http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... /310249966
A retired General Electric welder, Beeman operates a business called Libertarian Notary, south of Waterford.
He has been a registered Democrat, Republican and Libertarian, with the last switch, from Libertarian to Republican, occurring before the May primary.
Beeman said his political awakening came by way of a 10-day stay in the Erie County Prison 18 years ago. Beeman said he chose incarceration, rather than pay the $1,040 the state said he owed for what Beeman called "paperwork" violations at the mobile-home business he operated at the time.
Beeman said he emerged with a newfound commitment to question government.
Court records, in which Beeman is identified as William G. Beeman, Evert Beeman and Ebert G. Beeman, record the mode of his protest:
- Beeman owes the IRS more than $2 million. In an Oct. 16 hearing in federal court in Erie, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Skirtich, of Pittsburgh, told U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin that the debt mounted after Beeman quit filing income-tax returns in 1993.
- Waterford Township in July 2008 won a $5,600 judgment against Beeman and his corporation, Strivingforfreedom Inc., over unpaid sewer charges.
- The state Department of Transportation, meanwhile, wants to suspend Beeman's driver's license because he refuses to provide his Social Security number. Beeman's appeal of that license suspension is scheduled for December in Erie County Court. But it has not stopped Beeman from driving.
At a hearing Monday before Erie 1st Ward District Judge Sue Mack, Beeman was convicted of driving with the suspended license. He then got in his Subaru Forester, still sans valid license, and drove away, only to be ticketed within blocks of Mack's office by an Erie County detective.
Beeman said he owes Waterford Township nothing because he never signed up for the sewage service. He thinks the state has no right to require him to provide a Social Security number in order to drive.
His trouble with the IRS began several years ago, he said, when he turned about $1,200 into $100,000 by day trading on the stock market and failed to file returns for several years.
"I screwed up," he said.
He said he tried to work with the IRS, but gave up when agents made too many demands.
"The laws are just ungodly what you have to do. I don't care what you do, you are always going to break the law because you are going to miss something," he said.
Interpreting the Constitution
Beeman calls himself a Republican. His court filings, however, bear more in common with the so-called sovereign-citizen movement, members of which seek to abide by a rigid reading of the U.S. Constitution. In recent months, others with similar philosophies have been cropping up at court hearings in Erie County.
Documents Beeman filed in the IRS refer to admiralty law and declare that Beeman is a "third party," who is only visiting the court.
At the Oct. 16 federal court hearing on Beeman's tax problems, Beeman refused to answer Judge McLaughlin's questions directly.
"I would have been submitting to their authority," Beeman said afterward.
He has sued IRS agents for $7 million, claiming they improperly filed liens against him in Erie County Court.
"I am just trying to do what is morally right," he said.
