Psam Frank - Sovereign with his own laws and court

[Burnaby49]

Anyways, back to Psam arguing that he only has to obey certain laws, when he feels like it, and only after deep reflection and consultation and a vote of course.

In his world view he doesn't need a vote to get exemption from laws he doesn't like, he only needs a court order. However he's unfortunately finding that this surprisingly difficult to obtain. He's doubled up on the deep reflection part but it isn't an acceptable substitute.

I've never been contacted by elections Canada about anything except for the voter's card I'm mailed before every election. Given the massive quantity of junk mail I'm already routinely sent I don't miss the personal touch from my government.

[Psam]

In his world view he doesn't need a vote to get exemption from laws he doesn't like, he only needs a court order.

What a bunch of crap.

The order that I asked from the court was that I be held subject to the governance of a legislative assembly that does not deny section 3 Charter rights for periods of time.

The order I asked included the stipulation that if the Crown created a legislative assembly that does not deny section 3 Charter rights for periods of time, then I be governed by that instead of the one I helped create independently. It also included the stipulation that the legislative assembly that I am governed by must be receptive and supportive to any other Canadian citizen who wishes to take part in choosing the governance that I am subjected to. If the court finds that this is not the case, then I would expect the court to order me to resume being subject to the governance of the Crown’s legislative assemblies and I don’t think this would be unreasonable.

The Attorney for the respondent in my hearing in 2014 cited R v Crawford: “(a)pplication of Charter values must take into account other interests and in particular other Charter values which may conflict with their unrestricted and literal enforcement”. I did not refute or defy this reasoning. I wholeheartedly agree with it. I do not wish for a remedy for the denial of my rights to result in the rights of any other person to be denied.

If the legislative assembly that I am governed by is not receptive and supportive to any other citizen of Canada who wishes to be enfranchised in choosing the governance that I am subjected to, then the remedy for the denial of my section 3 Charter rights by the Crown would deny other citizens their same rights with respect to my governance. That would not be okay with me, and it would not be consistent with R v Crawford, which I happen to admire and find to be a fair and judicious decision of the SCC.

And please don’t make up this crap about me wanting to get out of paying taxes. I don’t want to pay one cent less than anybody else. Not one cent.

Actually, no, please feel free to go on making up crap about me just to satisfy your wish to believe I’m an idiot. It’s all good. No hard feelings.

[Burnaby49]

What a bunch of crap.

The order that I asked from the court was that I be held subject to the governance of a legislative assembly that does not deny section 3 Charter rights for periods of time.

The order I asked included the stipulation that if the Crown created a legislative assembly that does not deny section 3 Charter rights for periods of time, then I be governed by that instead of the one I helped create independently. It also included the stipulation that the legislative assembly that I am governed by must be receptive and supportive to any other Canadian citizen who wishes to take part in choosing the governance that I am subjected to. If the court finds that this is not the case, then I would expect the court to order me to resume being subject to the governance of the Crown’s legislative assemblies and I don’t think this would be unreasonable.

Quit true. However, since you knew that the B.C. legislature was never going to agree to your demands that it take orders from you about how you wanted it structured that portion of your lawsuit was just an excuse to attain your true purpose which was to get the court to agree that you were subject only to the laws and requirements of the Independent Sovereign Society, your own little fantasy government. Had you been issued that order you would supposedly, in your world, have been exempt from the laws of British Columbia as I stated. And sure, you've always claimed that you were willing to pay taxes, but only to your pretend government. Since the ISS is effectively you it meant you'd be cutting yourself a cheque every year to pay your taxes. A sweet deal I wouldn't mind getting in on if I thought it would work. So how has it worked for you?

And don't try to persuade me that ISS is some independent organization that you don't totally control, if 'control' is actually the correct word to apply to a total fiction. You thought it up and you'd be the guy running it if there was actually anything to run.

[JamesVincent]

Just to be clear, when you say “real and actual law”, you mean laws enacted under the legislative process depicted in the Constitution, or “supreme law”, and the Constitution became the “supreme law” at the time that it received a signature from the Queen in 1982, because her Majesty has an objectively conclusive ethical right to subject every person in this land to her authority, and her authority is manifested through the Constitution, right? Is there anything incorrect about this equivalency I made to unpack the words you used?

You completely missed the point but that seems to be the story of your life. Like Wes said have fun with the windmills.

[Psam]

And sure, you've always claimed that you were willing to pay taxes, but only to your pretend government. Since the ISS is effectively you it meant you'd be cutting yourself a cheque every year to pay your taxes.

