Dave (commietwat) LIE ber
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Thu Jan 15 13:28:18 2004
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Posted on Fri, Jan. 09, 2004

Bedford anti-tax advocate is movement's new hero
Dave LIE ber - In My Opinion(from the rectal cranial inversion view)


Star-Telegram (Ft. Worth)

Dave LIE ber


I spent part of this week in a bizarre world. U.S. District Judge John McBryde, the no-nonsense judge once accused by a fellow federal judge of "bizarre and bullying conduct," locked me along with dozens of other spectators in his courtroom. McBryde really did order his bailiffs to lock the door.

And who was I locked in there with? An all-star team of federal income-tax haters, some of whom don't recognize the authority of the United States government, and showed this by refusing to stand whenever the judge and jury entered the courtroom.

It was the trial of Bedford businessman Richard Simkanin, who was convicted Wednesday of 29 counts of violating U.S. tax laws. McBryde locked the door because he said he didn't want people running in and out. But courthouse security was tight and protesters outside held signs demanding McBryde's impeachment.

I would bet you money, tax-free of course, that hardly anybody in that courtroom pays federal income taxes. Most were proud of it, and who wouldn't be if they could get away with something like that? Even a reporter for a "patriotic" Web site sitting next to me said she didn't pay federal income taxes. "But don't put my name in the paper," she said.

Simkanin has been locked in a federal cell for months after he supposedly had a meeting at his Bedford office and, an informant alleged, said that killing a few judges might attract attention to the cause. His supporters, including a Round Rock talk radio host who told me that he attended the meeting in question, said Simkanin never said any such thing. But McBryde wasn't taking chances.

The tax haters in the courtroom hated McBryde as much as they hate income taxes. They acted surprised when he didn't let the trial become a circus testing the validity of federal income tax laws. No, McBryde figured his job was to help a jury determine whether Simkanin broke laws when he stopped filing personal tax returns and ceased withholding federal taxes from his Bedford employees' paychecks.

Simkanin may be the ultimate Bedford character in a city of great characters. After research in his library, which he called "one of the largest tax-book private libraries in Texas," he testified that he concluded taxes were, in his words, "alleged taxes."

At one point, he became so angry about the federal tax system that he announced on his Web site that he was expatriating himself from the United States, which he said was a government "in rebellion against the Republic of Texas."

He began telling his employees that those who pay federal taxes "become tax slaves." And although we all know that's true, he took it much further.

Once he received a letter from the Department of the Treasury, but he challenged it, testifying that for all he knew, it could have been from the Department of the Treasury of Puerto Rico.

He surrendered his Texas driver's license and replaced it with his own ID cards, including one from the "International Governmental Affairs Agency." He admitted he made that up because, he testified, "it just sounded good."

He named his sister-in-law, who joined the company as a file clerk, his replacement as president. He asked her to pay him in cash and take his name off official papers so he could drop off the government's radar. His accountants told him he was making huge mistakes, and when he wouldn't listen, they resigned.

But for someone who wanted off the radar, he sure flew back on. With others, he took out a full-page ad in USA Today explaining why he had serious reservations about the federal income tax system. And he surrounded himself with that all-star team of anti-taxpayers who are household names in households that don't pay taxes. These buddies served as a crazy cast of character witnesses at his trial.

There was Joseph Banister, a former IRS special agent who was recently hauled into a San Francisco federal court by prosecutors who demanded that he stop telling people income taxes were illegal. At first, the feds considered having Banister's hearing last month on an isolated federal island to keep out the kind of crowd with whom I shared the locked courtroom. But later they relented and yanked him into a regular courtroom.

There was Eduardo Rivera, a pony-tailed lawyer from California who took the stand to say that he didn't believe that everyone had to pay income taxes. But under cross-examination by federal prosecutors, he acknowledged that a permanent injunction had been placed against him in a California federal court that prevented him from saying just those things.

There was Bob Shulz, the founder of We the People for Constitutional Education, who complained on the witness stand that this whole anti-tax argument stems from the fact that the 16th Amendment enacting a federal income tax was improperly ratified in 1913. Somebody should get on that.

And there was Larken Rose, an Internet anti-tax rebel who called income tax a "fraud without rival in history" and said the IRS was an "extortion racket." On a Web site, I found a letter by him titled "Please Prosecute Me" that begins, "I, Larken Rose, have not filed a federal income tax return for 1997 or any subsequent year."

But Rose has not been prosecuted, probably because he doesn't make enough money selling videotapes off his Web site for the government to spend money chasing him. It is Simkanin, now Bedford's own convicted tax martyr, who is the newest hero of the movement.

In closing arguments, his lawyer asked the jury, "Does he look like a criminal to you?"

These jury members, who see an April 15 tax deadline coming their way, are no suckers. Hey, if they pay, why shouldn't the guy with the funny driver's license pay, too? So in answer to the question about whether he looked like a criminal, they unanimously answered that he did.

Dave Lieber's Column Appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. ( during the trial this little commie (he's jewish) sat in the courtroom and was acting like a frightened little kitty --- the whole time. His knickers were bunched up and he was real puckered, and couldn't wait to leave, he offered a copy of a NEW YORKER magazine to one of the court watchers , and then snatched it back and jerked the address label off , alleging that the court watcher might "do something", talk about a paranoid commie freak...and of course he being a communist(jewish) rat wouldn't you know he writes an opinion column for the bleeding hearts in cowtown that subscribe to the JEWISH controlled NEWSPAPER,) the ombudsman for the Ft. Worth Star Telegram is David House, if you write (A) letter by snail mail, or hand deliver one there they take them to a separate location for several months to "check for substances" ....he can receive e-mail, but don't count on him actually doing anything about the commie JEW bastards working there, or that own the PAPER.