Back in the sixties, a bunch of radical pacifists jumped on the phone tax resistance and haven’t been able to let go in all this time.
So why this clinging to phone taxes as a way of protesting war?
I assume everyone likes it is because it’s safe.
For those reasons it’s also entirely symbolic and almost completely meaningless.
Can’t we come up with new tactics?
When will we be able to leave the Vietnam War to the historians and just move on?
Many people think the old-line peace movement is a bunch of aging hippies; with campaigns like this, we kinda prove them right.
Let’s brainstorm some new actions!
I’m all for coming up with new tactics, and I think a lot of people have been doing just that.
This doesn’t mean, though, that we have to leave old tactics behind if they can serve us.
Nor should we assume that old tactics are not new tactics for some.
He says that phone tax resistance had become more complex in recent years because the number of phone companies had increased and there was no consistency in how they reacted to phone tax resistance.
For this reason, phone tax resistance lost its appeal as an easy first step to war tax resistance, and people stopped promoting it.
Now, though, we have the possibility, through a large phone tax redirection campaign and the Internet, to learn and gather together the how-to-do-it information on all these different phone services.
The project has a long way to go before it has enough momentum to matter.
Since the Hang Up On War campaign launched it has attracted a whole 68 signatories (as of ).
The official minutes/report will come out later, but I’m sure those of you who could not be there are wanting to hear something about it went, so here’s my take on it:
It was great!
Although we did not obtain the broader participation from all segments of the peace movement for which we had hoped, there were a lot of us there (over 70 throughout ), about ½ “old hats” and about ½ “new folk”, by my guestimate.
It was great seeing so many old friends and getting to know new ones.…
We strategized!
Several plans came out of that.
Here are some, with ways you can connect:
A new Working Group was established to develop a WTR Intro DVD, parts of which will also be put on our website for download/streaming.…
Another working group was set up to work on the survey/boycott proposal from the St. Louis Covenant Community of WTRs. The original proposal is at www.nwtrcc.org/oct05conf.htm (Proposal #2).
While the exact form of stages 2 & 3 will be developed later, we decided to go ahead with the development and pilot testing of a survey between now and the NWTRCC meeting in Seattle.…
Both of the above working groups are to include young people.
In addition, we decided to establish a Young Adult Review Panel to look at all of NWTRCC’s literature and work and make recommendations for improving our outreach to young people.…
Some of the specific [proposals] in which folk expressed interest, but for which I do not have anyone designated as convener, are:
new youth-oriented W-4 piece
a cellphone wtr campaign
making wtr links with counter-recruitment movement
redirection of war taxes to youth/student groups/projects
wtr outreach to young people involved in intentional community and nonviolent lifestyles
Karl Meyer at the NWTRCC press conference
Photos by Steev Hise
on the public mailing list wtr-s, Robert Randall discussed the new IRS policy on W-4 forms that I mentioned .
The threatened fines are the already existing $500 civil penalty for filing a W-4 claiming excessive allowances.
The IRS’ ability to assess this penalty has been there all along; the question is whether or not this represents a change in the likelihood that they will actually assess it.
Or is this just another tax season… scare story of the type which the media runs every year to assist with IRS compliance efforts?…
The so-called “lock-in letter” is also not new.
The IRS has always had the right to direct one’s employer to withhold at a higher rate once it has decided that your W-4 is inaccurate or inadequate.
And NWTRCC has always informed people of that.…
Even the part about employer liability for the taxes is not new.… Once an employer has knowledge that a W-4 is claiming allowances not permitted under IRS rules, the employer who fails to act on that knowledge is liable for civil and criminal penalties, and, I’m almost certain, that liability includes the unwithheld tax amounts.
This is why we’ve always counseled wtr’s not to tell their employers why they are filing a new W-4.
Before “Abu Ghraib” and “Guantánamo” and “extraordinary rendition” became the shorthand ways of referring to America’s torture policy, those in the know used the phrase “School of the Americas” to mean much the same thing.
The School of the Americas (now officially renamed “WHINSEC” in the same tried-and-true bad-publicity-fleeing method that saw Philip Morris transform into “Altria”) helped to train “our sons-of-bitches” during the cold war — the various military juntas and contras and such that helped keep Latin America from falling victim to Communism, organized labor, or democracy.
The annual vigil by thousands of School opponents has become, in addition to a statement of protest against such U.S. policies and an opportunity to do some crossing-the-line style civil disobedience, a networking opportunity for the anti-imperialist set.
A group from NWTRCC was at the event.
Robert Randall reports that there was a lot of interest in war tax resistance, with over a thousand people filling out NWTRCC’s survey:
I think it was one of the most exciting presences we’ve had at SOAW.
Asking people to fill out the survey gave us much more interaction with folk than the leafleting which we’ve done in past years.
(Our message did get out to everyone even more than if we had leafleted, though, as Ruth [Benn] put an ad in the SOAW printed program, which was handed out to all of the 20,000 people who came; we even found it available in the lobbies of the motels in town.)
People asked questions, got a little on-the-spot mini-counseling, were given the materials they needed (most often the new flyer on W-4 resistance, which we used up and had to re-copy), and sometimes went away with local folk to contact from our network list.
About 50 people signed up for introductory packets, and we got 16 names on the “Don’t Pay for War in Iraq!” call to tax resistance.
Our lit sales matched the best we’ve done in the past.
Wow!
We really mis-calculated on the number of pie chart flyers we could have given out today.
We had ordered 500 from the War Resisters League and divided them between the downtown Brunswick (GA) and the St. Simons Island post offices.
I was worried we’d have dozens left over after a full day of leafletting.
Uh-uh.
They were all gone at both P.O.’s by !
At the Brunswick P.O. we fortunately had a couple of hundred “Cost of War” flyers left over from last Fall, highlighting the costs of the Iraq War to Georgia and the 1st congressional district, and we promptly gave out of them, too.
We were headed home by .
Eight protesters from the New Hampshire Underground protested in front of the post office in Keene.
One reported: “Lots of horn honks and other gestures of support.
Even some from the police.”
Protesters in the New Hampshire Underground braved soggy weather to protest at the Keene Post Office.
Photo by Michael Hampton.
The film was made in by Carol Coney and features interviews with Brian Willson, Robert Randall, Holley Rauen, John Shibley, Karl Meyer, Ed Pearson, Vicki Metcalf, Ernest & Marion Bromley, Juanita Nelson, Maurice McCrackin, Randy Kehler, and Carolyn Stevens.
On the video, this film is sandwiched between segments of an earnest alternative media television program called “Alternative Views” that is, in this episode anyway, devoted to the October Surprise conspiracy theory.
If you want to watch only “Paying for Peace,” skip ahead to about 16:20 and play through the 45-minute mark.
Beware also the opening seconds of the video (outside of the documentary portion), which are marred by a high-pitched screech.
More from the swarm of tax resisters who came out to play on :
“All I kept thinking about was just how many people oppose the war, wish the war wasn’t happening and don’t really see a clear way of doing anything about it.
On tax day, everybody’s scrambling to pay the government and feeling like their hard earned dollars are being sopped up and wishing that that money went to roads and to schools and to healthcare.
We were able to interject some information about where that money really goes — and to offer some alternatives… about how people can withdraw their own complicity.”
