Some bits and pieces from here and there:
- Smithsonian looked at the government crackdown on sedition in Montana during World War Ⅰ.
Included is an example of how the ostensibly voluntary “Liberty Loan” war bond campaign was enforced by lynch mobs, which is also covered at The Montana Sedition Project:
A man who read philosophy and politics, Herman despised all war and refused to contribute to its financing. Finally a local “third degree committee” came to his farm west of town. His wife watched while holding their infant in her arms as the men strung a rope over the limb of an apple tree. When Herman continued to refuse to buy Liberty Bonds, the committee ran him into town and grilled him until early morning in the hall of a local fraternal organization. A local lawyer sat on the arm of his chair and threatened to punch him in the face unless he agreed to buy bonds. What Herman said in defense of his actions was used to prosecute him for sedition, The Billings Gazette editorialized that “he should be prosecuted to the extreme limit of the law.” He was convicted in a 1½-day jury trial and served 28 months. He was released .
- Are you planning to write to the tax authorities, to your government representatives, to the editor of the newspaper, to your friends and family, or anything of that sort, to explain why you won’t be paying war taxes this year? If so, Erica Weiland at NWTRCC would like to hear from you: “I’m creating a 1–2 minute Tax Day video, containing messages from war tax resisters directed to the IRS, Congress, the president, the military-industrial complex, or any other entity or individual.”
- Ruth Benn, coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, discusses how because war tax resisters are a largely individualist, idiosyncratic breed, they have difficulty congealing into a unified movement, in Individual Choices and Movement Building: Shall the Twain Meet?
- The folks at Crimethinc have put together a well-designed and inviting anarchist appeal: “To Change Everything”
- People are starting to notice that could be the easiest year to cheat the IRS.
- It apparently wasn’t all that hard to cheat the IRS either. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, 24% of the Earned Income Tax Credit payments the agency issued in were given to people who did not actually qualify for the credits.