No, the policy that the society’s members have agreed upon as to how spend the taxes received by the society if the courts were to allow it is not to cut ourselves cheques paying us our taxes back. That’s not how any member, including myself, wants it to go.

The society’s present policy, for some time now, is that it would look at the allocation of taxes to the various ministries that the governing party chooses in its budget. Then the society would ask the opposition party (or an opposition party if there’s more than one) how they would have allocated those funds if they had been in power. The society would then agree upon a middle ground expenditure of those funds between the two parties and give most of those funds (minus the society’s operating expenses) either directly to the ministries in the altered allocations or else, if the society agrees that one ministry is not fulfilling its mandate to the society’s members’ satisfaction, spend it directly on that subject area.

The society would then approach members and supporters of the opposition party and inform them that if they become members of the society and give their taxes to the society then the expenditures of their taxes would more closely suit their satisfaction. Then the society would encourage the members of the opposition party to use their influence in the party to lobby for the introduction of the interactive electoral system in the party’s infrastructure to choose the party’s executive, leader, constituency association directors, etc.

That’s all right here on page 3: http://issociety.org/wp-content/uploads ... gistry.pdf

[Burnaby49]

I defer to your superior knowledge of imaginary governments. This is getting way, way, to complicated for me to follow and my job used to be analyzing and applying the provisions of the Income Tax Act.

[Psam]

I’m just glad you agree that claiming that I have the intention of having my taxes paid back to me by cheque is absurd. Ridiculous.

Funny you could follow all of the dynamics of the head of state’s role in facilitating elections. That seems much more complicated to me, despite the fact that I know it well enough that it doesn’t really seem mysterious to me or anything.

Maybe you’re just claiming that it’s complicated because you can’t find any ways to rationally discredit the optimal nature of the strategy to permeate existing political parties with fair elections, and you don’t want to see it happen because fundamentally, your vicarious authoritarianism makes you feel revulsion at the thought of all of those people being free to make choices by their own schedules.

[AnOwlCalledSage]

That is why it is possible for the character named “God” in that book to be such an unethical, tyrannical, ignorant, pathetic moron and yet still be treated as ethically infallible by his brainwashed, irrational, simpleton followers and adherents.

Ah. I finally get why you don't understand religion or politics.

If a "God" creates a system of ethics that is "tyrannical, ignorant, pathetic" then that is the standard of ethics. So it can't be unethical and it is by definition ethically infallible.

Similarly if a people decide to create a system of laws governed by representatives that they elect according to a system that the majority agree with, whether you personally agree with it or not, that is the law.

It's similar to the dozens of "Sov Cits" and "Freeman on the Land" screaming at the police officer "You work for ME!!!". Yes he/she does. But he/she also works for the million of others who are quite happy to see the scrot involved arrested for violating the law.

If you wish to found your own religion or political party to advance either a different set of ethics or political system, you are free to do so and canvass for adherents and/or supporters.

Everyone else is, of course, free to ignore your religion/politics and carry on as they are.

[Burnaby49]

I've warned psam to stop discussing religion, that includes everyone. You're giving him a green light to continue sharing his profound thoughts on the topic if you start a debate with him.

[Psam]

Thanks Burnaby49, I actually did have more to say on the topic and I’m glad to see that another member’s comments on the subject give me a green light.

I’m trying to understand the rules here. You said it’s okay to discuss political theory but not actual politics, have I got that right? And no discussion of religion at all, right?

Wserra brought up a political theorist whose political theories are quite rampantly motivated by religion. I don’t see how it’s following the rules to use political theories founded on religion in debate without opening up the floor for discussing the religion upon which those theories are motivated. Please tell me how that is following the rules, because I don’t understand.

But anyway, if you look at the atrocities committed all over the world by the colonialists sent out from the country of Locke’s origin, we can see that if he was as influential as seems apparent then his theories are masterful at perpetuating tyranny and suffering. So claiming that the proof is in the pudding is true: the proof is that his theories are far from perfect. Whether the effects of his theories are caused by the religious motivations behind his theories would be an interesting discussion, but even if you leave his religion completely out of it, we can just look at how the European invaders treated the First Nations. Clearly Locke’s theories contributed to widespread oppression and suffering.

