Indiana RTV6 reports that “an increasing number of Indiana residents” are taking radical right-wing “tenther” beliefs to their logical extreme, declaring themselves “sovereign citizens” exempt from federal law and from paying taxes. These individuals claim their homes are embassies and have started “using identification cards that show them as diplomats.” The state reports that about 10 people a month have been asking for an official seal which supposedly exempts them from paying taxes. Some “sovereign citizens” have even refused to use drivers licenses or plates. When challenged by police, they show a homemade ID and claim that “no one can delay, detain or arrest them without facing damages of $2 million”:
A couple years ago I was stopped by a cop in New York for rolling through a flashing red light in a suburban town. He ran my i.d. which turned up an unpaid ticket from 20 years ago, of a similar issue. NY cops played hard ball, because of that one traffic violation in the data base. The cop handcuffed me, gave me a ride to headquarters, where he asked me a bunch of questions, but released me on payment of a couple hundred dollars deposit. My brother-in law, a law and order type, thought it was outrageous overkill. In a lot of other states, the cops are more lenient especially when there are kids, a wife or other witnesses around. The get tough approach is effective, especially with illegal protestors. If their names get published in the local paper, this has a definite deterence.
Last edited by Number Six on Sun Mar 07, 2010 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
'There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. I. vii)
'Choose loss rather than shameful gains.' (Chilon Fr. 10. Diels)
The state reports that about 10 people a month have been asking for an official seal which supposedly exempts them from paying taxes.
This is the part that always proves that these people don't understand what the word "sovereign" really means. If you are going to declare yourself sovereign, why do you think you need the government to approve your decision or to legitimize it? It conjures up the silly scenario of the signers of the Declaration of Independence forwarding the document to George III and asking him to countersign it in order for the document to have validity:
Jefferson: Bad news, guys. Georgie refused to sign our declaration.
Franklin: Gee, that is bad news. Guess we will have to delay the revolution until we do some more research and figure out a way to get George to realize that he has to sign that document.
Monroe: I bet we used the wrong color of ink when we signed it.
Hancock: You saying that I wasted a lot of ink for nothing?
"I could be dead wrong on this" - Irwin Schiff
"Do you realize I may even be delusional with respect to my income tax beliefs? " - Irwin Schiff
Indiana has been a hotbed for extremism in the past. In the 1930's the KKK Party won nearly ever legislative seat, the Governor's race, and many mayors races. It wasn't until the head of the party was arrested for rape and murder that it fell apart. According to the History Channel, when he was arrested he said something to the effect of "I will never be convicted I am untouchable." He went to jail. The party fell apart.
I note the use of the word "Apostille" on this buffoon's (ahahaha) credentials. From the (public domain) 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, via Wikipedia:
"Apostille is also a French word which means a certification. It is commonly used in English to refer to the legalization of a document for international use under the terms of the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. Documents which have been notarized by a notary public, and certain other documents, and then certified with a conformant apostille are accepted for legal use in all the nations that have signed the Hague Convention."
I'm guessing that Donald-Earl: Moron decided that, as an ambassador of a sovereign entity (himself), the use of "Apostille" is designed to tell one and all that his "credentials" are legitimate. The funny part is that he uses the seal of the State of Indiana on it, instead of his own "seal"; and this use of something which is supposed to be used only by the Indiana Secretary of State will lead to some interesting legal consequences for him.
I also note that the first example which I found on Wikipedia is an apostille from Alabama which misidentifies the relevant convention as "La Haye". Whaddya know -- Mr. Moore makes the same mistake on his "credentials". Making fun of this guy is like shooting fish in a barrel -- with the muzzle of the gun up against the fishes' sides.
Last edited by Pottapaug1938 on Fri Mar 05, 2010 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." -- Pastor Ray Mummert, Dover, PA, during an attempt to introduce creationism -- er, "intelligent design", into the Dover Public Schools
In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives passed a bill purporting to establish a new mathematical theorem involving squaring the circle, which involved three different values for pi: 3.2, 4, or roughly 3.23. Fortunately, the bill died in the Indiana Senate after a Purdue math professor intervened. When asked by a Representative if he wished to meet the author of the theorem, the professor replied that he was already acquainted with as many crazy people as he cared to know.
CaptainKickback wrote:Any state with a town called French Lick, which considers Larry Bird a member of the intelligentsia, and rabidly supported Bobby Knight's antics for years, is bound to be full of dull witted morons.
Says the guy from the state that elected a movie tough guy as governor, has a ridiculous initiative process that mandates outrageous spending levels while making it nearly impossible to raise taxes to pay for them, has the worst schools except for Mississippi and a rock-bottom credit rating, and now hopes those of us in the middle-American states that the Captain loves to ridicule will use our tax money to bail it out from its impending bankruptcy. Gee, I wonder why so few of us want to fund Californians' golden lifestyle.
