The most gullible man alive?

[.]

AntiShyster magazine

Mad Magazine is going from monthly to quarterly. I wonder how AntiShyster [sic] is doing.

Probably not well, even though one might imagine that they could obtain an almost unlimited number of subscriptions from the TP crowd were they not so impecunious.

[SteveSy]

Sometimes I think they post the most outrageous, totally retarded, stuff just to see if you guys will re-post it here...lol

[Famspear]

Sometimes I think they post the most outrageous, totally retarded, stuff just to see if you guys will re-post it here...lol

I think you may be giving them too much credit. Many of the people I have dealt with over the years on these topics (not on that web site, but just on the internet in general) don't seem to possess enough higher cognitive function power to be able to even figure out how to do what you describe. Many of those people seem to have no idea that their ideas are so goofy. For example, what kind of person does it take to assert that the "Internal Revenue Service" is not mentioned anywhere in the Internal Revenue Code, as I once had someone seriously assert to me. (The phrase "Internal Revenue Service" is actually found at least 200 times in the Internal Revenue Code. It ain't hard to find.....) And what about people who believe that spelling something in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS somehow changes its legal implication? These are people who lack not only basic analytic skills but to some degree basic common sense.

EDIT: Another example is the practice of providing fake quotes. These people post fake quotations -- asserting that the text of a particular court decision, for example, contains a particular quotation. I believe we've seen this from Dave Champion and Bill Benson. These people seem to be aware of the internet -- after all, they have their own web sites, for heaven's sake -- yet they seem blissfully unaware that people can easily run searches to check their material. Using fake quotes is pretty stupid in the internet age.

[fortinbras]

The Adask story at the beginning of this thread must be a hoax. Court decisions holding that paper money (and even checks) count in a bank robbery go back more than a century. This guy's defense would not have lasted ten seconds.

[Prof]

The Adask story at the beginning of this thread must be a hoax. Court decisions holding that paper money (and even checks) count in a bank robbery go back more than a century. This guy's defense would not have lasted ten seconds.

Not necessarily, according to one expert at Sooey:

#3 (permalink) Today, 02:08 AM
netwrkranger
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Re: Is this true?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheKingOfKool
a man
once wrote (I believe to Alfred Adask, publisher of AntiShyster
magazine) that he had robbed a bank, was caught, and with the aid
of counsel, was prepared to argue in court that since he had taken
only Federal Reserve Notes, he had taken nothing of “value” and
therefore could not be guilty of the criminal code section he was
accused of violating. Apparently the prosecutor decided to drop the
case, rather than have his argument go on the public record. This
was probably more than 10 years ago.

Can you find a court case identifier (number, court, etc.) for it?

Not that that is definitive. Someone could just as easily remove a record from a system so that it doesn't show

[The Observer]

Many of those people seem to have no idea that their ideas are so goofy.

Like the people who think that the 16th amendment doesn't actually mean that Congress has the right to tax the incomes of everyone, just licensed professions?

[SteveSy]

Many of those people seem to have no idea that their ideas are so goofy.

Like the people who think that the 16th amendment doesn't actually mean that Congress has the right to tax the incomes of everyone, just licensed professions?

Lol...

I think saying you can rob a bank without punishment because FRN's have "no value" is a little more far fetched. What you're talking about above has at least some foundation due to all the Supreme Court cases that talk about things being identified as a privilege and thus taxable. In fact every single State, that I've seen, specifically states its the privilege that's being taxed when talking about an income tax. You can argue the 16th changed all that for the federallies, but that in itself is arguable. The argument being that the 16th was specifically created for one purpose and that was to insure the Supreme Court could not reason the way it did as it related to income generated by a corporation from a particular source that was well known to fall under the direct tax clause, which it was. Anyway, this is old hat and has been argued here a zillion times....no need to derail the thread.

[Judge Roy Bean]

I would invite anyone who believes that myth to try it and see what happens. All those prosecutors are just a bunch of ****ies; if you really know how, you can easily scare them off with your sure-fire legal acumen.

Ignoring, of course the fact that even if you walk/run out with a bag of cut up newspaper, you still committed bank robbery when you confronted the employee and demanded something that didn't belong to you. And if you were doubly stupid and used a firearm, well there's another charge or possibly more.

The same goofy logic revolves around many of the debt elimination scams - hey, there wasn't any real money lent so you really don't have a debt, so it's OK to commit fraud along the way.

My suggestion is you first study up on what prison life and supervision is like. I have a sense a lot of these bozos have watched the wrong TV shows.

[Famspear]

Many of those people seem to have no idea that their ideas are so goofy.

Like the people who think that the 16th amendment doesn't actually mean that Congress has the right to tax the incomes of everyone, just licensed professions?

