- Networking with other Save-A-Patriot Fellowship Members

NEWS and COMMENTARY:
- September 14 through October 7th, 2004

INFORMATION:
- Gimme back my (silver) bullets

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Early planning for a Save-A-Patriot Fellowship conference is in the works for April 1st through 3rd, 2005. More details to follow in future issues of The Tax Freedom 101 Report. For a listing of past events similar in nature to this one please review our events page.

UPDATE: Networking with other Save-A-Patriot Fellowship Members

Members keep an eye out for the current and upcoming issues of the fellowship's members only printed newsletter of The Liberty Tree. In these editions we will be listing SAPF Independent Representatives, or "point men" with whom you can contact in order to network and fellowship with other members in your area.

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"The baby boomers and the Greatest Generation are delivering an economic disaster to their children," says Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist and co-author of The Coming Generational Storm, a book about the national debt. "We should be ashamed of ourselves."

...and this next quote from an "optimistic economist" had us rolling on the floor—in tears....

Economist James Galbraith of the University of Texas in Austin is a rare optimist in this debate. "I'm not at all concerned about Medicare or Social Security," Galbraith says. "Unless the government goes broke, Medicare isn't going to go broke, and the U.S. government isn't going to go broke because it can print money."

The looming national benefit crisis
By Dennis Cauchon and John Waggoner, USA TODAY

The long-term economic health of the United States is threatened by $53 trillion in government debts and liabilities that start to come due in four years when baby boomers begin to retire. (Related graphic: U.S. economy threatened by aging of America)

The "Greatest Generation" and its baby-boom children have promised themselves benefits unprecedented in size and scope. Many leading economists say that even the world's most prosperous economy cannot fulfill these promises without a crushing increase in taxes — and perhaps not even then.

Neither President Bush nor John Kerry is addressing the issue in detail as they campaign for the White House.

A USA TODAY analysis found that the nation's hidden debt — Americans' obligation today as taxpayers — is more than five times the $9.5 trillion they owe on mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other personal debt.

This hidden debt equals $473,456 per household, dwarfing the $84,454 each household owes in personal debt. Full Story Here

NEWS: No SSN = No USID [National ID Legislation Alert]
September 28, 2004

It really should come as no surprise to citizens that the issuance of a USID [Internal Passport] would be verboten without the inclusion of a federal ID number [SSN]. So, if there is still no law mandating a citizen to be numbered to live and work in the United States, how will a citizen without an SSN be permitted to travel to make a living [buy and sell] without a USID? The old cliché, "There's more than one way to skin a cat!" can more aptly be translated in this case to... "there is more than one way to coerce a citizen!" ... to waiving his birthrights that is.

U.S. passports and foreign visitor passports will also be getting a makeover next year. Full details as contained in the article below.

Fears of national ID with driver's licenses
Critics see Republican anti-terrorism bill as back-door step toward identity cards


WASHINGTON – The House Republican leadership's new bill to restructure the nation's intelligence bureaucracy would turn driver's licenses issued by the 50 states into a de facto national ID card, say privacy activists.

The House bill, set for committee markups this week, is expected to be merged with a Senate version and voted on before the Nov. 2 election.

But among the little-known provisions of the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" are new requirements for state driver's licenses that have very little to do with driving, say critics.

According to the legislation, within three years of its enactment, no federal agency may accept for any official purpose a driver's license or identification card issued by a state that does not require applicants to provide Social Security number and "facial imaging capture."

Washington would also require all states to share digital data acquired in the process of licensing to other states. Full Story Here

NEWS: Citizen IRS snitch brigade - compliments of Senator Charles Grassley [R]
September 15, 2004

Apparently the current IRS "informer" rate is not substantial enough to have citizens watching their fellow neighbors, and reporting on them. If a citizen suspects a neighbor may be living just a little bit beyond their means relative to the high life they personally enjoy, perhaps the citizen will be more attentive to checking into the lifestyle of their neighbors. If the well educated citizen snitch finds anything that smacks of apparent "tax evasion" or unacceptable "tax avoidance" for that matter, the citizen snitch may be in for a nice reward if they should choose to join the IRS snitch brigade.

