Showing posts with label IRS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IRS. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Only 85 Million Americans Pay Federal Tax? No.
Is It True That Only 85 Million Americans Pay Federal Tax? No.
Josh Barro
4/17/2012
Full Article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/04/17/everything-about-this-drudge-headline-is-wrong
Splashed across the Drudge front page right now is the headline: “DATA: ONLY 85 MILLION PAY FED TAXES.” This is the old trope about most Americans “not paying taxes.” And as usual, it’s a lie.
The truth is that most American adults pay federal taxes. The data point that Drudge has mangled here is that only about 122 million Americans pay federal personal income tax—and most who don’t pay other federal taxes.
The underlying data here are the IRS’s preliminary figures on 2010 individual income taxes, which indeed show that only 85 million federal individual income tax returns included a tax liability. But income tax is not the same thing as federal tax. Payroll tax raises nearly as much money as personal income tax, and is much less progressive—essentially everyone who works pays it, at a flat rate, and the tax is actually capped so that high earners pay a smaller percentage of their income than moderate and low earners. And people who don’t pay income tax pay other federal taxes, such as excise taxes on gasoline and tobacco. They also bear some of the burden of the corporate income tax..
Overall, the federal tax code is progressive, but not nearly as progressive as the federal income tax alone, and a large majority of households have a positive federal tax liability.
So the “fed taxes” part of Drudge’s headline is wrong. What about “85 million”? There are 85 million tax units that paid federal income tax in 2010, but some of those tax units are married couples. The IRS hasn’t yet announced how many in 2010, but in 2009, 44 percent of filers with a federal income tax liability were married couples. If that figure held for 2010, then about 122 million Americans paid federal income tax.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Wesley Snipes Ordered to Serve Three Years in Prison
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wesley-snipes-ordered-serve-three-47534
Wesley Snipes Ordered to Serve Three Years in Prison
11/19/2010
The “Blade” actor was hoping to receive a new trial after lawyers received jurors’ emails claiming other members had predetermined his fate.
A federal judge rejected actor Wesley Snipes' wish for a new trial and ordered the Blade star to serve out his three-year prison term for tax-related crimes, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
"The Defendant Snipes had a fair trial; he has had a full, fair and thorough review of his conviction and sentence by the Court of Appeals; and he has had a full, fair and thorough review of his present claims, during all of which he has remained at liberty. The time has come for the judgment to be enforced," U.S. District Court Judge William Terrell Hodges said in his 17-page order.
The Orlando-born Snipes was convicted in 2008 of failing to file federal tax returns. The prosecution said the actor attempted to avoid paying millions in taxes and obstructed the IRS.
Snipes' lawyer Daniel Meachum said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel that the decision "is just shocking," adding that his client "is very disappointed but staying strong and positive."
Two jurors sent emails to Snipes' lawyers alleging that other members made the conclusion that he was guilty before the trial officially started. Meachum also believed that one of the witnesses Kenneth Starr, who recently pleaded guilty to fraud, gave a "tainted" testimony against Snipes.
"We were hopeful that he had convinced Judge Hodges that the government's witness, Ken Starr, had perjured himself and that the government knew of his criminal activities and the predetermined minds of three jurors, but we obviously fell short in accomplishing that," Meachum said.
Snipes could challenge Hodges' ruling and ask the Supreme Court to review the case, though he would most likely be imprisoned during that period.
Hodges' order requires the actor to "surrender himself" upon receiving notice from the U.S. Marshal Service or the Bureau of Prisons, though details of when Snipes must turn himself in were not given.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Joe Stacks are rising up against unresponsive government
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5615.shtml
The Joe Stacks are rising up against unresponsive government
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 24, 2010
Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on “their” government.
The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that “their” government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agrees that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians who rule them “may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”
Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.
Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.
The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist. “Terrorist” is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.
But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can’t take it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.
“Violence,” Stack wrote, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” Stack concluded that nothing short of violence will get the attention of a government that has turned its back on the American people.
Anger is building up. People are beginning to do unusual things. Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local TV station conducted an online survey and found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with Hoskins’ action.
Perhaps the turning point was the federal government’s bailout of the investment banks whose reckless misbehavior diminished Americans’ retirement savings for the second time in eight years. Now a former head of the most culpable bank is campaigning to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to pay for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him by creating a “deficit commission.”
The “deficit commission” will be used to gut Social Security, just as the private insurance health plan is paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.
It could not be more clear that government represents the interest groups that finance the election campaigns.
Conservatives used to say that Washington’s power should be curtailed in behalf of state and local governments that are “closer to the people.” But of course state and local governments are also controlled by interest groups.
Consider Florida, for example. In 2004, the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did considerable damage to the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes and washed away enough of the high ground as to leave other homes vulnerable to the next storm.
People wanted to armor their homes with some form of sea wall. When the county gave the go ahead, two houses on the west end hired engineers who constructed a barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled with sand, each weighing about 70 tons. The sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of white sand trucked in, and sea oats were planted. It was a perfect solution, and an expensive one -- $250,000.