The Makingpeace blog has been covering war tax resistance actions in Austin, Texas and elsewhere.
As best we can figure, we gave out about 2200 flyers on at the Brunswick and St. Simons Island P.O.s.
Amazing!
We started at with 500 War Resisters League pie chart flyers at each P.O.
We ran out of those at in Brunswick and on St. Simons at , just as I arrived to give Bill Jerome a stack of about 400 “Economic Costs of the War” flyers with info from the American Friends Service Committee.
Milly Hastings reported later that when she & Steve Stevens finished their leafletting at , they had only 16 flyers left!
Although our youth were ready to provide someone to take over on St. Simons, there weren’t flyers for them!
On the Brunswick side, Cathy Browning brought us a couple of hundred of the flyers addressed to Georgia taxpayers, giving figures from the National Priorities Project on how much the war is costing us locally and what else the money could have purchased in services and meeting community needs.
Those weren’t going to be enough, so she went back and printed 600 more.
These were all gone by , a half-hour before the P.O. closed.
Paul Sheldon reports on his many tax day (more like tax week) actions at Paul’s Perambulations.
It will be difficult to keep up this witness — my wages at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, as of yesterday, are now being levied by the IRS — but we are going to try.
The most encouraging thing is the powerfully supportive response that we have received from so many people.
Clearly, our small action has struck a chord with others who similarly oppose this war, and are unsure about what they can do to help stop it.
Eric Muller: “The paper tiger casts a shadow, but it’s a shadow of paper and of enforcement.
What can they take from us? They can take our money.
And that’s a very small damage compared to the damage we’re creating throughout the world and particularly in Iraq right now, as we speak, you know much more damage is being inflicted than will be on the tax resisters who are working here today.”
Muller and others in the community have donated six thousand dollars to local charities instead of paying their full taxes to the federal government.
The money will go to Food for Lane County, Shelter-care, [and] peace groups, among others.
I’m in Eugene, Oregon at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee conference.
Kathy Kelly looks on as Ruth Benn addresses the NWTRCC conference
So far it’s been a long administrative committee meeting (I’m an alternate on the administrative committee) talking budget and objectives and scheduling, and then meeting the people who have arrived for our regular sessions, which began after dinner tonight.
We have a pretty big crowd this time around, about fifty so far and there are more coming tomorrow morning.
And despite the numbers, we got through the “let’s go around and introduce ourselves” segment with time to spare.
This group gets points for staying on-point and not getting thrown off much.
In this way it bucks the trend of many grassroots activist groups, many of which can’t seem to run a meeting to save their lives.
And it’s certainly not because we’re ideologically unified or lack talkative eccentrics!
Somehow when it comes down to brass tacks, we get down to brass tacks.
Robert Randall addressing some of the NWTRCC conference attendees
I’m fresh back from the NWTRCC national conference, which was held in Eugene, Oregon, and hosted by the enthusiastic and welcoming Eugene “Taxes for Peace Not War” group.
I’ve got a binder full of handouts and hastily-scratched notes that I took whenever I found a spare moment.
Today I’ll share some of my impressions of the gathering and of the current state of the war tax resistance movement.
Frivolity
Many of the attendees were concerned about the IRS being more aggressive in sending out notices of “frivolous filing” penalties to resisters who send letters of protest that explain their refusal to pay along with their tax returns.
One couple who were first-time resisters and had only refused to pay a token $50 last year were assessed “frivolous filing” penalties of $5,000 — each, even though they had filed a single return jointly — though they had filled out their return accurately and completely.
The IRS also insists that once they have assessed a “frivolous filing” penalty, you must pay that penalty before you can appeal it!
The law seems pretty clear that the “frivolous filing” penalty is only meant to apply if the tax return is incomplete or incorrect, but the IRS seems to be applying it haphazardly — not only to people who file complete and accurate returns but who refuse to pay some portion, but even to people who file and pay every cent but who merely inclose a letter registering their protest or disapproval!
Meanwhile, other resisters — including one who files a return every year with her social security number at the top but with none of the other required information, and with the 1040 form over-written with a protest message in red ink — have never been assessed a “frivolous filing” penalty or even received a “frivolous filing” warning letter.
The coordinating committee discusses the RFPTFA on morning
The “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act”
For a more in-depth examination of my misgivings about the RFPTFA, see:
One item on the agenda was a request by the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund that NWTRCC formally “recommit to the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill and the efforts NCPTF is doing to get it passed in Congress.”
As I explained , I have serious misgivings about “peace tax fund” proposals in general, and think that the current incarnation of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act in particular would do more harm than good.
However, NWTRCC had endorsed a different version of this legislation years ago, and so many people expected this new call for an endorsement to be a no-brainer.
Much debate ensued.
Robert Randall pointed out that NWTRCC’s “Statement of Purpose” includes “support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
He interpreted this as being a built-in endorsement of the latest act which would make the current debate moot.
However, no act by that name has been introduced recently — I think since — and in many important ways the current legislation does not resemble the version that NWTRCC endorsed back in the day.
I was a little worried that I would be the only one objecting to the endorsement and that this would put me outside of the general consensus of the group, but as it turns out there were many people present who expressed misgivings about peace tax fund legislation and who weren’t enthusiastic about endorsing it, and I heard more than one person express that this was a long-overdue debate.
Many of the Act’s supporters seem to have ideas of what the Act would accomplish that go way beyond the actual text of the legislation.
One said, for instance, that if the Act passed, it would effectively allow citizens to annually vote yea or nay on war or on whatever wars the government was engaged in at the time.
Some participants in the discussion were concerned that NWTRCC remain on good terms with NCPTF, in part so that we may be more influential as they recraft their strategy in the coming years.
One person said that because the Act is a long-shot to ever become law, it is best judged not by what its effects would be if it were enacted, but by what it symbolizes as a proposal that approximates the hopes of people who want legal recognition for conscientious objection to military taxation.
(Myself, I’m not sure I buy this argument, but in any case I think that the symbolism of the Act is ambiguous at best and may very well communicate a message that is, on the whole, harmful to the cause.)
The result of our discussion was that we decided to hold off on making a decision of whether or not to endorse until our meeting, at which time we will have more time to discuss the question and more time to study the points that are in debate.
A book of writings by and about Marian Franz and her work with the peace tax fund campaign is forthcoming, and will include a piece by Ruth Benn about the war tax resistance movement and its relationship with the peace tax fund campaign.
Election aftermath
There was varied reaction to the recent presidential election.
Many people were skeptical of the promise for meaningful change, and distrustful towards the Democratic party, and saw the election mostly in terms of whether it would anaesthetize progressive activists or whether it might be possible to reactivate the hopeful coalitions that helped to propel Obama into office once Hope turns to disappointment.
Others were very enthusiastic about the change and hoped that progressives and peace activists might finally be able to influence government policy.
One person went as far as to say that we’d “won” and would have to get used to being winners on the inside of the power structure instead of ignored pleaders outside of it.
Another hopefully imagined getting a group of progressive religious leaders to sit down with Obama and confront his faith with a challenge to go further than his public statements have so far suggested.
To me this all sounds like stuff of the same sort as gingerbread houses, flying carpets, and fairy godmothers, but I mention it here to show that some of the Hope bubble has infected even a skeptical group like NWTRCC.