Lol...

I think saying you can rob a bank without punishment because FRN's have "no value" is a little more far fetched. What you're talking about above has at least some foundation due to all the Supreme Court cases that talk about things being identified as a privilege and thus taxable. . . .

I agree with you Steve, but only in the sense that at least there is actually a physically printed word in the text of a case somewhere that these people read (such as "excise" or "privilege"); at least it's not completely made up.

But in a larger sense, that problem also illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of those people. Some legal logicians refer to this fallacy as whole word equivocation -- taking words out of context, essentially, and falsely arguing that because "excise" means this over here in Case A it must also mean the same thing over there in Case B, etc., etc. How did these people make it past the sixth grade operating at that level of "reasoning"? (Oops, don't get me started about The Educational System; I don't want to hijack the thread, either.)

And it's not just the knuckle-draggers at places like "sooey" that engage in this kind of "goofy-ness."

The so-called "gurus" make the most fundamental errors as well. For example, Peter E. Hendrickson, Robert Schulz and Dave Champion have cited Coppage v. Kansas for the "wages are not taxable" argument with respect to the following quote from the text of the case:

Included in the right of personal liberty and the right of private property-partaking of the nature of each- is the right to make contracts for the acquisition of property. Chief among such contracts is that of personal employment, by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property.

Yet the Court in that case never ruled that an income tax cannot be imposed on contracts of personal employment, etc., etc. Coppage was a criminal case involving a defendant convicted, under a Kansas statute, of firing an employee for refusing to resign as a member of a labor union. As I have noted elsewhere, no issues of taxation of any kind were presented to or decided by the Supreme Court in this case. Indeed, the word "tax" is not even found in the text of the Court's decision. The Coppage case is cited by these loons over and over and over and over and over.

Another is the famous Merchants' Loan argument (Irwin Schiff and many other crooks have cited this one) where the crooks argue that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in that case stands for the proposition that "income" somehow means only "corporate profits" or "corporate gain" -- ignoring the points (1) that the income ruled by the United States Supreme Court to be taxable in that very case was NOT corporate profit, (2) that the taxpayer was a decedent's estate, not a corporation, (3) that a decedent's estate cannot have "corporate profit," and (4) that the phrases "corporate profit" and "corporate gain" aren't even mentioned in the text.

I could never have gotten away with this kind of tactic in grade school. I mean, can you imagine? I had an eighth grade teacher English teacher who would have humiliated me for trying something like that. It would never have even occurred to me in grade school to be that intellectually dishonest.

[Famspear]

I have pondered the "gullibility" aspect of all this. It is ironic that the same people who profess to be so aware and suspecting of any governmental corruption will so easily swallow the mountains of crap generated by someone with absolutely no demonstrable ability except verbosity -- like Peter Hendrickson or Irwin Schiff. The knuckle-draggers spend what appear to be interminable hours poring over the Internal Revenue Manual and other internal IRS documents, or the f*****g Revenue Act of 1862 or whatever, and they strain impotently to try to twist the language in court cases. When presented with the overwhelming law that negates the validity of their scams, they seem to have no mental qualms about rejecting the real law, yet they are gullible enough to believe virtually anything that ex-cons like Hendrickson and Schiff write. I mean, here's a guy -- Hendrickson -- who states:

Any and all notions concerning the nature of the "income" tax-- how it is applied, why it can be thus applied, how it interfaces with the legal system and so forth-- which are not taught in CtC or on this site (exclusive of forum posts, of course) are just inherently wrong or are entirely irrelevant to the tax. They are raised or promoted either in ignorance or for ill purposes.

He has also stated that he considers his own publication, Cracking the Code, to be:

. . . the most comprehensive and sophisticated research and analysis of the common, Constitutional, statutory and "case" law related to the American tax system in general and the "income" tax in particular ever conducted.

This is a guy with a previous tax conviction, who served time in prison for that. This is a guy who later lost his own civil tax case involving the government's claim against him for an erroneous tax refund he received using his own "Cracking the Code" theory. This is a guy who, as far as I can tell from his web site, does not even claim to ever have spent a day in an accounting course or a law course. He also claims no legal or accounting credential whatsoever from any recognized authority. Yet he claims to have uncovered The Truth about the Internal Revenue Code -- a set of statutes so extensive that the Code runs over 5,400 pages, even where printed in small type (not counting pages of annotations, etc.) and contains mind-numbing complexity, including (at least in the past) at least one sentence of over 400 words. He claims to know The Truth about this Code without any formal training. Lawyers, certified public accountants and others -- with years of training and exposure to contextually relevant experiences that Hendrickson cannot possibly have -- spend even more and more years after the date of licensure, studying this monstrosity known as the Internal Revenue Code, and 99.99999999% of all the lawyers, CPAs, judges, etc., would conclude that Hendrickson is a total idiot when it comes to his conclusions about the Code. And yet his gullible followers seem to be almost completely fooled by his verbosity (which verbosity, I might add, is impressive). Hendrickson's Heroes actually claim to "believe" (at least on some level) that this ex-con has discovered The Truth About The Tax Law.