As it says right under my avatar, I live in Texas. We have plenty of Latino immigrants here, legal and illegal. My feelings about immigration are mixed. It's not true that "they only take jobs Americans wouldn't do." I know a guy who can no longer make a living in meatpacking because the jobs have all gone to illegals. Of course, right-wing ideologues like you generally endorse union busting, and the decimation of working-class wages, so IMO you and your political allies talk out of both sides of your mouths. Do like Arizona and shut down businesses that employ illegals. But then California would have to pay living wages to its lower classes rather than having an army of brown-skinned serfs to exploit.
As an affluent guy in (I think) the San Diego area, do you cut your own lawn and maintain your own shrubbery, or are you employing one of those very illegals? Around here, we don't consider it our entitlement to have underpaid cooks, nannies, and gardeners. The illegals are mostly in construction and agricultural labor. It's big business that wants no control on immigration.
Unlike in California, where Latinos are "the other," here they're our neighbors and family members. As one of my redneck cousins put it 30 years ago, "There ain't a family in Texas can say nothin' against the Messicans 'cause there ain't a family they ain't married into." I honor the record of my Mexican immigrant landlord (who, as far as I know, came here legally), who just retired from the U.S. Army after 26 years of service.
Studies of the effect of immigration on the California economy are mixed. Most consider immigration a net plus. One thing's for sure: They're mostly employed. With or without federal action, California could send all its illegals home tomorrow if everyone refused to employ them. But then you'd either have to cut your own lawns and raise your own kids, like the rest of America, or pay a living wage. Your state's budget problems are not primarily the result of immigration. The populace won't even pay a vehicle tax to balance the budget. Social services are too generous and taxation is too low. Really, the population is probably too large to be sustainable, at least at the current standard of living.
I spent much of my last vacation in California (last September). It's a beautiful state with an enviable lifestyle. But all my friends out there, without exception, were in terrible economic straits, from the programmer who was laid off for the second time that year to the millionaire who lost a fortune to a Ponzi scheme involving Nevada real estate. Illegal immigration has little to do with a burst bubble in subprime lending (except that illegal construction labor may have made even more rapid expansion possible). In the past, sunny Golden State optimism led people to take on debt they shouldn't have been able to handle, in the belief that something else (high-tech, ever expanding house values) would come along to save the day. I don't see where the next salvation is going to come from, especially with an increasingly ill educated work force. Legalized pot isn't gonna do it, though it'll probably keep people from rioting in the streets.
Were I a native Texan, I might get ticked off at your calling my state a sh*thole. Actually, it's an ugly, corrupt mediocrity, but I live here because I can afford to. It wouldn't occur to me to take out an ARM on a tiny $750K condo in the outskirts of San Diego with the faith that some income stream would arise to allow me to afford the jump in interest a few years down the line. We ain't much to look at, but we're self-sufficient. As for "candy-*ssed," I have a 2nd-degree black belt so I doubt you'd talk like that if we met face to face. IMO, Californians are, on the average, more effete than people in the rest of America. My buddy who spent 7 years in L.A. was amazed that people couldn't do the simplest maintenance (replacing their own windows, wiring their own stereos, minor car repair). No, they rely on those illegals they love to verbally trash. Go rent A Day Without a Mexican and get back to me.
MODERATOR (or janitor) please move the previous ego-centric attempt to derail / hijack the thread to either the approprite thread or (better yet) to write-only storage.
While we're enjoying this thread-hijacking, I found this recent summary of why the illegal immigrant crime-wave is a myth - specifically, that if you control for age and remove immigration-related offenses, latino immigrants don't commit more crimes than anyone else.
I live in California and I really don't care who has the government's blessing to be there and who does not. I think of illegal immigrants as human beings who need a job and go where the jobs pay best. This is capitalism, that's how it works, and I don't see why anyone should expect differently. I spoke to a construction worker a few years ago, who said he could make $100 a day in cash in LA as a day laborer (this was before the crash) or he could make $1 a day picking cotton in Veracruz. Who can criticize his choice? He had four kids back home and went back to see them every 6 months or so. The rest of the time he stayed in LA in a 2-room apartment with 6 other guys. To me he was a pleasant hard-working young man, and better company than many Americans I have met.
Proposition 13 plays a major role in our state's disaster. AFAIK it was not passed by illegals.
I don't buy the argument that the work wouldn't get done without immigrants in various stages of legality or illegality. I've done most of those farm and other manual labor jobs and any able-bodied person could also do them. Other states could have learned the lessons of the consequences of illegal immigration, from California and Texas. The workers need to be taxed like everyone else. If they don't have an SS number or other verifiable legal work permit, they shouldn't be working here. Employers and home-owners prefer to hire them because they are desperate, and ever so grateful that the gringos are so stupidly generous. But those hiring them had better have a plan if the Mexicans or Guats get hurt. They know how to sue! And there are plenty of lawyers will to take their cases. I know a tree guy who dropped a tree on one of the Guatemalans. A tragic story but the guy's family got 100's of thousands in insurance payments. He also had a worker who purposely got hurt and sued.
