Wesley Snipes and Unreasonable Justice

The headlines state "Wesley Snipes Gets 3 Years".

The story says that he got three one-year sentences, to be served consecutively, which is weird.

He was convicted of three misdemeanors. The maximum allowable sentence for a misdemeanor is one year or - maybe - one year minus a day.

For the judge to give him the maximum sentence three times, then make them run consecutively makes me think the judge was peeved. This is a judge "throwing the book at him." The judge is violating the spirit of the law.

Perhaps it is just biased reporting; we aren't told which misdemeanors were violated.

I doubt if it will stand on appeal, but it is timely for the IRS. This is the annual high-profile tax case that the IRS tries to have in the news each April 15th.

In my eyes Snipes hurt his cause when he paid-up at the sentencing. He effectively admitted that he owed the money.

And it is hard to say that he doesn't owe the money.

If you sign your enlistment paper you have agreed to abide by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You have agreed that appointees of your government have the right to shoot you if you if the enemy doesn't. You have put yourself between the hammer and the anvil.

If you sign your 1040, you have agreed to abide by the tax code... which is stupid, since the code is too complicated to understand and probably self-contradictory. Once you sign, they got you if they want you.

A friend describes it this way, "If you want to play baseball, you have to play by baseball rules... but you don't have to play baseball."

I haven't played baseball since 1998. When an agent called and pointed that out to me, I admitted it saying, "The income tax is voluntary. I don't choose to volunteer." She giggled. I'll swear it was a nervous giggle. She said, "I haven't heard that one before." She never called back.

Watch the video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6716929127738729234. It confirms what I've been reading for years; that the Income Tax is voluntary. Then ask yourself how Wesley Snipes got three years for not volunteering? (They couldn't punish him for not volunteering, so they hit him as hard as they could for something else.)

The video is of a talk given at the National Press Club. The speaker, Marcella Brooks, was the forewoman of a jury during a "willful failure to file" case. The defendant was acquitted because the government repeatedly refused cite - to the defendant and to the jury - the law where it says you have to file.

Now, tell me again what Wesley Snipes is going to jail about?

When I Google myself, all I find is a Capital-Journal interview where I claim/admit that I don't pay income tax. The interview was done in 1992, while I was running for Congress.

At the end of the article the reporter asked an IRS agent about it. The agent said, "We want everyone to pay their taxes."

This is the second most efficient form of lying; to tell a truth without answering the question. He said "the IRS wants everyone to pay their taxes" (true), but he didn't say I owed taxes.

What is really scary about this is that while some agents are innocent - they don't know that the income tax is voluntary - others are not. They know it is voluntary and they enforce it anyway. Revenuers depend on people's innocence and the IRS' ability to intimidate. We are not a "nation of laws", we are a nation of cowards.

I admit I'm terrified. Under the weight of a century of micro-management by Congress, consensus and law have broken down . Now I see my government seeking to achieve its goals by terror and intimidation.

I heard the following phrase at a Fully Informed Jury Association convention: "You have no rights which you do not assert."

Snipes should have stood on his right to a jury.