The Picket Line: Sitemap

• 31 August 2010: In 2009, activists broke in to the offices of an arms manufacturer and destroyed equipment, they were arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, but they raise a “necessity defense” that they were acting to prevent war crimes by the arms purchasers — this year a jury acquitted them, unanimously. Meet the “decommissioners.” Also: the Women’s Freedom League hijacks a tax auction and turns it into a suffrage rally.
• 30 August 2010: Oh how far the Quakers have fallen since the days when they were notorious for their refusal to participate in war! Also: Three more Leo Tolstoy essays on the Christian duty of noncooperation with evil, of which he says tax resistance plays a vital role.
• 29 August 2010: Two Leo Tolstoy essays on taxes, war & peace. Also: the British government hints at prosecuting the Women’s Freedom League itself for its non-participation in mandatory government employee contributions, to which the W.F.L. responds: oh, we double dog dare you to try!
• 28 August 2010: My sweetie and I spent most of July in Mexico. Here are some of my impressions of the small-government, free-market paradise (sort-of maybe) south of the border. Oh yeah, and also a guide to their microbrews.
• 27 August 2010: The Revolution Will Not Be a Complex Compound Sentence in the Passive Voice! Some remarks concerning the style and substance of Juan Carlos Rois’s “War Tax Resistance as a Human Right.”
• 26 August 2010: “War Tax Resistance as a Human Right,” by Juan Carlos Rois, here ineptly translated into English for the first time.
• 25 August 2010: In the course of the victory of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, a new set of tax resisters emerged: women who hadn’t been required to pay taxes before but who were now considered to be enfranchised taxpayers and who were none too happy about it.
• 24 August 2010: On 24 August 1849 a meeting of the Second General Peace Congress was held in Paris, presided over by Victor Hugo, at which a proposal concerning war taxes and loans was debated.
• 23 August 2010: The fascistesque Blue Shirts of Ireland launched a tax strike to protest Irish trade policy in 1934. A riot broke out when the government tried to seize and auction property of the strikers, and one striker was shot to death by police.
• 22 August 2010: The law treated ordinary (male) tax resisters much more leniently than (female) suffragists who withheld their taxes in protest against having no say in government. Here is one example.
• 21 August 2010: In a 1988 paper, Juan Carlos Rois gave an in-depth critique of the struggle to enshrine conscientious objection to military taxation as an internationally-recognized human right. Here is my translation of the outline of that paper.
• 20 August 2010: An article from Insumissia last April discussed the war tax resistance movement in Spain and the debate over the war tax resistance campaign there.
• 19 August 2010: More details on the joint National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee National Gathering / 25th Annual New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters coming up this November in Boston. Also: echoes of the great Chicago property tax strikes of the 1930s sounded in 1977.
• 18 August 2010: A note on Howard Zinn’s tax resistance, from his recently-released F.B.I. files. Also: An account of the pacifist crisis of conscience of John Lowell Heywood over military commutation fines during the American Civil War, from the Autobiography of Adin Ballou. Ballou counseled Heywood to pay the fines under protest rather than submit to imprisonment, but he later had second thoughts about this.
• 17 August 2010: On 17 August 1971, Nat Hentoff’s column in The Village Voice carried a story of a post office employee and union organizer who was interrogated at length by postal inspectors about, among other things, his war tax resistance.
• 16 August 2010: Arnold Cuba, an undergrad at the University of Texas, started resisting the federal telephone service excise tax during the Vietnam War, and in 1972 had his VW seized by the I.R.S. to be auctioned off to cover $2.44 in resisted taxes. Also: the greatest value of Wikileaks may be measured not in any specific piece of leaked information, but in the disproportionate damage that leakage in general induces unjust, secretive conspiracies to inflict upon themselves.
• 15 August 2010: An guest essay of mine on the topic of war tax resistance was featured on “Living Nonviolence” yesterday.
• 14 August 2010: The Greek immigrant community of Lewiston, Maine, banded together and went on a tax strike in 1907.
• 13 August 2010: Conscience Studio is a Quaker-oriented group that focuses on living life conscientiously. They have a service program centered on development and human rights issues in Indonesia, and a strong war tax resistance focus.
• 12 August 2010: Tax resistance news from Germany, Venezuela, and Sicily. Also, a profile of J. Tony Serra, a free guide to nonviolent resistance, and an anarchist lemonade-in. And, 1911: a suffragist tax resister has her property taken by the government and auctioned off, and the auction turns into a suffrage rally.
• 10 August 2010: Samuel Adams on tax resistance in the American Revolution, and his account of the Boston Tea Party.
• 9 August 2010: Some meditations on obedience, consent, and support in the light of the Wikileaks / Bradley Manning saga, and how you can help support Bradley Manning, who took a hell of a risk in a good cause.
• 8 August 2010: Addresses where you can send mail to war tax resisters Carlos Steward and Frank Donnelly, who are doing time in the federal prison system for their stands.