Just east of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section of beachfront road and left three houses built on pilings sitting on the beach. Last year, government with FEMA money rebuilt the section of washed away beachfront road and armored it and two adjacent houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel panels that it drove down into the sand, leaving six to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground. Hundreds of truckloads of sand were brought in to cover the unsightly sea wall.
It didn’t require a storm to wash away the loose sand and leave the ugly rusty metal exposed on the beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents and vacationers are left with an eyesore on a beach ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.
The ugly rusty barrier built by government is still there. But the intelligent approach taken by the private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I write heavy equipment is on the beach slashing open the tubes and piling up the sand to be carried away. The homes will be left standing on the edge and will be undermined by the next hurricane.
Why did this happen? The official reason given by Florida’s Department of Environmental Policy is that the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only DEP can issue a permanent permit, and as the homeowners don’t have DEP’s permanent permit, out goes the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive sea wall.
This is the way government “works” for ordinary citizens. For the vast majority of people, government exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great pleasure in ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the homeowners, now elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.
The real explanation for DEP’s merciless treatment of citizens is that the agency is powerless against developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the Everglades, from destroying wetlands, from polluting rivers, or from building in front of the coastal setback line. As the state politicians protect developers from the DEP, the only people against whom the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented citizens. Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at powerless citizens.
In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are numerous examples of developers getting what they want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the beach and the dunes. As this occurs the setback line for construction moves inland. Back when the real estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan’s irresponsibly low interest rate policy, small beach front lots were going for one million dollars. In the midst of this frenzy, a well-connected developer bought a beachfront lot for $30,000.
The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat land on the beach. Decades ago it was a lot, but as the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned in front of the setback line. The developer got the lot for the low price, because no one had been able to get a building permit for years.
But the developer got a permit. According to the head of the neighborhood association at the time, the developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction was another part of the state and who was a former employee of the developer, and was issued a permit. Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom the house sat unsold for years. The community, which had opposed the project, concluded that the developer just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the law.
Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the east end of Inlet Beach another well connected developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise Walton County’s highest and last remaining sand dunes held in place with native vegetation in order to build 20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a permit for the construction of a 15-foot high man-made sand wall, a marketing device that will offer little protection.
According to information sent to me, nine of the houses will be seaward of the Coastal Construction Control line. Apparently this was a result of the developer being represented by a former county attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow the developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood plain maps instead of using the current 2007 maps. Since 1996, there have been a number of hurricanes, such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has moved inward.
When state and local governments allow developers to set aside the rules governing flood-plain development, they create insurance losses that drive up the insurance premiums for everyone in the community. The disturbance of the natural dunes could result in a breach through which storm surge can damage nearby properties. Instead of protecting people, government is allowing a developer to impose costs of his project on others.
Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the American population came to the realization that government does not represent them. Government represents moneyed interests for whom it bends the rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a legally privileged class.
In contrast, as at the west end of Inlet Beach, ordinary citizens are being driven into the ground.
This is what we call “freedom and democracy.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
The Joe Stacks are rising up against unresponsive government
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 24, 2010
Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on “their” government.
The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that “their” government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agrees that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians who rule them “may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”
Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.
Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.
The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist. “Terrorist” is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.
But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can’t take it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.
“Violence,” Stack wrote, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” Stack concluded that nothing short of violence will get the attention of a government that has turned its back on the American people.
Anger is building up. People are beginning to do unusual things. Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local TV station conducted an online survey and found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with Hoskins’ action.
Perhaps the turning point was the federal government’s bailout of the investment banks whose reckless misbehavior diminished Americans’ retirement savings for the second time in eight years. Now a former head of the most culpable bank is campaigning to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to pay for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him by creating a “deficit commission.”
The “deficit commission” will be used to gut Social Security, just as the private insurance health plan is paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.
It could not be more clear that government represents the interest groups that finance the election campaigns.
Conservatives used to say that Washington’s power should be curtailed in behalf of state and local governments that are “closer to the people.” But of course state and local governments are also controlled by interest groups.
Consider Florida, for example. In 2004, the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did considerable damage to the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes and washed away enough of the high ground as to leave other homes vulnerable to the next storm.
People wanted to armor their homes with some form of sea wall. When the county gave the go ahead, two houses on the west end hired engineers who constructed a barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled with sand, each weighing about 70 tons. The sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of white sand trucked in, and sea oats were planted. It was a perfect solution, and an expensive one -- $250,000.
Just east of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section of beachfront road and left three houses built on pilings sitting on the beach. Last year, government with FEMA money rebuilt the section of washed away beachfront road and armored it and two adjacent houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel panels that it drove down into the sand, leaving six to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground. Hundreds of truckloads of sand were brought in to cover the unsightly sea wall.
