*bites America*

The reason most conspiracy theorists seem crazy is because of one key point that forces them to speculate. Nobody knows who runs the Federal reserve. Without that one connection everything seems random, unless you check out the peripheral things related to it.

Let's just say 2010 is going to be a baaaad year.

Not for me, It's going to be election in Sweden. Unless US is going like a crazy world police and declare war on liberal countries or something...

I don't mind the income tax in my country, but then the defence budget in Sweden is pretty... small. It's shrinking even. Most of the money I lose in taxes is what I gain back in services and privileges, and not on bombs.

I'm watching it right now. This is something that really needs to be more heavily circulated. It's not just another "conspiracy theory" film, because this has something different: solid proof. :D

LOL American Government
LOL IRS

thats all i have to say

I'd laugh, but I have to live it.

Sure, when I say it, it's insane, but when that movie says it...

Now we only need to uncover the truth behind Luxemberg...

No, there never WAS a law requiring you to pay income taxes. It was a temporary measure brought about to finance WWI.

There is NOTHING more permanent in a bureacracy than a temporary measure!

Besides, money is power, I can't believe people are so surprised that the aristocracy still hold 'little people' in contempt.

I never understood how they enforce the tax code without a law. I know if you aren't a citizen you don't pay taxes, they can't withhold taxes from your paychecks.

Hint: They throw your ass in the slammer.

Yes, they charge you with Tax Evasion. I don't know if it is actually a law or if they just get away with it.

Internal Revenue Code section 7201

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code

IRS Code =/= Unequivocal Law

The whole point of the debate it to show us the law, not the code . Any agency can write code, but it's meaningless without Congressional legislation to back it up.

Ok, what if I called it title 26 of the US code? Did you even read the link I posted or did you just let your knee jerk? the IRC is American law.

Call it whatever you like. All that's being asked is to point out the law that was passed by Congress that correlates with that part of the code. If it truly is US law, then it had to come from somewhere. If not, then it is fraudulent code, hence one of the major debates of the film.

You still have not read the link have you? Why are you here pestering me?

Do you know what the US code is? it is the official codification of all federal laws.

The document which I refered to as "The internal revenue code" is in fact title 26 of the US code (remember, that's the official codification of all US federal laws! Still with me?)

Title 26 is where they list all of the federal tax laws. Section 7201 of title 26 of the US code lays out the specific statement, if you are interested, of the illigal nature of refusing to pay taxes. Would you like to read the text in question, here you go. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/h.....1----000-.html

In summation, please remember:

the US constitution Article 1 Section 8 allows congress to lay taxes

The sixteenth amendment (ratified by 42 states, well in excess of the 2/3 required to ratify it, despite false claims in the documentary) specifically allows for an income tax.

Title 26 of the US code is the specific legislation related to the nature of these taxes, and finally section 7201 of title 26 even defines the penalties for not obeying these laws.

All of this information is easy to find, especially with the help of the help of searchable internet copies of the US code like the one hosted by Cornell University, and the people in the documentary who claimed to not be able to find this information were either lying, lazy, or were willfully remaining blind to it motivated by their own ideology.

The central question of the documentary "Where is the law that says you must pay taxes" and the alleged "investigation" of the question that the documentary conducts is mere sophistry.

You still have not read the link have you?

Oh I have, it just doesn't site the law(s) that established said code. It just backs up code with other code, that in turn is backed up by the code it's backing up. That's called circular reasoning.

Let me repeat this. US Code is merely a restatement of laws enacted by Congress. US Code is not directly passed by Congress. It is simply there as a means of reference and organization. Code within the US Code MUST be backed up by an Act of Congress, otherwise it is not law. End of story.

If all people can site are circles of code, then that doesn't give me a lot of faith behind said code.

Yes, Article 1 gives Congress power, but Congress still has to define how they are going to exercise said power, if it is to be carried out by the Executive Branch(In this case, the Department of the Treasury through the IRS). They do so with legislative acts(refer to my first point).

It's 3/4th of the State Legislatures, not that that matters here. And the 16th Amendment didn't enable an income tax, it enabled an unapportioned income tax. There's a huge difference.