• 7 August 2010: A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is on-line. Also: Bomb-throwing anarchists, mutinies, and revolutionary agitators on the march, in the wake of the Viborg Manifesto, which called on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czar.
• 6 August 2010: Charlotte Despard and Laurence Housman speak out for tax resistance in the suffrage movement as Winifred Patch’s property is sold for back taxes in 1910.
• 5 August 2010: Gertrude Eaton’s and Marion McKenzie’s property is auctioned off for back taxes, giving suffragists opportunities for two more rallies, in 1911.
• 4 August 2010: Occasionally, tax resistance takes the form of opposition so widespread and mainstream that it wins at the ballot box. Such was the case in Castine, Maine, where residents voted to illegally refuse, as a town, to pay a state school tax, 35 years ago today.
• 3 August 2010: Between 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq War, the New York Times covered the American war tax resistance and peace tax fund movements.
• 2 August 2010: Evan Reeves decides to become a war tax resister, and has an innovative protest idea. Also: A Quebec man tries to pay his taxes with 200,000 pennies. And: Americans renouncing their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. Also: Alcohol, tobacco, ammunition, and firearms federal excise tax receipts are way up. And: how the U.S. judiciary supplements the legislature’s revenue raising prerogatives in times of war.
• 1 August 2010: War tax resisters George Monk and Molly Schaffnit went off-the-grid and back-to-the-land to stop funding the military. Also: Patrick O’Neill on the sentencing of war tax resister Frank Donnelly. And: Murry Rothbard on the 17th century French tax rebellion of the Croquants. Also: the latest news on I.R.S. enforcement efforts. And: The “contumacious” Kate Harvey refuses to pay her taxes or her fines, and other suffragists refuse to license their dogs, in 1913.
• 31 July 2010: I got a letter from the I.R.S. while I was away. Also: John O’Hagan went to jail indefinitely rather than pay a $1 poll tax he felt was unconstitutional, in New Jersey in 1907.
• 30 July 2010: We wrap up our Mexico vacation today, NWTRCC’s website gets a facelift, and Clare Hanrahan reminds us of our responsibilities in the face of the ongoing U.S. torture policy. Also: Winifred Patch has her silver seized and sold to pay her resisted taxes, and protesters outside the auction address the crowd on women’s suffrage.
• 29 July 2010: Cloise W. Noggle stubbornly refused to pay taxes because he “did not like the way votes are counted or taxes administered” so, in 1949, he went to jail.
• 27 July 2010: Suffragist Evelyn Sharp tries to get her day in court for her tax resistance, but the government seems happy to maintain a campaign of harassment instead.
• 26 July 2010: In 2003 the I.R.S. sued the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for refusing to garnish the wages of Priscilla Adams, one of its war tax resisting employees. (The Meeting is still holding out.)
• 25 July 2010: Kate Harvey’s trial for tax resistance in 1913. “I am not resisting the Act as an Act. If it had come straight down from heaven I should resist it just the same. I am doing what every business man throughout the country does as a matter of course — I refuse to pay for goods which I cannot choose.”
• 23 July 2010: Tax resistance in Shanghai in the wake of the massacre of 1927. Also: the government seizes all the sheep on the Crow reservation in Montana in 1899 for refused taxes.
• 20 July 2010: Barricades, property seizures, and shady auctions: another week of action for the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
• 19 July 2010: The Women’s Tax Resistance League announces that they’re closing up shop in 1918 in the wake of a partial victory for women’s suffrage.
• 18 July 2010: In 1884, almost all of the saloon keepers in Cincinnati refused to pay the liquor tax on beer and saloons. What does this have to do with marijuana in California today?
• 17 July 2010: The official Women’s Freedom League policy on tax resistance.
• 16 July 2010: In 1983, the New York Times covered the war tax resistance of Carl Lundborg, and printed some statistics the I.R.S. had been collecting about war tax resisters.
• 15 July 2010: New Zealanders send manure to cabinet ministers to protest against a “flatulence tax” on greenhouse-gas-emitting livestock. Also: auctions of property seized from tax resisters become opportunities for suffrage rallies and parades in 1911.
• 14 July 2010: Anna Howard Shaw’s car is seized for back taxes in 1915, increasing its value as a symbol for the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movement. Shaw’s tax resistance was inspired in part by the tradition of Quaker war tax resistance. Also: the tax resistance of early American suffragist Lucy Stone. Stone’s house, which was sold for back taxes in 1858, became a suffrage shrine (that Shaw visited in her newly-famous car).
• 13 July 2010: Kate Harvey continues to barricade her house against the tax collector, and the Women’s Tax Resistance League makes every auction of seized goods an opportunity for a rally.
• 12 July 2010: Syndicalists defy the income tax in France in 1922 and defend resisters against property seizures.
