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David Cay Johnston on Joe Stack & Vernon Hunter

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:05 pm
by Famspear
David Cay Johnston has an article on Joe Stack, Vernon Hunter, section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 as amended by section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and other things.

The article is called "Tax Favors, IBM, and the murder of Vernon Hunter" (March 3, 2010).

An excerpt (I assert the Fair Use doctrine):
Vernon Hunter served two tours of duty in Vietnam, raised a solid family, and, according to family and coworkers, had he not been killed when a tax denier flew his plane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas, the 68-year-old collections manager would have rushed to save others without regard for his own life.

Go to the Internet, however, and the person you will see hailed as a hero by his family and a patriot by his fellow tax deniers is Joseph A. Stack III [sic; should read Andrew Joseph Stack III], who never served, who set his home ablaze, and then used his personal airplane to murder as many IRS workers as he could because of his rage against taxes generally, and in particular, a 1986 tax favor for IBM.

Stack’s daughter, on ABC, called her father a “hero,” a word she later took back. But she made clear that she, too, is angry at the American tax system, although she inexplicably now lives, of all places, in heavily taxed Norway.

[ . . . ]

The February 18 crash quickly faded from the news — treated as the deadly actions of a lunatic rather than what it really was: an early warning sign of deep trouble in America, a trouble rooted in Congress’s abuse of its power to tax.

[ . . . ]
Interesting read.

See:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm ... ndid=00434

Re: David Cay Johnston on Joe Stack & Vernon Hunter

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 1:38 am
by Number Six
Thanks, Famspear--David Cay Johnston is one of the most lucid writers on tax issues, good article!