There was much mention of “Camp Hope” — a vigil that will be held near Obama’s home in Chicago in up to inauguration day.
The goals of this vigil will be to encourage Obama to follow-through boldly on some of his more progressive campaign themes.
The demands of the vigil are meant to harmonize with, rather than to protest, the goals of the Obama campaigners, and will concentrate on actions that the new administration can take immediately via executive orders.
This is said to be partially based on a similar vigil that took place in the run-up to Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in that asked Carter to pardon Vietnam-era draft resisters and to cancel the B-1 bomber program, both of which Carter did.
A new war funding supplemental bill is expected to hit Congress in , and this will be an early test of what kind of Change we can expect from the new order, and what kind of power the current anti-war movement is capable of asserting.
The War Tax Boycott
’s war tax boycott campaign was well-received by some local war tax resistance groups, who found it a good focal point for their outreach efforts.
However, the number of people who participated in the boycott disappointed the hopes of those who initiated the campaign.
There was much discussion of whether we should continue the campaign into and if so in what fashion.
If we were to continue the campaign into — making the the climax of the campaign — this would give us little time to mount a serious outreach effort, and at the same time it would have to compete for attention with the actions of the opening months of the new Obama administration.
It might be hard to convince new resisters to join up if they’re still placing their hopes for peace with their rulers.
We eventually concluded that we would continue the campaign, but would concentrate this year on retrenching and consolidation rather than on a major outreach and publicity campaign, in preparation for a larger campaign when the inevitable Obama Disappointment sets in.
Meanwhile, local groups that find the campaign useful can continue to use it as before.
Rather than making April 15th the target date for beginning to resist, we may be better off doing what Code Pink did with its war tax resistance campaign and tell people that their resistance begins the moment they take their first affirmative step toward tax resistance, for instance by adjusting their W-4 withholding.
One person said that although she resisted taxes , she didn’t sign up for the boycott because she was only resisting a small amount and was redirecting that amount to local groups, and she had the impression that the boycott was mainly for people redirecting larger amounts to the two showcase charities highlighted by the boycott campaign.
Some people who did boycott outreach found that some folks were reluctant to sign on to the boycott for fear of the danger of being on some government list, and stressed that there should be a way for people to join the campaign anonymously.
Miscellany
Some local University of Oregon students dropped by the meeting and volunteered to create a redesigned mock-up of the nwtrcc.org web site that we could use if we’d like — a much-appreciated and spontaneous act of generosity.
NWTRCC will be trying to nurture a new regional gathering of war tax resisters — something along the lines of the New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters that is coming up later .
To this end, it will be inviting groups that are interested in hosting such a gathering to submit proposals, and will select one of these proposals to support with some seed money and other assistance.
NWTRCC decided to commit to revitalize the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which seems to have run out of steam (appeals for funds go out very infrequently, and resisters are reimbursed only after long delay).
NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn is preparing a series of “Readings on Money.”
These include transcripts of some of the discussion on that subject at the Fall gathering in Las Vegas, Karen Marysdaughter’s essay on “The Influence of Money on Decisions to Engage in War Tax Resistance,” George Salzman’s “Inheritance and Social Responsibility,” a debate about the ethics of accepting interest on loans and bank deposits from Juanita Nelson and Bob Irwin, and a look at the intwined structure of government spending, national debt, the war machine, the federal reserve, and the income tax from Jay Sordean.
Kathy Kelly leads a workshop on “Honesty and Empathy: Questions for Collaborators”
Kathy Kelly led us through some role-playing exercises concerning collaboration and how to confront it, and shared some stories with us from her experiences with activism and humanitarian assistance.
Her public presentation at the University after the end of the NWTRCC conference session was well-appreciated by those who attended.
Kelly is an engaging speaker who relates interesting experiences vividly and well — with a great command of accents and the ability to invoke strong and varied emotions without making the audience feel like they’ve been strapped on a roller-coaster.
One of her themes: around the world, many people are forced to make great sacrifices because of the decisions our political leaders are making.
Meanwhile, what will raise us to make the sacrifices we need to make to make things right?
To those of us to whom much has been given, much will be expected in this regard.
We need to slow down and unflinchingly reassess our priorities.
“This is what grown-ups do.”
Mike Butler volunteered to bring NWTRCC into the MySpace / Facebook universe, so keep an eye out there.
Erica Weiland removes a pillar of militarism in Susan Quinlan’s workshop
Susan Quinlan demonstrated some of the techniques she uses in youth outreach to teach about the unbalanced government budget priorities and about how to build a better society by shifting your support from the pillars that support a system of injustice to the pillars that support the scaffolding of a better system.
I remember a couple of interesting stories of how people were introduced to war tax resistance.
One couple was working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia and met some war tax resisters there and then took up war tax resistance on their return home.
Another new resister had been working for an alternative newspaper that received a grant from a war tax resisters’ tax-redirection alternative fund, and learned about war tax resistance that way.
Conference attendees review part of Steev Hise’s rough cut for Death and Taxes
Steev Hise’s war tax resistance video project continues, with a projected completion date around .
Conference attendees saw a preview of a portion of the film and seemed enthusiastic about it.
The next national meeting will be held this coming Spring (early ) somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. — details to be hashed out in the coming months.
The next national will be in Cleveland, Ohio around .
And with all that, I’m still leaving a lot out.
But for now, that’ll have to do.
I’m back from the NWTRCC National Gathering in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
I’ll share some of my impressions and go into more detail in the coming days.
I flew into Charlottesville and was picked up by one of our hosts — who’d be shuttling incoming conferencers all weekend and who did a fantastic job of making sure we all got collected, assembled, fed, and then given a comfortable place to lay our heads at the end of the day.
We passed the new America tombstone on the way back to Harrisonburg where we were holding the sessions of our meeting at the Community Mennonite Church.
After the administrative committee met on morning and afternoon to grease the wheels for the larger coordinating committee meetings, night was devoted to introductions, a viewing of a video on corrupt and insufficiently-monitored government spending on the Afghanistan War, and reports from local groups about how their Tax Day actions went and what they’ve been up to.
Clare Hanrahan shared some stories from the tour she and Coleman Smith have been conducting through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to meet with peace & justice activists in that area, forge alliances between them, and learn about the state of the regional movement.
They’ve been blogging their adventures on the War Resisters League Asheville site.
Lots of people reported that their tax day protests had been upstaged by the Tea Party demonstrations this year, though a few groups took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach and partied along with the rest of them.
One person noted that with more people e-filing their tax returns, the phenomenon of the last-minute post office rush has diminished, and there’s less media attention and less of an audience for leafletting and such.
Ruth Benn reported on how in New York they held a viewing of tax resistance related excerpts from Boston Legal and Stranger Than Fiction as a discussion-prompter.
Robert Randall reported that an attempt to focus messaging around the single issue of opposition to the Iraq War had seemed promising at first, as the war became more unpopular even in his red state of Georgia, but that it hadn’t seemed to lead to any noticeable uptick in interest in war tax resistance or in new resisters.
Many people noted the increasing challenge of developing interest in our message in a time when the anti-war movement is suffering from a post-election tranquilization.
Ray Gingerich reflected on the difficulty he is having in trying to reinvigorate the war tax resistance tradition in the Mennonite church.
