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| User:Famspear From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I am an American attorney with an interest in Income tax in the United States. I have a background in the entertainment business. I am interested in cinema, broadcasting, politics, international relations, military aircraft (especially fighter planes), and languages. Cite It has come to my attention that there is a presently ongoing attempt to delete an entry titled Tax Honesty Movement from "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Those that read my writing know I can't let lies go unchallenged, Thus I put my $0.02 in on the topic: LEAVE IT AS IS!. Mr. Abramson states Since the latter article exhaustively addresses the various arguments contending that the income tax is unconstitutional, illegal, or improper - including the belief that there simply is no law that requires taxes to be paid. It seems Mr. Abramson wants to delete an article the contradicts his own POV article. Mr. Abramson's article IS a POV article because the law supports the Tax Honesty Researchers. Quite simply, Mr. Abramson, you are wrong. You are wrong for a very simple reason: You don't address the actual written words of law. If you don't address the WRITTEN WORDS of the STATUTES, REGULATIONS, and appropriate Supreme Court rulings, then anything you have to say about the "INCOME" tax is Hearsay. Neither do you address the distinction between what constitutes a direct tax and an indirect tax. And neither do you address what definition of "INCOME" the Supreme Court limited Congress to using; Quote: "there would seem to be no room to doubt that the word must be given the same meaning in all of the Income Tax Acts of Congress that was given to it in the Corporation Excise Tax Act" Merchants’ Loan & Trust Co. v. Smietanka, 255 U.S. 509 (1921) Since you don't discuss the Consitutional meaning of "INCOME" as used in the 16th. Amendment, you can't be very clear on what is taxed with an "INCOME" tax. Just on this one issue, I have 6 plus pages dedicated to showing, what the definition of "INCOME" that is taxed by the "INCOME" tax is according to the Supreme Court. Because of the Cognitive_dissonance that many have regarding this issue I have approximately 74 questions on numbered pages 4-10 on my website. The questions are in the manner of an open book reading comprehension quiz. You may access those questions here: [3] . Tax Honesty Researchers are a small, but not insignificant, and growing number of people who have actually taken the time to study what the WRITTEN WORDS of the STATUTES and REGULATIONS of the tax law actually say. And in reply to the insult about the use of the word honesty in the label: It's the government that refuses to answer questions. 1,200 people asked 6 questions of the government via Commissioner Everson and Secretary Snow. Those 6 questions and the government's non-responsive reply may be read here:[4] Perhaps you could put together a Wiki page on government evasion and use the scan of that evasive, insulting, threatening letter that does not answer the questions asked. You don't need my IP logged. Here's that website again: [5] [Note: The above comments were posted by an anonymous user at IP 4.158.201.8 on 31 March 2006.] In reply to the above, Famspear said this: Dear fellow editors: I'd like to suggest that maybe we should reserve this page for comments about the substance of this discussion: whether the article in question should be deleted. I argue that neither this page (nor any formal Wikipedia articles) should be used as a soapbox for people on a mission to argue that the tax laws, etc., are invalid, etc., etc. Statements such as the "law supports the Tax Honesty Researchers" and "You don't address the actual written words of law" and "It's the government that refuses to answer questions" are not material to the question before us. So let's take a deep breath and relax ......... Yours, Famspear 20:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC) Yes, yes, that's it. Breathe deeply and slowly, deeply and slowly....... Famspear 20:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC) Dear fellow editors: By the way, for anyone who is interested, I just thought of a fun after-school project! I'm going to take the anonymous comments by the users at IP 4.158.201.8 and IP 63.157.175.198 above, and discuss them at Talk:Tax protester. Watch that Talk page in the next few days if you're interested. I argue that Talk:Tax protester is a more appropriate page to talk about that kind of stuff, not here on this page. Yours, Famspear 21:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC) Mr./Ms. Famspear correctly states: I'd like to suggest that maybe we should reserve this page for comments about the substance of this discussion... Mr./Ms. Famspear incorrectly states: Statements such as the "law supports the Tax Honesty Researchers" and "You don't address the actual written words of law" and "It's the government that refuses to answer questions" are not material to the question before us. That is exactly THE material that drives the tax honesty movement. I submitted external links for the purpose of giving those that are going to be active in this decision process something to think about in regards to the tax honesty movement article. A taste if you will, of the thought process of at least one person who, after reading the written words of the statutes and regulations, has determined that the law does not apply to him. Mr./Ms. Famspear further states: By the way, for anyone who is interested, I just thought of a fun after-school project! I'm going to take the anonymous comments by the users at IP 4.158.201.8 and IP 63.157.175.198 above, and discuss them at Talk:Tax protester. Watch that Talk page in the next few days if you're interested. I argue that Talk:Tax protester is a more appropriate page to talk about that kind of stuff, not here on this page. Mr./Ms. Famspear, I am