A Power Foreign to Our Constitution
Mission Statement JNJ Library Federal J.A.I.L.
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Of Apples and Oranges
(By Ron Branson – National J.A.I.L. CIC)
Two days ago (6/27/09) I sent out a publication under the title of “California Going Broke.” http://www.jail4judges.org/JNJ_Library/2009/2009-06-27.html Therein, I appealed to an illustration of apples and oranges I once used to bait the California Director of Finances on how he could immensely increase the volume of revenue to put into the California coffers. He listened with intentive interest. I will here restate what I said.
“I asked him if I had an apple tree in my back yard, and my next door neighbor had an orange tree, and we decided to mutually trade a bushel basket of my apples for a bushel basket of his oranges, has a taxable event transpired for both of us? He said, “Yes.”
I then told him that the State of California was missing out on some very serious revenue. When a worker trades his labor to a corporation for a salary, he pays a tax on his labor. But on the other hand, the corporation which receives the labor in exchange, not only does not pay a tax on the value of the labor received, but in fact, takes it as a tax deduction. I asked him why California fails to tax the value of the labor received from the exchange, as this is a large amount of revenue to the State of California. His answer was, “We couldn’t do that!” I asked, “Why not, it’s a taxable event according to you.” He said, “The corporations would not allow us to get away with that!” [End of illustration.]
This publication sparked a sensible response from a person by the name of Ivan Fail, ilf@centurytel.net, of Sparta, Missouri regarding his true-life experience in dealing with a certain corporation. But first, let us establish this man’s credibility. We are not speaking of a young inexperienced whipper-snapper. He states that he was a very system man who served his country as an honorable Marine which thereafter led him into a 1960 highly respected career for the legal system as a Federal Prison Correctional Officer. Now, some 48 years later, he finds it hard to believe what he was a part of. He describes his part in a system that was a “…larcenous, greed driven, head games, hucksterism and hypocrisy of the legal system.” He states, “I started to ‘wake up and smell the coffee’.” Then after retiring from the system, a very frustrating,
prolonged and expensive frivolous lawsuit at the hands of a serial litigant
professional plaintiff that cost him $60,000. This, he said, was the ‘death knell’ of any residual respect that he had for the legal system. “Ironically my collective experiences taught me one infallible but shocking truth that millions of ‘un-sued’ law abiding Americans will never learn about because “their heads are forcibly buried in the sands of naïveté and ignorance” by political and legal hype and hucksterism.
That truth is the fact that one of America's major ‘Societal Time Bomb
Factories’ is ‘camouflaged behind white-collar greed, arrogance, a law degree, a black robe, hot air and ceremonial hype. … It is in fact an unscrupulous, politics-propelled and protected, cut-throat, ”for-profit industry” promenading as an “elite- and ethics-governed profession.’
What has stuck in his craw is the fact that after being forced to fork out $60,000 in frivolous attorney’s fees, he was not allowed to take a single penny of that loss as a tax deduction, yet corporations take these same fees as a standard deduction. He states, they “own and operate the Congress which belongs to the same Country Clubs that they do.”
Now, getting back to my illustration of the apples and oranges which I referred to above: In this illustration, the value of the bushel basket of apples is exactly the same as that of a bushel basket of oranges. Both sides agree on this point. According to the Director of Finance, neither owes a tax on the fruit of their own tree. However, once the two trade over the fence, both sides suddenly owe a tax on their “gain.” This is arrived at by government by the theory that the bushel basket of apples has no value to the apple grower, and likewise the same is true of the orange grower. So the apple grower gave up nothing in exchange for the oranges. And the orange grower gave nothing up in order to get the bushel basket of apples, i.e., both made a profit upon which they now owe a tax to the government.
In reality, each surrendered value for value, so neither gained, and would owe no tax. However, the Califofnia Director of Finance determined both made a gain out of thin air, and therefore owed a tax. Since this is his own established standard, I then applied that standard based on his rules. If a worker owes a tax on “gain”, therefore, corporations necessarily would owe a tax on their gain of the value of the labor received. He then responded, “We couldn’t do that!” and the reason he said was, “The coropration would not allow us to get away with that!”
I don’t know about you, but if I understand the operations of our tax system, refusal by a person or business to pay a tax owed is called a “tax protestor,” and they have a place reserved behind bars for these tax protestors.
Now let me point out that our current tax code is nothing more than a warmed over 1909 Corporation Tax Act as described in http://www.enotes.com/major-acts-congress/corporate-income-tax-act. It is a tax upon the profit or gain made as the result of the exercise of a corporate privilege. Hence, only those benefiting from the exercise of a corporate charter are the subject of the income tax.
This principle is explained in Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43 (1906), to wit, “The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the state or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to criminate him. He owes no such duty to the state, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond the protection of his life and property.
“His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the state, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his rights are a refusal to incriminate himself, and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under a warrant of the law. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.
“Upon the other hand, the corporation is a creature of the state. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public. It receives certain special privileges and franchises, and holds them subject to the laws of the state and the limitations of its charter. Its powers are limited by law. It can make no contract not authorized by its charter. Its rights to [201 U.S. 43, 75] act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation.”
So let us revisit the apple and orange analogy applying the instant above criteria. If Party “A,” the apple-grower, is a private individual, no tax may be imposed upon his right to exchange his goods or his services, i.e. “apples” or whatever he wishes. As the Supreme Court has said, “He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.”
On the other hand, if Party “B,” the orange grower, is functioning under a corporate charter, and thereby in the exercise of its corporate charter, makes a gain of a bushel basket of apples, then they would owe a tax on such gain.
So, let us recap what is going on in this country. Party “A,” the apple grower, a private citizen who owes no taxes on his own private affairs, may be thrown in prison because he is convicted of failing to pay a tax which he does not owe, nor is the subject of the tax, while Party “B,” the orange grower, a government- created corporation which owes the tax, not only refuses to pay the tax, i.e., “The corporations would not allow us to get away with that,” but gets to deduct the figure of its gain from all other taxes it may owe.
Hmmmm, that’s like going shopping for a new car that is listed as a value of $30,000, and finding the one you want, you tell the dealer that you will take that one. He says ”okay”. Then you ask him, “Now how are you going to pay me the $30,000 you owe me for accepting the car?”
Corporations who owe the tax, are rewarded for being tax protestors, while citizens who do not owe the tax are thrown in jail if they do not pay over! This is taxation American-style. Isn’t America great?
Now how is it that such a crazy system has come about? The answer is very clear: It is the courts and their self-created doctrine of judicial immunity that was the necessary ingredient to bring this about. If it were possible to straighten out every wrong in this country excepting the doctrine of judicial immunity, it would not take long before we would be back exactly where we are now. This is precisely why Americans shall have no remedy nor a future without judicial accountability over judicial immunity by an independent, autonomous citizen’s Grand Jury. (www.jail4judges.org)
-Ron Branson – the crazy guy with radical principles of right and wrong.
Byron Prior (alltrue@nl.rogers.com) 
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