On tax day, he sends his letter of protest to his church.
He also recalled for us that their local war tax resistance group used to be much more active and at one time they had a mutual aid fund that they used to defray the costs of penalties, interest, and frivolous filing fines incurred by individual members.
morning
After breakfast morning, we discussed what we thought of a rough cut of an upcoming war tax resistance film project, and talked about what we thought would be the best use of the available footage.
Then Bill Ramsey gave us an update on the War Tax Boycott project, and we discussed options for modifying the campaign going forward.
Here are some of the comments from my notes (these are all paraphrased and on-the-fly, so may not represent what these folks actually said or meant to say):
David Waters
I love the palm cards.
Pam Allee
It would be good to keep the campaign going on a low simmer during the sleepy times so that we would be ready to jump in with a flashier campaign when the moment is right.
Bill Ramsey
I recommend a scaled-down campaign in which we keep the website updated but reduce the budget.
Robert Randall
How can we hold on to the new resisters whom we learn about for the first time when they sign up for the boycott?
Ray Gingerich
I’m confused as to whether the boycott is meant only for first-timers or if it’s for everyone; to me it seemed gimmicky and not particularly appealing.
Susan Balzer
Some people might not want to sign on to the boycott because they don’t want to be “on a list” and they might be more comfortable if there’s a way to remain anonymous.
Jim Stockwell
I think maybe “boycott” is a threatening or discouraging word to some people.
Clare Hanrahan
The hard copy boycott sign-on sheets weren’t at all popular when we were tabling.
Daniel Woodham
We should make the palm cards less likely to go stale by removing the year and references to specific wars/issues.
Geov Parrish
The value of the campaign is mainly as a vehicle for publicizing war tax resistance as an option, not so much in getting people to sign on.
Erica Weiland
I wonder if by framing the campaign as a one-year thing we prompt people to make their resistance temporary.
Clare Hanrahan
I do low-income resistance and I redirect unwaged labor, not money.
I think the war tax resistance movement should honor that and recognize that option for boycott participants (not assume everyone has a dollar amount to redirect).
Tim Godshall (and others)
We need to have better follow-up with the people who sign on — by phone is better than by email.
Robert Randall
Maybe we could parcel out some of the following-up to people in our network list.
Next came a discussion of our finances and a report from the fundraising committee, and then we broke for lunch.
afternoon
First thing on afternoon we had a panel presentation and group discussion about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about NWTRCC’s relationship with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
This was the most contentious item on the agenda, and I’m going to leave you all in suspense about it by writing it up in a future blog post all its own rather than putting it here.
After this, we broke up into smaller group sessions.
In mine, a group of maybe twenty resisters just shared some of their recent experiences with resistance and with the IRS.
Sharing our war stories like this is one of the best parts of these meetings, and is also a great way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of how IRS enforcement trends are changing.
I didn’t take notes during that session since it seemed to be a more-intimate sharing of personal information than the general meeting.
I did write down one quote though that was too good to miss, from Clare Hanrahan:
“I used to say that they could boil me in oil before I’d pay any war taxes, but now that I know that they could actually do that…”
One idea I came away with was that it would be nice to have some tips from war tax resistance veterans about how to deal with “mixed marriages” in which one partner is a resister and the other one is not.
There are some tricky questions, especially when finances get tangled up together.
I’m hoping, next time I have some free time, to put some time into collecting some of these stories and tips.
The next full-group session was about “organizing strategies and outreach ideas in the Obama era.”
I didn’t take notes here either as I was facilitating and had to devote all of my attention to that.
What I mostly recall from the discussion is that people were less interested in talking about strategies, techniques, and outreach ideas and more interested in talking about what sort of messaging we should and shouldn’t use.
Before dinner was another set of small-group breakout sessions.
I joined the web team, discussing the nitty-gritty of web site maintenance and design, none of which is really worth relating here.
was our business meeting, in which decisions that require consensus approval of the coordinating committee are made, folks are rotated onto and off of the administrative committee (Erica Weiland is joining us this time), we review the budget and priorities and how the coordinator is doing, check in on the progress of ongoing projects, and plan for the next gathering.
The first half of the meeting was largely taken up by Peace Tax Fund-related discussion, which I’m holding off reporting on until a future post.
For the second half, I was the facilitator and so took no notes.
So you’ll just have to wait until Ruth Benn posts her meeting minutes for a full picture of what took place.
This issue had come up at our last meeting in Eugene because the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund had asked us to formally endorse this legislation.
We were unable to reach consensus on the endorsement at that meeting and didn’t allot enough time to really discuss the matter in detail, so we planned to readdress the issue and devote more time to discussion this time around.
One of the arguments in favor of us endorsing the bill was that in the NWTRCC “Statement of Purpose” is a section that many people interpreted as a built-in endorsement of the bill.
That section reads:
NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals.
These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability.
I’ve heard many perspectives about whether this section endorses the bill or merely indicates that support for it is one of many war tax resistance related activities that our affiliate groups engage in.
But in any case, the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill” doesn’t exist as an active piece of legislation anymore.
The currently-proposed legislation is substantially different in content and has a new name.
So this time around, in addition to debating the endorsement question, we were also trying to come up with a satisfactory way to remove or replace the anachronistic language from our statement of purpose.
On , we had a panel presentation on the bill followed by an open discussion.
Bethany Criss, the executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, presented the case for why we should endorse.
Ray Gingerich and I each gave statements opposing the endorsement.
Ruth Benn shared some of her insights from being exposed to the variety of international peace tax fund campaigns (some of which are promoting legislation that differs in important ways from the U.S. bill) and also recounted some of the history of the close working relationship of NWTRCC and NCPTF.
After these brief remarks from the panel, other attendees addressed the issue.
The following summary is based on notes I was taking at the time, so is only as good as my attention and note-taking were — caveat emptor:
Bethany Criss started out by noting the similarity between legalized conscientious objection to military service and conscientious objection to military taxation.
She also tried to assuage concerns that the “Religious Freedom” part of the bill’s title meant that the provisions of the bill would not be available to non-religious objectors.
She said that she felt confident that Congress would not raid the peace tax fund to pay for military expenses because the RFPTFA would represent a contract between us and Congress and that we could hold them accountable if they were to violate it.
She acknowledged that the bill was imperfect and would not accomplish as much as many people would like, but hoped that we would see it as an initial step in an incremental process.
I went next.
Here’s more-or-less the argument I gave against endorsement:
War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Fund advocates agree that the belligerent militarism of the United States is a grave problem, that individuals must act to oppose it, and that our tax dollars are an important way in which we can move from complicity to opposition.
Because of this, we’re natural allies and have much in common.
The RFPTFA currently being pushed by the NCPTF has some significant problems. So much so that although our groups have much in common in our outlook and our interests, I think it would be a mistake for NWTRCC to endorse the RFPTFA.
Indeed, the problems with the bill are so significant that if the bill ever looked as though it might pass, we would be wiser to actively oppose the bill than to endorse it.
The main problems with the bill are two: 1) it’s no good, and 2) it’s bad.
That is, not only would it not deliver any meaningful benefits, but it would have harmful effects that would be damaging to the war tax resistance movement and dangerous to individual war tax resisters.
The reason why I say the bill is no good is this.