It didn’t require a storm to wash away the loose sand and leave the ugly rusty metal exposed on the beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents and vacationers are left with an eyesore on a beach ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.
The ugly rusty barrier built by government is still there. But the intelligent approach taken by the private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I write heavy equipment is on the beach slashing open the tubes and piling up the sand to be carried away. The homes will be left standing on the edge and will be undermined by the next hurricane.
Why did this happen? The official reason given by Florida’s Department of Environmental Policy is that the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only DEP can issue a permanent permit, and as the homeowners don’t have DEP’s permanent permit, out goes the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive sea wall.
This is the way government “works” for ordinary citizens. For the vast majority of people, government exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great pleasure in ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the homeowners, now elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.
The real explanation for DEP’s merciless treatment of citizens is that the agency is powerless against developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the Everglades, from destroying wetlands, from polluting rivers, or from building in front of the coastal setback line. As the state politicians protect developers from the DEP, the only people against whom the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented citizens. Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at powerless citizens.
In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are numerous examples of developers getting what they want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the beach and the dunes. As this occurs the setback line for construction moves inland. Back when the real estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan’s irresponsibly low interest rate policy, small beach front lots were going for one million dollars. In the midst of this frenzy, a well-connected developer bought a beachfront lot for $30,000.
The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat land on the beach. Decades ago it was a lot, but as the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned in front of the setback line. The developer got the lot for the low price, because no one had been able to get a building permit for years.
But the developer got a permit. According to the head of the neighborhood association at the time, the developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction was another part of the state and who was a former employee of the developer, and was issued a permit. Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom the house sat unsold for years. The community, which had opposed the project, concluded that the developer just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the law.
Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the east end of Inlet Beach another well connected developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise Walton County’s highest and last remaining sand dunes held in place with native vegetation in order to build 20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a permit for the construction of a 15-foot high man-made sand wall, a marketing device that will offer little protection.
According to information sent to me, nine of the houses will be seaward of the Coastal Construction Control line. Apparently this was a result of the developer being represented by a former county attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow the developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood plain maps instead of using the current 2007 maps. Since 1996, there have been a number of hurricanes, such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has moved inward.
When state and local governments allow developers to set aside the rules governing flood-plain development, they create insurance losses that drive up the insurance premiums for everyone in the community. The disturbance of the natural dunes could result in a breach through which storm surge can damage nearby properties. Instead of protecting people, government is allowing a developer to impose costs of his project on others.
Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the American population came to the realization that government does not represent them. Government represents moneyed interests for whom it bends the rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a legally privileged class.
In contrast, as at the west end of Inlet Beach, ordinary citizens are being driven into the ground.
This is what we call “freedom and democracy.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
Man bulldozes own home to stop bank having it
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/man-bulldozes-own-home-to-stop-bank-having-it-20100223-ow0g.html
Man bulldozes own home to stop bank having it
February 23, 2010
MOSCOW, Ohio - A US man says he bulldozed his $US350,000 ($A389,191) home to keep a bank from foreclosing on it.
Terry Hoskins says he has struggled with the RiverHills Bank over his home in Moscow, Ohio for years and had problems with the Internal Revenue Service. He says the IRS placed liens on his carpet store and commercial property and the bank claimed his house as collateral.
Hoskins says he owes $US160,000 ($A177,916) on the house. He says he spent a lot of money on lawyers and finally had enough. About two weeks ago he bulldozed the home.
Messages were left for the bank and its lawyer.
Man bulldozes own home to stop bank having it
February 23, 2010
MOSCOW, Ohio - A US man says he bulldozed his $US350,000 ($A389,191) home to keep a bank from foreclosing on it.
Terry Hoskins says he has struggled with the RiverHills Bank over his home in Moscow, Ohio for years and had problems with the Internal Revenue Service. He says the IRS placed liens on his carpet store and commercial property and the bank claimed his house as collateral.
Hoskins says he owes $US160,000 ($A177,916) on the house. He says he spent a lot of money on lawyers and finally had enough. About two weeks ago he bulldozed the home.
Messages were left for the bank and its lawyer.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002589
The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED March 10, 2008
It looks like the Bush Justice Department just bagged themselves another Democratic Governor. Here’s the New York Times on the story:
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation.
The wiretap captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The person briefed on the case and the law enforcement official identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.
Mr. Spitzer, a first term Democrat, today made a brief public appearance during which he apologized for his behavior, and described it as a “private matter.” He did not address his political future. “I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong,” said Mr. Spitzer, who appeared with his wife Silda at his Manhattan office. “I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better.”
On the other hand, ABC News this evening offers a starkly different account of how the investigation got launched. According to ABC, the whole investigation of the prostitution ring itself was triggered by an investigation of Spitzer.
The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials. It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club. …
The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought in the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad. “We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.