• 11 July 2010: Mayor Hervé Ferland of Verdun, Montreal leads a tax resistance campaign in 1935.
• 8 July 2010: Frank Sproson reflects on Emma Sproson’s tax resistance. Also: suffragists interrogate Winston Churchill about Emma Sproson’s imprisonment.
• 6 July 2010: The Women’s Tax Resistance League produced a series of posters to propagandize their cause. They also came out in force at the unveiling of a new statue of John Hampden at Aylesbury.
• 4 July 2010: Want to renounce your citizenship? The government taxes that too. And: the war tax resistance movement in the Canary Islands, Joan Baez sings of whiskey rebels and moonshiners, and announcing the November NWTRCC national in Boston in conjunction with the 25th Annual New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters this November. Also: see you in August — we’re off to Mexico!
• 3 July 2010: A rare example of conscientious war tax resistance from Australia in 1959: Ian Henry Leys. “The Commonwealth has no moral right to levy taxes for war purposes, and therefore no legal right,” Leys told the court.
• 2 July 2010: So the I.R.S. got audited the other day… Also: Suffragists in Britain prepare to rally to support a tax resisting comrade whose goods are to be seized and sold at auction.
• 1 July 2010: Workers in Florida refuse to pay a war tax to the government of Cuba in 1897. Also: merchants in Arkansas unite to defy a state sales tax in 1935.
• 28 June 2010: Some news from the war tax resistance movement in Spain. Also, the former president of Catalonia says legal channels for improving the political status of Catalonia are a waste of time, so it’s time for a mass tax resistance campaign.
• 27 June 2010: The announcement of the publication of “The Tax Resistance Movement in Great Britain” in 1919, and excerpts from Laurence Housman’s “The Duty of Tax Resistance.”
• 25 June 2010: More information about how to renounce your citizenship and get out of Dodge. Also: Larry Dansinger on the Frank Donnelly case, Carl Kline on war tax resistance as an antidepressant for frustrated activists, and 1,295 prisoners got the first-time homebuyer tax credit during their stay in the big house. And: I get another letter from the I.R.S.
• 24 June 2010: Why did American Quaker war tax resistance evaporate in the decades after the American Civil War? Here’s another clue to the mystery. Also: the government threatens to go after the husbands of suffragette tax resisters for “aiding and abetting.”
• 23 June 2010: Julia Butterfly Hill addressed her war tax resistance to an audience in New York in April. A video of her presentation has turned up on YouTube. Here it is.
• 22 June 2010: A practical guide to a very effective, if somewhat daunting, method of tax resistance: expatriate and renounce your citizenship.
• 21 June 2010: How does a tax resistance campaign by Italy’s Northern League sound? Also: Joan Baez, the Peacemakers, Roy C. Kepler, and Edmund Wilson are profiled in a 1964 article on the war tax resistance movement. And: Evelyn Sharp ends her tax resistance when women win the vote.
• 20 June 2010: The feds say they can seize Thrift Savings Plan money to settle tax debts, they plan to relax the new 1099 requirements a bit, and they are going to pressure recipients of government checks to switch to direct deposit. Also: arrests, trials, property seizures and auctions… just another week in the British women’s suffrage movement.
• 19 June 2010: Elizabeth Knight is imprisoned for her tax resistance, as reported on this date in 1914.
• 18 June 2010: The Raj goes on the offensive against Gandhi’s tax resisters, 80 years ago today. Also: George Bernard Shaw prepares to become an unwitting tax resistance martyr for women’s rights.
• 17 June 2010: Kate Harvey writes of “a limit to a woman’s patience. The limit is reached when they talk of compelling us to contribute towards the salaries of the men who slam the door in our faces! Resistance is our most effective weapon.”
• 16 June 2010: When the tax collectors came for LaSaunders Hudson, he ordered them at gunpoint to strip naked and turned them back out into the street, to the delight of his neighbors.
• 15 June 2010: War tax resister Frank Donnelly was sentenced to a year in prison yesterday. Also: notes on Vivien Kellems’s tax resistance strategy. And: women’s suffragists rally around the new John Hampden statue at Aylesbury.
• 12 June 2010: An Amish bishop explains his church’s position on refusing to buy war bonds. Also: Elizabeth Knight and Emma Sproson call the tax authorities’ bluff.
• 9 June 2010: A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with an update from Julia Butterfly Hill on her resistance, and reports from the Arizona national gathering and from this year’s tax day actions, among other things. Also, a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League wrote a history of that movement shortly after it succeeded in winning the vote for women. Unfortunately the only copy I’ve been able to locate is one continent and one ocean away.
• 7 June 2010: I got an “Urgent!!,” certified letter from the I.R.S. today. If it’s anything like the first “Urgent!!” letter they sent me, I’ve got about 15 months to think about it before they make their next move.
• 6 June 2010: The campaign of the Women’s Tax Resistance League kicks into high gear, as reported on this date in 1913.
