Posted on 06/02/2006 8:33:07 AM PDT by Irontank
Set to debut in theaters in July, the documentary America: From Freedom to Fascism recounts how our government is abandoning the constitutional framework of liberty. Twelve-year-old Ricky Miller wasn't expecting anything dramatic when he answered the door one Saturday morning. His father Scotty Miller had just gotten into the shower. His sister Jennifer was just waking up from a slumber party with some teenage friends. By all appearances, it seemed like a typical early April morning in Virginia Beach.
This changed dramatically when Ricky opened the door and was confronted with 15 heavily armed agents from the Internal Revenue Service and state enforcement agencies. One of them threw Ricky to the floor, stuck a gun in his face, and ordered him to be quiet. The armed raiding party made its way upstairs, where it barged into the bathroom and forced Scotty out of the shower. Another small group burst in on Jennifer and her friends, who had yet to get dressed.
"There were four girls getting dressed, and these guys with guns were watching us," Jennifer recalls on-camera in the new documentary America: From Freedom to Fascism. "We tried to close the door but this guy blocked it with his foot." As the terrified screams of his daughter and her friends could be heard in the background, Scotty Miller, dressed only in a towel that was inadequate to provide him modesty, provoked a near-lethal response from the raiders when he reached toward his drawers to get a pair of underwear.
Scotty had known that there was some trouble down at "The Jewish Mother" in Virginia Beach, one of two locations of a family-owned restaurant chain. His wife Edy, who helped manage the restaurant, had called and frantically told him to come quickly.
Armed IRS-led raiding parties had descended on both locations, seizing cash registers, receipts, price lists, computers, calendars, telephones, Rolodexes - anything that could be pried from the store and carried away. Terrified staff were held at gunpoint while equally unnerved customers were forcibly evicted - some of them literally having the utensils taken from their hands as they tried to enjoy a meal.
For five months, John Colaprete, owner of the restaurant chain; the Miller family; and the chain's other employees were forced "to do business out of a shoebox," Colaprete relates on-camera in the film, while the feds held on to their property and their reputations were ravaged in the press. The store had lost as much as $20,000 on the day of the raid alone. The chain lost its liquor license, along with much of its customer base. Neither Colaprete nor Miller could figure out what, if anything, they had done to provoke a paramilitary raid on a popular and growing small business.
Five months later, they had their answers. Deborah Shofner, a bookkeeper who had been fired by the chain for embezzlement, had made false and malicious accusations against its management to the feds. When the raids failed to produce substantive evidence to corroborate Shofner's charges, the IRS returned the restaurant's property the following August, without so much as a syllable of apology.
By that time, however, "The Jewish Mother" had nearly been driven out of business. Scotty Miller, who was shunned by his friends and traumatized by the federal assault, had been hospitalized with clinical depression.
"A day doesn't go by that I don't wonder what harassment will occur next," Colaprete stated during his 1998 testimony before a Senate investigation of IRS abuses. "I would like to know why this dark entity known as the IRS has come into my life and refused to leave."
Origins of the "Dark Entity"
Colaprete's anguished complaint is echoed by thousands of other Americans whose lives have been disrupted - or ruined - by the same agency. Where did that "Dark Entity" come from? Why must we put up with it? How can we make it go away?
As Aaron Russo demonstrates in his riveting documentary - scheduled to be released in theaters on July 28 - the IRS itself is just one appendage of the "Dark Entity" that seized control over our nation in what could be called the Revolution of 1913.
For three decades prior to making his new documentary, Russo carved out a career of some distinction as a pop music impresario and movie producer (see profile on page 17). In the early 1990s he became concerned about political and social trends that he believed were carrying our once-free nation toward tyranny. Further investigation led Russo to conclude that our nation wasn't drifting toward tyranny, but rather being propelled in that direction by a powerful but dimly seen group of elitists whose handiwork includes the graduated income tax and the IRS. He made the acquaintance of several sober and responsible people willing to risk impoverishment or imprisonment on behalf of their belief that the income tax was a fraud.
But Russo's film isn't just about the "tax protest" movement.
"I set out on a journey to make a film about whether or not there was a law requiring Americans to pay an Income Tax … or was this tax a fraud," Russo explains at the outset of the film. "The process of discovery brought something much more dangerous and frightening to my attention - now I bring it to yours."
"In 1913," he narrates, "America was a free country. Then a band of powerful bankers achieved their fathers' and their great-grandfathers' goal. America has never been the same. Soon the world will not be the same."