Fox News reported earlier in the day that Spitzer would resign at his press conference. He did not. In any event, however, Spitzer—who was previously viewed as a rising star in the Democratic Party—is now damaged goods. Many had expected him to consolidate power in Albany, inching the Democrats towards control of the State Senate, and to rule as a powerful governor. He may or may not survive the initial shock waves of the scandal, but certainly no one now expects him to be a powerful force in the statehouse.
The Times notes in its story that Spitzer once prosecuted a prostitution ring:
In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island. “This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. “It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”
These facts are likely to dominate the punditry’s discussion of the issue. Spitzer will be labeled a hypocrite (a charge he can hardly refute).
However, there is a second tier of questions that needs to be examined with respect to the Spitzer case. They go to prosecutorial motivation and direction. Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican. Beyond this, a number of the cases seem to have been tied closely to election cycles. Indeed, a study of the cases out of Alabama shows clearly that even cases opened against Republicans are in fact only part of a broader pattern of going after Democrats. So here are the rather amazing facts that surface in the Spitzer case:
(1) The prosecutors handling the case came from the Public Integrity Section.
(2) The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were politically motivated and grossly abusive. Here are a few:
Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was the first man prosecuted under the act — for having an affair with Lucille Cameron, whom he later married. The prosecution was manifestly an effort “to get” Johnson, who at the time was the most famous African-American. (All of this is developed well in Ken Burns’s film “Unforgiveable Blackness”).
University of Chicago sociologist William I. Thomas was prosecuted for having an affair with an officer’s wife in France. Thomas was targeted because of his Bohemian social and his radical political views.
In 1944 Charles Chaplin was prosecuted for having an affair with actress Joan Barry. The prosecution again provided cover for a politically motivated effort to drive Chaplin out of the country.
Canadian author Elizabeth Smart was arrested and charged in 1940 while crossing the border with the British poet George Barker.
(3) The resources dedicated to the case in terms of prosecutors and investigators are extraordinary.
(4) How the investigation got started. The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.
All of these facts are consistent with a process which is not the investigation of a crime, but rather an attempt to target and build a case against an individual.
The answer of the Justice Department to all this is likely to be: Trust us. But in the current environment, the reservoir of trust is tapped. The Justice Department needs to submit to some questions about how this probe got launched, who launched it, and to what extent political appointees were involved in its direction. This has nothing to do with Spitzer’s guilt or innocence. But it has everything to do with the fading integrity of the Public Integrity Section.
The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED March 10, 2008
It looks like the Bush Justice Department just bagged themselves another Democratic Governor. Here’s the New York Times on the story:
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation.
The wiretap captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The person briefed on the case and the law enforcement official identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.
Mr. Spitzer, a first term Democrat, today made a brief public appearance during which he apologized for his behavior, and described it as a “private matter.” He did not address his political future. “I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong,” said Mr. Spitzer, who appeared with his wife Silda at his Manhattan office. “I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better.”
On the other hand, ABC News this evening offers a starkly different account of how the investigation got launched. According to ABC, the whole investigation of the prostitution ring itself was triggered by an investigation of Spitzer.
The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials. It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club. …
The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought in the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad. “We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.
Fox News reported earlier in the day that Spitzer would resign at his press conference. He did not. In any event, however, Spitzer—who was previously viewed as a rising star in the Democratic Party—is now damaged goods. Many had expected him to consolidate power in Albany, inching the Democrats towards control of the State Senate, and to rule as a powerful governor. He may or may not survive the initial shock waves of the scandal, but certainly no one now expects him to be a powerful force in the statehouse.
The Times notes in its story that Spitzer once prosecuted a prostitution ring:
In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island. “This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. “It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”
These facts are likely to dominate the punditry’s discussion of the issue. Spitzer will be labeled a hypocrite (a charge he can hardly refute).
However, there is a second tier of questions that needs to be examined with respect to the Spitzer case. They go to prosecutorial motivation and direction. Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican. Beyond this, a number of the cases seem to have been tied closely to election cycles. Indeed, a study of the cases out of Alabama shows clearly that even cases opened against Republicans are in fact only part of a broader pattern of going after Democrats. So here are the rather amazing facts that surface in the Spitzer case:
(1) The prosecutors handling the case came from the Public Integrity Section.
(2) The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were politically motivated and grossly abusive. Here are a few:
Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was the first man prosecuted under the act — for having an affair with Lucille Cameron, whom he later married. The prosecution was manifestly an effort “to get” Johnson, who at the time was the most famous African-American. (All of this is developed well in Ken Burns’s film “Unforgiveable Blackness”).
University of Chicago sociologist William I. Thomas was prosecuted for having an affair with an officer’s wife in France. Thomas was targeted because of his Bohemian social and his radical political views.
In 1944 Charles Chaplin was prosecuted for having an affair with actress Joan Barry. The prosecution again provided cover for a politically motivated effort to drive Chaplin out of the country.
Canadian author Elizabeth Smart was arrested and charged in 1940 while crossing the border with the British poet George Barker.