Look, unless it's the Library of Congress, I don't really care what they have to say. If I want legal advise, I'll consult an attorney.

I'm going to have to call bullshit here. You aren't doing any research here, and it's become obvious that you are quite entirly just making up your argument as you go along.

The US Code is the law, that is its function. You claim it is not "passed by congress" but in fact that is exactly how the US code comes into being. It's text is composed of all of the bills that congress has passed and that the president has signed into law. Once something has become law, it is entered into the US code. It is the official codification of all our federal laws, that is what it is, that is it's function. You have demonstrated that you have no concept of what you are talking about.

It's text is composed of all of the bills that congress has passed and that the president has signed into law. Once something has become law, it is entered into the US code.

You just backed up my point. Of the code that was entered into title 26 that pertains to an income tax on individuals, where/what is the bill that was passed by Congress and signed by the President that the code was derived from? That's what this movie is asking.

You are, if nothing else, making a very good argument for the libertarian position on public schools. I already answered the central question of the documentary. You apparently have no concept of the pointlessness of your most recent question. Curing you of your ignorance is becoming tedious, as you seem to feel no obligation to do research of your own and yet I must consistantly point you to sources of new facts that you demand. Tell me, if you can continue to demand esoteric facts, and I must fetch them for you then why should I keep on with this idiocy? The dates that each iteration of the income tax law were entered into the US code are already listed in a link I provided, and if you really so deeply urgently want to know what the bill was called before it became a law then go look it up your own self, but it does not matter one iota, since they were passed and entered into the code.

I will give you a hint, that the bills will each have 2 names, one beginning with the designation HR and then a number, and one beginning with S and then a number. This is, of course, just esoteric trivia!

Oh, I get it. The Income Tax is a faith based system.
I'll gonna go pray the the patron saint of revenue that I get a big return on my 1040 now!

I don't know what question you are asking, and frankly neither do you. The link I provided above lists the dates of each adopted change to the US Code as pertains to a federal income tax, so get researching if you really want the numbers these bills were assigned on their various congressional dockets. Are you contending that these parts of the US code were never passed by congress? Well have fun chasing your UFOs.

Looks like I opened a can of worms ...

Anything political opens a can of worms in and of itself.



Anything that makes a reference to fascism is just inviting the Drama Llama to come to the party.

You sort of did, but I did find the exact law that the documentary was looking for :)

I see in the internal Revenue code the definition of wages as income, but don't see anywhere stated in any laws that wages are income... code isn't the law, if code was the law it wouldn't be called code >> code is mearly the interpertation of the law, used to inforce the law, and solve disputes and what not. I'm in no way saying that charging tax to our wages is illegal, far from that =3 I'm generally just against how corporate America is

Actually, if you educate yourself as to what the US Code is, you would find that it is indeed the law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Code

The Internal Revenue code is title 26 of the US Code, and hence itself law. Please don't make up arguments as you go along, I prefer to argue with people who have a basic grasp of the factual underpinnings of what they are trying to counter me with.

If you read my link you'll find that the US Code is indeed "the law" To which we appeal when we use the term "the law". Authoritative interpretations of these laws can be found in Supreme Court majority reports, in which the justices write long interpretations and opinions of laws which they find written in the US Code.

Bah, whatever, never said that Title 26 "blah blah blah" isn't inforcable by law >> In general I am against govermnet's involvement in the economy... But okay yes, your right, my mistake =p

It's simple.

They have moar gunz than u noob, lawlz.

This is where all the American taxes go;

http://www.grooveking.com/images/taxes.jpg

You mean it goes to useful things, and not just minority women on welfare, hurr hurr hurr?

That's my impression of an American libertarian :) I think if they would agree that we don't need a standing army, then maybe socialist pinkos like me could agree that we don't need an income tax.

Agreed.

Isn't Welfare paid by State Taxes?

If you don't believe that taxes even exist then I doubt you would be able to make the distinction :)

I never said that. You pointed out tax collection is Constitutional law.

You said:I never said that.

I know, I said it, that's why my name is next to it. I'm confused why you would want to state this.