• 3 June 2010: Tax auctions, imprisonments, and releases from prison: all opportunities for the Women’s Tax Resistance League to rally supporters.
• 2 June 2010: Randy Kehler and Juanita Nelson address the Conflict Transformation Across Cultures program in Brattelboro, Vermont tonight. Also: a showing of “Death and Taxes” coming up at the Ventura Film Festival.
• 31 May 2010: Kathy Kelly on discerning ourselves from the drones. War Resisters International on war tax resistance in Spain, and an opportunity for resistance-through-overcompliance in the new health care law. Also: supporters of war tax resister Frank Donnelly plan to rally at his sentencing on June 14.
• 30 May 2010: Some few data points about a tax rebellion in York County, Pennsylvania in 1786, around the same time as Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts.
• 29 May 2010: On this date in 1959: Maurice McCrackin released from jail after his five-month term for tax resistance.
• 28 May 2010: “All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.” An episode from the life of “one man revolution” Ammon Hennacy.
• 27 May 2010: British suffragettes are imprisoned and their goods are seized and auctioned off, but their tax resistance continues undaunted.
• 26 May 2010: Organized resistance against the “Nanny Tax” in the United States in the 1950s.
• 25 May 2010: Edward Koryto protested his increased property tax assessment by razing the home it took him seven years to build from scrap lumber. Also: more tales of suffragettes being harassed by the tax collector.
• 24 May 2010: The latest Stanford Law Review includes an article about tax resistance and “No Taxation Without Representation” rhetoric in the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. Also: notes about the tax resistance of Lou J.C. Daniels and Ellen Clark Sargent, from “The History of Woman Suffrage.”
• 23 May 2010: Kate Harvey and Mary Anderson barricade their homes against tax collectors, protesters at a tax auction face off with local hooligans, and a chapter from Flora Annie Steel’s new novel is auctioned off for her tax debts: just a typical week in the 1913-era British women’s suffrage movement.
• 22 May 2010: In 1903, women in Wisconsin plotted a tax strike for suffrage. And: the war tax resistance of Aleck Dodd in 1949 put him at odds with the Toledo Council of Churches, of which he was the head.
• 21 May 2010: Joan Baez founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence as an outgrowth of her war tax resistance in the Vietnam War period.
• 20 May 2010: Derek Brett of Conscience and Peace Tax International explains how their campaign grew out of the international movement to recognize conscientious objection to military conscription, and how he sees the movement’s goals. And has the “starve the beast” hypothesis been refuted by experiment?
• 18 May 2010: From the 18 May 1872 Nelson Evening Mail, a remarkable declaration of fed-up tax resistance that, with the updating of a few details, would look good in tomorrow’s daily.
• 17 May 2010: War tax resister Martha Tranquilli, who spent seven and a half months in prison for her stand, was profiled in the Lakeland Ledger on this date in 1973.
• 14 May 2010: 100 years ago today, United Press covered the tax resistance campaign of English nonconformists: Government of England is Alarmed — Many “Dissenters” Getting Into Jail for Refusing to Contribute to Support of Church of England — Boycott of Offensive Tax is Widespread.
• 12 May 2010: Spanish antimilitarists give out “bad milk” to protest war taxes. Also: a provision snuck in to the new health care industry legislation requires businesses to file millions more 1099 forms to report their payments to people and businesses.
• 11 May 2010: In the Spring of 1912, there were many auctions of goods seized from women’s suffrage activists by tax enforcers. The movement turned each auction into a rally for the cause.
• 10 May 2010: A tax strike by the titans of industry — a la “Atlas Shrugged” — is mostly a thing of fiction, but there have been some exceptions. Here’s an example from 1924.
• 9 May 2010: Reports and photos from the opening days of the Spring 2010 NWTRCC national gathering in Tucson, Arizona.
• 8 May 2010: The government moves against suffragette tax resisters in 1914, and one puts her letter from Internal Revenue up for auction to raise money for the cause.
• 7 May 2010: I’m in Tucson for the NWTRCC National Gathering which starts today. Some links: Medea Benjamin on a TEA Party split over militarism, war tax resister Dana Visalli on what he learned in Afghanistan about the United States, and a new “Death & Taxes” Poster. Also: I review Lee Harris’s new book: “The Next American Civil War: The Populist Revolt Against the Liberal Elite.”
• 6 May 2010: More suffragette protesters argue with the authorities in the pages of The Vote.
• 5 May 2010: During World War I in the U.S., an ostensibly voluntary war funding drive in which people were encouraged to buy “Liberty Bonds” was made effectively mandatory by a vigilante enforcement system that was even more ruthless than the government’s.
• 4 May 2010: I got my first letter from the I.R.S. this year… and a second letter the same day. One was surprising. Also: Ralph Shinaberry said if the government thinks it can tell him what and how much to grow on his farm, they might as well be the owners, and they can pay their own damn taxes. So the government auctioned off 1/264th of it.