(3) The resources dedicated to the case in terms of prosecutors and investigators are extraordinary.
(4) How the investigation got started. The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.
All of these facts are consistent with a process which is not the investigation of a crime, but rather an attempt to target and build a case against an individual.
The answer of the Justice Department to all this is likely to be: Trust us. But in the current environment, the reservoir of trust is tapped. The Justice Department needs to submit to some questions about how this probe got launched, who launched it, and to what extent political appointees were involved in its direction. This has nothing to do with Spitzer’s guilt or innocence. But it has everything to do with the fading integrity of the Public Integrity Section.
Friday, March 14, 2008
It Wasn't the Sex
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4424507
It Wasn't the Sex; Suspicious $$ Transfers Led to Spitzer
Officials Say Spitzer Is 'Client 9' in a Federal Complaint Against the Prostitution Ring
By BRIAN ROSS
March 10, 2008
The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer's suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.
It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn't hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club.
As recently as this past Valentine's Day, Feb. 13, Spitzer, who officials say is identified in a federal complaint as "Client 9," arranged for a prostitute "Kristen" to meet him in Washington, D.C.
The woman met Client 9 at the Mayflower Hotel, room 871, "for her tryst," according to the complaint. Client 9 also is alleged to have paid for the woman's train tickets, cab fare, mini bar and room service, travel time and hotel.
The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI's Public Corruption Squad.
"We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it," said one Justice Department official.
Spitzer, who made his name by bringing high-profile cases against many of New York's financial giants, is likely to be prosecuted under a relatively obscure statute called "structuring," according to a Justice Department official.
Structuring involves creating a series of financial movements designed to obscure the true purpose of the payments.
Prosecutors reportedly have a series of e-mails and wiretapped phone conversations of Spitzer.
In a interview two years ago, Spitzer, then-attorney general, told ABC News he had some advice for people who break the law. "Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need," he said.
It Wasn't the Sex; Suspicious $$ Transfers Led to Spitzer
Officials Say Spitzer Is 'Client 9' in a Federal Complaint Against the Prostitution Ring
By BRIAN ROSS
March 10, 2008
The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer's suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.
It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn't hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club.
As recently as this past Valentine's Day, Feb. 13, Spitzer, who officials say is identified in a federal complaint as "Client 9," arranged for a prostitute "Kristen" to meet him in Washington, D.C.
The woman met Client 9 at the Mayflower Hotel, room 871, "for her tryst," according to the complaint. Client 9 also is alleged to have paid for the woman's train tickets, cab fare, mini bar and room service, travel time and hotel.
The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI's Public Corruption Squad.
"We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it," said one Justice Department official.
Spitzer, who made his name by bringing high-profile cases against many of New York's financial giants, is likely to be prosecuted under a relatively obscure statute called "structuring," according to a Justice Department official.
Structuring involves creating a series of financial movements designed to obscure the true purpose of the payments.
Prosecutors reportedly have a series of e-mails and wiretapped phone conversations of Spitzer.
In a interview two years ago, Spitzer, then-attorney general, told ABC News he had some advice for people who break the law. "Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need," he said.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Is It Time for Clemens to Dial Nanny 911?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/sports/baseball/26araton.html
February 26, 2008
Sports of The Times
Is It Time for Clemens to Dial Nanny 911?
By HARVEY ARATON
The nanny, it turns out, speaks English and speaks it well, idioms and all.
A reading of an online transcript and a telephone call to the press office of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform revealed that Roger Clemens, aided by political muscle, distorted the linguistic skills of a former employee and grandmother of two.
“And her English, as I understand it, is not that good,” Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican and ranking minority committee member, cued Clemens at the Capitol Hill hearing earlier this month.
“It is not that good,” Clemens replied, seizing the opportunity to make the masses understand why the nanny had to be summoned to his Houston Ponderosa before her interview with committee investigators — for her own good, of course.
But Steven G. Glickman, counsel to the majority and a participant in the telephone interview, indicated through a committee press officer that the unnamed nanny spoke English that was only accented, not deficient.
For instance, when told she had the right to representation, the nanny replied she didn’t have a lawyer before adding: “But I’m not afraid, I’m telling the truth, so bring it on.”
Make her day.
Sounds like an opening line scripted by Clint Eastwood, or Clemens, the cold-blooded gunslinger from 60 feet 6 inches away, but now closer than ever to staring down at Jeff Novitzky, the I.R.S. special agent and sultan of steroid-enforcement swat.
Monday came the news that a draft letter was drawn up last week by committee staff members for the purposes of referring the Clemens case to the Justice Department. Get those scorecards ready. The real game, not the exhibition spitting contest the Clemens and Brian McNamee camps have waged all winter, may be about to begin.
You wonder: Is Clemens finally seeing the big picture, fearing that a hastily stitched tapestry of tall tales dating to 1998 is about to unravel?