Excerpts from the article: A Subsidy to Greed, Revenge, and Harassment
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor - The Progress Report

The Wall Street Journal of September 9, 2004, has an editorial, 'Scrutiny on the Bounty,' on an attempt to turn more Americans into bounty hunters. Charles Grassley, Republican-party Senator from Iowa and Finance Committee Chairman, has added a provision to a tax bill to give informers part of what the IRS collects from the evader. This measure is adapted from a 1986 amendment to the False Claims Act, which Grassley introduced for fraud cases. The IRS already pays snitches, but this bill would increase the loot.

There is indeed a vast underground economy in the US, as in all other countries. In Senate hearings in July, an estimate of $310 billion in uncollected tax revenue was reported. But turning Americans into tax spies will not bring in anywhere near that amount of extra revenue. People will shift to legal ways of avoiding taxes, or shift operations to other countries, or become more secretive. There will also be a lot of spying and telling on innocent persons who were paying their full taxes. Full Story Here

NEWS: Junior's job will be to keep Granny alive [Taxpayer News]
September 14, 2004

Got kid? Good. Got kids? Even better! You may need them. No, not just for your yearly dependent deduction. You will need them to take care of your parents while enjoying your retirement years RVing across the country or sipping your Tequila Sunrise in some third world Caribbean resort. Medicare, the "entitlement" program has some adjustments to make to draw down Granny's Social Security check significantly, perhaps enough so she won't even be able to pay her bills. Don't worry... That is where your kid[s] come in, while you're at the craps table in Vegas. Be happy... Junior is grown up now, and has more than 70% of his paycheck taken to help Granny pay her bills, because Congress just increased her Social Security payments to meet the need. Spending to maintain Medicaid, the "welfare" program, the program your kids will most likely partake of only need be financed by adding to the yearly budget deficit under the direction of some fiscally irresponsible republican leader, or just taken directly out of some younger Joe Citizen's socialist workers party employment check under a democrat leader. The combination of both plans really makes for a good year!

No Cost Tax Tip for Taxpayers: As far as we know there still is a substantial deduction allowed for the blind. Start junior off early in life with this added bonus. Encourage running with scissors, or better yet purchase an advanced at home chemistry set with all the good chemicals. You and Junior may get lucky, and even qualify for Social Security disability insurance! [DISCLAIMER: This "no cost tax tip for taxpayers" is provided by your friendly ignorant neighborhood bean counter, and should not be considered legal, medical, or tax advice.]

Medical Costs Eat At Social Security

WASHINGTON — With a new Medicare drug benefit set to begin in 2006, Americans 65 and older can expect to spend a large and growing share of their Social Security checks on Medicare premiums and expenses, previously undisclosed federal data show.

Information the Bush administration excluded from its 2004 report on the Medicare program shows that a typical 65-year-old can expect to spend 37% of his or her Social Security income on Medicare premiums, co-payments and out-of-pocket expenses in 2006. That share is projected to grow to almost 40% in 2011 and nearly 50% by 2021.

Unless Congress does something to hold down costs confronting seniors, the official projections suggest that health spending will consume virtually the entire amount of Social Security benefits when children born today reach retirement age. Full Story Here

Forced mental screening - Rep. Ron Paul seeks to yank program, decries use of drugs on children

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, plans to offer an amendment in the House of Representatives today that would remove from an appropriations bill a new mandatory mental-health screening program for America's children.

"The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their children is, yet again, under attack," writes Kent Snyder of the Paul-founded Liberty Committee. "The pharmaceutical industry has convinced President Bush to support mandatory mental-health screening for every child in America, including preschool children, and the industry is now working to convince Congress as well."

...the New Freedom Initiative recommends screening not only for children but eventually for every American. The initiative came out of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which President Bush established in 2002.

Critics of the plan say it is a thinly veiled attempt by drug companies to provide a wider market for high-priced antidepressants and antipsychotic medication, and puts government in areas of Americans' lives where it does not belong. Full Story Here

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INFORMATION: Gimme back my (silver) bullets

The following article comes from a the September 2004 issue of the fellowship's members only newsletter, The Liberty Tree. It was mailed to all members of the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship as part of the members assistance program known as the Victory Express!

However, once the Judiciary becomes involved in the corruption, the people are left with little chance for obtaining redress. That is why it is vitally important to rein in the Judiciary, by again making them accountable for their actions on the bench. One way to do this is through the introduction and passage of judicial accountability legislation. (See Reasonable Action issue Vol. VI No. 2 March/April 1990. See also JAIL4judges for more information on just such proposed legislation). Of course, since corruption is rampant in the Legislature too, this will be no simple task. Pressure—heavy pressure—must be brought to bear on our legislators until they realize that continuing to stonewall on the issue will result in the loss of their cushy jobs. But, this pressure will only come as the result of education of the public at large to the very real problems that we face. The Fellowship has devised what we consider the best plan to accomplish this necessary education; it will be addressed at the end of this article.