• 3 May 2010: A 1964 article about the Amish resistance to the Social Security taxes in the United States, and a couple other data points about the campaign. They were eventually successful in gaining a partial exemption from those taxes for the Amish, but it took over a decade.
• 2 May 2010: An analysis of the strategy of war tax resistance in Spain, ideas for making it more successful, and some answers to criticisms of the tactic.
• 1 May 2010: Tax resisting suffragettes see their goods seized and auctioned off, and the movement turns the auctions into protest rallies..
• 30 April 2010: El País covers the Spanish war tax resistance movement and the philosophy of tax resistance. Also: a tax strike among Puerto Rican merchants in 1932.
• 27 April 2010: Kate Lelacheur’s tax resisting cow. Also: suffragists turn tax auctions of property seized from tax resisters and court cases against them into opportunities for organizing and protest.
• 25 April 2010: A 1972 Catholic-led tax strike against government tax preferences for secular public education in Cleveland, Ohio. And: the war tax resistance of Vinton Deming and his employer, the Friends Journal, twenty years back or so.
• 24 April 2010: John Hampden was adopted as a sort of patron saint of the Women’s Tax Resistance League and other suffragist groups who used or defended the tactic of tax resistance. Other tax resisters from Gandhi to Karl Marx to Benjamin Ricketson Tucker also looked to the example of Hampden. Here’s why.
• 23 April 2010: Several examples of organized war tax resistance and redirection among Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Quakers in the early 1980s.
• 22 April 2010: A wealth of information about tax resistance in the British women’s suffrage movement comes on-line. Also: it’s time for a new Boston Tea Party, says Huey Long, seventy-five years ago today.
• 21 April 2010: A closer look at the next U.S. military budget. Also: a campaign to shine a brighter light on businesses that profit from contributing to war and violent conflict. And: Greek kiosk owners strike to protest a tax hike.
• 20 April 2010: The documentary film “Path of Greatest Resistance” about war tax resisters in Western Massachusetts in the early 1990s, is now on-line. Also: war tax resisters Larry Dansinger and Bill Ramsey meet the press on Tax Day.
• 18 April 2010: Decades of opinion polls about taxation collected in one place. Building liberty from the ground up. Libertarianism, thick & thin. A heartwarming cartoon. And a 1939 tax strike in Pennsylvania puts pressure on the local coal lords.
• 17 April 2010: More “Tax Day” recaps. Also: war tax resister Allen Cooper gets fired by his jingoistic cocaine snorting boss. And: a flashback to Utah Governor J. Bracken Lee’s quixotic tax protest in 1956.
• 16 April 2010: “Tax Day” has come and gone; here is some of the news from around the country.
• 15 April 2010: It’s “tax day” in the U.S. and there’s plenty going on, including war tax resisters in my area redirecting $20,000 to charity. Also: The last tax resistance crusade of Vivien Kellems.
• 14 April 2010: Announcing the publication of “Rebecca Riots!: True Stories of the Transvestite Terrorists who Vexed Victoria.” Also: TEA Partiers and war tax resisters make their plans for tax day.
• 13 April 2010: On this date in 1968, Joan Baez explains why she prefers to have the tax collector seize her money to paying it voluntarily.
• 12 April 2010: The “Cabbage Patch” tax resistance of Karl Meyer, and Meyer disciple P.A. Trisha.
• 11 April 2010: War tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner briefly lost their home to the I.R.S. in 1989, in what became a cause célèbre. Also: Philadelphia Quakers resisted tax withholding.
• 10 April 2010: Frank Massey’s great-great-grandfather was a war tax resister too. Also: Canadian anti-abortion tax resister David Little is jailed this month for refusing to pay. And: tax resistance leads to a violent revolt in Malaga, Spain in 1911.
• 9 April 2010: How I learned to stop worrying and love the national debt (it might be what finally reins in military spending). Also: a report of tax resistance in Germany between the wars.
• 8 April 2010: Taxpatriatism on the rise, says the Wall Street Journal. Also: details on the upcoming NWTRCC National Gathering, libertarian war tax resister Jose Roldan explains himself, tax resistance for animal welfare in Spain, and Cindy Sheehan reminds anti-war taxpayers that you get what you pay for.
• 7 April 2010: A profile of war tax resister Larry Bassett. Also: Leftist scholar Noam Chomsky and right-wing low-tax advocates came together as the National Taxpayers’ Union in 1971 to protest against the bloated military budget.
• 3 April 2010: A new issue of “More Than a Paycheck” with news and updates, a preview of Tax Day actions this year, Chris Moore-Backman on his legal case, and a profile of Liz Scranton (which reminds me of a produce-addled wild-eyed hairy mountain man). Also: tax resistance against inadqueate police protection in London and for animal protection in Spain.
