Unfortunately, this year I couldn't make the commitment to run an educational campaign, so instead I signed up to be a "paper candidate" for a local office. This means I'm not actively campaigning, but still helping the LP by giving a libertarian option for voters that will help get our numbers up in the aggregate. This November we will have 132 candidates on the ballot across Texas and I'll be running for Justice of the Peace for Travis County, a position that I would seem to be totally under-qualified for and would seriously impede my career in IT Consulting if I were to win.
However, the law is something that I've been studying for a number of years and if I somehow won this race I would be willing to put my career on hold to serve out the term. The local chapter of the League of Women Voters sent a questionnaire concerning the race, but only two questions allowing 450 character answers didn't leave much of an opportunity to explain my platform. Nevertheless, I was able to give a standard libertarian answer for the question of how I would ensure that the role of "the people's court" is fulfilled:
"As JOP I would radically change the goal of the JP court from focusing on revenue generation for the state to protecting the rights of the individual. This means rightly prosecuting crimes that are malum in se, evil in themselves, while vigorously defending people accused of "crimes" that are malum prohibitum, illegal by statute. In this way the people will see the court as a tool for seeking justice, not as a device for taking their liberties."In other words, if you're going to have a state, use it as a tool for defensive purposes only. Don't use it for enforcing statutes against victimless crimes just to steal people's money. That's pretty basic libertarianism 101 stuff. It was the second question that I found more interesting. What changes, if any, are needed in court processes and procedures to make the court more efficient and effective in fulfilling its duties?
"The entire court system is engaged in a variety of scams and conspiracies to rob the people of their liberties. Lawyer tricks confuse people into waiving their natural rights and volunteering into oppressive contracts with the state. I would not seek to make the court more efficient in these corrupt machinations, instead I desire a court that effectively presumes innocence and honors due process rights of the defendant from agents of the state."Scams and conspiracies? Lawyer tricks? Corrupt machinations? These allegations require some explanation.
Boss Hoggism or Legal Sleight of Hand
One of the most credible people interviewed in the film on this topic was Joe Banister. Like other former IRS agents, it all started when he heard of the $50,000 challenge to show the law that required the average person to file a 1040 and pay a tax on his labor. As a special agent of the Criminal Investigation Division for the IRS, Mr. Banister thought this challenge was something he could easily accomplish to dispel the rumors. Months later, Banister submitted a preliminary report to his supervisors with his startling conclusions regarding the income tax. Instead of proving the "anti-taxers" wrong, he ended up giving his resignation to his longtime employer and becoming one of the leading figures in the tax honesty movement.
But for people like Mr. Banister it doesn't end there. The most credible and prominent people in the tax honesty movement are invariably drug before a kangaroo court and indicted on something, anything. Even when they win on appeal it is only through a long fight over multiple years that drains their life savings. It's a battle that destroys marriages, lives, family - and for what? It takes a special kind of person that holds their integrity above all else to choose to fight this battle rather than to just give in and let the tax man have his cut.
Seeing people like Irwin Schiff, Sherry Jackson, Joe Banister, and others relentlessly prosecuted to make an example for the rest of us has a real chilling effect. What is to be done when the system is so lawless? How do you fight a system with a clique of boss hoggs running things at the top that don't give a damn what the law actually says? If you try to fight back and stand on your rights you are subject to their army of useful idiots that follow orders and don’t know any better. It's a pretty depressing and shameful situation we're in.
It was through only after reading Peter Eric Hendrickson's Cracking the Code and listening to the Rule of Law Radio show for several years that I've slowly come to a different conclusion about our predicament. Rather than seeing the conspirators as brutish criminals that are totally lawless and respect nothing but violence, I see them as intelligent criminals that use complex legalese and magician's sleight of hand tricks on the meaning of words themselves. They have an entirely different lexicon of legal terminology that's completely different from the common meaning of words and from their perspective if you're ignorant enough to fall for their elaborate scams then you deserve what you get.
They aren't completely amoral, they have their own system of ethics - the ethics of a vampire. Just as the mythical vampire can't feast on your blood unless you are foolish enough to invite him into your home, even if you do so under mistaken pretenses, this criminal class preys on people's gullibility and faith in government to trick them into volunteering into private contracts that have no legal, lawful or ethical foundation. Buyer beware. Read the fine print. These are the mottos that give their conscience sanction. Ignore them at your own risk.