It should by now be fairly well established that he was at José Canseco’s place in South Florida when they visited with the Blue Jays that year in June to drop off his family, or to take a tour of the property or a performance-enhancement tutorial.
We also know that Canseco has said Clemens was not at the party, while the nanny said that Clemens was at the house but she did not recall a party, while a photograph that reportedly has surfaced places Clemens at the possible party, while Clemens has a golf receipt to prove that while he might have stopped by, he wasn’t there long enough to party or be party to any discussion of drugs.
•
Questioned about the dizzying timeline of Clemens’s appearance and exit, the nanny — again, not as verbally challenged as Davis understood her to be and Clemens agreed she was — cut to the heart of the matter, as it relates to the possibility of meaningful disclosure.
“Well, first of all, that’s kind of hard to tell because I wasn’t with him 24/7,” she said, speaking to the absurdity of the ongoing party dissection, 10 years after. With the exception of the Republican cheerleaders who allowed Clemens and his lawyers to set this smoke screen during the hearing, who actually believed it was ever germane to the McNamee claims of injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone?
Surely not Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat and committee chairman, who made himself clear after the hearing that he did not think much of what Clemens had to say. Common sense tells us that Waxman is driving the bus and ready to hand Clemens, if not McNamee, off to Novitzky and the Balco bashers that brought down Marion Jones and brought perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Barry Bonds.
Obviously, an investigation by the Justice Department does not guarantee an eventual indictment on perjury charges, Ã la Jones and Bonds. It does mean that Clemens’s public relations campaign against McNamee and anyone whose version of events contrasted his own has failed. In the court of public opinion, and to the committee members who did not want his autograph, the more Clemens went on the attack, the less believable he was.
When he publicly aired a secretly taped telephone conversation with McNamee, his former trainer sounded distraught over having to give him up to George Mitchell, not like some deluded soul bent on destroying an all-time great. When Clemens was confronted with the damaging testimony of Andy and Laura Pettitte, his attempts to question his protégé’s comprehension skills made you wonder if Clemens comprehended the gravity of his denials, under oath.
•
Everyone’s reputation was deemed sacrificial to save his own. His agents took hits for his troubles. His wife, Debbie, was exposed as an H.G.H. user. The nanny, whose interview included an eloquent expression of affection seven years after she left Clemens’s employ, was made to sound like someone who had just slipped into the country in the back of a truck.
Bring it on, Clemens kept saying, while everyone around him took a hit. Now there is a draft letter that probably leads to a criminal investigation. No turning back now. No promise of relief up ahead. For his last act in baseball, he may have to go the distance.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com
February 26, 2008
Sports of The Times
Is It Time for Clemens to Dial Nanny 911?
By HARVEY ARATON
The nanny, it turns out, speaks English and speaks it well, idioms and all.
A reading of an online transcript and a telephone call to the press office of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform revealed that Roger Clemens, aided by political muscle, distorted the linguistic skills of a former employee and grandmother of two.
“And her English, as I understand it, is not that good,” Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican and ranking minority committee member, cued Clemens at the Capitol Hill hearing earlier this month.
“It is not that good,” Clemens replied, seizing the opportunity to make the masses understand why the nanny had to be summoned to his Houston Ponderosa before her interview with committee investigators — for her own good, of course.
But Steven G. Glickman, counsel to the majority and a participant in the telephone interview, indicated through a committee press officer that the unnamed nanny spoke English that was only accented, not deficient.
For instance, when told she had the right to representation, the nanny replied she didn’t have a lawyer before adding: “But I’m not afraid, I’m telling the truth, so bring it on.”
Make her day.
Sounds like an opening line scripted by Clint Eastwood, or Clemens, the cold-blooded gunslinger from 60 feet 6 inches away, but now closer than ever to staring down at Jeff Novitzky, the I.R.S. special agent and sultan of steroid-enforcement swat.
Monday came the news that a draft letter was drawn up last week by committee staff members for the purposes of referring the Clemens case to the Justice Department. Get those scorecards ready. The real game, not the exhibition spitting contest the Clemens and Brian McNamee camps have waged all winter, may be about to begin.
You wonder: Is Clemens finally seeing the big picture, fearing that a hastily stitched tapestry of tall tales dating to 1998 is about to unravel?
It should by now be fairly well established that he was at José Canseco’s place in South Florida when they visited with the Blue Jays that year in June to drop off his family, or to take a tour of the property or a performance-enhancement tutorial.
We also know that Canseco has said Clemens was not at the party, while the nanny said that Clemens was at the house but she did not recall a party, while a photograph that reportedly has surfaced places Clemens at the possible party, while Clemens has a golf receipt to prove that while he might have stopped by, he wasn’t there long enough to party or be party to any discussion of drugs.
•
Questioned about the dizzying timeline of Clemens’s appearance and exit, the nanny — again, not as verbally challenged as Davis understood her to be and Clemens agreed she was — cut to the heart of the matter, as it relates to the possibility of meaningful disclosure.