that person that posted from IP 4.158.201.8. I am not anonymous. Merely, not advertising my name. The website SynapticSparks is mine. If you want to take on the comments, and since your userpage states: I am an American attorney with an interest in Income tax in the United States, then how about a little one on one, you and I. You, a hifalutin big city lawyer, and me, a dumb ex-truck driver. Since you are the educated one, expect lot's of questions. I've only a few days before I am indisposed for about 2 weeks, so our little tête-à-tête will be interupted. The page is already set up for us. [6] You may send your email answer directly to me mailto as that is how your comments will be put on that page. Dear Mr. Dale R. Eastman or User at IP address 4.158.201.8: Regarding your questions to me personally (see above), please see my response at Talk:Tax protester, so we don’t clutter this page with any more off-topic material. Thanks, Famspear 05:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC) Dale Eastman and the "Tax Honesty Movement"1. Dear Mr. Dale R. Eastman or User at IP address 4.158.201.8: Regarding your questions to me personally at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tax_Honesty_Movement, thank you for your comments.2. Yes, speaking of your being busy with other things, I am pretty much in the same position right now. Because I do lots of tax stuff, this is the busiest time of year for me, until Monday, April 17th (because April 15th falls on a Saturday this year). I can’t promise you that I will be able to get to your tax commentary in any meaningful way. 3. Also, if we ever do have time for this, I would say that rather than posting material on your web site, a much more efficient method of communication – one that I suspect would result in a lot more people reading what we have to say -- would be to talk about it here at Talk:Tax protester. 4. Regarding your comments, yes, I guess I am a big city lawyer. For what it’s worth, I did drive a truck in my first job many years ago (it was only a delivery van, not a big truck, but whatever). Formal legal analysis versus incorrect idiosyncratic interpretation5. I can tell you at this point, that you are the umpteenth tax protester or "tax honesty movement" member to review these statutes, regs, and court decisions. Both your analysis and your conclusions are incorrect as a matter of law. That’s nothing against you personally. Part of it is that you’re not trained to do legal analysis and part of it is your overall approach.6. I have briefly reviewed the material at your web site. Many of the cases you cite, especially Eisner v. Macomber, Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., and the Merchants' Bank case, have been exhaustively covered by other tax protesters over the years. Unfortunately, the so-called "analysis" that tax protesters apply in studying these cases is not a correct formal legal analysis. 7. In your web site you instead apply an "idiosyncratic interpretation" to what are essentially very technical legal texts. To analyze law properly, you must instead use principles of formal legal analysis used to study not only tax law but contract law, property law, criminal law, tort law, and all other areas of American law. Formal legal analysis cannot be “learned” merely by studying the texts of one, or five, or even a hundred court decisions. How to learn to perform formal legal analysis8. You cannot learn formal legal analysis merely by studying the statutes and regulations you discuss on your web site. Learning to do formal legal analysis cannot be done in the way you have tried to do it. You learn to perform legal analysis by becoming a lawyer.9. The process of just getting into law school in the first place is a rigorous winnowing that few people can withstand. You first have to graduate from an accredited college or university with at least a bachelor’s degree. Then, you have to apply to a law school and sit for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Many college graduates simply do not have the college grades or the LSAT scores to be accepted by a law school. 10. Once you are accepted and enter law school, you gradually learn to perform correct legal analysis not by having a professor "lecture" as a professor would in high school or college, and not primarily by reading a "textbook." Instead you go through a rigorous, formal process using two methods: the Socratic method and the case method. Law school in the United States is akin to a military boot camp -- for the mind. However, instead of lasting about six weeks, law school lasts three years. 11. Further, many law schools are very competitive. Many law schools have what is called "grade deflation." That is, if you were an A student in college, you will usually end up being a C or a B minus student in law school. Even if you graduated from college in the top of your class, law school can be a rude awakening. If there are three hundred people in your first year class, you are essentially competing with nearly three hundred clones of yourself, in terms of ability to perform. Your competition is not merely college students, not merely college graduates, but instead college graduates who have been accepted into law school. Most people simply cannot make the cut. 12. A further hurdle is that some law schools deliberately "flunk out" a large number of law students after the end of the first year. So some people don’t make it – even after having gone this far. 13. The law students who do make it gradually learn to perform correct legal analysis in part by studying literally thousands of court decisions (and statutes and other legal materials) of all kinds – not just tax law decisions – in a very intense, rigorous academic atmosphere. They start with old English cases (our law originally comes from something called English common law) with archaic and very technical language. They study contracts, property, torts, criminal law, constitutional law, legal research and writing, civil procedure, evidence, principal and agent, corporations and partnerships, trusts and wills, marital property rights, employment law, secured transactions, and on and on. A doctor of jurisprudence degree requires about 88 to 97 semester hours of law, depending on the law school – and this is AFTER four years of college, AFTER graduating from college, AFTER having taken the LSAT, and AFTER having been accepted for admission to law school. 