This was the year, 1913, in which three critical structural changes - two of which are examined by Russo - grievously undermined our republican form of government. The first was creation of the Federal Reserve System, which Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) describes on-screen as an agency created to "counterfeit money." The other two radical changes were the imposition of the income tax via the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, and the 17th Amendment, which effectively destroyed the U.S. Senate as a body representing the interests of the states. Prior to 1913, money consisted of gold and silver, with paper currency serving only as receipts for the same. In that year, however, Congress abdicated its constitutional duty to "coin" money to the Federal Reserve, which arrogated to itself the right to issue "fiat" currency - paper notes not backed by precious metals, but rather by the "full faith and credit" of the federal government.
Since that time, Russo observes, the dollar has lost roughly 96 percent of its purchasing power, as the Fed - which is owned by a government-created-and-sustained private cartel of largely anonymous banking interests - has relentlessly printed "money" to loan to the U.S. government, at interest.
Although the term was not in use at the time of its creation, the word "fascist" perfectly describes the Federal Reserve System: the Fed is a cartel of private banking interests allied with the central government in a corrupt and mutually enriching entente against the public interest, backed by brute force. The creation of the Fed was thus a key turning point in America's devolution from freedom toward fascism.
From Fascism to Communism
Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, was a devout disciple of Karl Marx, who devised a modified form of political collectivism called the corporate state. The system that now governs America bears a much stronger resemblance to Mussolini's corporatism than the constitutional republic we inherited from our Founding Fathers.
"I find it really difficult to believe that so many people consider our nation to be the most successful example of free market capitalism," Russo commented in an interview with The New American. "The foundation of our present economic system is a Central Bank, and the graduated Income Tax - two of the planks of the Communist Manifesto. So even though we're relatively prosperous, largely because of debt, it's really dishonest to say that we're in any sense a [free market] capitalist society."
The objective of communism, according to the Manifesto, can be summarized in a single phrase: "The abolition of private property." That this is the objective of those who exercise control over the executive branch of the U.S. government under both Republican and Democrat administrations can be seen in Russo's film.
Toward the beginning of From Freedom to Fascism, Russo gives time to prominent leaders of what he identifies as the "Tax Honesty Movement," whose members include former IRS investigators like Joe Banister and Sherry Jackson. That movement is devoted to the idea that there is no specific statutory requirement that individual American wage earners file a tax return.
Is there a specific law requiring Americans to file a return? To find the answer to that question, Russo interviewed two strikingly different personalities on camera. One was Rep. Paul; the other was former IRS Commissioner and General Counsel Sheldon Cohen.
Statesman vs. Bureaucrat
"Is there a law requiring Americans to file a 1040?" Russo asked Rep. Paul point-blank.
"Not explicitly," replied the congressman, who has studied the question in depth. "But it's certainly implied.... I can't cite a law. They think it's the law, and they have all the guns."
Russo posed the same question to Cohen, only to have Cohen lead him through dense thickets of doublespeak.
"I believe that a man's labor is his private property," Russo said.
"That's your view," Cohen said with a smirk, "but it's not the law."
Contemplate that answer for a second. If your labor isn't your property, to whom or what does it belong?
The obvious answer is that it belongs to "society," which is supposedly represented by the entity that extracts, at gunpoint, as much of the proceeds of your labor as it sees fit: the federal government.
How does this state of affairs differ in principle - not in consistent practice - from Soviet communism?
"This is a waste of time," grouses Cohen as Russo politely presses his question. "Whatever I say you won't believe." At another point, when Russo highlights contradictions between IRS enforcement policies and various Supreme Court rulings, Cohen plaintively protests: "You've caught me unprepared." Finally Cohen signals for the interview to end just before issuing what Russo, who grew up as a Brooklyn-born Jewish kid in Long Island, identifies as a threat spoken in Yiddish, an expression favored by gangsters that he translated as: "Aaron, nothing can help you."
Oddly enough, Cohen - who may be the most knowledgeable person alive where it comes to the tax code - did not cite Section 6012 of Title 26 of the U.S. Code, which states: "Returns with respect to income taxes under subtitle A [governing tax computations] shall be made by the following: (1)(A) Every individual having for the taxable year gross income which equals or exceeds the exemption amount." The penalty for violation of Section 6012 can be found under Section 7203, which calls for up to a $25,000 fine and one year in prison for an individual "who willfully fails to pay such estimated tax or tax, make such return, keep such records, or supply such information."