Define Your Terms
My favorite example of this is the word "regulate". Today it means that 100,000 bureaucrats can tell you what to do in virtually every area of your life, but in the time of the Constitution it meant "to keep regular." For example, "regulating the value of coin" instructed the congress to keep it from overly fluctuating through inflation and deflation, "regulating commerce among the states" allowed the federal government to prevent the states from enacting tariffs against each other, and having a "well regulated Militia" meant the individuals compromising that militia were well trained and had properly working firearms.
It's hard enough to comply with all the laws when there are so many that it's even impossible for the federal government to give an estimate, but it would be impossible if the law constantly changed as the common usage of words did as well. Lucky for us, words have special meanings when they are specifically defined in statutes, and if they are not defined there you look for the meaning in a law dictionary like Bouvier's or Black's Law Dictionary. Unlucky for us, this double-edged sword is the source of the lawyer trickery that fool hapless saps into volunteering into contracts, submitting to jurisdictions, and otherwise opting themselves in to requirements and obligations that have no legal basis.
Before visiting three of the biggest scams that rely on legal sleight of hand, let's review a word that is central to understanding all of them: include, includes, including. In common language, the word "includes" would be translated to "such as". For example, "I enjoy eating fruit, including apples". Under a normal context I may also enjoy eating oranges, but in the world of legalese we may find that this word is not one of enlargement, but one of restriction. Instead of translating to "such as", includes is defined as "means". The impact is that, for the purpose of that sentence, the common definition of "fruit" no longer applies and now "fruit" means apples and only apples.
There is a Latin term for this, inclusio unius est exclusio alterius, "the inclusion of one is the exclusion of another." According to Black's Law, "When certain persons or things are specified in a law, contract, or will, an intention to exclude all others from its operation may be inferred. Under this maxim, if statute specifies one exception to a general rule or assumes to specify the effects of a certain provision, other exceptions or effects are excluded.” There are websites filled with quotes from supreme court rulings, hundred page treatises, and finely written essays dedicated to this seemingly innocuous term because of how this word can create multi-layered definitions that have to be carefully analyzed to have any chance of arriving at the correct interpretation. As we'll see, it is the cornerstone of some of the most invasive laws that impact us every moment of our waking lives, but with a correct understanding of what it means in legalese they just melt away like snow on a sunny day.
Cracking the Code
The income tax exposes the presumption of our political leaders: that they are our masters, that they own us. The fruit of my labor is not mine, but the governments, and those men with guns will choose how much will be returned to me. In the "land of the free", where we supposedly fought a civil war to abolish slavery, it is a sad lesson how quickly we accepted new masters.
A direct tax on income is also blatantly unconstitutional. The constitution gives two and only two types of taxation: direct and apportioned or indirect and unapportioned. In the first case the federal government can only directly tax the people if the tax is apportioned by the state populations. In the second case it can only tax the people without regards to state enumeration if it is indirect, such as a tax on tobacco that one can avoid by growing their own tobacco or refraining from its use. As described in America: Freedom to Fascism, Supreme Court rulings declared an income tax unconstitutional before the 16th amendment and after its passage they ruled that it granted no new powers of taxation. So if they didn't have it before, and they didn't get it, then how is it that we all sign self-confession forms under penalty of perjury every year (5th amendment, anyone?).
But what if it didn't have to be this way? When the tax code was put on the internet, for the first time allowing one to quickly execute key word searches across its hundreds of pages and three million words, Peter Eric Hendrickson claimed that he cracked the code to this mystery. By finding every use and definition of terms like "income", "wages", "employee", "employer", and "trade or business", he discovered that the income tax could actually comply with the constitution and the supreme court rulings but under this legalese interpretation the income tax laws no longer applied to the vast majority of private individuals.
As quoted and explained in detail throughout the book chapter and verse, the income tax is filled with particular definitions and circular logic that results in it only being applicable to the payment of federal government workers.
"Wages" is defined as "all remuneration... for services performed by an employee for an employer", where employee is defined as including "an officer, employee, or elected official of the United States, a State, or any political subdivision thereof, or the District of Colombia, or any agency or instrumentality of any one or more of the foregoing."
