16th Amendment and the supreme court cases that decided what it meant, then instructed the jury that he was the giver of the law and that his word was final (a blatant and treasonous violation of his oath of office).

I should not have been surprised, but I was. I had been following the case through the efforts of attending bloggers from Doug Kenline and the Trial Logs. These people need to be congratulated for their coverage and comentary on the trial.

The case against Larken was so weak that it was suggested he ask for a summary judgement after the prosecution rested. You see, they failed to make their case. They failed to prove a liabilty on Larken to file and they failed to prove that he knew of this liabilty. Even though I have zero faith in the rule of law anymore, the trial was going in Larken's favor.

But what do you get when you seat a jury from a pool out of the Federal Witness Protection Program, in a court appointed by the same government that has been commiting fraud and treason on the people for over a century, with a prosecutor and a judge[sic] paid for by that same goverment?

What you don't get is the truth.

I hope a lot of people have learned something from this. You cannot solve the problems of tyranical government through that same government's courts. And when the rule of law breaks down, you have to fall back to moral law.


"The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law."
~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819.

Our Fly on the Wall...

...at the Larken Rose Trial...actually... I think he has a nice cushy seat... is Scoop Kenline!!! Make sure to check out his blog for the latest news, updates and photos of this trial.

Also check out Trial Logs for additional information and updates.

Thanks to both for all of their efforts.


"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. "
-- Will Rogers

Additional Updates...

...are available at Trial Logs....

Thanks to all the folks over there for helping us out on the reporting of the Larken Rose trial.

And don't forget to check out Doug Kenline's blog, too, for updates and photos.


In a famous incident in 1854, President Franklin Pierce was pilloried for vetoing an extremely popular bill intended to help mentally ill. The act was championed by the renowned 19th century social reformer Dorothea Dix. In the face of heavy criticism, Pierce countered: "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for the public charity." To approve such spending, argued Pierce, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

Doug Kenline...

...will be covering the Larkin Rose trial this week. Go to his blog and checkout the audioblogs and photoblogs (on the right).

A big Thank You to Doug and to Robert Ingle as well.

Thanks guys. We appreciate it very much.

UPDATE!!! RW Moore is also attending the trial with Doug and Robert.


"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816