“Well, first of all, that’s kind of hard to tell because I wasn’t with him 24/7,” she said, speaking to the absurdity of the ongoing party dissection, 10 years after. With the exception of the Republican cheerleaders who allowed Clemens and his lawyers to set this smoke screen during the hearing, who actually believed it was ever germane to the McNamee claims of injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone?
Surely not Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat and committee chairman, who made himself clear after the hearing that he did not think much of what Clemens had to say. Common sense tells us that Waxman is driving the bus and ready to hand Clemens, if not McNamee, off to Novitzky and the Balco bashers that brought down Marion Jones and brought perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Barry Bonds.
Obviously, an investigation by the Justice Department does not guarantee an eventual indictment on perjury charges, Ã la Jones and Bonds. It does mean that Clemens’s public relations campaign against McNamee and anyone whose version of events contrasted his own has failed. In the court of public opinion, and to the committee members who did not want his autograph, the more Clemens went on the attack, the less believable he was.
When he publicly aired a secretly taped telephone conversation with McNamee, his former trainer sounded distraught over having to give him up to George Mitchell, not like some deluded soul bent on destroying an all-time great. When Clemens was confronted with the damaging testimony of Andy and Laura Pettitte, his attempts to question his protégé’s comprehension skills made you wonder if Clemens comprehended the gravity of his denials, under oath.
•
Everyone’s reputation was deemed sacrificial to save his own. His agents took hits for his troubles. His wife, Debbie, was exposed as an H.G.H. user. The nanny, whose interview included an eloquent expression of affection seven years after she left Clemens’s employ, was made to sound like someone who had just slipped into the country in the back of a truck.
Bring it on, Clemens kept saying, while everyone around him took a hit. Now there is a draft letter that probably leads to a criminal investigation. No turning back now. No promise of relief up ahead. For his last act in baseball, he may have to go the distance.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com
Monday, February 4, 2008
Jury acquits Snipes of tax fraud
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080201/ap_en_mo/snipes_tax_trial
Jury acquits Snipes of tax fraud
By TRAVIS REED, Associated Press Writer
2-1-2008
Action star Wesley Snipes was found not guilty of federal tax-fraud and conspiracy charges Friday, but was convicted on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file a tax return.
Snipes and two co-defendants, a delicensed accountant and a tax protest leader, were indicted in 2006. Snipes was also indicted on six counts of willful failure to file a tax return from 1999-2004, a period in which he signed two contracts for more than $10 million on sequels in the "Blade" trilogy. He was acquitted on three of those and convicted on the others. He could be sentenced to three years in prison after originally facing a possible 16 years.
Co-defendants Eddie Ray Kahn, the founder of a tax protest group, and Douglas P. Rosile, the accountant, were convicted by the same jury of tax fraud and conspiracy.
Snipes sat expressionless until all of his verdicts were read. Then, defense attorney Robert Bernhoft put his hand on the actor's leg and Snipes nodded in relief.
Rosile grimaced when his verdict was read. Kahn was not in attendance. He remains behind bars and argues the court has no jurisdiction to try him.
The verdict came on the third full day of deliberations.
Snipes, who starred in the "Blade" films and "White Men Can't Jump," is among the most famous targets of an IRS criminal investigation, and his prosecution was key for the government. The actor used tax protest arguments long rejected by courts but still continuing to find adherents.
For example, Snipes said the IRS's own code meant no citizen had to pay taxes on income earned in this country, and the agency had no legal authority to collect wages anyway, because it is not a proper government entity.
Snipes' attorneys claimed he was victimized by crooked advisers, and tried for years to get the IRS to explain whether he owed taxes. Later, the actor threatened the government and individual agents in his pursuit, declaring himself a "nonresident alien" not subject to tax laws.
Prosecutors say Snipes paid taxes in the 1990s, but changed his mind after meeting Kahn in 2000. He allegedly stopped filing returns, illegally sought $11 million in 1996 and 1997 taxes paid and drew fake checks to pay the U.S. Treasury.
Kahn founded the central Florida tax protest group American Rights Litigators and its successor, Guiding Light of God Ministries. He has been using tax scams since at least the early 1980s, according to government documents, and refused to defend himself in court against these charges.
Rosile, a CPA who lost his licenses in Florida and Ohio, allegedly prepared the fraudulent documents for Snipes, along with numerous other Kahn clients. He and Kahn would split a percentage of any fraudulent tax return that slipped through, their alleged agreement showed.
In a yearslong battle with the IRS, Snipes drew on the dubious "861 argument." So named because it refers to Section 861 of the tax code, the law holds that foreign-source wages of U.S. citizens are taxable. But tax protesters take that to mean only such income is subject to tax, and no wages made in this country are.
Judge and jury have long rejected those ideas, but there are exceptions. A few have won acquittal because the jury thought they sincerely believed they did not have to pay taxes.