The gullibility of these people is astonishing.

[Prof]

And, having lived and paid taxes in four "states" where state income taxation is used, including MISS, MA, NC and SC, I can state emphatically that none tie the imposition of an income tax to any previlege or excise. I also do my son's Cal. state income tax; that tax is not imposed on any privilege or excise. That makes a total of five states, Steviepoo. Finally, DC, where I lived and paid taxes for 4 years, also imposes an income tax without reference to privilege or excise.

[Paul]

And, having lived and paid taxes in four "states" where state income taxation is used, including MISS, MA, NC and SC, I can state emphatically that none tie the imposition of an income tax to any previlege or excise.

Well, Illinois does, but the privilege it taxes is the privilege of earning or receiving income in or as a resident of Illinois.

The tax was enacted under the 1870 constitution, under which it had to be a privilege tax to be authorized. It was immediately challenged on the ground that earning or receiving income was not a "privilege," and very quickly upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court on the grounds that earning or receiving income is a taxable privilege.

[SteveSy]

And, having lived and paid taxes in four "states" where state income taxation is used, including MISS, MA, NC and SC, I can state emphatically that none tie the imposition of an income tax to any previlege or excise.

MISS: "There is hereby levied a statewide privilege tax upon every person, firm, corporation, or association, other than banks, state or national, doing business of lending money secured by mortgages, trust receipts, retained-title or purchase contracts, on motor vehicles, furniture, refrigerators containing mechanical freezing units operated by gas or electricity, or radios or any other tangible personal property, located in the State of Mississippi, or doing a business of purchasing"...blah, blah

From my understanding Mississippi places a tax on every person or firm for the privilege of doing business there.

NC: "The tax imposed in this section shall not be less than thirty‑five dollars ($35.00) and shall be for the privilege of carrying on, doing business, and/or the continuance of articles of incorporation or domestication of each corporation in this State."

I'm not going to look them all up....if privileges didn't matter none of these laws would use the word. I'm sure if you took the time you would find several State cases in all of those you listed that identify a privilege that they're taxing, even if they ridiculously claim being domiciled or simply receiving an income there is the privilege. It's just silly, more like stupid, to claim simply receiving an income is a privilege. Does anyone honestly believe a State could make it illegal to earn an income without violating the U.S. Constitution?

[SteveSy]

SteveSy, you do realize that a state and the Federal government could use COMPLETELY different definition for what constitutes income and the state's definition would not violate the US Constitution including the 16th Amendment.

Think about it slowly and carefully and see if you can figure out where your "logic" went straight into the commode. Then get back to us.

Yes I realize they can use different definitions. I'm not talking about what IS income by definition anyway. I assume you're trying to say it doesn't matter what a State has said about local taxation, its irrelevant to constitutional federal taxation. This is true. However, the United States was founded upon the same common principles as those found in the States, in fact the fundamental legal principles incorporated in to the Constitution were derived from them. Taxing the privilege to do something has been around much longer than the Constitution and it is and always has been an extremely common practice. You can go through tons of older Supreme Court cases, which all the new one's are founded upon, and privileges are mentioned numerous times. Why? For what purpose if they aren't needed to tax with an excise or duty?

Like I said why get this started? We've argued this a zillion times. You think I'm wrong, I think I'm right. You can't explain why they resort to identifying privileges or even mention them except to claim they're old cases so no sense in reading them, and/or the 16th makes the argument about privileges moot.

All I was saying when all this started was that it's not as stupid as saying you can legally rob a bank because Federal Reserve notes have no value.

[The Observer]

All I was saying when all this started was that it's not as stupid as saying you can legally rob a bank because Federal Reserve notes have no value.

But you are saying that the 16th amendment argument regarding licensed/privileged professions is somewhat stupid. I'll ask the Quatloosian Court to take due note of that admission.

[SteveSy]

All I was saying when all this started was that it's not as stupid as saying you can legally rob a bank because Federal Reserve notes have no value.

But you are saying that the 16th amendment argument regarding licensed/privileged professions is somewhat stupid. I'll ask the Quatloosian Court to take due note of that admission.

lol, no that's not what I'm saying. You can make fun of me much like the followers of the Catholic church made fun of Galileo. Jeez everyone knew the Earth was the center of the universe, I mean come on, even all people who were the legal authority on the matter knew, Galileo's position was clearly frivolous. But that was not quite as bad as say a man claiming his dog was Jesus incarnate.

btw, I don't believe the 16th has anything to do with licensed/privileged professions, but I know what you're getting at.

