Posted on 12/29/2015 10:43:05 AM PST by Timber Rattler
Melissa Klein was checking her bank accounts just a few weeks before Christmas when her face turned ashen. The money was gone - every single penny.
Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries had confiscated all the cash in Mrs. Klein's checking account and savings account as well as a special account set aside for their church tithe.
(snip)
"It was like my breath was taken away," Mrs. Klein told me in a telephone conversation. "I panicked. Everything was gone."
And, as I said before, Commissioner Avakian even seized money set aside for You Know Who.
"We had three accounts," she told me. "I have one account that's labeled, 'Godâs money' - our tithing. They just took it."
Attorney Tyler Smith, who represents the Kleins, tells me his clients still plan on fighting the state's decision - even if it means going to the Supreme Court.
"The least expensive option to stay in compliance with the law was to pay the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries funds that will be kept in a separate account until they prevail in their court appeal," Smith told me in a prepared statement.
He said the couple had asked the state to hold off on collection attempts - but that request was denied.
(snip)
Avakian has publicly stated his intentions to target Christian business owners who do not comply with the state's way of thinking. Here's what he told The Oregonian about Sweet Cakes By Melissa in 2013:
"The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate."
I've never met Brad Avakian but he sounds like a pretty ruthless individual - a person who is using his office to bully and intimidate Christians.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Seriously, these people acted like dimwits when confronted by utterly ruthless fascists. Thinking you are impervious, immune, and immortal is guaranteed to get your butt stomped.
The very *first* thing they should have done, even before any penalty was assessed, was to transfer ownership of their business to someone else, hopefully out of state. The same with their home and other assets.
This idiocy began in January of 2013. The better part of a year passed in which they knew the state was going to rule against them. And yet their actions were just pathetic.
The sold their building, and took their business online, working out of their house. What did they hope to accomplish?
They left assets where they could be seized, they didn’t protect themselves financially. However, once the judgment was made, they got crowd sourced funding to pay for it.
Whatever else happens to them it is their own fault. But their poor lesson should at least educate *other* people what *not* to do if they are faced with similar tyranny.
I know this sounds something like sneering at the Jews who refused to emigrate from Nazi Germany even when they had been given the choice to do so. But there is only so much sympathy you can have for such people.
God helps those who help themselves, but God also lets those who want to be martyred have their wish as well.
When we moved to MY MY wife got a tax is card for a business she never started. At tax time they told us we underpaid taxes by $2,500, which was their estimate of our owed taxes. They then sucked every dime out of our checking account, which amounted to only about a grand. We lost about $800 in the end but the lesson was learned. We keep our money and all electronic funds receival in our Seattle account and use the local one for small potatoes stuff.
If I had been advising these people, once the state “said” they owed it money I would have cleaned out every Oregon account other than for petty change stuff.
MY = KY
You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn't mean they will win.
The Religious Liberty and Charitable Donation Protection Act applies only to bankruptcy cases, and then only if the giving is less than 15% of the gross income. And Gross Income might not mean what you might think it would mean. See, for a quick overview of Sec. 548(a)(1)(B), Wadsworth v. Word of Life Christian Center (In re McGough, 2013 737 F.3d 1269 (10th Cir. 2013)
If these folks wanted to give the money to the church, the best course of action would have been to drop it in the plate in cash, not holding it in a bank account. Show me copies of the signature cards for the accounts, and I'll let you know whether they were subject to garnishment.
As to the alleged shock of the account holders - Oregon law provides that the bank give notice and an opportunity to contest a garnishment. Think it is somewhere around O.R.S. 18.785.
The founding fathers are spinning in their graves.
Normal people would simply go to one of many other bakeries. This vicious people, however, had to destroy someone and their business.
And so it begins. There are many who deny that Christians are being persecuted in this country.
Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries... Commissioner Avakian even seized money set aside for [tithing]... Avakian has publicly stated his intentions to target Christian business owners who do not comply with the state's way of thinking.
isn’t the state required to inform the kleins of intent to garnishment?
Very soon, it will be time to “rehabilitate” Fascist sexual deviants like Avakian. I look forward to it.
They could have also bought cyber-currency, like Bitcoin.
Yep.
Ask Dennis Hastert how much of a right you have to handle your own money.
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