leftlibertarian.org

22 July 2008

I received a notice of levy today from the IRS. (Form 8159 — Taxpayer’s Copy of Notice of Levy.)

In December of last year, they levied an account I was in the process of closing, and ended up with about five dollars. In January they levied another bank account and emptied it out to the tune of about $4,350. This new levy is the first one since then.

They’re trying to get $1,385 and they’ll probably get it all, as I have more than that in this account.

This should effectively close out my delinquent taxes for 2005 and 2006, with them managing to seize all of what I didn’t pay in those years, plus interest and penalties. They don’t seem to be trying to chase me down for what I didn’t pay last year. I think this must be because I had to file a corrected return because they incorrectly modified the return I filed in April — see The Picket Line for 22 April 2008 for details about that — and this corrected return is probably still making its way through the system.

The three accounts they’ve gone after are three accounts for which they would have gotten 1099 forms reporting interest in previous tax years. That’s no big surprise.

The total they’ve seized includes $4955 in delinquent taxes and $814 in interest and penalties. (This includes the seizure of a small, incorrectly refunded California state tax payment, if you’re wondering why these numbers don’t all add up right.)

What have I learned?

1. that the IRS will come after accounts it learns about via 1099s
2. that the amount of time that passes between levies varies, in the case of my three levies, from one month to six
3. that once it’s started issuing levies the agency will try to keep going until it runs out of delinquent taxes to pursue or sources to levy, even if the amount being pursued falls to a fairly low level
4. that if a corrected tax return is still being processed, even if the ultimate tax shown on the return is not being disputed, this may put the collection process on hold for that return

If you’re wondering why I’m bothering to resist taxes in this way, since the government has been effective at seizing the money with icing on top anyway, see The Picket Line for 4 December 2007 for an in-depth look at some of the reasoning behind this.

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The Malaysian news website Malaysiakini has a “Vox Populi” column. One participant there recently asked:

As a Malaysian tired of the events unfolding every day, can we, the helpless rakyat [roughly, “people” — TPL], organise something to tell our politicians that we are sick of their behaviour? How about we all refuse to pay the income tax in 2008?

Another responds:

The refusal to pay the income tax suggested here is a legitimate method of civil disobedience advocated by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American naturalist, philosopher, and author of the book Walden and an important essay “Civil disobedience.”

Thoreau had a major influence on leaders of non-violent resistance, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tax resistance on a large scale may be difficult to organise for now, but if the government deteriorates into a police state that fans racial or religious emotions, civil disobedience, including tax resistance, may be the only way to go for Malaysians to organise effective resistance while avoiding deep scarring of the society.

A third joins in:

I do not think Malaysians should waste anymore time and effort to argue or convince other Malaysians that the present BN government and all their machinery are corrupt as hell.…

If the BN MPs are still undecided on crossing over, then we should strongly persuade them to do so by all means. A suggestion to stop paying taxes until this govt is removed can also be explored.

We can’t do this alone but in numbers we can. Instead of street demonstration, why not take leave from work. They can’t sack us all if all of us were to act. We are given a second chance to change things and our destiny.

If we fail to exercise our rights and choice at this opportunity, then be prepared to live another generation of misery and abuses. It boils down to a simple choice, really. God will not help us until we start helping ourselves.

There’s some similar discussion going on elsewhere on the site as well.

(Friday, July 18th, 2008) After a decision by a Napanee judge, rendered at 10:30 am this morning, lifting a publication ban on Tyendinaga Mohawk Shawn Brant’s preliminary hearing, Crown attorneys attempted to have the effect of the decision stayed, but failed.

At midday, only Crown prosecutors (no defence lawyers) appeared before a judge of the Court of Appeal, and convinced the judge to issue a stay. The media was ordered to “immediately cease reporting on evidence heard at the preliminary inquiry and remove all related reports from websites”.

Then, at shortly after 5pm, lawyers for the CBC and Mr. Brant appeared before the same Appeals judge, along with Crown counsel. After substantial submissions, the judge lifted her earlier stay and dismissed the stay application altogether, ordering the publication ban lifted once more.

The appeal may go ahead in due course, but the media are at present free to publish all the evidence heard at the preliminary inquiry.

As reported briefly today, this decision makes crucial evidence available to public scrutiny for the first time. The preliminary inquiry dealt with charges arising from Mr. Brant's participation in two highway and rail blockades held by Tyendinaga Mohawks in 2007 to pressure the government to resolve longstanding land claim and poverty-related grievances.