It would be expected that a former IRS commissioner would be able to cite those provisions on demand. Yet he finds himself confused and lost amid the abstruse details of the Tax Code. How can we expect to do any better? Laws protecting lives, property, and public order are clear and easily complied with. The same cannot be said of the mare's nest of "laws" and precedents cited by the IRS to justify seizing the product of our labor at gunpoint.
Had Cohen not granted the interview, Russo points out in the closing credits, his film could not have been made. The interview itself is easily worth the price of admission. Forced from his natural habitat - the murky ambiguity favored by all corrupt governments - Cohen withers in the glare of candid inquiry like a vampire who, losing a game of "musical coffins," finds himself trapped in the pitiless advance of dawn's first light.
Americans by the millions need to see that interview. They need to look into Cohen's eyes and see the clinical indifference with which he dismisses the concept of private property, the absolute disregard he shows to the rule of law and the concept of individual liberty. A face needs to be put on the bureaucratic class that is choking our liberty, and Cohen's serves that purpose very well.
Force and Fraud
As Russo documents, the IRS embodies Lenin's definition of dictatorship: "Power without limit, resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by rules." Illinois resident Whitey Harrell, charged with evading federal income taxes, made a formal request for the statutory authority under which he was required to pay, promising - as any honest person would - to obey the law once it was clearly explained to him. During a videotaped tax hearing, an IRS enforcement official named Agent Craner replied: "I talked to my boss and he told me that my badge is my authority." That non-responsive answer is a pretty suitable paraphrase of Lenin's dictum.
New York Times reporter David Kay Johnston received a similar answer when he posed the same question at an IRS press conference: "Why won't the IRS answer the questions set forth in the petitions from the American people" regarding the statutory authority for collecting income taxes?" Replied IRS functionary Terry Lemons: "The government is answering the question, through our enforcement actions in the courts."
Freedom cannot exist where "laws" are too numerous to count, and too convoluted to be understood by intelligent people of good will. Yes, the IRS can cite statutory language to justify imposing and collecting income taxes, and prosecuting those who don't comply. But here's where the idea that the existing system is based on "law," in the American sense, breaks down: because of the volume, complexity, and self-contradictory nature of the tax code, many honest people - independent business owners in particular - are incapable of compliance. Taxpayers are compelled to offer evidence against themselves, and any time the IRS chooses, it can ruin Americans who have not committed any crimes against persons, property, or public order.
Compounding this outrage is the fact that income taxes are not used to pay the operating expenses of the federal government - a fact discussed by several of the experts interviewed by Russo. The 1983 Grace Commission reported that 100 percent of Income Tax revenues are used to pay interest on the national debt - which is to say that the IRS is in the business of collecting what mobsters call the "vig," or extortionate interest, on behalf of the banking syndicate that operates the Federal Reserve.
And this is made possible, Rep. Paul specifies - and Russo repeatedly emphasizes - because Congress has abdicated its constitutional responsibilities, and the electorate has permitted this to happen.
The real solution, as Russo's film demonstrates, "is not to ignore or defy bad and unjust laws that have been imposed on our nation by the forces that have seized control of our political institutions," comments Alan Scholl, Director of Mission and Campaigns for The John Birch Society. "We gain nothing if freedom-loving people become embroiled in expensive legal battles, or wind up in prison, rather than joining in an effort to restore constitutional government. That process begins with raising public awareness of the damage that's been done to our free institutions, and while our organization doesn't agree with every element of Mr. Russo's film, it has tremendous potential to rouse the American public from its lethal reverie."
Familiar Story, Told Well
Well-informed Americans will be familiar with much of the evidence Russo has capably assembled:
• The operation of a secretive power elite, most visibly represented by the Council on Foreign Relations, which seeks political and financial control of the world;
• The key disclosures made by Georgetown historian Carroll Quigley, who had access to the power elite's papers and secret records, as outlined in his book Tragedy and Hope;
• The use of perpetual war to generate public debt, and constrict individual liberties;
• The relationship between the banking cartel and corporatist trade pacts like NAFTA, GATT, and CAFTA - and how illegal immigration is being used to advance the consolidation of the Western Hemisphere into a European Union-style mega-state, which means the loss of our national identity, our prosperity, and eventually our liberty;
• The emergence of digital microchip technology portending the use of implantable IDs.
Many readers of this magazine are familiar with this story. Tens of millions of others, however, are not. Therein lies the tragedy - and the challenge.
Russo has made a tremendously informative and often entertaining movie. While not without its flaws, it must be said that, examined as a whole, the film defines the problem correctly. It also endorses the correct solution: organized, principled, peaceful citizen activism to induce Congress to reassert its constitutional authority on behalf of the sovereign people.