Similarly, the term "trade or business" includes "the performance of the functions of a public office". "Wages" is defined as "including personal service as an officer or employee of a State", and then "state" is "construed to include the District of Colombia".
Remembering the legalese definition of "includes", does it sound like you work for an "employer"? Are you engaged in a "trade or business"? Do you earn "wages" or "income"? You may not if you don’t work for the federal government!
Why would it be constitutional to put an income tax on federal government workers but not the rest of us in the public sector? Remember that one of the constitutional taxes is indirect and unapportioned, and that government workers don't really pay taxes, they consume tax money. If someone gives you $20, and then takes $5, did they "tax" any money, or did they just give you $15? That is the crux of the issue - when the same entity is paying "gross income" and "withholding" a certain percentage and then paying "net income", then what does it matter what bookkeeping mumbo-jumbo is happening, the net result is that entity, the federal government, is paying its workers. Working for the federal government is not a right, it is a privilege, and therefore it would fall under the indirect and unapportioned taxing power of the constitution.
So when millions of people file 1040 confession forms and say "I'm an employee", "I make wages" and "I'm engaged in a trade or business" the government sits back and nods, happy to keep the fantasy going. If you're willing to make these claims the government won't be correcting you - that's up for you to figure out.
Drivers License: Transport or Travel?
Thus, what do we make of the situation when a libertarian activist asks a traffic officer if he's being detained on a warrantless DUI checkpoint which he believes to be unconstitutional, and the cop snarls, "driving's a privilege, not a right!" Here we have a dilemma. Do you own your vehicle? If you did, you'd have certain rights over it, not privileges granted by a license. The Supreme Court has ruled that we have a right to travel, a right of locomotion, a right to move from one place to another according to inclination, a right of free transit from or through the territory of any state. It seems plausible, after all we pay for the roads with the tax on gasoline, but this conflicts with our daily experience that a traffic officer can pull us over, demand our license, and impound our vehicle on the flimsiest of pretenses, especially since the militarization of the police and the escalation of the war on drugs.
Once again, it seems we might have a conspiracy of lawyer tricks run by criminals with vampire ethics and enforced by useful idiots that have never read or understood the law they believe to be rightly enforcing.
Eddie Craig is an Air Force veteran and a former Nacogdoches Sheriff Deputy that has spent the last 12 years researching various Texas Codes, especially the Transportation Code. I first heard him on Rule of Law Radio where he described the myriad violations that occur during every traffic stop according to the Texas Transportation Code. Eventually he compiled his research into a workbook and traffic seminar, and I was able to attend his first presentation at Brave New Bookstore. Unsurprisingly, his findings echoed many of the same themes I had already found when researching the income tax. It seemed there was a code to crack concerning the traffic laws as well, and Mr. Craig had found it.
Assuming we have a right to use our property, our personal vehicles, the first question to ask is what is a drivers license and who needs one? The Texas Transportation Code defines it as "authorization issued by the department for the operation of a motor vehicle" and claims that a person "may not operate a motor vehicle on a highway in this state unless the person holds a driver's license."
The next question is, what is a motor vehicle? It is consistently defined as "a device in or by which a person or property is or may be transported or drawn on a public highway". Unsurprisingly, we consistently see the word transportation used in these definitions, but what is surprising is that it's never defined anywhere in the Transportation Code. According to our hierarchy of legal definitions, this means we need to look at legal dictionaries and the case law that goes with it.
In Black's Law Dictionary, transportation is defined as "The removal of goods or persons from one place to another, by a carrier." And this is where it gets interesting. According to every legal dictionary a carrier, a common carrier, a contract carrier, and even a private carrier are all referencing the act of transportation of passengers or freight for pay. Carriers are in the "regular business of transporting people and / or freight".
So if we put this all together, one needs a driver's license to operate a "motor vehicle", which is a device used in "transportation", which is the act that a "carrier" engages in when operating a business of transporting people and / or freight for payment. I don't drive a taxi. I'm not hauling semi-trailers across the country for a living. So why again do I have a driver's license?