The documents include wiretap transcripts that feature OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino telling Mohawk protest leader Shawn Brant in a telephone conversation that, "your whole world’s going to come crashing down" and threatening to "do everything I can within your community and everywhere to destroy your reputation" during during the blockade which took place on June 29th, 2007, on the AFN's National Day of Action.

Defence counsel, Peter Rosenthal, will be available tomorrow to discuss the conduct of the Crown Attorneys, as well as to provide documents and transcripts relevant from the preliminary inquiry.

PRESS CONFERENCE
TIME: July 19th, 2008, 2pm
LOCATION: Offices of Roach, Schwartz & Associates
(688 St.Clair Avenue West, Toronto)

For more information, contact:
Peter Rosenthal, Counsel: rosent@math.toronto.edu
Shawn Brant: (613) 391-4055

This past weekend, I stepped into Revolution Books in Boston, Massachusetts. What a joke. Bob Avakian and his Maoist goons should rename it and their Revolutionary Communist Party "No Gods, No Masters...except for Bob Avakian." What a blatant cult of personality. Their slogan is telling:

The tiny store, about the size of a large closet, on the second floor of some building near Harvard Square, had a few delightful books, but in large, there was nothing but Marxist, Maoist, and Avakianist literature. Not one title concerning anarchism, the other half of the socialist movement, as far as I could tell. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised, but it still irks me. From what I hear, the store used to carry books on all sorts of "counter-culture" subjects, from atheism to Rastafarianism. However, from what I saw Saturday, it almost exclusively carries books which fit in with their Maoist ideology. I believe I saw some Zinn and maybe some Chomsky, but I don't think it was their pro-anarchism work so much as their work attacking U.S. imperialism.

I'd love to see more genuinely radical bookstores that don't cater to a specific ideology. Or at least, if you're going to cater to a specific ideology, don't hide it. Infoshops which carry only anarchist works generally don't call themselves "Revolution Books" or "Radical Books", do they? (Fie on those who do!)

21 July 2008

Federal Times seems pretty convinced that we’ve just about seen the end of the IRS program of assigning some of its tax delinquency cases to quasi-private debt collection agencies.

According to the Times, Congress won’t explicitly kill the program, but will underfund it to the point where it won’t be able to continue.

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The “Soul-N-Black” blog talk radio program has pointed a few people this way over the last couple of days with it’s “It’s About To Get Jumpin’” episode.

The speaker complains that black Americans aren’t getting their money’s worth for the taxes they pay, and that rules governing who gets disqualified for Social Security benefits disproportionately target black Americans. In addition, the government is loading Americans down with tens of thousands of dollars of national debt apiece. So black Americans should form a separate, parallel government and stop paying money to Washington (especially since the IRS-governed tax is optional anyway).

This, anyway, is my paraphrase of his argument. There are some other points too, about the bizarre doctrines of Creflo Dollar, and about the quality of argument and analysis in black America. Anyway, here’s what he has to say about The Picket Line:

I want you to go to this website called http://sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php, and I want you to look at… what it’s called is, “the Don’s Method” [sic] of not paying taxes: “How to resist the federal income tax through the Don’t Owe Nothin’ Method.”

Now I want people to understand this, and follow this, and look at it, okay? So I want you to check out Don’s Method. Okay? It’s at The Picket Line’s website.

Go through this and I want you to see if you can apply this into your life. ’Cause you know I keep hearing these house niggers talking about a whole bunch of shit but they’re not giving solutions — and remember, I told you that Soul-N-Black is coming in to start spanking assholes and spanking faces and putting down solutions. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start embarrassing them, okay, for real. This is what your black leaders should be talking to you about. This is what your people should be opening their eyes about.

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If you’ve been following the Charles Merrill case, you might also be interested in a new blog by John Bisceglia called Gay Tax Protest. Bisceglia has experienced first-hand the harm caused by lack of government respect for same-sex marriage contracts, and he concludes: “It is immoral and unjust to expect gay and lesbian families to pay taxes to a government that denies us the legal protections of civil marriage.”

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Thanks to …no third solution for plugging The Picket Line recently.

According to Wikipedia short selling or "shorting" is the practice of selling securities the seller does not then own, in the hope of repurchasing them later at a lower price. This is done in an attempt to profit from an expected decline in price of a security, such as a stock or a bond, in contrast to the ordinary investment practice, where an investor "goes long," purchasing a security in the hope the price will rise. "Naked shorting" is the practice of selling a stock short without first borrowing the shares or ensuring that the shares can be borrowed. Naked shorting is not necessarily a violation of [American] federal securities laws, and can contribute to market liquidity, but is illegal when it drives down stock prices. Seems like the 'invisible' hand is more like a sleight-of-hand. Actually the Shag thinks this all sounds a bit like garden variety theft. The present stock rally which some observers are referring to as a "bear trap" or "bear rally" seems to be getting the nervous eye of the state. From the Los Angeles Times last Wednesday ...


