Circus day at the Browns

[Disilloosianed]

A candlelight vigil??????? Jesus H. Christ.

[webhick]

A ditty from FoxNews.com, I assume that the quotes from the townspeople at the end might be from the meeting. Most of the article rehashes the same crap. I put an arrow in to where the new stuff seems to start.

Link to the Story

N.H. Town Hopes to End Standoff Between Police and Couple Barricaded in Home Since January

Thursday , June 21, 2007

AP

PLAINFIELD, N.H. —
To avoid serving prison sentences for tax evasion, Ed Brown and his wife, Elaine, have locked themselves off from the world on their own terms.

From behind the 8-inch concrete walls of their 110-acre hilltop compound, the couple taunt police and SWAT teams and play to reporters and government-haters with references to past standoffs that turned deadly. Residents want the Browns' circus to end before their small Connecticut River town becomes the next Ruby Ridge or Waco.

The Browns raised the specter of the first case, the 1992 shootout at an Idaho property called Ruby Ridge, by holding a news conference Monday with Randy Weaver, whose wife and child were killed there along with a deputy U.S. marshal.

Ed Brown warned authorities they wouldn't take him alive: "We either walk out of here free or we die."

The Browns were sentenced in abstentia to 63-month prison sentences in April, after being convicted of conspiring to evade taxes on nearly $1.9 million in Elaine Brown's income and of plotting to disguise large financial transactions.

Though they have refused to leave the compound, U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier insists he has no plans to raid it to make them serve their time and will instead seek a peaceful surrender.

Expert observers praise the authorities' hands-off approach, but patience is wearing thin for Plainfield's 2,400 residents. Town selectmen recently asked Monier to stop the influx of militiamen and other anti-government groups to the Browns' home and to bring the couple to justice.

"While we understand and support efforts to achieve a quiet resolution to this matter, the longer the Browns remain at large the better the chance, in our view, that our local police force will be involved in an incident with them or their group of supporters," the letter reads. "In short, we believe that it is time that definitive action be taken."

It's a sentiment echoed throughout the town.

"The people of Plainfield feel the whole thing has been mismanaged from the get-go," says Stephen Taylor, a Plainfield native who is state agriculture commissioner. "He's got this band of loonies up there right now. There's this constant traffic and helicopters overhead and everything. Goddamn crazies."

The town south of bustling Lebanon has a "live-and-let-live" reputation that no one wants linked to the Browns, Taylor said.

"Everybody feels a tiny bit of embarrassment. This is what we're going to be known for?" Taylor said. "We don't want to be known for this."

The Browns' home on an isolated dirt roads includes a turret that offers a 360-degree view of the property and a driveway that is sometimes barricaded with SUVs.

Ed Brown, a retired exterminator, and his wife, a dentist, have bragged that the compound is self-sufficient and capable of running entirely on solar, wind and geothermal energies.

While saying repeatedly that he has no interest in harming the Browns or their supporters, Monier has not said what he does plan to do.

He says the massive law enforcement turnout on June 7, complete with roadblocks and planes, was for surveillance of the compound while agents seized the Lebanon building that housed Elaine Brown's dental practice.

But Ed Brown and many town residents believe it was a botched raid that apparently had to be called off when someone walking a dog stumbled onto federal agents in camouflage near the home.

"We were much better off before the federal government tried to take him into custody and it didn't go well," fumed town administrator Steve Halleran. "The fervor had died down. That was one of the things we were hoping, that people would go on to other things. But that's all by the wayside."

Weaver's news conference with the couple only added to local frustrations.

"That must've been a first. We've never really seen convicted felons just be able to hold press conferences," Halleran said. "There has to be a restriction of access to and from their property. If people can continue to visit them, to bring them supplies, with diesel fuel and food, they can stay there for a long time."

Brown neighbor David Grobe, a former patient of Elaine Brown, just wants the dirt road to be silent again. He said satellite news trucks parked at a softball field for Monday's news conference at the same time residents wanted to play.

"This used to be a very quiet street," he said.

Sitting in lawn chairs around the Browns' long gravel driveway, the couple's supporters rail against Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, the Vatican and the mainstream media.

Some defend the Browns' claim — repeatedly rejected by courts — that no law authorizes the federal income tax and that the 1913 constitutional amendment permitting it was never properly ratified.

"The income tax can take more than the Mafia can with a machine gun. Believe me," said Alfred Liseo of Meriden, Conn.

"The Mafia doesn't have popular support," interrupted Bill Walker. "The government has support of millions of ignorant people who have the wool pulled over their eyes. They think they need to pay. They don't."