The truly stupid and asinine reality is that the sovereign and anti-SS, anti-system crowd, end up being behind the illegals in driver's rights and work opportunities. Why don't they ask the Mexicans what they think about protesting the "un-constitutional" driving and tax laws?
'There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. I. vii)
'Choose loss rather than shameful gains.' (Chilon Fr. 10. Diels)
I've got absolutely no problem with immigration, legal or otherwise. Immigration is a net benefit to an economy, and is one of the few things the vast majority of economists agree on. In the short term they can cause economic disruptions, but in the long run they are beneficial. They free up domestic labor to be more productive elsewhere. I used to pick tomatoes, now I write software, and I vastly prefer the latter. The economy is not a fixed pie, it grows and expands. Illegal immigration no more destroys jobs than does a baby boon.
The people who complain about being displaced are full of it. There's nothing stopping them from applying for the very same jobs. They'll have to lower their wages they demand, but they aren't excluded. What they're really complaining about is competition. Someone has come in and outbid their labor. They want an unskilled job at skilled wages.
But enough of that, back to the illegals themselves. They DO pay taxes, sales taxes. And many pay income taxes too. They don't get welfare (they're illegals, duh) so they have to work for a living. Hell, that's the entire reason they're here! They are being productive members of our economy paying their way. Neither do they cause cultural disruption, at least not in the southwest where we already have very high latino citizenship. The lack of a common language is a problem, but it's a small one, and one largely created by the government.
However, the fact that someone broke the law to get here does cause a problem. Illegals are less likely to report crimes for fear of being deported, they're easy victims of coyotes, and they can be prone to criminal behavior themselves. The solution to this isn't a Soviet-style wall along the borders, it's eliminating their illegal status. In my opinion a visa should be issued for anyone who has a job lined up. Let anyone with a job enter this country legally, requiring only a basic background and health check.
A massive problem with illegal workers is that they don't have valid social security numbers.
So, they use numbers that they buy from an identity stealer.
This causes problems for the legitimate holder of the SSN in that wages which they never earned get reported against their name.
Then, the IRS sends them a nasty notice proposing an income tax adjustment plus penalties and interest because they never reported the incom they earned from an employer six states away from them.
Resolving this takes many hours of the victim's and IRS staff time plus the involvement of the police to process the identity theft claim.
If all goes well, the theft victim is cleared and the withholdings against the illegal go into never-never land.
For many of the farm jobs there are H-2A and H2-B workers such as the Jamaicans who come up to work in the fields and orchards. This is a legal program that works well for those farms that need experienced help and have trouble finding local people willing to work a long season. The workers get just under $10 an hour, they get free housing, and are screened for compatibility of the program. The farms must post the listings with state labor departments and give US citizens the same opportunity. The problem with this is that through experience, the farmer wants the experienced Mexican, Jamaican or Costa Rican worker instead of say, ex-cons (too much attitude), young and "green" workers (peevish), those coming out of half-way houses, etc.. Common ground culturally counts for a lot, as with the Jamaicans.
There are a lot of laboring fields--painting, landscaping, home-improvement, etc. that employ groups of men and women that work better when all workers are counted for tax, statistics, insurance and other purposes. Law non-compliance creates fear of government penalties, which creates complexes and needless suffering. That tax form you filed six years ago that if discovered by an auditor could open up a major investigation -- you have to cover the consequent guilt and denial with justification of how you needed the money more than the government. And those who cover other people's lies through legal artifice are complicit with them.
There is another issue connected to hiring immigrants who have not been properly screened by the government. They may have serious criminal or records of civil violations from their home countries, and they are fleeing from government law enforcement. The State department probably does its best in weeding out such people when it can find records.
Last edited by Number Six on Mon Mar 08, 2010 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
'There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. I. vii)
'Choose loss rather than shameful gains.' (Chilon Fr. 10. Diels)
If i had to choose i'd rather be living in a country people are trying to get into, than one they're trying to leave. And frankly, the proper venues for solving illegal immigration are the countries they're leaving. I remember a report about illegal irish in New York-- when Ireland's previously depressed economy began to recover, most of them went home. Illegal mexicans, guatemalans, etc, would do the same.
I don't know if so many people would be against illegal immigration if they knew just how complicated and expensive it is to immigrate here. The process excludes the poor worker looking for better pay, so if he wants to work for the best wages he has to come here illegally. If the immigration process was quick and cheap, you'd have a lot less illegal immigration. Of course, you'd still have a lot of Mexicans coming to America to work, and that pisses some people off no matter how they get here.
A friend of mine came to the United States illegally (from Canada). He was dating an American, and the process for him to come here legally was too expensive, so he snuck in. They eventually got married so he's legal now, but his life would be much different if he never would have come over. Another friend of mine wanted to emigrate to Canada. It was, at minimum, a two-year process, a hefty filing fee, and no guarantee that he would even get in.
Keep the process simple and lets get these people paying taxes. I'd wager that the majority of them would WANT to be here legally, but that is simply out of reach for them.