• 2 April 2010: On this date: 1888, Thomas Condon, an Irish member of parliament, promotes tax resistance in a speech that would lead to his arrest and imprisonment. 1970, an ad in the Village Voice urges tax resistance against the Vietnam War. 1975: the papers report on the I.R.S. seizure of the home of war tax resisters Paul & Addie Snyder.
• 1 April 2010: Raytheon retreats from Derry after anti-war saboteurs and a sympathetic jury yank away the welcome mat. Also: a new supplement updates the war tax resister’s bible. And: an interview with Spanish war tax resister Joan Surroca. Also: a news report of a war tax resistance press conference from 1971.
• 31 March 2010: When Vivien Kellems resisted the federal income tax withholding system, she was subjected to an unusually intense smear campaign, which included the government intercepting her private mail and leaking it to the press.
• 30 March 2010: Quaker war tax resister Chris Moore-Backman is trying to get the Ninth Circuit court of appeals to recognize a statutory right to conscientious objection to military taxation, and is also trying to reinvigorate the tradition of Quaker war tax resistance.
• 29 March 2010: News from a war tax resistance and redirection campaign in Spain. Also: American progressives show that they can play the dissent=treason game too.
• 28 March 2010: Captured by North Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and held for over two months, Dr. Marjorie Nelson came home to be a war tax resister.
• 27 March 2010: Graft, corruption, tax resistance, and peculiar parliamentary procedure in Arkansas in 1921.
• 25 March 2010: The latest issue of New Escapologist carries an article I wrote to introduce the practical technique of tax resistance. Also: John K. Stoner tries to get American Mennonites excited about a new war tax resistance protest campaign. And: would you be surprised to learn the I.R.S. issues more press releases about tax-related prosecutions in the weeks leading up to April 15?
• 23 March 2010: The new health-care industry law includes concessions to the conscientious objection of the Amish and of people who oppose abortion. Meanwhile conscientious objectors to military taxation still don’t get no respect.
• 22 March 2010: The new health-care industry legislation has a number of provisions that may be of interest to tax resisters.
• 20 March 2010: My turn to play “list the ten books that have most influenced you.” Also: Obama signs another bill into law — any implications for tax resisters?
• 19 March 2010: In my annual report I summarize my seventh year of tax resistance and forecast the year ahead.
• 18 March 2010: Tax Day actions around the country this year, Clare Hanrahan addresses the crowd in a video from the C-SPAN archives, and another look at the “Render Unto Caesar” koan.
• 17 March 2010: Kat Kanning discusses her arrest and jail time after her I.R.S. office civil disobedience action, Conscience Canada issues its 2009 tax year “Peace Tax Return,” and Noam Chomsky discusses his war tax resistance during the Vietnam War. Also: tax resistance was one of the tactics used by groups agitating for the Reform Act of 1832.
• 16 March 2010: Two hunks of The Picket Line have been published in hardcopy form by an independent market-anarchist press. Also: the tax resistance of Barbara and Saunders Dixon.
• 15 March 2010: Caroline Urie, one of the founders of the modern American war tax resistance movement.
• 14 March 2010: If your progressive friends aren’t war tax resisters yet, this Daily Kos post and Chris Hedges column might push them over the edge. Also: the Mennonite Central Committee sets up a fund for people who want to redirect their tax dollars toward undoing some of the harm in Afghanistan. And: another flashback to the beginnings of the modern American war tax resistance movement.
• 13 March 2010: Tax resistance on-this-day flashbacks: The Peace Investors of Eugene in 1972, “attractive woman newspaper editor” Mary Cain in 1952, and the Peacemakers A.J. Muste and Caroline Urie in 1949.
• 12 March 2010: Maybe it was the British cops painting swastikas on their helmets and marching through Tel Aviv shouting “Heil Hitler,” but many Jews decided they would rather not pay taxes to the British administration of Palestine. Decades later, the Palestinians feel much the same about the new boss.
• 11 March 2010: Some updated statistics on how many people aren’t paying their taxes and what the I.R.S. is doing about it.
• 10 March 2010: Come Home, America: the new left/right/libertarian antimilitarist coalition has a homepage. Also: Vaclav Havel on coerced consent, the National Treasury Employees Union and the Internal Revenue Service quake in fear at the prospect of taxpayer retaliation, and more productive prisoner tax fraud: “I’m through with the street crime. I’m strictly white collar from now on. I love the I.R.S.”
• 7 March 2010: I’ve got an article in this month’s Simple Living News on your favorite topic and mine. Also: two articles in the latest Rojo y Negro on war tax resistance in Spain.
• 6 March 2010: David R. Henderson reports on the recent left/right/libertarian anti-war confab. Also: a huge spike in expatriates renouncing their U.S. citizenship (it’s because of taxes). And: about the Possibility Alliance community in Missouri.
• 4 March 2010: Irwin Hogenauer was one of the pacifist conscientious objectors from World War II who turned his backs on the civilian labor camps and helped to found the modern American war tax resistance movement. Here are some pieces from the archvies about Hogenauer’s resistance.