Getting back to the purpose of this article—the reason why wild theories get to be so popular—we must look at the psychological effect of what has been discussed above. Given that corruption is so prevalent in all areas of government, and the fact that the deeper it is rooted, the tougher it is to yank it out, people seem to shy away from acknowledging it. Instead of recognizing that the courts, in ruling against patriots' Constitutional issues, are acting outside of the law, some people take to the idea that obscure or even secret schemes are at work. Thus, it is supposed by some that a gold-fringed flag is the reason why a judge ignores Constitutional protections, rather than seeing that he is just corrupt. Or it might be claimed that by failing to object to our name being spelled in all capital letters, we subject ourselves to a jurisdiction in which the Constitution is irrelevant. But again, the Constitution is rendered irrelevant not by such tricks, but because corrupt judges and prosecutors openly violate its protections and limitations with impunity, knowing that they will not be held accountable.

Psychology comes into play because there is no quick fix for stopping corruption, and a quick fix is what too many patriots want. And so, recognition of the nature of the corruption takes a back seat to fanciful silver bullets. Sadly, as long as patriots keep that mindset, silver bullets will continue to be the driving force behind some patriots fighting for a return to Constitutional principles and limited government. When one bullet fails to slay the beast, another one is taken up, and then another. Our cause is adversely affected not only because precious resources are diverted into less productive endeavors, but because people get discouraged and possibly in trouble when the theories don't pan out.

With respect to the nature of the corruption we face—not all of it, certainly, but the most invidious in my view—it is just infidelity to the Constitution, in all its many aspects. When Congress enacts a law that exercises some power that the people never granted to them, they violate their oaths of office (whereby they swore to uphold the Constitution) and act corruptly. When Executive branch officers and their minions follow through by enforcing such law, they violate their oaths and act corruptly. When the Judiciary condones such impositions, they violate their oaths of office and act corruptly. This type of corruption can often go unnoticed by the masses, because it is so institutionalized as to be almost second nature. And also because it is often the result of popular support of the people (or at least, we are often led to believe that it is), fulfilling the prophetic end of all democracies—voting themselves largesse from the public treasury until they bankrupt the nation.

From this small example, it can be seen that the corruption is not limited to government, but is present throughout society. Our collective acquiescence to assumption of ungranted powers emboldens the liberty thieves to try for a little more, and then a little more, until it is all gone. And perhaps this is part of the reason why people gravitate towards silver bullets as the answer rather than exposure of the corruption—the latter requires that we acknowledge our own culpability in the problem. After all, as Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing."

In this light, it can be seen more clearly why education is such a necessary first step in restoring our freedoms. People must be made to see how they have been manipulated down through the years into supporting massive spending for social programs which falsely promise all sorts of free lunches "for the sake of the children," while truly enslaving those same children, and their children after them, to pay for it all. They need to understand the adage "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have." Ignorance of such concepts is curable—all it takes is education. Once a person is confronted with truth, it is a special breed (although not necessarily a rare one) that can turn their backs on it and continue on as if they didn't know. Cognitive dissonance is not an easy feat—I'm sure it must take a toll on a person. But truth must be made available to them so that their eyes might be opened as ours were. Once opened, there is plenty to see that somehow escaped their attention before—before they knew what they should be looking for. And you just never know which aspect of the loss of our liberties might cause that eye-opening effect.

This brings me back to the Fellowship's plan for educating the public mentioned above: a talk show format radio network broadcasting shows which should be of interest to everyone who wants to restore fidelity to the Constitution—and broadcasting them 24 hours every day. What's more, it will be intended for the uninitiated too, to pique their interest in being part of the solution. As a way to get this project started, the Fellowship opened up Associate Memberships at a modest price, for those who see the need and viability of such a powerful communication tool, but have no need of casework or paralegal services. To help promote the idea for the network to other liberty-minded groups, the Fellowship is making ready to produce a DVD that illustrates the benefits of this project. But funds are short. Hopefully, you see the potential for the radio network, and will help us carry these projects forward by encouraging others to become Associate Members, or even with a donation for those purposes.

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