If the bill passes, it would give Congress more taxpayer money to spend and would allow Congress to spend as much money as it likes on war and armaments.
Every dollar paid into the “Peace Tax Fund” would increase taxpayer spending on the military.
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what the NCPTF intends, which may be true.
But sometimes good intentions lead to counterproductive laws and policies.
If you read the NCPTF literature, you’ll see that they admit that the bill would increase government revenue without decreasing how much Congress could spend on war:
So Congress would have more taxpayer money than before and could spend as much as it wants on war.
Why on earth would we want this?
Well, we’re supposed to want this because at least our money wouldn’t be spent on war.
But this is just an illusion.
The basic problem has to do with displacement.
If you pay into the Peace Tax Fund and Congress can only spend “your” money on something nice like the National Park Service, Congress can just take some other money that it had been planning to spend on the Park Service and divert it to the Pentagon.
So Congress spends just like it always has, with a little more taxpayer money than it would have had otherwise, but the people who pay into the Peace Tax Fund falsely believe that they aren’t responsible for the results of that increased spending.
It would be as though I were to pour a cup of sand into a mug full of hot coffee and then claim that I wasn’t responsible for the spillover since my sand sank to the bottom of the mug and it was only someone else’s coffee that spilled over the top.
So that’s why the RFPTFA isn’t any good.
Now here’s why it’s bad.
First: it constructs an illusion through which people can be induced to pay for war and militarism while believing that they are not.
The war tax resistance movement should be working hard to tear down illusions like this, not build up new ones.
Second: it would divide the war tax resistance movement between those people who maintain their testimony against paying for war and those who take advantage of the false moral cover of the RFPTFA.
This would also give the IRS fewer targets to pursue, and make the remaining war tax resisters more likely to be targeted by enforcement actions.
If the war tax resistance movement ever does become a powerful force for social change, you can bet that the government will consider passing such a bill — not as a concession to our movement but as a divide-and-conquer technique against it.
Third: it would give a persuasive rhetorical tool to people who oppose war tax resisters.
They would say that war tax resisters should just pay into the Peace Tax Fund like good, law-abiding, conscientious people.
Imagine what the IRS would say to resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
Those three things are harmful effects the bill would have if it ever became law.
I don’t think this is likely, but there’s a fourth reason not to endorse the bill that doesn’t depend on whether or not it is successful in becoming law: advocacy of such a bill sends the message that the war tax resistance movement is naïve and that our conscientious scruples are superficial.
It tells people that war tax resisters:
are not particularly conscientious at all, but can be easily bought-off by symbolic concessions and simple sleight-of-hand
are conscientious enough to check a box on a form, but not conscientious enough to follow through on the ramifications of our actions
are willing enough to fund war if you can give us a way to deny that we’re doing it
would rather have a certificate from the government recognizing our officially certified conscientiousness than to actually be conscientious
These flaws have been pointed out before, and frequently PTF promoters have responded with an argument along these lines: Sure the RFPTFA won’t reduce military spending and it has at best an ambiguous effect on taxpayer complicity, but it has strong symbolic power: it’s a way to get conscientious objection to military taxation officially recognized, to get a foot in the door, to be able to take a census of conscientious objectors every April 15th, to propagandize for peace with every 1040 booklet, and so forth.
These benefits are not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons, but even if you were to acknowledge them — are they sufficient to justify putting any more energy into a 38-year-old campaign that has gone nowhere at all, currently in support of a piece of legislation that, even as watered down as it is, hasn’t had as much as a committee hearing in over a decade?
I feel strongly about this, and I have not pulled my punches.
Some of you may think I’m being uncharitable and unfair.
I’ll end on this note: I think the advocates of the RFPTFA have their hearts in the right place.
They are temperamentally our allies and I hope they continue to think of themselves that way.
I think that to the extent that we agree, we should continue to work closely and warmly together, and to the extent that we disagree we can agree to disagree.
After me, Ray Gingerich spoke, giving what I interpreted as a Thoreauvian argument against the peace tax fund idea: we shouldn’t wait to act conscientiously until the government gives us its permission to do so.
In addition, he feels from his work in trying to reintroduce war tax resistance into the Mennonite churches that the peace tax fund is an obstacle to this — it creates an excuse that people use: they say they’ll resist taxes but only when there’s a peace tax fund that allows them to do it legally.
After these prepared remarks from the panel, and Ruth’s discussion which I mentioned above, we heard from the other attendees.
Before Eugene, I thought of myself as a real outlier in my skepticism about the peace tax fund bill.
Most of what I heard about the bill in war tax resistance circles was positive, and the way people spoke about it made it seem like NWTRCC enthusiasm for the peace tax fund was a foregone conclusion if not a tautological one.
In Eugene I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few other people shared my misgivings about the bill, though I still felt like we were the minority.
In Harrisonburg last Saturday, though, it was clear that the tide had shifted dramatically.
Even with the executive director of the NCPTF there to pitch the bill, most people had little praise for it, and even the ones who were peace tax fund supporters in the abstract expressed that we probably shouldn’t endorse this version.
Gary Erb noted that most of those present probably wouldn’t qualify as conscientious objectors under the bill’s restrictive language, and so wouldn’t be able to legally avail themselves of the RFPTFA even if they cared to.
He also felt the bill would have a divide-and-conquer effect against the WTR movement, and recommended against endorsement.
Geov Parrish felt that the RFPTFA hadn’t a chance of becoming law, so it should be best seen as an educational vehicle.
That being the case, it was a poor idea to have watered it down so much in an attempt to make it palatable enough to pass through Congress.
Also, he noted that he feels excluded from the RFPTFA and its promotional materials because he is not a Christian.
Joffre Stewart said that as an anarchist resister, begging the state for exemptions and favors isn’t his style.
He thinks that conscientious objection to military service was mostly enacted for the state’s benefit, not for the benefit of the COs, and he thinks the same would be true of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
From this, he draws the conclusion that the reason we don’t have legal conscientious objection to military taxation is that war tax resisters have not yet become sufficiently inconvenient to the government.
Daniel Woodham thought that though the RFPTFA wasn’t perfect, it might make for a good first step, and once it was enacted we could work to amend it or correct its faults over time.
Bethany Criss said that in her view the “laundry list” of items in the section (§3b) of the bill that defines spending that falls under the “military purpose” category shouldn’t be seen as excluding other spending from that category, but only as examples of spending that fall under that category.
In her view, once the bill passes, a next step will be to ensure that the “military purpose” definition is interpreted inclusively so that it covers all the stuff we’re worried about.
Greg Reagle gave us some perspective on the reasoning behind watering down the bill to permit Congress to spend the money in the RFPTF on anything in the budget other than things in the military purpose category (previous incarnations of the bill had specified more precisely where that money would go).
He said that potential supporters in Congress had balked at having their spending decisions micromanaged by legislation, and so the changes had been made to mollify them.
Erica Weiland wanted to emphasize the positive working relationship between NWTRCC and NCPTF, though she too was opposed to endorsing the bill.
As an anarchist she doesn’t much favor trying to solve problems via legislation, but as an activist she tries to inspire well-intentioned people to be more active in ways that seem most appropriate to them, so she wants to encourage PTF promoters to keep doing their thing.