14. And AFTER having gone through all this for three years after college and AFTER HAVING earned a doctor of jurisprudence degree, you are still not finished. You still have to sit for the bar examination – often a two or three day affair, administered under the supervision of the highest court in your state (usually called the state Supreme Court). If you pass the bar examination, you are finally licensed by the state Supreme Court as an attorney – and THEN you can start legally advising other people about what the law is and how it applies. Only then are you legally qualified to advise other people about what the constitution, the statutes, the regs, the treaties, the court decisions and other legal materials really mean and how they should be interpreted. 15. With all due respect, the method of "analysis" you use on your web site – this idiosyncratic interpretation -- does not conform to the rules of legal analysis. This means that not only are your conclusions incorrect as a matter of law, your method of "reasoning" is also incorrect as a matter of law. Using your method of interpretation, you would fail the first semester of law school. The rules cannot be learned in a day or a month or a year of reading actual statutes, regs, and court decisions in the way you obviously have been reading them. 16. However, that is not to say that you would actually use your method of reasoning if you actually were in law school. If you actually were in law school, you would quickly learn to spot the errors in the "analytical" method you use on your web site -- and you would I suspect learn to do it right. Idiosyncratic interpretation results in lack of credibility17. Some of these court decisions you talk about on your web site are what legal scholars call "leading cases" in the world of tax law. In particular, most tax lawyers can remember some leading cases after studying them in law school. You lose credibility right off the bat by analyzing these leading cases incorrectly on your web site, and by rendering incorrect conclusions about what the cases stand for. Because you lose credibility when you post an incorrect conclusion about a leading case, you immediately lose credibility on the internet.18. You will notice that I have not addressed any of the material on your web site specifically. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will have time after tax season dies down a bit to provide an example for you of how to correctly interpret one of the cases you discuss on your web site. Wikipedia treatment of the article on the "tax honesty movement"19. Regarding the article on the Tax Honesty Movement, the article needs some clean up from a Wikipedia standpoint. My personal vote was to delete the article because I argue that whatever parts of the article can comply with Wikipedia’s rules can be presented more cogently in the article on tax protesters. It’s not necessarily a big deal whether the article stays or is deleted. My personal vote was for deletion, not a vote for suppressing basic information to the effect that so-called tax honesty movement exists. However, if anyone tries to mislead people into thinking that the tax honesty movement is not a continuation of and part of the tax protester movement, they violate Wikipedia rules. If anyone tries to use a Wikipedia article to try to persuade people that that the tax laws are being "misapplied," etc., etc. (and it matters not what specific words they use to try to hide what they are doing), then they are violating Wikipedia policies, rules, guidelines, etc. Wikipedia is not a cyberspace soapbox. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.20. If the Wikipedia community decides that the article stays, the article’s content is like the content of any other article: it’s subject to the Wikipedia rules including Neutral Point of View and Verifiability. If the article is deleted, the information on the tax honesty movement is already covered at Tax protester. Either way, proponents of the tax honesty movement who contribute text to a Wikipedia article will be subject to having their material edited or deleted the same as anyone else. This is an encyclopedia. 21. Well, it's 12:50 am on a Monday morning where I am. I have to go to work in the morning! Thanks for your interest. Famspear 05:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC) Dale Eastman's Reply22. Mr./Ms.? Famspear. Thank you for the reply. I thank you ahead of time on behalf of the Tax Honesty Movement, and on behalf of those that call us Tax Protestors, for the time you will be putting into this as your schedule will permit (after the 17th.) Both sides of the issue will learn from our dialog, And I hope to make the case that the Tax Honesty Movement is real, and valid.23. I've taken the liberty of numbering our paragraphs for easier reference. 