[Demosthenes]

Any chance you'll ever pick up a history book and read about why Galileo was prosecuted?

Hint: When his guy was in power, Galileo went to considerable effort to humiliate his enemies. Payback's a bitch.

[Prof]

And, having lived and paid taxes in four "states" where state income taxation is used, including MISS, MA, NC and SC, I can state emphatically that none tie the imposition of an income tax to any previlege or excise.

MISS: "There is hereby levied a statewide privilege tax upon every person, firm, corporation, or association, other than banks, state or national, doing business of lending money secured by mortgages, trust receipts, retained-title or purchase contracts, on motor vehicles, furniture, refrigerators containing mechanical freezing units operated by gas or electricity, or radios or any other tangible personal property, located in the State of Mississippi, or doing a business of purchasing"...blah, blah

From my understanding Mississippi places a tax on every person or firm for the privilege of doing business there.

NC: "The tax imposed in this section shall not be less than thirty‑five dollars ($35.00) and shall be for the privilege of carrying on, doing business, and/or the continuance of articles of incorporation or domestication of each corporation in this State."

I'm not going to look them all up....if privileges didn't matter none of these laws would use the word. I'm sure if you took the time you would find several State cases in all of those you listed that identify a privilege that they're taxing, even if they ridiculously claim being domiciled or simply receiving an income there is the privilege. It's just silly, more like stupid, to claim simply receiving an income is a privilege. Does anyone honestly believe a State could make it illegal to earn an income without violating the U.S. Constitution?

NC: Taxed for the privilege of working as a butcher for my Dad and in the UNC library. Mississippi: Taxed for the privilege of being an employee of the State of Mississippi. I was not in any business in either state but was a either a wage-earner or a full-time graduate student in NC and a law professor (not licensed to practice law) in Mississippi. When I later lived in NC, I was taxed by SC (as I had been before and would be thereafter) for being an employee of private businesses or and employee of USC/Clemson or an employee of the United States Army. Nice try Steviepoo, but there was not any license of privilege associated with my employment in either of those three states (nor in Mass, for that matter, where my wife's income as an advertising artist was also taxed-- I was a grad. student on the GI Bill at HLS at that time).

Your selective reading of statutes is, at best, silly.

[SteveSy]

NC: Taxed for the privilege of working as a butcher for my Dad and in the UNC library. Mississippi: Taxed for the privilege of being an employee of the State of Mississippi. I was not in any business in either state but was a either a wage-earner or a full-time graduate student in NC and a law professor (not licensed to practice law) in Mississippi. When I later lived in NC, I was taxed by SC (as I had been before and would be thereafter) for being an employee of private businesses or and employee of USC/Clemson or an employee of the United States Army. Nice try Steviepoo, but there was not any license of privilege associated with my employment in either of those three states (nor in Mass, for that matter, where my wife's income as an advertising artist was also taxed-- I was a grad. student on the GI Bill at HLS at that time).

Your selective reading of statutes is, at best, silly.

Like I said I'm not going to take the time to look all of them up. The court in any of those states could have simply reasoned that living or earning an income within the State was the privilege and thus taxable as absurd as that is. This is how it is in Illinois.

Sec 201
(a) In general. A tax measured by net income is hereby imposed on every individual, corporation, trust and estate for each taxable year ending after July 31, 1969 on the privilege of earning or receiving income in or as a resident of this State. Such tax shall be in addition to all other occupation or privilege taxes imposed by this State or by any municipal corporation or political subdivision thereof.

No selective reading...I might clarify that if the State constitution has no defined limitation on direct taxes, such as a tax on personal property, then its likely they may not have associated the tax with privileges as those are strictly tied to an indirect type of tax.

[Paul]

Sorry, stevesy, but like I said, the 1870 constitution of Illinois allowed only limited types of taxation, one of which was privilege taxes. The Illinois Income Tax Act was enacted under that constitution as a tax on the privilege of earning or receiving income, was challenged on the ground that that is not a taxable privilege, and was upheld by the IL Supreme Court on the ground that it is.

And the Galileo comparison is moronic BS. The law is not some body of principles discoverable by experimentation and observation. It is a creation of the lawmaking bodies, which in our system includes the courts who declare what the constitution and statutes mean. When you claim that all the courts are wrong because you read the constitution or statutes differently, it is you who are doing the equivalent of saying, "Galileo, we don't care what you can see in your telescope -- we know what the Bible and the ancient philosophers said about the cosmos."