"Stop being good Democrats," Russo urges. "Stop being good Republicans. Start being good Americans."
In the film's final frames, Russo does invoke the concept of "civil disobedience" - which he defines to include boycotts, strikes, and passive resistance of totalitarian impositions, where necessary and possible. But he never loses sight of the fact that any worthwhile changes have to be made through Congress as a result of conscientious citizen action.
But at least there will be a good movie to see this summer
This will never happen to Illegal Aliens.
I've said this many times in the last decade: The US today is frighteningly similar to the descriptions my teachers gave me, in the 1960's, of the Soviet Union.
As Fred Reed said in one of his articles (fredoneverything.net), the US may be the first country in history to become a "dictatorship without a dictator".
http://www.catslv.org/TaxProtesterFAQ.html
Required reading for anyone who believes that they don't have to pay income tax.
Good post, I was looking for the link myself. The income tax is evil, but there is no reason to pretend that one doesn't have to pay it. All that does is get good people in trouble with the law.
New tag
It is NOT at all like the Soviet Union. However, I have been through this government raid on your business scenario followed by extensive contact with the IRS. it was truly horrible and completely ruined my life. Anything anyone does to get the American public to see the many problems has my support. That is for sure.
I'm not sure the movie makes the point that you don't have to pay it...and certainly the article is not making that point.
Oddly enough, Cohen - who may be the most knowledgeable person alive where it comes to the tax code - did not cite Section 6012 of Title 26 of the U.S. Code, which states: "Returns with respect to income taxes under subtitle A [governing tax computations] shall be made by the following: (1)(A) Every individual having for the taxable year gross income which equals or exceeds the exemption amount." The penalty for violation of Section 6012 can be found under Section 7203, which calls for up to a $25,000 fine and one year in prison for an individual "who willfully fails to pay such estimated tax or tax, make such return, keep such records, or supply such information."
It would be expected that a former IRS commissioner would be able to cite those provisions on demand. Yet he finds himself confused and lost amid the abstruse details of the Tax Code. How can we expect to do any better? Laws protecting lives, property, and public order are clear and easily complied with. The same cannot be said of the mare's nest of "laws" and precedents cited by the IRS to justify seizing the product of our labor at gunpoint.
The point of the article is that 1/4 or more of your income is confiscated by the federal government pursuant to a tax code that is over 17,000 pages, a code of related regulations that is tens of thousands more pages and too many interpretative opinions of the federal courts to count. Moreover, any determination by the IRS that you may not have complied with this thoroughly incomprehensible tax system (a system that no one could possibly fully comprehend), can result in an audit where the individual taxpayer is presumed to be noncompliant until he can prove otherwise.
Talk to tax attorneys or CPA's...everyone I've met has more than horror story of how someone's life was turned upside down because they were unable to prove that they complied with a system that the IRS itself does not understand after suffereing through a brutal audit process
While I have reservations about the existence of a "shadow government", and I'm not ready to pull on my tinfoil hat, I have no illusions about where this country is headed if things do not change.
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/wns/truth.htm
The Chinese see the United States as a dying empire... rotting from within, collapsing under its own weight, the idiocy of its government and the ineptitude of its citizens. The speed of descent of our American civilization is matched only by its wholly illogical, unneccessary nature. I would tend to agree that if we leave our government to its own devices, the US as we know it will not exist within the next fifty to one hundred years. I believe that the future health of this republic lies in the hands of its thinking citizens, and the few elected officials who are still defined by reason.
What's evil is the federal reserve system. What's truly evil is that the IRS can arrest you and hold you without a court hearing, trial, or legal representation. And they can do it all without a warrant.
Rodney King wrote: "The income tax is evil..."
Give unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's. I agree with you, but I'll still file.
I'm always amazed when I read the 16th Amendment. What sane person would vote for such a thing? They must have been very naive back then to think they could write such an open-ended abomination without the government taking advantage of it. The 16th is literally a blank check:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
The 16th is the fountain from which springs all sorts of government mischief. Education Dept. unconstitutional? No problem! Comply with No Child Left Behind, or you won't get this pile of money! Set the drinking age to 21, or you won't get this pile of money. Seatbelts? Wear them or you won't get this pile of money. You get the point.
Go to the website and donate - I have.
This is so important, and needs to be seen by as many constitution loving (pre-FDR & pre-Fed that is) Americans as possible.
We all know the media is controlled by power elites, and it will be likely that theaters owned by same will not be screening this - I hope there are enough independents that will though. It could even be picked up by cable eventually.
