In Battleboro, Vermont, war tax resisters held a ceremony in which they redirected a few thousand dollars from the IRS to community groups.
The Times Argus covered the ceremony, at which resisters Daniel Sicken, Ellen Kaye, and Lou Waronker.
Ellen Kaye of Brattleboro, who was holding a hand-painted sign that said, “I Haven’t Bought A Bomb ,” said she decided in that she just couldn’t send money to the federal government to use on military actions.
And Berkeley’s KPFA covered war tax resistance on their Sunday Salon program.
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research and Jeremy Scahill (author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army) presented the problem, and area war tax resister Jon Marley promoted a solution.
Host Larry Bensky talked about his own tax resistance from years ago.
(If you download the archived broadcast, the tax-themed segment starts at 67:45.)
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Tax Day action reports are starting to trickle in.
This year, the TEA Party presence seemed way down, or at least the news media has gotten tired of covering it.
There were many reports of liberals engaged in various creative protests designed to shine some light on profitable corporations who somehow manage to rake in government subsidies and get away without paying taxes, and a couple of reports of anti-war activists trying to inform the public about the bloated military budget.
Some folks have taken to submitting an affidavit along with their tax returns declaring that they are only filing “under threat, duress and coercion… because I fear retaliation by the IRS… to avoid going to jail, not because I believe there’s a legitimate obligation; I am terrified of the IRS… and being attacked by them if I don’t comply with them.”
They hope to make explicit the threat of government violence that is largely implicit at tax time and to preempt silly people like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who insist we have a “voluntary” tax system.