So the next time you get pulled over for speeding, take a look at the statute that authorizes the department of transportation to erect speed signs and ask, "who do speed signs apply to?" Maybe the traffic officer is confusing you for someone engaged in commerce.
Gold Fringe Flags, Strawmen, and Billion Dollar Birth Certificates
You're not an "employee", you don’t earn "income", you don't operate a "motor vehicle", and you don't engage in "transportation". Still following along? If so, this next topic may stretch your credulity to its limit. It has its origins in the beginning of the country, leaving the gold standard, and the moment you were born. It includes gold fringed flags, admiralty law, your name in all capital letters (Capitis Diminutio Maxima), your birth certificate, treasury bonds, your "straw man" or "legal fiction", and every interaction you've ever had with government, police officers, courts, and corporations. This one goes down the deepest trails of the rabbit hole, and sometimes you'll wonder if the proponents of these theories are government agents trying to entrap you, but if you take the time to survey the information and take a step back the resulting landscape comes together consistently, and it just figures that we'd live in a world where something this crazy could be true.
The best place to begin might be with your strawman, your legal fiction, the corporate entity that was created the moment the ink was dry on your birth certificate. If your parents named you John Doe, your straw man might be named JOHN DOE. This character is a "person", but unlike a flesh-and-blood human being, he is a legalese "person", a n artificial person or corporation. This corporate person can sign contracts, assume duties, incur penalties, and it has the unfortunate tendency to get people confused with you, the flesh-and-blood human being.
That bad side of this situation is that this elaborate scam is what gives all the lower courts such as traffic courts, family courts, and tax courts the jurisdiction to act upon you - because you volunteer into it! Whenever a summons appears that asks for "JOHN DOE" and you show up saying, "that's me" no one is going to correct you. Whenever they ask you if you "understand the charges" you are agreeing that you "stand under" their jurisdiction and from then on volunteer into their private contract. Instead of living under common law, your straw man operates under admiralty law because a birth certificate literally hands over the new born's straw man to the government as a ward of the state, just as a ship wrecked in the sea can be found and claimed by new owners. This is why court rooms have a gold fringed flag, because they are operating under admiralty law. This explains why a judge can say "I don't want the constitution brought up in my court", because his court has nothing to do with the constitution, it is all private contracts through color of law like the Uniform Commercial Code.
If there is a good side to this scenario, it's that in the farthest depths of patriot mythology you'll find references to "commercial redemption", the "secured party creditor process", and "reclaiming your strawman". The idea is that there are certain forms you can sign and actions you can take to reclaim your "legal fiction" from being a tool of the state and use it for your own purposes - and that also includes those millions of dollars of fiat currency tied to your birth certificate / bank note. The UCC1 Financing Statement tells the public that you officially reclaim control over your Agent in commerce, your strawman. Your parents may have abandoned him to the government, but now you're ready and willing to take him back. File a few more forms and you'll have direct access to an account at the Treasury in your strawman's name, you'll be filing tax forms on behalf of your strawman, and you'll regain your status as a sovereign human being, a secure party creditor, at the same level of states, banks, and the gods themselves.
Conclusion
That said, there is a risk / reward tolerance for everyone, and these are important decisions that should not be taken lightly. I ran into Joe Banister at the Austin airport once and asked him what he thought about Cracking the Code. He said it was 100% accurate, but the question remains, is this a battle that you are willing to fight yourself, or are you going to instead support people that are fighting it on your behalf?
Accepting the risk really depends on the magnitude of the reward. With cracking the code the risk comes if you lose your nerve and admit that you make "income" after all, then you could be slapped with a $5,000 frivolous filing fee. But if you stick to your guns you may instead receive a hefty check from the Treasury department and have your return added to the Bulletin Board displaying the $11,000,000+ from the tens of thousands of returns that have used the CTC method.
When I first heard about the strawman / Secured Party Creditor strategy on Rule of Law Radio I categorized it as patriot mythology that was more likely to be a Federal sting operation than anything real. Since then I've met someone that's gone through the process and has shown me his documents and explained how he has paid his taxes, utility bills, and even purchased real estate through his reclaimed strawman. He also warned that if you don't do it correctly you could go to jail for securities fraud.
Do the research, weigh your options, and make a decision: will you continue to invite the vampires in, or will you kick them out once and for all?