[Demosthenes]

Another article on tax protester Joe Haas:

Brown Supporter Arrested
Man Charged With Threatening Lebanon City Councilor
By Peter Jamison
Valley News Staff Writer

Plainfield -- Police arrested a supporter of federal fugitives Ed and Elaine Brown outside Plainfield Town Hall last night on a charge of criminally threatening a Lebanon City Councilor.

The misdemeanor charge against Joseph Haas, 54, of Concord, stemmed from a long e-mail he sent to various government officials last Friday. In the e-mail, Haas assailed New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch and the Lebanon City Council, in language by turns biblical and legalistic, for not doing more to protect the Browns from the U.S. Marshals Service.

“You all live in a dream land of lies, the father of which is the devil himself: devil worshipers you must be,” Haas wrote in the e-mail, addressing the Lebanon City Council. “Either you do your job, or get out of the way. WISE UP OR DIE. If the latter be your choice, then BE GONE with you NOW!”

After receiving the e-mail, Lebanon City Councilor Terri Dudley, who formerly served as a state representative, complained to Lebanon Police Chief Jim Alexander and state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte. Dudley was the only city councilor that Haas mentioned by name. “You have turned the Isaiah 1:21 ‘faithful city' (in your 78+ years Rep. Terri Duddy) into a land of the harlot: the vague and the vagabond,” Haas wrote. Dudley, 78, said in an interview last night that she found the e-mail chilling. “Everybody has the right to free speech,” she said. “I do not think they have the right to threaten the life of someone else.”

Bernie Bastian, a friend of Haas who also supports the Browns, said last night that Haas' comments in the e-mail should not be construed as a death threat. He sought to offer alternative interpretations of the “WISE UP OR DIE” phrase.

“That could be, ‘If you're not smart enough, you get hit by a car in the road,” Bastian said. “We've got ‘Live Free or Die’ on the license plate. Wising up is easier than living free. So is ‘Live Free or Die' a threat?”

Bastian was one of about 10 Brown supporters who turned out with Haas for the regular meeting of the Plainfield Selectboard last night. Haas had rallied the group to attend the meeting and request that town officials intervene with federal authorities on behalf of the Browns. He was arrested as he left his car, just after he arrived. Three local officers and two state troopers were waiting for him in the parking lot. Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway and two assistant county attorneys were also present.

Haas, a bespectacled man in a patterned short-sleeve shirt, made no efforts to resist police. Several of the Browns' supporters captured his arrest on video, circling Haas as police escorted him into the Plainfield Police Department and then into a Sullivan County Sheriff's Department cruiser, which ferried him to Lebanon.

“We were here in case something like this happened,” said Danny Romero, an Internet radio producer who traveled to the Browns' home last weekend from Texas.

“This is fascism,” said Corinna Cooper, a California resident who was holding aloft a sign reading “Taxes or Blood? Is this America?” outside the town hall as Selectboard members met inside.

Plainfield Police Chief Gordon Gillens said that Lebanon Police, who had a warrant for Haas' arrest, had asked that Haas be arrested if he showed up to the Selectboard meeting, which he had indicated he might attend. Lebanon police also staked out last night's City Council meeting in case Haas showed up there.

Lebanon Police Sgt. Stephen St. Louis said Haas was released last night on a personal recognizance bond, and would be arraigned on July 31. If convicted, he faces a fine up to $1,200, but no jail time.

In 2005, Haas faced criminal charges for sending an e-mail to Ayotte in which he warned that her month-old daughter would be killed if she didn't stop prosecuting one of his friends. The judge ruled that the law under which he was tried -- improper influence of a public official -- was unconstitutional because it was too broad, and dismissed Haas' case.

Ed and Elaine Brown were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison earlier this year for not paying federal income taxes. For the past five months they have stayed at their home on Plainfield's Center of Town Road, saying they will resist any attempt by U.S. Marshals to arrest them.

Dudley said that Haas had attended a Lebanon City Council meeting on June 6 where he demanded that city officials fire Police Chief Jim Alexander for his role in arresting Ed Brown last year.

Bastian said that Lebanon Police had been in touch with Haas sometime in the past week to investigate the alleged threat. As a result, he said, his friend “expected” that he might be arrested in the coming days. “I have his car keys and stuff, just in case,” Bastian said.

County Attorney Hathaway said his office had heard that there might be a large contingent of the Browns' supporters at the meeting and were there to offer advice, as needed, to police.

At the Selectboard meeting last night, Bastian, speaking on behalf of Haas, told board members that they had a constitutional obligation to protect the Browns from federal law-enforcement agents.

If they did not do so, Bastian suggested, the town should refund the couple's local property taxes.

[webhick]

A candlelight vigil??????? Jesus H. Christ.

At gunstock mountain. I check Gunstock's events, and the vigil itself is not listed, but there is something called the Free State Project, which according to their FAQ for "Who is welcome to participate?"