The IRS bears a unique burden of proof in criminal tax cases. The agency must show not only that someone broke the law, but he or she did so with willful, bad purpose to defraud the government.
Jury acquits Snipes of tax fraud
By TRAVIS REED, Associated Press Writer
2-1-2008
Action star Wesley Snipes was found not guilty of federal tax-fraud and conspiracy charges Friday, but was convicted on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file a tax return.
Snipes and two co-defendants, a delicensed accountant and a tax protest leader, were indicted in 2006. Snipes was also indicted on six counts of willful failure to file a tax return from 1999-2004, a period in which he signed two contracts for more than $10 million on sequels in the "Blade" trilogy. He was acquitted on three of those and convicted on the others. He could be sentenced to three years in prison after originally facing a possible 16 years.
Co-defendants Eddie Ray Kahn, the founder of a tax protest group, and Douglas P. Rosile, the accountant, were convicted by the same jury of tax fraud and conspiracy.
Snipes sat expressionless until all of his verdicts were read. Then, defense attorney Robert Bernhoft put his hand on the actor's leg and Snipes nodded in relief.
Rosile grimaced when his verdict was read. Kahn was not in attendance. He remains behind bars and argues the court has no jurisdiction to try him.
The verdict came on the third full day of deliberations.
Snipes, who starred in the "Blade" films and "White Men Can't Jump," is among the most famous targets of an IRS criminal investigation, and his prosecution was key for the government. The actor used tax protest arguments long rejected by courts but still continuing to find adherents.
For example, Snipes said the IRS's own code meant no citizen had to pay taxes on income earned in this country, and the agency had no legal authority to collect wages anyway, because it is not a proper government entity.
Snipes' attorneys claimed he was victimized by crooked advisers, and tried for years to get the IRS to explain whether he owed taxes. Later, the actor threatened the government and individual agents in his pursuit, declaring himself a "nonresident alien" not subject to tax laws.
Prosecutors say Snipes paid taxes in the 1990s, but changed his mind after meeting Kahn in 2000. He allegedly stopped filing returns, illegally sought $11 million in 1996 and 1997 taxes paid and drew fake checks to pay the U.S. Treasury.
Kahn founded the central Florida tax protest group American Rights Litigators and its successor, Guiding Light of God Ministries. He has been using tax scams since at least the early 1980s, according to government documents, and refused to defend himself in court against these charges.
Rosile, a CPA who lost his licenses in Florida and Ohio, allegedly prepared the fraudulent documents for Snipes, along with numerous other Kahn clients. He and Kahn would split a percentage of any fraudulent tax return that slipped through, their alleged agreement showed.
In a yearslong battle with the IRS, Snipes drew on the dubious "861 argument." So named because it refers to Section 861 of the tax code, the law holds that foreign-source wages of U.S. citizens are taxable. But tax protesters take that to mean only such income is subject to tax, and no wages made in this country are.
Judge and jury have long rejected those ideas, but there are exceptions. A few have won acquittal because the jury thought they sincerely believed they did not have to pay taxes.
The IRS bears a unique burden of proof in criminal tax cases. The agency must show not only that someone broke the law, but he or she did so with willful, bad purpose to defraud the government.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Patriot Hero Aaron Russo Passes Away
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/240807_b_aaron.htm
Patriot Hero Aaron Russo Passes Away
Prison Planet
Friday, August 24, 2007
We were saddened to hear of the passing of activist, film maker, freedom fighter and all round maverick Aaron Russo today, who died today after a long battle with cancer at the age of 64.
Aaron will be remembered fondly for all his achievements, not least of which the excellent America: From Freedom to Fascism, his final movie which exposed the fraudulent basis of the IRS and the Federal Reserve.
Aaron was a real patriot who loved his country and risked his whole career to stand for the truth. He was an example to us all.
Aaron Russo was the Samuel Adams of our day, a stalwart defender of liberty, his passing is greatly mourned but his fiery spirit lives on in all of his great work and in his wife, his children and his film America From Freedom to Fascism.
Our deep condolences go out to Aaron's family and friends at this difficult time.
God Speed Aaron, we salute you.
Patriot Hero Aaron Russo Passes Away
Prison Planet
Friday, August 24, 2007
We were saddened to hear of the passing of activist, film maker, freedom fighter and all round maverick Aaron Russo today, who died today after a long battle with cancer at the age of 64.
Aaron will be remembered fondly for all his achievements, not least of which the excellent America: From Freedom to Fascism, his final movie which exposed the fraudulent basis of the IRS and the Federal Reserve.
Aaron was a real patriot who loved his country and risked his whole career to stand for the truth. He was an example to us all.
Aaron Russo was the Samuel Adams of our day, a stalwart defender of liberty, his passing is greatly mourned but his fiery spirit lives on in all of his great work and in his wife, his children and his film America From Freedom to Fascism.
Our deep condolences go out to Aaron's family and friends at this difficult time.
God Speed Aaron, we salute you.
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