Sorry, I'm confused too. Doing too much at once.

I'm sorry. I'm trying to follow a bunch of arguments in this thread too, sorry. I think I used the word "you" when I was meaning to refer to a hypothetical person, hence the confusion.

There are two systems. You find this occurrance a LOT in our government, a state system AND a federal system.

If you read again carefully you'll find that that wasn't what was causing any confusion.

It's not that Libertarians think minority women below the poverty line should go screw themselves, it's that they think helping them isn't the Federal government's problem, nor should it be funded by the federal dime. Many such libertarians are in fact very generous donators to PRIVATE charity organizations, they just get pissy about being Forced to be charitable.. since when you thnk about it forced charity isn't charity at all.

I think the welfare argument is a red herring, though. When libertarians complain about taxes there is an elephant in the room that no one wants to talk to, and if we took care of it and lowered the taxes accordingly they would hardly notice the burden of social welfare programs.

Still on the military? RIGHT!

You just go and tell EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE GORRAM WORLD to disband their standing-armies, and I'll go ask the pentagon to do the same for us. Have fun! ^.^

You are misconstruing my point, and your reasoning is perfunctory at best, certainly by your reasoning since America leads the world in Military spending we aught to be in control of every other country, or certainly the ones which give only a small part of their budget to it?

Oh but I shouldn't, I'm not having an argument about militarism vs pacifism here, I'm saying that the income tax serves the presumably important task of paying for our bloated military apparatus, and any argument about the validity of an income tax is also tied up with the question of our armed forces.

Some of it is a red herring.



In honesty, a lot of money gets eaten up by beauracratic overhead, and it doesn't even matter which beauracracy eats it up, wether military, or welfare, FBI, etc. It's still wasted money. (As well as 'pork barrel projects' which are routinely attached to bills, which wastes even more money on what could be considered pet projects.)


The military ain't the only black hole in the grand scheme of the budget.

That's depressing.

Yeah, I saw this documentary a couple of months ago.

SPOILER ALERT
US Constitution Article 1 Section 8: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Sixteenth Amendment: 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.
/SPOILER ALERT



A steaming load of right-wing crazy crap supported only by the conspiratorial mindset and a trust in magical thinking over, you know, research. America has some of the lowest taxes in the world, but some folks can't stop crying about all of the free abortions they imagine their paycheck must be providing to gay black women on welfare. If you want lower taxes step 1 is to disband the standing army, that's where the largest part of your tax dollar goes every time, but what right-wing libertarian would want to do away with that wonderful device which we bring our own masturbatory justice to those sinful foreigners?

Yo step the fuck off my magical thinking

I will slice your shit up with ENERGY WINGS

Oh no, I'm under psychic attack from the international Jewish banking conspiracy™ of right-wing libertarian lore! Get out of my mind!

Thats the one. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/.....ion/article01/

Without a standing army we have no sovrignity.. not that we have much sovrignity with one.

Just like Canada!

But perhapse I misstated my position. I think it would be reasonable to maintain, say, a national guard and a navy of some size, but a defense department that focuses on having first strike capability all over the world, and one that requires that we have hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers deployed around the world at all times, not to mention a nuclear arsenal that could level every continent on the earth several thousand times over, is fairly indefensible.

No one I know is arguing that we shouldn't have a standing army, especially Aaron Russo. Whats being argued is that things were done long before we even had an income tax, let alone the demonic one we have today. Back then, they could easily pay for things with tariffs and such. My point is, there were and are other sources for the Federal government to get money.
The second point is that the interest that the Federal government has to pay to the Federal Reserve is almost, if not as much, as the income tax takes in.
The whole point of the documentary was that if we abolish the Federal Reserve and go back to having the Treasury issue all the money, like they did prior to 1913, we eliminate the need for an income tax right there. Not to mention eliminating several trillion dollars of our national debt in the process.
You can dismiss the other stuff as loony if you want, that's up to you. But I hardly see how this primary part of the film can really be debatable.

You said: No one I know is arguing that we shouldn't have a standing army, especially Aaron Russo.