Robert Randall said he was impressed at the high plane on which the discussion was taking place.
He thought that the results of passing the RFPTFA might not be all that important, but that there might be some benefits to be had from the campaign to pass the bill anyway.
Pam Allee felt that the bill would help to emphasize that “we are the government” and so we can take control of the budget and change spending priorities so as to emphasize things like education, seat belt law enforcement, and other liberal priorities.
She was concerned that the RFPTFA seemed to lack grassroots support.
Larry Bassett paused to wonder whether it was really appropriate to the mission of a group like NWTRCC to be endorsing legislation or the individual projects of the affiliate groups.
Jim Stockwell felt that there might be a contradiction in that for many WTRs, the fact that tax resistance is illegal civil disobedience is an essential part of their WTR, and so legal conscientious objection would not be helpful to them.
He hoped our two groups would continue to work together.
Hiro (whose last name I didn’t catch, and whose first name I may be misspelling) encouraged us to patiently work at incremental approaches and not reject RFPTFA just because it wasn’t everything we wanted.
That said, she also worried that the government would spend the “peace” tax fund on things based on its warped definition of peacemaking work.
She envisioned Blackwater contractors doing their institution-building mopping-up exercises in Iraq (where she is from) and calling it “peacemaking” activities deserving of RFPTFA funding.
Tim Godshall tried to give us some perspective, noting that WTRs are one of the best arguments for the PTF (that is, the existence of WTRs demonstrates that many citizens have a strong conscientious objection that their government needs to accommodate), and also that although the RFPTFA might not have any effect on the military budget, the same could be said of WTRs. He believes that the RFPTFA is one part of a larger campaign to pressure the government to change its spending priorities.
Peter Smith disagreed with the suggestion that if the RFPTFA were to pass it would divide the WTR movement.
He agreed that we should not endorse the legislation, but hoped we would continue to support the PTF campaigners.
Ray Gingerich responded to a comment from Joffre Stewart by insisting that he was not an anarchist and indeed believed that a strong, active government (for example, one capable of implementing single-payer universal health care) was not incompatible with pacifism.
He plugged nonviolent conflict resolution strategies of the The Unconquerable World / A Force More Powerful school.
He also suggested that Marian Franz (the long-time National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director) had been used by people and institutions who wanted to delay their confrontation with taxpayer complicity by putting it off until some distant future in which conscientious objection to military taxation was a legalized option.
Joffre Stewart noted that the U.S. government had no qualms about raiding the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for its military spending, and that it had stacked its “U.S. Institute of Peace” with CIA folk committed to the government’s violent foreign policy.
He therefore sees no reason to trust the government to administer a “peace tax fund.”
Bethany Criss told us that not only is she committed to seeing the RFPTFA enacted into law, but that she is also a war tax resister and has been since .
She said that although there is an associated “Peace Tax Foundation” with an educational mission, there should be no doubt that the Campaign’s goal is to get the legislation passed into law.
She thinks that the bill will be beneficial to war tax resisters and the war tax resistance movement by making WTR more visible.
She says that if the bill were enacted, it would not take away the opportunity to resist or say no; that resisters could continue to resist as before if they wished.
The goal is to bring more people in to a war tax resistance mindset.
She notes that part of the reason the bill was watered down is that their campaign doesn’t yet have enough supporters to bring enough pressure to bear on the legislators; this is another reason why she’d like our support.
Finally, Bill Ramsey felt that we might be better off not concentrating on the (unlikely) endorsement and instead trying to work on ways the two groups can work better together.
was an open-ended discussion without any decisions to be made on either the endorsement or the statement of purpose wording; on , our “business meeting,” we addressed those decisions.
A number of people who could not come to the meeting sent along their opinions about the RFPTFA, and printouts of these were made available to attendees of the business meeting before we took up the issue.
These were on the whole much more positive about the Act and more in favor of endorsement than the attendees had been, with one person recommending endorsement, another recommending “NWTRCC continuing its endorsement” of the bill (though we had a hard time determining which if any version of the bill our group had originally endorsed), and another conveying the results of a discussion about the issue held by Sonoma County Taxes for Peace which led to that group deciding to strongly support NWTRCC endorsing the bill.
Predictably, we did not reach consensus at the business meeting on to endorse the RFPTFA.
I counted about a half-dozen people in favor of endorsement, maybe half again as many against it.
Unfortunately, although a non-endorsement was pretty clearly the inevitable conclusion, it took a while to get there, and we weren’t able to devote as much time as we needed to the stickier question of the Statement of Purpose and its anachronistic reference to the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
The upshot of that discussion was that there were two replacement phrases with a large amount of support:
“…support of peace tax fund legislation…”
“…support of legislation that would legalize conscientious objection to military taxation…”
While there was broad support for both, neither was able to rally a consensus around it.
My proposal to simply scrap the old anachronistic wording for now and perhaps come up with a replacement at a later date also failed to attract consensus support — with many people feeling that by rejecting the endorsement and also eliminating mention of the PTF from our Statement of Purpose it would look too much like we’d conducted a wholesale purge of PTF sympathy from the group.
So when it came down to it, the Statement of Purpose ended up the same way it began in this area: it continues to pledge our support for supporters of the long-gone “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
This is a little ridiculous, but seems mostly harmless.
I regretted that Charles Purvis’s petition for a writ of certiorari in his
Supreme Court appeal was not available
on-line. It’s a good example of someone trying to get the
U.S. government to
take seriously what its prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, said
at the Nuremberg trial of German “war criminals”:
And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German
aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must
condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now
in judgment. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and
aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people only when
we make all men answerable to the law. This trial represents mankind’s
desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have
used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world’s peace and
to commit aggressions against the rights of their neighbors.
Fat chance, but there’s something to be said for making the effort. Anyway,
here, on-line for the first time as far as I can tell, are excerpts from the
Purvis writ, as presented by his attorney William Durland (and as found in
Durland’s book People Pay
for Peace). Afterwards I’ll share some of my thoughts:
The decision below as it applies to Petitioner, a Quaker, and war tax
refuser, causes him to become a party or an accessory to a criminal act in
violation of international law, the United States Constitution, the criminal
statutes of the United States and his conscience.
To compel the petitioner to pay federal income tax deficiencies and additions
as war taxes makes him a party of an accessory to a criminal act in violation
of international law and Article Ⅵ of the United States Constitution.
International Law is Applicable to Cases Arising in
U.S. Courts
There can be no doubt that international law is relevant and applicable to
cases arising in United States Courts. Article Ⅵ , paragraph 2 of the United
States Constitution provides that:
All treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United
States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state
shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or law of any state to
the contrary notwithstanding.
When a question arises concerning whether international law is relevant to a
domestic case, it is the duty of the domestic court to determine (1) whether
principles of international law are implicated in the case; if so (2) which
principles of international law are applicable and (3) whether application of
these principles to the case at bar overrides inferior municipal law thus
justifying otherwise allegedly illegal conduct.
In the
Paquete Habana, 175
U.S. 677, 700
(), the Supreme Court declared that:
International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and
administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction as often
as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their
determination.
Accord,Hilton v. Guyot.
