Reno's success letter

[Judge Roy Bean]

Several of these con artists have stashed their loot someplace and will regard a stint of free room and board at taxpayers expense as a tolerable interlude before they unbury their loot. Most of the time, calculating their time behind bars versus their ill-gotten gains, they could easily have earned more doing honest work, but they never see it that way. In the meantime, they leave in their wake ruined lives and misery.

Long long prison stretches, so much so that it's obvious the stolen money won't be much consolation when they get out, will (I hope) discourage such crooks.

I'm sorry, but I have to step in and say that prosecutorial deterrence isn't the answer, although I'd love to see it just to put the promoters behind bars for decades.

The answer is clear, concise and unambiguous tax laws that leave no room for misinterpretation or even simple misunderstanding. There really is no question as to the authority to impose the taxes, the failure is to do so in such a way that makes it unquestionable. The elitism in promulgating tax law is it's own innate vulnerability.

We're not going to be able to bring the educational level of the general populace up to the point where they reject nonsense from promoters as long as it's more complex than two-plus-two-equals-four.

Someone needs to wake up and point out how the senior staff members of the members of House Ways and Means Committee are the guilty parties in this absurdity. Elected members couldn't write tax code if they had a gun to their head; the perpetrators of this mess live and work inside the beltway and are House employees.

[.]

clear, concise and unambiguous

I agree that it's a very noble goal. A fair bit of deterrence might be accomplished by rewriting a few primary sections like 1, 61-63, and maybe 6011, 6012 and 6051, but why would that stop the determined? We could dump the entire IRC and go to a national sales tax, a VAT or anything else imaginable and the true idiots will just tilt at a different set of windmills.

Even using layman's language further reduced to a sort of simpleton's 2+2=4 slang and vernacular would still leave room for innumerable morons and their gurus to argue about the definition of everything down to "a," "and" and "the." Not to mention Constimatooshunal (not an easy thing to get rewritten,) flag fringe, OMB number, positive law, sovereign citizenship of wherever, Queen of England, etc., etc., arguments" ad nauseam and the next ten totally stupid ideas they come up with.

If an idiot will argue about what "includes" means, he'll argue about anything and everything, including the kitchen sink.

A very minor part of the problem are provisions that have been purposefully couched in seemingly general terms to hide who the beneficiaries of the obscurity might be. That sort of stuff is done at the behest of our representatives, not their paid staffs who write only the legalese our alleged representatives want written. Ain't no way that stuff is getting rewritten. That stuff also isn't what the TP morons rely on.

Ed: family insane, Uncle Irwin, MulletBoy, Tricky Dicky Simkanin, the Soooooey fugitives from reality and all the rest of their ilk and cohorts will always be with us no matter what we do.

[webhick]

If an idiot will argue about what "includes" means, he'll argue about anything and everything, including the kitchen sink.

By their own definition of includes, they'd only be able to argue about the kitchen sink.

[Famspear]

If an idiot will argue about what "includes" means, he'll argue about anything and everything, including the kitchen sink.

By their own definition of includes, they'd only be able to argue about the kitchen sink.

Excellent point!

[ErsatzAnatchist]

His resume looks impressive.

Josh Gordon (much like his predecessor Attorney Bownes) is a real lawyer and does not suck on paper or in the real world.

Given that this is an appeal, Reno will have very little involvement in the case. The attorney will read the transcripts and see what errors he can allege to get his client a new trial or new sentencing. They won't even let Reno show up for the oral argument.

[Gregg]

They won't even let Reno show up for the oral argument.

That alone increases his odds exponentially.

[Dezcad]

Jose Gonzalez, Reno's father, talks about Reno here on Youtube.