I think you are confused about the argument that is taking place. I didn't make any assertions about Aaron Russo's beliefs. I came close, by generalizing that I believe libertarians are in favor of a large military, because American libertarians seem to be inordinately militant. I asserted that if libertarians truly wanted to get out of paying an income tax the best way would be to advocate for the abolition of America's standing army, which is the recipient of more than 50% of American tax dollars.

How is it indefensible? It's part of the cost of being a world power. Alot of people may think the US is pushing the world around a bit more than it should, but don't even think for an instant if we cut back and went all isolationist again (like we were just before Both world wars.) don't think for an instant that soneome else won't fill that void, for good or for ill.

You can argue of course that we should be more responsible with the power we wield, but asking that it be thrown away is like asking to be kicked in the head.

But getting back to Libertarianism. Providing for the defense of the nation and it's interests IS one of the government's jobs, extorting money from productive citizens to fund social programs without being allowed any say in the matter is not.

Again, I'm not going to engage you about your theories concerning military powers, you believe in some interesting buzz words, and I believe in some different theories, and that's that.

But your last statements are at odds with one another. The income tax is absolutely necessary to maintaining our military. Without the vast revenue brought in by the income tax we would have no way to pay for such a massive military.

You recognize that libertarians see "national defense" as one of the valid roles of government, good because I recognize that as one of their believes as well, and that is my entire point in bringing up the military, that being that it is the single largest beneficiary of the income tax (and in fact is larger than all the other beneficiaries combined)!

Hmm, okay.

..so what are we arguing about?

I really don't remember anymore, but do want to point out again that Freedom to Fascism is complete sophistry. The law that the flim's producer allegedly went in search for is:

Title 26 section 7201 of the US code

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/h.....1----000-.html

which has it's legal foundlings in article 1 section 8 of the constitution, and the sixteenth amendment. Finding this law is easy, and the libertarian wonks in the film who pretend that they couldn't find any legal basis had either not looked, or were preoccupied with certain conspiracy theories (presented as fact) which invalidate either the 16th amendment or article 1 section 8 of the constitution.

Are they even libertarian? I just tend to lump all the conspiracy theorists into one category, that of "lunatic". Giving them a label that coincides with any political 'side' is to taint said side with these idiots.

*nods* Libertarianism is a fine theory, too bad it's most vocal spokesmen tend to be total tin-foil-beanie whack-jobs.

I also think libertarianism (lower case referring to the political philosophy) is good, however I'm wary of any American who tells me they are a libertarian, because they probably mean Libertarian (uppercase, referring to the organized political party). An American libertarian is likely to believe strongly in guns, sexism, the bible, and race war (Not to mention UFOs or that taxes are illegal). Libertarianism in America is sort of screwed up. For instance you could call the ACLU a libertarian organization, in fact, a group of lawyers that defends peoples civil rights against the predation of the government could hardly be called anything else, but since it's a left wing brand of libertarianism it's always painted as liberal in America, where you aren't properly considered a libertarian unless you've got a flannel outfit, a gut and are a member of the patriot militias movement, or you are a cut throat day trader on Wall Street.

Ah yes, the 16th Amendment. I'm not going to stand here and rebuttal with whether it was ratified or not. I could talk until I was blue in the face, and those that don't care will still not care.
Rather, lets discuss what income is, or at least, what it was.
Back then, income was defined as a gain or profit. In other words, money you got, yet did not exchange or do anything for. Example, if you have stocks or bonds and you sell them for more than you paid or if you collect dividends from stocks, you just received income.
However, if you exchange something for something else, you are not aquiring anything more than what you had before. You simply bartered and equal exchange of good and/or services. Example, you buy something at the store, you exchange money for goods. You work a job for someone, you exchanged labor for money.
In other words, if you did or gave something for the good/service/money you received, then it is not income.
But wait, what's this? Why, it's the US Code from long ago, and it says the same thing I did. Wait again, who's that over there? Why it's the IRS of days past, and they're here to contort and/or outright change the meaning or words! YAY! I feel so patriotic paying my taxes now!
[I]That[I] is my main beef with Income tax.