If a person has an alternative complete and concise method of writing and adjudicating laws by which to consensually have her or his conduct constrained, and you condone unilaterally, uncompromisingly imposing your government upon her or him anyway, then you are complicit in some extent of tyranny and injustice. John Locke and Jesus can suck each other’s d*#!s all they want, they’re still both idiots.

[MRN]

Oh, what the Hell, I have not yet completed my newbie orientation task of attempting to reason with the unreasonable.

Cover me (in dachshunds) I'm going in.

Wserra brought up a political theorist whose political theories are quite rampantly motivated by religion. I don’t see how it’s following the rules to use political theories founded on religion in debate without opening up the floor for discussing the religion upon which those theories are motivated. Please tell me how that is following the rules, because I don’t understand.

Hi, Psam! So, I have an undergraduate degree mostly concentrated on Anthropology and Sociology of religion.

So I can testify that it is possible and useful to have an extremely in-depth conversation about how a given religious belief affects how people understand the world and how it drives their actions without ever needing or attempting to decide whether or not that belief is true or whether the people who believe it are 'smart' or 'dumb' or 'deluded' or what.

Frankly, you don't need it here. Locke and his readers held certain beliefs. His writings make less sense if you don't know that. But on the whole, it's perfectly possible to evaluate the moral claims he makes on your own terms and work out whether or not you think it's true without caring about the truth of his REASONS.

To be seriously reductive, the Bible says you shall not kill or bear false witness. You can reject the Bible completely and still nod thoughtfully and say "you know what, yeah. Those are bad things. I don't think I should do them and I think they should be illegal."

As for the moral justification you seek for being subjected to a legal and electoral system you don't consent to in every detail, I'll have a go.

Piano concertos. ICUs. Trains. International telephone calls. Avocados in February. The Canadarm.

Or, to put it another way, if you want a society large enough for individuals to specialize and large-scale, complex, multi-person enterprises and endeavours to happen, then you have to cope with a representative rather than direct system of governance and a "good enough" set of laws and customs, because you are never going to get more than a handful of people to agree in every detail on a system and that limits you to hunter-gatherer or small agriculture societies.

Ideally, most people most of the time think most of the laws are good law.
Practically, it takes a fairly high level of vigilance to stay close to that ideal.

Pragmatically, the system you propose, if implemented, will produce a lot of churn but not a lot of progress.

We'd probably end up with basically all the politicians we have now, plus some failed candidates who did pretty well, cycling in and out of office, because those are the people well enough known to consistently attract sufficient votes under your system.

(Also pragmatically, a lot of very smart and determined people have spent a lot of years trying to get proportional rep through, which is a much less disruptive change, and so far we got nothin'. If you want to change the world, it helps to have high ideals but also a strong grasp of what you're likely to actually be able to accomplish at a given time.)

Yeah, I don't always like it either. I've spent 30-odd years kicking against the pricks in various ways and with varying degrees of success, as people should. KEEPING your system "good enough" takes quite a lot of, ironically, specialized and co-operative effort.

As for not paying taxes to a government whose actions you regard as tyrannical or immoral or illegitimate, you're kind of going the long way around. And I say this as a former tax protester (within the strict meaning) myself.

I successfully and legally avoided paying any taxes to the Canadian government for the entire period of the Canadian presence in Afghanistan. (I don't mean or plan to open that can of worms but saying '2001-2011' just seems painfully coy.)

Here you go:

Select a number of registered charities and other organizations empowered to give tax receipts whose aims and methods you feel you CAN wholeheartedly endorse.

Work out how much you need to give away each year to have enough charitable deductions to get you to $0.00 owing.

Write a bunch of cheques, or, these days, you can usually donate through their website. As I mentioned the last time I brought this up on Quatloos, this part is an almost indecent amount of fun.

Collect your receipts, do your taxes. Pay no taxes. Done. Almost the exact outcome you're pushing for except VASTLY less hassle. Perfectly legal, too. You might get audited, but assuming you kept all your receipts, that's no big deal.

[Burnaby49]

About time for a refresher on Quatloos rules. I'll post it here sometime today and address the issues of politics and religion. Very generally both are prohibited but with some exceptions. As quick examples your postings on alternate voting systems are entirely political but are allowed however the comments you make about politicians on your Face Book page would not be allowed here. I've written extensively on minister Belanger's religious views because he uses them to forward a sovereign legal immunity scam but my own religious views, or lack of them, are not allowed because they are just my personal opinion and are not related to any valid Quatloos topic. I'll explain more fully with the backstory later but at the moment Xmas baking takes precedence.