24. I'm going to start this even though we both won't have time to deal with this. I will be duplicating this on the page I set up. On that page I can use color to enhance discernment as to whose words are whose. [2] Naked Assertions25. Well then, on to it: In your paragraphs 5,6,& 7, you basically repeat the same mantra. What you attempt to say with that mantra, as paraphrased by me, is: "Dumb trucker don't know how to read the law".26. You state in paragraph 5: Both your analysis and your conclusions are incorrect as a matter of law. You state in paragraph 6: Unfortunately, the so-called "analysis" that tax protesters apply in studying these cases is not a correct formal legal analysis. As frustrating as I imagine this is going to be for you, I'm going to call those statements for what they are: NAKED ASSERTIONS. Because I'm a lawyer and I said so27. In your paragraphs 8 through 14 you wave the flag of the rigors of lawyer school. (Rhetorical: So what. Half of you graduated at the bottom of your class.) In your paragraphs 5 through 18 you essentially wrote a hit piece in an attempt to attack my credibility by expounding upon your "formal" education.Logic vs. Credentials28. You have no "authority"; no credibility, to make such statements about my analysis as you did in paragraphs 5 & 6. You have no authority; no credibility whatsoever, except that which you create in your dialog with me. Unfortunately, Dear learn-ed person, That beautiful sheepskin hanging on the wall behind you is presently meaningless. I can not see it, the lurkers who will read this can not see it. A posted scan will be called a forgery and dismissed as meaningless. I do not worship at the alter of the bar. I do not pay attention to credentials, I pay attention to whether the credentialed person says things that make sense. Remember, on the internet, nobody knows if you are a dog. Your paragraphs 8 through 14 have been neutralized. With 8 through 14 neutralized, support for your naked assertions in paragraphs 5,6,7,15,16,& 17 is also neutralized. The playing field is now level.Trained for Logic29. In paragraph 10, you state: Law school in the United States is akin to a military boot camp -- for the mind. EXCELLENT! Good, Good. You can use that well disciplined mind of yours to PROVE my analysis results are wrong (or not).If we agreed, there would be no discussion30. I'll admit that the point brought forth in paragraphs 5, & 6, is a possibility, and ONLY a possibility, because otherwise you and I would have nothing to discuss. We have a collision of analysis "results". However, as pointed out in the paragraph 28, because you say so on the (alleged) authority of your education is no different than: "Because I'm the Mommy, that's why."Logic vs. Decree31. You can tell me how you think. You can give me reasons for why you think the way you do. You can give me information to think about. What you can not do is tell me WHAT to think. That just doesn't cut it in a society that is supposed to be based upon personal Liberty.The law MUST be understandable32. You are familiar with the "Void For Vagueness Doctrine"?
33. Connally continues:
34. In paragraph 7, you state: In your web site you instead apply an "idiosyncratic interpretation" to what are essentially very technical legal texts. On March 18th my wife and I viewed the free screening of Aaron Russo's new movie: America From Freedom To Fascism. [3] I was with approximately 750 other people of common intelligence that have the same "idiosyncratic interpretation" of the law that I do. We "differ as to its application" with you. Admitted by the We the People organization [4] these showings are presently, mostly, "preaching to the choir". Every showing has been in packed houses. It's a small, but not insignificant, and growing choir, that "differ[s] as to its application" with you. 35. The "Void For Vagueness Doctrine" is espoused specifically in regard to tax law in the Gould v. Gould case. The concept presented stands on the merits of its self-evident, logical truth:
Logic vs. Decree (reprise)36. Now, tell us all again, why do we need you (lawyers) to interpret laws for us?Time does not now permit37. In paragraph 18 you state: You will notice that I have not addressed any of the material on your web site specifically. Yes, I have noticed. We can get on with this after about the 21st.38. Again, thanks for the time you have/are going to put in to this discussion. I hope that the removal of the Tax Honesty Movement article will wait until after we can pick this up. 39. Dear Taxman and other editors: Without getting into specifics about what I intended with respect to a discussion with Mr. Dale Eastman, the user at IP 4.158.201.8, I have to say that Taxman's point -- that this talk page should be reserved for efforts to improve the Tax protester article -- is well taken. Upon reflection, I agree that this talk page may not be the most appropriate place to dialog with Mr. Eastman. (As I had already told Mr. Eastman, it's pretty unclear whether I would be able to get to Mr. Eastman's commentary in any meaningful way, anyway.) However, we have all gained some valuable information from Mr. Eastman's comments posted above. Thanks, Famspear 22:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC) 40. Taxman says: Grand claims require greater evidence. No Sir, they don't. They only require the same evidence any other claim requires... And you don't get to set that bar for the evidence required. 41. Taxman says: Nearly all of this discussion is completely frivolous... The magic government word that means If we address what you have before us, the US income tax, as presently executed will collapse. But then you know that "frivolous" is a Tax Honesty Movement "HOT button word." 42. Taxman is correct as to proper forum, which is why I put together my own page. [5] 43. I am mirroring my dialog Mr. Famspear. I have no problem with deleting my previous post to this forum each time I put something else here with a link to the page where I am recording the dialog. I have no problem with Mr. Famspear doing the same thing. 44. I didn't really want to put a debate discussion here. Famspear is correct that it will get read more so here, and thus offer more chance to educate. On the other hand Famspear may not be comfortable with loosing his anonymity if he emails me directly. (There are web page based mail utilities out there if that is a concern. In effect, they become anonymous remailers.) 45. Mr. Famspear says: However, we have all gained some valuable information from Mr. Eastman's comments posted above. That comment could be taken two different ways. Are you giving me a compliment? Posted-Dale Eastman. |