• 3 March 2010: A populist movement to get people to move their money out of banks and into credit unions has tax resistance implications. Also: I.R.S. workers discover they are very unpopular, cannot show their faces in polite society, and have to be paranoid of every envelope they open.
• 2 March 2010: The numbers are out on Lucky Duckies in tax year 2008: more than a third of tax-filing households paid no federal income tax that year (and 2009 promises to be even better). Also: mothers resist a ridiculous baby carriage tax in Paris in 1913.
• 1 March 2010: A flashback to the war tax resistance of Francis and Valerie Riggs, some sixty years ago. Valerie was, I believe, one of the founding members of Peacemakers, the group that launched the modern American war tax resistance movement.
• 28 February 2010: War tax resisters Frank Donnelly, Larry Dansinger, and Dan Jenkins on the radio (here’s a podcast). Also: Villa Nueva, Argentina is blanketed with tax resistance pamphlets, and everyone is dodging blame. And: the I.R.S. begs Congress for more money so it can answer its tax assistance phone line 71% of the time after an average 698-second hold (seriously, those are the agency’s goals for this year if it gets more funding).
• 26 February 2010: California, under a federal court order to bring prisoner healthcare up to the barest minimum of constitutional standards, cuts 40% from its prison health care budget. Meanwhile, state liquor license regulators raid San Francisco bars looking for bootleg herb-, fruit-, or pepper- infused vodka.
• 25 February 2010: You’re invited to the May NWTRCC national gathering in Tucson. Also: Rebecca and Her Daughters reemerge in Arizona. And: a neighborhood in Argentina opts out of the municipal tax system. Also: inmates in Florida swipe $100,000 from the I.R.S. while still behind bars.
• 24 February 2010: Anti-war conservatives shake things up at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and meet with their libertarian and progressive counterparts to plan an antimilitarist alliance. Also: in 1922, the residents of Guntur jumped the gun, and, disregarding Gandhi’s pleas to wait, launched a tax resistance campaign on their own.
• 23 February 2010: Some dispatches from a mass tax-strike and municipal government shutdown in the south of France in 1907.
• 22 February 2010: So, don’t you want to know what I think of that guy who flew a plane into the I.R.S. building?
• 21 February 2010: How to brew your own hard cider: a photographic walk-through from my kitchen.
• 20 February 2010: Here’s a hand-crafted, semantic XHTML version of Henry Tobit Evans’s 1910 book “Rebecca and Her Daughters: Being a History of the Agrarian Disturbances in Wales Known as ‘The Rebecca Riots’.”
• 19 February 2010: Two reports of the tollbooth-destroying Jack-a-Lents from 1735, who, like the Rebeccaites a century later, donned women’s clothing and blackface. Also: a political cartoon compares the Rebeccaites with Irish independence advocates.
• 18 February 2010: Some additional data points concerning the Rebecca Riots of the 1840s.
• 17 February 2010: Today, a look at the wacky, cross-dressing, Welsh tax resisters of the 1840s who called themselves “Rebecca and her daughters.”
• 16 February 2010: A review of William Wollaston’s “The Religion of Nature Delineated” (1722).
• 13 February 2010: A review of the new war tax resistance video, a look at how the war tax resistance testimony fares in modern Quaker Meetings, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left registers as a subversive organization and refuses to pay its filing fee, Steuern zu zahlen ist keine Bürgertugend, Wendy McElroy on the philosophy of William Wollaston, and American prison slave labor’s link to war materiel.
• ☆ 12 February 2010: Thoreau challenged the pacifists of his time to make sure their non-resistance was not a disguised collaboration with violence, and also to make their action effective so that it would most quickly succeed to end injustice.
• 10 February 2010: A new video about government spending priorities and war tax resistance, put out by the Mennonite Central Committee. Also: seven million American children went missing in 1986, thanks to a change in the tax laws. And: Nepalese doctors stage a tax strike.
• 7 February 2010: A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, “More Than a Paycheck” with news about last month’s Southeast War Tax Resistance gathering and the criminal case against war tax resister Frank Donnelly. Also: more tax resistance talk in Argentina, and Greek tax collectors go on strike.
• 6 February 2010: Tax resistance in Palestine in 1988–9: an excerpt from Andrew Rigby’s 1991 book “Living the Intifada.”
• 5 February 2010: The “Taxed Enough Already” crowd in 1950s France was a lot like their counterparts in today’s United States, except that they actually put their money where their mouths were.
• ☆ 4 February 2010: How to brew your own beer: a photographic walk-through from my kitchen.
• 3 February 2010: Billy Bragg goes to Hyde Park’s “Speaker’s Corner” to talk up his tax resistance campaign. Also: Vivien Kellems’s 1948 American payroll tax resistance is reenacted this year in Italy. And: a New York assemblyman asks his constituents to resist their taxes.