[wserra]

Locke and his readers held certain beliefs. His writings make less sense if you don't know that. But on the whole, it's perfectly possible to evaluate the moral claims he makes on your own terms and work out whether or not you think it's true without caring about the truth of his REASONS.

Very well put.

[MRN]

About time for a refresher on Quatloos rules. I'll post it here sometime today and address the issues of politics and religion. Very generally both are prohibited but with some exceptions.

1) Ooh, where's the part of the forum suitable for gingerbread recipes?

2) As someone who wants to stay on the right side of those rules, because I can absolutely see how impossible this place would be without them, I appreciate that. My sense is that my general approach of being strictly non-partisan (I will neither attack nor defend the present elected government of Canada in this place) but not neutral (threatening elected officials with violence or inciting it against them is wrong, whether or not you think you've built in plausible deniability) will work fairly well here, but I'd like to note that I try hard to take correction gracefully.

[Burnaby49]

My comment wasn't directly aimed at you, it was at psam, but you fit in too because responding to postings about religion and politics just escalates things. We found that out to our cost in 2012. See below for a post I just made on a UK discussion. It puts my 2012 comment in context and gives the background on why politics and religion aren't allowed.

As far as your gingerbread recipe is concerned, go for it. Irrelevant but innocuous. I certainly babble on and on about beer and pubbing. I've even posted my own recipes from time to time.

Time for a refresher on Quatloos rules. Rather than make the effort to do a new posting on this I'll just re-post comments I made on a UK discussion years ago. It's still largely relevant. With advancing senility I've forgotten what cross-postings and CoC violations are and I've had my own temper tantrums but the position on religion and politics is unchanged.

Quatloos Rules

No political discussions.

No religious discussions

No commercial advertising

No misquoting people

No racist or sexist comments

No accusing another members of lying or CoC violations with providing proof at time of accusation

No temper tantrums

No changing history (editing your posts for anything other than grammar, punctuation or formatting

Do not quote dissent unless 1) it later became law OR you are arguing FOR a change of law

No cross-posting

Do not register and/or use multiple logins without the express permission of an admin.

Do not attempt to circumvent a ban or other punishment

There are few formal stated rules but just guidelines to keep things civil and at least semi-professional. The two big ones are the ban on discussions of religion and politics.

A little background for you UK contributors who weren't here for the great purge of 2012. I joined up in late 2011 and Quatloos was largely focused on its mission exposing of scams, tax fraud, sovereigns, freemen etc. We even allowed flame wars, some of which got quite vile. One contributor, in particular, seemed to post here for no other purpose than to be grossly offensive. When arguments got out of hand they were transferred to a specific section called "Flame Wars and Other Pissing Contests". Great fun I suppose, I didn't participate in them.

But it all went to hell with the 2012 American presidential election. Things just somehow blew up into one partisan acrimonious argument after another about Obama and Romney, some of it very offensive. Political squabbling overwhelmed the site and threatened to destroy Quatloos's reputation as an objective investigative source of information on it's primary goals. A lot of previous followers just stopped reading it. So Jay, the site's founder and owner, took action and had a purge. All the political postings were deleted and many contributors who participated here for no other purpose than to argue about issues irrelevant to Quatloos's purpose were banned and all their postings, on any topics, deleted. I'd say over half of the listed contributors were purged. The individual I noted above was one of them. Along with that Jay did some housekeeping and deleted the mass of casual posters who had just dabbled a few times but had contributed nothing.

Then the moderators (I wasn't one at the time) got together and set up some firm rules about allowed topics and contributor conduct to get things back on track. No flame wars, no politics, no religion are the primary ones. Topics are expected to stick to the intent of the site. In my opinion entirely beneficial. I pretty much dropped out of the site in mid 2012 because of all the pointless arguing and political ranting. None of it had anything to do with why I'd been contributing. Also offensive racial, sexual and religious comments are right out and can get you banned entirely if egregious enough.

Religion, as a general topic, is out for the same reason as politics. Again, in 2012, posters started totally pointless religious squabbles. They often got quite heated and were irrelevant to the site's purpose. However religion is an acceptable topic in the context of scams and Freemen discussion but only in respect to how religion is an integral part of the scam. If you read my Ed Belanger postings it is all about Christianity and the King James bible because these are the foundations of Belanger's ploys to entice suckers to follow his scams. I don't given my opinion of Christianity or any other religion but I discuss how Belanger uses it to manipulate people like the Volks into screwing up their lives.