See generally I Whitman International Law Section 11
(). International law is applicable to
domestic courts. The question is which aspects of international law become
“the supreme law” of the land. Treaties made by the President, “and with the
advice and consent of the Senate” are obviously included by express
provisions of Article Ⅱ, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. The
term “treaty”, though not defined in the Constitution, has generally been
determined to include “irrespective of their nomenclatures, such
international agreements as conventions, pacts, protocols and covenants.”
Introduction to
U.S. Treaties and
Other International Agreements, Cumulative Index, ⅹ
() (Hereafter,
U.S.T.).
What has been termed “customary international law” is also binding on
domestic courts.
Such customary International Law as is universally recognized or has at any
rate received the assent of the United States, and further all international
conventions ratified by the United States, are binding upon American courts,
even if in conflict with previous American statutory law…
Ⅱ Oppenheim,
International Law. 101
(6th
ed.
). “Offenses against the Law of Nations”
have been sustained in federal courts even if there were no statutes defining
the offense under Article Ⅰ, Section 8, Clause 10 of the
U.S. Constitution.
Therefore a substantial body of treaties, international agreements, and
offenses against the Law of Nations or customary international law are
binding on American courts. See Introduction to
U.S.T. Cumulative Index, supra, at ⅺ.
International Law Prohibits Aggressive Policies of “Defense”
There are many bases for determining that American nuclear weapons are in
violation of international law. (Petitioner will present his case against
nuclear planning here rather than the Vietnam War crimes because (1) the
brevity of the writ requires it; (2) the latter has terminated and
(3) the former continues to be a basis for the present refusal to pay war
taxes for past years. However, much of this argument also applies to the
former). Perhaps the most fundamental tenet of all international norms is
that a sovereign refrain from use of or threat of force in its relations with
other countries. This policy has been consistently expressed in various forms
as early as .
In the
Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International
Disputes, , 32
Stat.
1779, 1780, T.S.
392 the parties (including the United States) expressed “a strong desire to
concert for the maintenance of the general peace;” to extend “the empire of
law,” and to strengthen “the appreciation of international justice…”
Accord, Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International
Disputes, , 37
Stat.
2199, 2201, T.S.
536.
Similarly, Article Ⅰ of the Pan American Anti-war Treaty of Non-aggression and Conciliation,
, 49
Stat.
3363, 3375, T.S.
906, states that the parties “solemnly declare that they condemn wars of
aggression in their mutual relations or in those with other states…”
The Charter
of the United Nations, , 59
Stat.
1033, T.S. 993
(hereinafter
U.N.
Charter) is replete with references to the duty to use peaceful means
in international relations. The Preamble expresses a determination “to save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war…”; “to ensure, by the
acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force
shall not be used, save in the common interest…”
U.N.
Charter, 59
Stat.
1033, 1035. Chapter Ⅰ of the
U.N.
Charter sets forth the purposes of the United Nations. Because these
provisions provide a guiding light in the interpretation of international
law, it is important to develop a firm grasp of these basic principles.
Article Ⅰ provides that:
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to
take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of
threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression
or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means,
and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law,
adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations
which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the
principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take
other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
[E]ncouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for
all…
U.N.
Charter at 1037 (emphasis added).
In Article 2, the members agree to “fulfill in good faith the obligations
assumed by them” in the Charter; to “settle their international disputes by
peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and
justice, are not endangered” to “refrain in their international relations
from the threat or use of force…” or to act “in any other manner inconsistent
with the purposes of the United Nations.”
U.N.
Charter at 1037.
International Law Prohibits Specific Planning for and Acts of
Aggression
The Hague
Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land,
, 36
Stat.
2277, T.S. 403
(hereinafter, Hague Conventions), was “inspired by the desire to
diminish the evils of war…” 36
Stat.
at 2279. The Convention declares that where no specific international
regulation addresses a specific course of conduct, that the parties follow
“the principles of the law of nations, as they result from the usages
established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and the
dictates of the public conscience.” 36
Stat.
at 2280. Article 22 of the Convention provides that “[t]he right of
belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy are not unlimited.” 36
Stat.
at 2301. Most importantly, Article 23 provides:
In addition… it is especially forbidden:
To employ poison or poisoned weapons;
To kill or wound treacherously…
To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary
suffering…
36
Stat.
at 2301–02.
Article 24 prohibits the bombardment of villages, towns, or cities which are
undefended. 36
Stat.
at 2302, while Article 27 declares that in sieges or bombardments all
necessary steps must be taken to spare buildings dedicated to religion, the
arts, science, or caring for the sick and wounded. 36
Stat.
at 2303.
The Charter of
the International Military Tribunal
, 59
Stat.
1544, E.A.S. 472 (“London Agreement
enunciating the Nuremberg Principles”) (Hereinafter, Nuremberg
Charter) outlined violations of international law for which even
individual citizens of belligerent nations could be held responsible. Article
6 provides that:
The following acts, or any of them are crimes… for which there shall be
individual responsibility:
Crimes Against Peace: namely, planning, preparation… of a war of
aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements
or assurances, or participation in a common plan… for the
accomplishment of any of the foregoing.
War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws and customs of war.
Such violations shall include but not be limited to, murder,
ill-treatment… of civilian populations… plunder of public or private
property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages…
Crimes Against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination… and
other inhuman acts committed against any civilian population before or
during the war or persecutions on political, racial or religious
grounds in execution of or in connection with any crimes… whether or
not in violation of the domestic law of the country where
perpetrated.
Article 7 went on to provide that the “fact that the Defendant acted pursuant
to order of his [sic.] Government
or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility.”
Charter at 1548.
In the United States delegation to the
United Nations introduced a Resolution before the General Assembly affirming
“the Principles of International Law recognized by the Charter of the
Nuremberg Tribunal.”
G.A.
Res. 95(1),
U.N.
Doc.
A/64/Add. 1, at 188
(). The Resolution was unanimously adopted
by the General Assembly on . In the Nuremberg Principles
were restated by the International Law Commission. Finally, the United
Nations Security Council, by Resolution, condemned acts of “reprisals as
incompatible with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.”
G.A.
Res. 188, Session ⅩⅨ,
4/1/1964.
U.S. Policies
and Development of Nuclear Weapons are Inconsistent with International
Law
There can be no doubt that the actual aggressive use of atomic weapons
results in almost total destruction of everything within several miles of the
site of the explosion. See United States Department of Defense, The
Effects of Nuclear Weapons (). The
residual effects caused by radiation and radio-active fall-out create
long-term illness and death in a matter analogous to poisoning. See United
States Atomic Energy Commission, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
(),
p. 473.
The indiscriminate and “wanton destruction of cities” which results from the
use of nuclear weapons is prima facie proof of war crimes,
as defined by Principle VI
of the Nuremberg Charter, and of crimes against humanity, as
defined by Principle VI(c)
of the Charter. Likewise, the poisonous effects of nuclear
radiation and fall-out are prima facie violations of the
United States’ obligations under Article 23(a) of the Hague
Conventions prohibiting the use of “poison or poisonous arms.”