• 2 February 2010: A call for more aggressive tax resistance in the women’s suffrage movement, 99 years ago today. Also: don’t forget to let NWTRCC know about your Tax Day plans this year.
• 1 February 2010: A special Picket Line treat: the complete text of William Davis’s “The Fries Rebellion,” lovingly reformatted in semantic HTML.
• 31 January 2010: Ghis (Ghislaine Lanctôt) writes of her time behind bars for tax resistance in Canada in her new book “Escape in Prison.”
• 30 January 2010: Thomas Cogswell Upham, who was born 211 years ago today, wrote about the possibilities and promise of pacifism, and suggested that the reason why a Christian peace had not yet pervaded the globe was that Christians did not take their testimony seriously enough.
• 25 January 2010: Taxpatriate satyagrahi Jeff Knaebel has a new quest and a new website. Also: Washington wants you to invest your 401(k)s and IRAs in government bonds and has begun floating ideas on how to force you to do so. And: An obituary for long-time war tax resister George Willoughby. Also: another tax resistance campaign in Argentina.
• 24 January 2010: A 1712 debate between Samuel Bownas and William Ray about tithe and war tax resistance.
• 22 January 2010: War tax resister Patrick Keaney takes his case to the top, Billy Bragg says he’ll refuse to pay taxes that pay for outrageous bonuses of executives of taxpayer-bailed-out banks, the U.S. changes policies on tax-delinquent federal contractors and charitable donations to Haiti relief, and one frustrated taxpayer starts a tax resistance campaign against the corrupt government of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Also: the trailer to the new war tax resistance promotional film “Death and Taxes.”
• 21 January 2010: On this date in 1854, Thoreau wrote to a friend about the conflict between the superficial clothes of our roles and the sentences we pronounce from a more universal perspective.
• 13 January 2010: A day in the life of David Gross, tax resister.
• 8 January 2010: A review of Helen and Scott Nearing’s “Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World.”
• 7 January 2010: We know what happened during the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, but at least as interesting, though less bombastic, is what happened during the Whiskey Rebellion in Kentucky.
• 6 January 2010: Notes from the National Taxpayer Advocate’s Annual Report about social security levies, haphazard collection processes, rampant taxpatriatism, the undermining of the offer-in-compromise program, and increasing taxpayer noncompliance.
• 5 January 2010: 98 years ago today, the Toronto World covered the Women’s Tax Resistance League and compared it to other tax resistance campaigns.
• 4 January 2010: There’s a federal excise tax on all air travel in the United States. Here are the details. Also: the monthly-spending accounting I did a couple of days back had some errors in it; here’s a correction. And: a profile of war tax resister Frances Crowe.
• 3 January 2010: Here’s a classy, well-made video short promoting war tax resistance. Also: registration information and more details about The 13th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns coming up in Norway this July. And: an update on duelling tax resistance campaigns in Chascomús (last time it was the secessionists from Lezama who were resisting; this time its the unionist Chascomunenses).
• 2 January 2010: Last month I kept track of every cent I spent. I’ve done this one-month-accounting for seven years now in order to keep my finger on the pulse of my budget and keep my spending within the limits of my below-the-tax-line income.
• 1 January 2010: Some excerpts from a new year’s day letter from Thoreau in which he dishes on politics and liberal reformers.
• 2009 Sitemap
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• links: other websites of interest
• FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
• How to Resist the Federal Income Tax Through the “Don’t Owe Nothin’” Method
• Retirement Savings Credit (Form 8880): using it to eliminate your income tax
• Rebecca and Her Daughters: Being a History of the Agrarian Disturbances in Wales Known as “The Rebecca Riots” by Henry Tobit Evans
• The Sufferings of many, for Refuſing to pay the wicked Exactions of the Ceſs, Locality, Fynes &c. Vindicated. by Alexander Shields
• Resistance to Civil Government by H.D. Thoreau
• Slavery in Massachusetts by H.D. Thoreau
• Thoreau on John Brown (including “A Plea for Captain John Brown”)
• Life Without Principle by H.D. Thoreau
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s journals
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s juvenilia
• Sir Walter Raleigh by H.D. Thoreau
• Thomas Carlyle and His Works by H.D. Thoreau
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s “Natural History of Massachusetts”
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”
• Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum by H.D. Thoreau
• Reform and the Reformers by H.D. Thoreau
• The Service by H.D. Thoreau
• Herald of Freedom by H.D. Thoreau
• Paradise (to be) Regained by H.D. Thoreau
• Letter to the Liberals by Leo Tolstoy
• Letter to Eugen Heinrich Schmitt by Leo Tolstoy
• “Carthago Delenda Est” by Leo Tolstoy
• Patriotism and Government by Leo Tolstoy
• “Thou Shalt Not Kill” by Leo Tolstoy
• The Only Means by Leo Tolstoy
• Excerpts from the Journal of John Woolman