The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday stepped up its war against what it believes is manipulation of stocks by "short sellers" -- traders who bet on falling share prices.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox surprised Wall Street with a plan to curb illegal short selling in 19 major financial company shares, including embattled mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Shares of Fannie and Freddie have been big targets of bearish traders this year.

With the nation's financial system under enormous strain and the stock market in its worst slump since 2000-02, federal regulators are facing pressure to show they're on top of the situation. Cox unveiled the agency's plan to limit short selling at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on financial market concerns.

The SEC chief said the agency was taking action to stop what he said was stock manipulation "that threatens the stability of financial institutions."

In a short sale, a trader borrows stock, usually from a brokerage's inventory, and sells it, expecting the price to decline. If the bet is correct, the trader can buy new shares later at a lower price, repay the borrowed stock and pocket the difference between the sale price and the repurchase price.

Shorting is legal -- unless traders are ordering stock sales without having arranged to borrow actual shares. That would be "naked" shorting, which is illegal, says John Coffee, a securities-law professor at Columbia Law School.

But the rule against such stock plays hasn't been enforced much, Coffee said.

The SEC's new plan is a crackdown on naked shorting of major financial stocks amid what has been a severe hammering of the shares -- to the point where investors are beginning to question the firms' survival.

Beginning on Monday, the SEC will require that "anyone effecting a short sale in these securities arrange beforehand to borrow the securities and deliver them at settlement." The emergency rule will be in effect through July 29, but could be extended until Aug. 21, the SEC said.

What's more, Cox said the agency eventually expects to cover the entire stock market with the new rule.

For the 19 stocks on the list, the change means that brokerages no longer will be able to take a short seller's word that he actually has borrowed the shares he wants sold. And that, in turn, could curb situations in which multiple short sellers are expecting to borrow the same shares for sale -- similar, say, to five different people putting the same car up for sale, knowing that only one of them can deliver the vehicle.

The SEC suspects that some short sellers are ganging up on financial stocks, engaging in naked shorting while spreading rumors that the companies are in dire straits.

It’s Sunday again.

So, what did you all write about this week? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments.

Anarchists in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada are putting together a musicians network. If you play an instrument or have some other musical talent NORM needs you. From A-infos:

Music is an incredibly important aspect of all revolutionary movements. Inherent in song is the power to bring people together, united under common grievances, beliefs, emotions and visions for the future. As revolutionary anarchists of Northeast North America, our struggle is no different. Therefore, members of the Northeast Anarchist Network have recently launched a Network of Revolutionary Musicians (NORM), an association of musicians and bands striving ­ through their art to promote anarchism and people's struggles. We hope that through this project we can connect all of those musicians and help them bond together in the common cause of providing a soundtrack to our struggles and inspiring new generations to join the fight for a new world.


The NORM is planning a tour this summer, possibly called NEAN's Traveling Festival of Anarchy," to bring revolutionary music, as well as skill shares, propaganda and workshops, in a caravan across the Northeast. Thus far, we have bands and venues set up in Massachusetts, Vermont, Upstate New York, and Maine. The NORM is developing a page on the NEAN Web site where affiliated musicians can upload profiles complete with music downloads, videos, bios, and tour dates. We are also working on a compilation CD, hopefully the first of many, that NEAN affiliated groups and projects can use to fundraise. Some of the NORM's other goals, laid out in the original proposal, include:

"Bridging musicians and music scenes with revolutionary struggles and movements, and [helping] those involved in these movements to find creative expression of resistance through music...Acting as a committee to help set up entertainment events during and around NEAN Assemblies and other gatherings...Connecting a diverse range of genres and styles, and encourage the creativity, originality and bravery to break out of the comfort zones we limit ourselves to ­ musically and otherwise...(and)... fostering the creation of our own means of entertainment, expression, and sharing amongst ourselves in resistance to capitalist contracts, copyrights, and control over the music industry."


If you are a musician, have a venue, or just a music lover, get involved! We need help throwing this project together, bands, hosts and teachers for our tour, and songs for the compilations. We have an e-mail list and are actively working on all of the above-listed goals.

Thanks for the idea, Brad.