One issue that has divided the moderators is the banning of certain contributors. Philosophically we are against it, the site welcomes diverse opinions. You won't get banned here for arguing in favour of scammers like Ceylon or disagreeing with other posters as long as you keep it civil. The relatively few posters who have been banned after the Great Purge were not kicked out because of their opinions but because of their conduct or because they were just trolls. Even those were the subject of much moderator discussion and warnings first.

As you can tell from my postings some laxity is allowed as long as it doesn't touch banned topics. I'm often off topic babbling on about beer or aircraft, or my recent New York trip, but just as aside, not as a primary discussion. I try to add value rather than give my opinions.

So those are the basics. As you British posters are aware we moderators take a very light hand on policing opinions and behaviour which is why many of you probably post here. I've only used my moderator powers three times, this one, a flame war I deleted, and a third deletion of postings at the poster's own requests. But I'm lurking in the background watching.

[MRN]

My comment wasn't directly aimed at you, it was at psam, but you fit in too because responding to postings about religion and politics just escalates things.

Ah, yes, the Incremental Flame War issue. I used to be on a science fiction mailing list where we had that concern. Nobody necessarily trying to push the limits, but topic drift, like gasoline fumes, accumulates. And then boom.

Noted, and I'll do my best to stay on the right side of things.

[MRN]

As far as your gingerbread recipe is concerned, go for it. Irrelevant but innocuous.

Not completely innocuous I hate "gingerbread" recipes that call for practically no ginger, so fair warning, this one will gently toast your nose-hairs.

It was my Grandmother's and the only real change I've made is that spices and butter are comparatively cheaper now so it calls for more of the first and uses the second instead of margarine, and I added the glaze.

It's fast, fairly foolproof, and tasty, though, so since it's the season:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
½ cup dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons powdered ginger
1/2 cup candied ginger, diced finely (if it's sticking together while you dice it you can do it in a bowl with some of your flour in it)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mace
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup softened salted butter
¾ cup blackstrap molasses
1 large egg
2 tablespoons rum
1 cup boiling water

1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup icing sugar

Preheat oven to 350 F

Sift together dry ingredients, stir in candied ginger.
Cream in butter, molasses, rum, and egg and beat until no lumps remain.
Add boiling water.
Beat for another two minutes.
Pour into a greased or parchment-lined loaf pan.

Bake 50-55 minutes, or until cake springs back when lightly touched.
While it cools mix lemon juice and icing sugar; pour it over the cooled loaf as a glaze.

[Psam]

Well getting back to the question of whether my constitutional arguments have any validity, here’s another quote from the Supreme Court of Canada, from Hunter et al. v. Southam Inc, https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-c ... 4/index.do

“The task of expounding a constitution is crucially different from that of construing a statute. A statute defines present rights and obligations. It is easily enacted and as easily repealed. A constitution, by contrast, is drafted with an eye to the future. Its function is to provide a continuing framework for the legitimate exercise of governmental power and, when joined by a Bill or a Charter of Rights , for the unremitting protection of individual rights and liberties. Once enacted, its provisions cannot easily be repealed or amended. It must, therefore, be capable of growth and development over time to meet new social, political and historical realities often unimagined by its framers. The judiciary is the guardian of the constitution and must, in interpreting its provisions, bear these considerations in mind. Professor Paul Freund expressed this idea aptly when he admonished the American courts ‘not to read the provisions of the Constitution like a last will and testament lest it become one’.” (emphasis added)

When I claim that periods of time during which section 3 Charter rights are unavailable to be exercised could be construed as denials of these rights in accordance with section 24 of the Charter, I am met not just with utter denial of the possibility that there is any merit to this but even contempt and degradation.

Why are the members of this forum so abusive toward the suggestion that periods of time during which a constitutional right is not available to be exercised might qualify as a denial as per section 24?

24. (1) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Con ... .html#h-48

Would this not be consistent with the SCC’s stipulation that the Constitution be “capable of growth and development over time to meet new social, political and historical realities often unimagined by its framers“?

[AnOwlCalledSage]

Well getting back to the question of whether my constitutional arguments have any validity

#QTWTAIN

[Burnaby49]

Thanks for the recipe, I might give it a shot. My wife is a ginger fanatic and nothing is ever gingery enough for her. She makes her own ginger ale from her own fresh ginger concentrate and soda water because even the Jamaican ginger ales aren't strong enough for her. Although, if I do, I'll probably up the ginger quota even higher.