Anyone who can agree to the clause in the Statement of Intent which says that you should support the creation of a society in which the maximum role of civil government is the protection of citizens' rights to life, liberty, and property. In essence, this includes everyone who wants to cut the size and scope of government by about two-thirds or more. Put in a positive way, most FSP members support policies such as abolition of all income taxes, elimination of regulatory bureaucracies, repeal of most gun control laws, repeal of most drug prohibition laws, complete free trade, decentralization of government, and widescale privatization. People of this disposition may go by many names: "classical liberals" (not the same as modern liberals at all, but followers of Thomas Jefferson and similar thinkers), libertarians, paleoconservatives, constitutionalists, voluntarists, etc., etc.

These people don't sound quite like Ed's type. They're a voice for changing the existing laws and he's voicing that the laws don't exist to begin with. And, the "Free State Project" doesn't sound all that violent or paranoid. But then again, I haven't read up on them (and haven't heard about them before, despite living in NH for almost 20 years).

I hope the supporters get their butts thrown out.

[John J. Bulten]

Let's convince Monier to declare ownership of the Browns' home, designate it a federal minimum-security prison, and just keep guards there until 2012. That way everyone gets what they want, and he can even credit them for time served since Jan.

(Webhick, my man, what plausible deniability project do they have you on that requires you to disavow all knowledge of the FSP?)

[Demosthenes]

But then again, I haven't read up on them (and haven't heard about them before, despite living in NH for almost 20 years).

I have lots and lots and lots on the FSP supporting Ed. They're basically a weird mix pacifist hippies and rabid gun nuts that don't believe in voting which is fairly ironic considering they all intentionally moved to a single, small state (New Hampshire) in order to have an effective voting block. A few are tax protesters butmany don't have enough income to meet the filing threshhold.

They don't like Ed or his violent threats or his stance on "show me the law" but they absolutely crave the press they've received from holding signs and vigils. Bottom line, they're using Ed and Elaine's potential violent death for their own ego and press purposes. It's gross.

Remember the people we all thought were stupid because they took their children to a shootout and built a bonfire at Ed's house in January as if it were all a big party?



Here's the main FSP website:
http://www.freestateproject.org/

[webhick]

(Webhick, my man, what plausible deniability project do they have you on that requires you to disavow all knowledge of the FSP?)

It's the "Squirrel Canon Warfare" project. And it just so happens to be the same one that you're operating under when you call me "man"

Honestly, I've probably seen the group in passing and they just didn't make enough of an impression to stick.

[Famspear]

Dear Mr. Bulten: You wrote:

-----"Let's convince Monier to declare ownership of the Browns' home [ . . . ]"

Actually, that's an interesting idea, as the United States apparently already owns (at a minimum) an undivided share in the property by virtue of the court's recent forfeiture order. There's no need for the United States Marshal to "declare ownership," as the USA already owns the property, at least to the extent of the value designated in the forfeiture order.

Of course, this is quite separate and apart from the property interest already held by the USA in the form of the statutory tax lien (section 6321).

I don't know that anyone has brought this up before, but when Federal agents are camped out on Mr. Brown's property, it would seem that, for a variety of legal reasons (aside from the fact that they're just doing their job), the agents aren't trespassing. I guess you could say they're on FEDERAL PROPERTY now. The Browns and the USA are now co-owners. --Famspear

[Evil Squirrel Overlord]

I don't know if I like the "Squirrel Cannon Warfare" comment, anyway. Isn't blockading these individuals inside "Festung Braun" just feeding their resolve and popularity. Isn't there a way to "smoke" them out like good libertarians such as opening a tannery upwind? After all, it is their right to operate a tannery.

[Demosthenes]

Good login name, Evil Squirrel Overlord!

[webhick]

I don't know if I like the "Squirrel Cannon Warfare" comment, anyway.

The squirrels are building a cannon to wage war on the chipmunks who are stealing squirrelly attention for their kamikaze stunts on cars. That's squirrel territory and the chipmunks are encroaching. The cannon will be chucking acorns and field mice. If you would like a certified copy of the department report, I will be happy to forward that along to you.

Isn't blockading these individuals inside "Festung Braun" just feeding their resolve and popularity. Isn't there a way to "smoke" them out like good libertarians such as opening a tannery upwind? After all, it is their right to operate a tannery.

Right on!

[TheSaint]

Let's convince Monier to declare ownership of the Browns' home, designate it a federal minimum-security prison, and just keep guards there until 2012.

Better idea: declare ownership of the Browns' home, and designate it a federal shooting range.

[Demosthenes]

We hit 100 posts so I'm locking the thread. Continue the conversation on the Brown CNN thread.

[grixit]

A candlelight vigil??????? Jesus H. Christ.

We were so close, there was no room
We bled inside each others wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace