Posted on 08/13/2015 5:23:45 AM PDT by Javeth
Freedom to travel is a fundamental and internationally recognized human right. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Congress ratified the UDHR on April 2, 1992. But its now having second thoughts.
The right to travel makes some politicians very nervous. Consider the issue from their viewpoint. Leaving the country makes it more difficult to detain you if the Feds suspect you of a crime, such as withdrawing lawfully earned cash from your bank account. Its also less convenient to surveil you if your political opinions dont toe the party line. And above all, its harder for Big Brother to grab your assets.
So, its hardly surprising that in May, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced legislation that would seize the passport of any US citizen with seriously delinquent tax debts. The proposal, part of an omnibus trade bill, isnt new. Indeed, this is the fourth year in a row that Hatch, or other Big Government apologists, have introduced this measure.
The proposal requires no hearing or any other due process to grab your passport. All thats needed is for the IRS to issue a Notice of Levy for any amount greater than $50,000.This is a letter informing you that the IRS thinks you owe it money.
Sure, $50,000 sounds like a lot of dough. But when it comes to tax liabilities, its practically chump change.
In June, the House of Representatives removed the passport revocation provision from the trade bill. But the measure isnt dead. The Senate version of the bill still contains this measure.
The bill is now in conference, where Senator Hatch and his cronies must convince their colleagues that revoking the passports of US citizens who might owe money to the IRS is just, equitable, and compatible with the US Constitution (not to mention the UDHR).
In case you wondered, its not just Big Government conservatives like Orrin Hatch who support this measure. Theres bipartisan support for the concept. Indeed, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced the first proposal of this type in 2012, following a 2011 General Accountability Office recommendation. Obviously, politicians from both the left and right want to restrict travel options for US citizens. That means that even if passport revocation for back taxes doesnt pass this year, the proposal will resurface.
You might wonder what the need is for this measure, since the IRS can already apply to a federal court for a legal writ called Ne Exeat Republica. In the context of unpaid tax, this writ forbids you from leaving the US until you pay up. But to invoke this measure, the IRS must first obtain a court order to ground you. Thats inconvenient, since it involves that pesky concept of due process the Feds want to avoid at all costs. Senator Hatch and his colleagues want to remove that obstacle as soon as possible.
Of course, try talking with your representation sometime without handing them a huge legal bribe bag 'o cash during the most recent election and see where that gets you.
We are about 20 years too late for a couple of thousand firing squads, but that may be just an over the top observation on my part.
At this point, I am whole heartedly ready for a collapse to happen; it seems it is the only way I will ever be free.
Not there... yet.
Melissa Gilbert will have to postpone that trip to Cancun.
They already take your passport if you fall behind in your child or spousal support.
I’m actually becoming convinced that the GOPe (especially in the Senate) has become so utterly arrogant and tyrannical that they’re actively pushing legislation to piss off basically the entire US population outside the Beltway and Wall Street, just to “show us who’s boss”, benefit their elite circles at Americans’ expense and try to drum into our heads that we no longer have a democracy, and our only choice is to bow to the serfdom the Washington elites are fully intending to impose on us. Just like the British were doing in 1774 when they followed one set of outrageous impositions with another set even more draconian, despotic and arrogant when the colonists raised even mild protests, except now even worse since they’ve co-opted the media and are using the tools of modern technology to do their bidding.
If it hadn’t been clear before, then the laughable attempt by Megyn Kelly and the Fox News stooges to railroad Trump (showing their cards as the most repulsive sycophants to the GOPe and Rupert Murdoch’s own RINO globalist agenda) was essentially the GOPe showing its hand. It was idiotic, inept and amateurish just like the ridiculous stories and propaganda coming out of Pravda and Soviet Russia, but in a way, this very ineptitude and corruption is the dictators’ way of trying to drum how powerless the people are in the face of the tyrants. Like they’re saying to us, “yeah, we’re now were incompetent idiots, but we have so much power that we’re no longer accountable to you mere rabble anymore”. That these idiots would support a bill like this, not to mention the atrocity of the TPP Obamatrade bill, right in the midst of the base’s angry rejection of the GOPe, just shows how bought out, arrogant, despotic and out of touch they’ve become.
Bill of Attainders are illegal under Section 9 U.S. Constitution.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
People in UT can be fooled over and over. But I understand he won’t put his name on the 2018 ballot for UT people to again make a fool of themselves.
Yes very true, I was pointing this out above, and since alimony and child support are often so draconian and outrageous— well beyond a person’s realistic ability to cover such costs and not adjusted even if the earner loses a job or suffers a reduction in salary due to an illness— this sort of practice in effect represents a form of modern day slavery. I’ve in fact come to sense that this is a major reason why even so many religious Americans are refusing to marry or start families anymore, the almost Soviet level impositions of American family courts and the constraints on even basic freedoms (like travel) are making marriage these days a kind of state-compelled round of Russian roulette with a nearly fully loaded cylinder! These statist practices are an absolute outrage in a country calling itself a democracy.
Hatch is so awful that he’s single-handedly ruined the affection I’d otherwise have for the state of Utah. It’s got so much natural beauty and nice people— plenty of friends from there— and yet I simply can’t understand how such an otherwise solid state would repeatedly elect a backstabbing fool like Hatch. Then again SC has Lindsey Graham, and Arizona has BOTH McCain and Flake, so that’s two other otherwise fine conservative states marred by their traitor-Senators and all they treason they keep committing.
And he has always been that way.
Congress will exempt themselves.
Thank you, bill of attainder— that’s the term I was looking for to connect up to this, couldn’t think of it. This sort of law (not to mention current policies of revoking passports for child or spousal support) loudly smack of bills of attainder, utterly unconstitutional and contrary to basic principles of liberty.
“Guilty until proven innocent.” - Orin Hatch.
Lately been wondering the same thing.
Yeah. I once lived in a country where you needed a tax clearance every time you left the country. This is what third world dictators do.
Yeah Fatca has become more or less the American equivalent of the Soviet Union’s confiscation of citizen’s assets when they were overseas (or sometimes even if they were in the country, there was always a “reason” that could be dredged up to target political enemies). Onerous, confusing, outrageously expensive regulations on assets both domestic and foreign that in many cases (as through inheritance) even the holders won’t be aware of. A perfect tool for statists to force private citizens into government-mandated indentured servitude, much like the terms on some student loans that inflate wildly to six figures through interest usury.
It’s one of the reasons the US now has a record number of people expatriating, emigrating and renouncing— with millions more relinquishing or going off the State Dept’s radar. With so many restrictions on basic liberties being passed by GOPe RINOs in the Senate as much as the Dems, freedom-loving Americans simply have no trust in government to respect them or their basic freedoms.
In fact I once heard that only one other very 3rd-world country— I think it was Eritrea— has the outrageous and onerous tax reporting requirements that the US has adopted recently. Third world dictatorships seem to be the new model that the GOPe is looking to for ideas.
Al Sharpton won’t be travelling???
Had a friend who had an IRS error. Originally thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for it was an real estate error. took over a year to clear up wit a couple of letters by the accountant. Owed zero in the end. But with this legislation, this law abiding taxpayer would have been a political prisoner in his own country.
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