This movie's topics are what I have been trying to post on FR since I first registered.
Unfortunately many here on FR immediately attacked me, calling out the tinfoil hats, how pathetic they are too.
These truths will set you free, and shine the harsh white light on the progressives of BOTH parties who have usurped our Govt, broken the public trust and robbed generations of Americans of their wealth in building the welfare/warfare state for their own constitutionally corrupt enrichment.
This event occurred over eight years ago. The IRS was raked over the coals for such raids and as a result underwent extensive reforms. Reference:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/07/09/irs/
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, July 8) -- Americans are just one signature away from tax collection reform as the Senate Thursday approved the bill that would make sweeping changes in the way the Internal Revenue Service interacts with taxpayers.
The bill, which enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the Senate, passed on a 96-2 vote. The House approved the measure 402-8 before it left for the 4th of July vacation.
Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), who spearheaded the measure, called it historic after the vote. "All we seek is an agency that provides service, civility and fairness to the American people," Roth said.
In a statement, President Bill Clinton also praised the bill's passage and said he will sign it.
"I am pleased that the Senate has finally passed bipartisan legislation to reform the IRS and strengthen taxpayer rights," Clinton said. "This reform will help my effort to create an IRS that respects American taxpayers and respects their values. I look forward to signing it into law."
In the Senate, Vermont Republican James Jeffords said the changes will make the IRS a "kinder, gentler agency."
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called the reform bill a first step, adding Congress must still act to simplify the tax code.
"Americans have every reason to celebrate," said Roth, chief author of the legislation. "They have let their desire be known, and they have been heard."
The IRS overhaul bill was the result, in part, of last September's highly publicized hearings in which taxpayers told horror stories of their treatment at the hands of the U.S. tax agency.
The IRS reform bill includes the following provision:
The burden of proof in civil court cases involving tax disputes would be shifted from the taxpayer to the IRS.
The IRS must suspend penalties and interest if the agency waits more than 18 months to tell someone they owe additional taxes.
People who face collection actions due to tax problems caused without their knowledge by spouses would be protected from some collection actions.
A nine-member board with six private citizens to oversee the operations of the IRS.
The IRS taxpayer advocate's office will have expanded powers to grant taxpayer assistance orders, which can halt tax collections in cases of hardship.
While the bill has been politically popular in this election year, some say the reform measure will have little effect on most taxpayers. Only 4 to 5 million of the 212 million personal and business returns filed annually end up in dispute with the tax collection agency, according to Phil Brand, the IRS's former chief compliance officer.
Over the next 10 years experts predict the reform measures will cost the IRS $12.9 billion, mostly in lost collections of taxes and penalties.
I am sorry for your infringed rights and financial loss.
Get all your friends to make donations to the website to help this be aired to the widest audience possible.
This could very well be a new beginning a la Goldwater & Reagan.
The republican party will return to it's 40 years of insignificance unless it is purged of all the establishment big govt pols like the Spector's and Collins'.
If I could I'd throw them all out but for Coburn & Paul, the only two I've seen that speak the truth.
"This changed dramatically when Ricky opened the door and was confronted with 15 heavily armed agents from the Internal Revenue Service and state enforcement agencies. One of them threw Ricky to the floor, stuck a gun in his face, and ordered him to be quiet. The armed raiding party made its way upstairs, where it barged into the bathroom and forced Scotty out of the shower. Another small group burst in on Jennifer and her friends, who had yet to get dressed."
Didn't this happen to Elias Gonzalez and his family?
It's much much worse than you seem to believe.
From one who routinely gets tinfoiled here, may I suggest some excellent video and essays that fill in what our educrats so deceptively determined we didn't need to know about our own country? The best Rat/RINO killers I have been able to find!
How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/cbf-02-15-06.ram
The Issue of Tariffs: How U.S. Revenue Collection Was Turned Inside-Out (video)
http://mises.org:88/Sophocleus
Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America's Families, Finances, and Freedom (And Limits the Pursuit of Happiness)
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/cbf-02-02-06.ram
Big Business and the Rise of American Statism
http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm
The Founding of The Federal Reserve (video)
http://mises.org:88/Rothbard-Fed
The Great Depression, World War II, and American Prosperity, Part I (video)
http://www.mises.org/multimedia/video/Woods/Woods5.wmv
Secrets of the Federal Reserve
http://www.barefootsworld.net/fs_m_ch_01.html
Jackson's 2nd Bank US VETO (very important - what he correctly and constitutionally opposed is just what we ended up with in 1913)
http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/ajveto.htm
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