I think your understanding of this topic is less than perfect. Your assertion that only what is now covered by the capitol gains tax should count as income is puzzling, and otherwise I find your find your reasoning to puzzling to be argued with, you'll have to refer to impartial history texts or US laws if I'm going to understand your argument.

Your assertion that only what is now covered by the capitol gains tax should count as income is puzzling...

What's so hard to grasp about this? That's the way it was. That's how we had income taxes dating back to the Civil War, because they weren't taxes on income as we've been told.

If you have trouble grasping this, just find older versions of the IRC or even pre-IRC. The further you go back, the more and more you'll see the definition of "income" depart from what you know it to be today.

I don't think semantics is a very good way to refute a law. The income tax was not devised to generate tax revenue from things that were already taxed, it was to generate more tax revenue from workers earning wages and salaries. And again since you provide no sources to advance your assertion, and being that I have already done ample research on you behalf in this argument I am disinclined to pursue it any further.

Regardless of whether or not you want to see in a law that may or may not be there, the original point of all of this was that we wouldn't need an income tax if there was no Federal Reserve.

That is a completely nonsensical statement. We need an income tax to pay for our federal government, and most particularly the bloated defense department I have mentioned previously, which soaks up more than 50 percent of our taxes. Without an income tax our government would not be able to support itself. The federal reserve system makes an Income tax manageable. It is a system that perpetuates and regulates itself, granted, but removing it would still leave the problem of how to pay for the government.

Have you watched the movie?

All money in circulation is borrowed from the Federal Reserve by the government. It is on loan, with interest. Those interest payments alone are now huge, not to mention the actual loans themselves.

If the government, though the Treasury issued the money themselves like we did prior to 1913, we would no longer have that interest to pay or the huge loans.
Granted, we'd still have $2+ Trillion in Treasury Bills to pay off, but that's another story.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html

Again you reveal startling ignorance. Do you know how the government pays this interest? The answer may surprise you!

There is a separate matter of the interest that the federal reserve charges to private banks, which must be paid back in federal reserve notes, which is an entirlydifferent matter that actually does involve money being exchanged, unlike the United States Governments method of paying the federal reserve.

I'm not talking about "the" interest rate that everyone thinks of when they hear "The Fed" uttered. I'm talking about the direct Federal Reserve to Treasury loan. So long as we have a single Federal Reserve Note out in circulation, we will have a debt to the Federal Reserve.

I talked about the interest rate because I wasn't confident in your ability to know the difference. I also said something cryptic about "the answer surprising you." by which I mean, go research the full functioning of the federal reserve system. We have been paying that debt by a handy little method that might make you smile when you discover it. It's no problem at all in fact. But I'm not going to hand it to you, because I've already answered a lot of your questions through my own research. Go do your own.

Are you referring to the gold bullion we initially had to pay them with and is why places such as Ft. Knox are empty?
If so, that's not a very good reason to smile.

No, I am not talking about gold. In fact I think I told you to go research it, which you haven't. You are making yourself look like a particularly lazy and intellectually dishonest arguer.

If you're referring to the exact procedure of exchange, the Treasury issues bonds in exchange for notes from the Federal Reserve.

You could argue that we use inflation and the resulting devaluing of the dollar, to make the actual amount we owe the Federal Reserve less, but all that does is complicate things, since the only was to have inflation is to have more dollars out there, which of course would just make us owe that much more to the Federal Reserve.

There's also fractional reserve banking, but that just makes the banks more money.

Then there's the fact that a majority of stocks are held by governments, mostly the federal, and that the fraud that is the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is how they are able to pay it off.

But none of these address the fact that so long as the Federal Reserve exists, we will always be slaves to it. If you don't believe me with what I say, that's cool. I probably wouldn't either. ;)

At least give this a read if you haven't already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cr....._Jekyll_Island

The bonds are it bucko. The value of these bonds is based on your expectation that the US will be able to pay. Whereas you seem to have no confidence these bonds have historically been the most stable investment in the world. The US is good for it. This interest is handily paid off by US bonds because their value comes from public confidence in the solvency of the government. You can call it all smoke and mirrors if you want, but I would accuse you of having no real concept of wealth, and no real understanding of economics. Treasury bonds back up reserve notes, and reserve notes are the currency that is used by the united states economic engine. Maybe we could hypothesize about these debts actually all coming due, and the federal reserve... I don't know, repossessing America, but this is a good ol' boys agreement, it's always going to be in the fed's best interest to accept more bonds as payment ;)

You know, all of the anti-tax ideas you saw in this documentary have been discredited nearly as soon as they were invented thought the years. The contention that the sixteenth amendment was never properly ratified is based on the preposterous notion that because copies ratified in the different states may have had different spellings or punctuation marks in them! If you really must believe in silly conspiracy theories I would encourage you to investigate the actual fact that the US had 8 presidents before President George Washington. That has the benefit of being both eerie and true!

I think I'll get to The Creature from Jekyll Island at about the same time I start taking Holocaust denial seriously :)

Wow... O.O
That's pretty bad...

Honestly I recomend every american read the declaration of independence. Look at this administrations reccord, and then read 1984.

1984 has been invoked. The thread is officially over.


(if this were a political thread in yer typical political forum)

OH NOES! ORWELL!!!

Yeah...damn commies.

I watched that last night. ^^() I'd seen it before as well. Makes me glad I'm living up in Canada. We have our own federal banks, but they are in-fact owned by the government. We're starting to have our own money woes however, as it seems the last two terms of governments have been getting their money from private banks, rather than the national bank. Nobody seems to know why.

Frankly, I think the banks are trying to take over up here, the same way they have down there. At least for the time being, we're still free. :p

What I found perhaps most chilling was that stream of little "Federal Orders" or whatever they were...basically, it sounds to me that Bush (or a future president) could hold the entire country hostage say, right before an election, and postpone elections for "national security," in a sense having a "soft coup" (I just made that term up).

Meanwhile, most people won't pay attention because they'll be worried that we're all going to hell for "lettings some fags get married."

Hmm...now I need to go re-read that oath I had to sign before I became a teacher. At least I'll know how much I'm violating it on a daily basis, then.

Reminds me of Deus Ex.

[SPOILERS]
The Gray Death - a virus - is specially engineered in order to cause a worldwide epidemic and, through havoc caused by terrorist groups such as the NSF (National Secessionist Forces) in America and Silhouette in France allow FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to seize control of the government in a completely bloodless coup through various minor and major rules, laws and suchlike.
[/SPOILERS]

25%-35% of a person's paycheck is not a "little bit".

Also, I don't think anyone here is complaining about paying state taxes, just federal. I could be wrong, but I don't believe federal taxes pay for city workers...

Federal pays for:


Federal government administration

This would be all the little things that make Congress run smoothly. Assistants, pages, janitors, etc. I don't know wether or not they use tax money to pay for office supplies, but it is fairly likely. A lot of it gets eaten up by this before it ever hits the rest of the budget.

Federal programs

They are many. They are legion. All the programs started by FDR that survive to this day are funded by federal taxes, as are the FBI, CIA, etc.

Military

Currently, the lion's share of the budget is eaten by military spending. Military spending is not simply "buying more gunz, lolz". It is also invested in many kinds of research (You know that foam used in space shuttles? Military-funded science invented that) the results of which can potentially have applications in civilian life.

Obviously, it also pays the members of said military, as well as those awarded military contracts. (current controversies over Halliburton aside, there are few companies that can do that kind of logistics work)

Government initiatives

These range, but can include any laws that require states to actively spend money (No Child Left Behind gets a bad rap for this. It's the federal government's responsibility to fund its own initiatives, even if it uses the states as the vehicles for those initiatives) Federal grants are included here, etc.





There's a lot of stuff out there that your taxes pay for, and I haven't even listed it all yet! A lot of it is junk that EVERYONE TAKES FOR GRANTED, like federal grants, the FBI, various federal welfare programs, MEDICARE, etc.

Oh goody. I haven't gotten my required dose of conspiracy theory video since that one about a missile being what really hit the Pentagon stopped making the rounds.

Haha, agreed. This video is definitely not "hard proof." But, i've already postulated on such things in mifmafs's journal, to no avail.