Additionally, Article 23(a) of the Hague Conventions of
and ,
which prohibits the use of “arms, projectiles, or material of a nature of
cause superfluous injury”, and the
Declaration of St. Petersburg
of , which declares that “the only
legitimate object… [of] war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy”,
indicate a customary rule of international law prohibiting weapons of
indiscriminate destruction such as nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the aggressive use of atomic weapons would directly contradict the
express purposes of using best efforts to avoid a nuclear war and negotiate
an end to the nuclear arms race. See discussion,
infra.. And since the radiation-related after effects
of nuclear explosions cannot be controlled, the harm to persons and property
in neutral countries would constitute an act of aggression against third
states. G.A.
Res. 3314, Session ⅩⅩⅨ,
12/14/74.
The real question is whether current policies and weapons are in violation of
international law. To answer this question one must look to the history and
facts of nuclear weapons development.
On the basis that the “planning” or “preparation” for wars of aggression
violates Article 6(a) of the Nuremberg Charter, that “use of
threat of force” is in violation of several treaties including the
U.N.
Charter; that the
U.N.
Charter condemns “situations which might lead to a breach of the
peace,”
U.N.
Charter Art. 1, 59
Stat.
at 1037, and imposes a duty upon members “to practice tolerance and live
together in peace,”
U.N.
Charter, Preamble, at 1035; that the United States has declared an
intention “[t]o prevent the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes”
and to eliminate nuclear weapons from national arsenals,
e.g. Declaration on Atomic
Energy, 60
Stat.
at 1480. Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, 21
U.S.T. at 484–85; and that the United
States has promised to work for international peace and security “with the
least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources” 21
U.S.T. at 486;
U.N.
Charter Art. 26, 59
Stat.
at 1041, the possession of nuclear weapons for future “first strike” use is
violative of international law. The “official” nuclear policy of this country
is one of deterrence or second-strike capability. This concept is aptly
explained by Robert Aldridge who for sixteen years worked in Lockheed
Corporation’s engineering department, designing every submarine-launched
ballistic missile bought by the Navy. Aldridge explains:
Deterrence is the strategic policy under which most of us believe the
Pentagon is still operating. It is presented as a defensive measure, of
sorts, because it is based on a second-strike response — massive and
unacceptable retaliation — which theoretically deters the Soviet Union from
attacking us.
Aldridge, The Counterforce Syndrome () (hereinafter Counterforce)
Aldridge goes on to note that to be an effective deterrent, United States
retaliatory forces would have to survive the worst conceivable attack and
still wreck havoc in the Soviet Union. To this end, land-based ballistic
missiles are stored in underground silos. The fact is that since the late
1960s both the Soviet Union and the United States have possessed this
deterrent capability. Counterforce at 2. To maintain this
“balance” super-powers agreed in S.A.L.T. Ⅰ
(Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) to refrain from developing elaborate
anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs).
There came a time, however, when actual
U.S. policy
shifted from deterrence to what Aldridge terms “counterforce”. In9
, Aldridge resigned after helping design
three generations of Polaris missiles, the multiple individually-targeted
reentry vehicles (MIRVs) for Poseidon, and
the beginnings of the Trident missile. The cause of Aldridge’s resignation
was his sense of a shift in nuclear policies:
At the onset of the Trident program, I discovered the Pentagon’s interest in
acquiring a precise “counterforce” weapon capable of destroying “hardened”
military emplacements such as missile silos. This was a profound shift from
a policy of retaliating only when fired upon, because it does not make sense
to attack empty silos (which is all that would be left following an enemy
first-strike attack on the United States).
Counterforce at ⅶ.
The S.A.L.T. Ⅰ agreement
froze the number of strategic arms, but did not freeze quality improvements — the area of primary
U.S. emphasis.
Counterforce at 60. The sheer explosive power of these weapons
is unimaginable. According to Senator George McGovern, the
U.S. presently
possesses 8,500 warheads, a combined explosive power of over three billion
tons of TNT, which calculates to about
1,500 pounds of explosive for every man, woman and child on the planet.
McGovern, “End of the World”, Playboy 124, 126
() (hereinafter,
McGovern). But the magnitude of explosive is not as important as
the accuracy of the explosion. Moreover,
S.A.L.T. Ⅰ
did not limit the numbers of strategic warheads (as opposed to strategic
missiles) and thus since
S.A.L.T. Ⅰ
the U.S. has
increased its nuclear warhead stockpile from 4,600 to 9,000 while the Soviet
Union has increased theirs from 2,000 to 4,000. “The
SALT Trap”. The Progressive, p. 9, ().
Additionally, S.A.L.T. Ⅰ placed no
restrictions on production of two weapon systems which have critically
affected the arms race: MIRVs and the cruise missile.
MIRVing missiles means two to fourteen additional independently
targeted warheads to a single missile, giving it the kill potential of many
missiles. The cruise missile is a mobile weapon which flies at altitudes
below the detective capabilities of radar and which can strike within thirty
feet of a target over 2,000 miles distant, according to the
Progressive Magazine.
The dangers in such policies are legion. For one thing, these developments
make it virtually impossible to verify compliance with an arms limitation
agreement. Although satellites can count missiles, submarines or airplanes,
they cannot determine how many warheads are on a given missile.
McGovern at 196.
The United States has retrofitted accuracy improvement systems and
MIRVs
to both land and submarine launched missiles. In
the
U.S. retrofitted
550 Minutemen Ⅲ missiles with the NS-20
guidance system which doubled the accuracy of the 1650
MIRV warheads.
This gave each warhead an even chance of landing within 600 feet of any Soviet
silo with a blast nine times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.
McGovern at 196. Each of the 1,650 Minuteman warheads now has
over an 80% chance of destroying any Soviet silo at which it is aimed.
Other weapons systems currently in development pose an even greater threat of
the risk of outbreak of nuclear war. Lockheed began work in
on a maneuvering re-entry vehicle
(MARV) which permits in-flight alterations
in navigation increasing ever-more the accuracy of the hit. In
, concept studies were initiated for the
Mark 500
MARV
for possible use on Trident missiles.
In the
ABM Treaty was modified to allow only
100 defensive interceptors for each country, thus making nonsense of the
Pentagon rationale that in-flight maneuverability is essential to evade enemy
defense systems.
In the Missile X program was initiated. The
actual implementation of the program began in
. Under this system five to
twenty-five mile trenches will be dug in the Western
U.S. Each trench
will conceal a missile which can be moved back and forth at random, the
assumption being that the Soviets would exhaust their
ICBMs
trying to “find” the missile. The problem is that the Pentagon scenario omits
to consider the fact “that a 20-megaton burst, such as that produced by a
Soviet SS-9 ICBM,
would leave a 75-foot high layer of dirt on the lid if it struck as far as
half a mile away. Missile-X would probably be entombed unless it were planned
as a first-strike weapon.” Counterforce at 27. Moreover, the
trench system once again creates insurmountable verification problems since
“there would be no way the Soviets would be certain that there was only one
missile in any given trench.” Counterforce at 27.
The Trident submarine launched missile system is a floating vessel of
destruction. The 560 foot long Trident carries twenty-four submarine launched
ballistic missiles (SLCMs) each with a
range of 4,000 nautical miles and each equipped with eight 100-kiloton
warheads. The proposed modifications of the Trident submarine, or Trident-2,
carries twenty-four Trident-2 missiles, each with a range of 6,000 nautical
miles, and each capable of “delivering seventeen super-accurate
MARV
warheads to within as few feet as many targets. Counterforce at
25, 26. As Aldridge describes it:
One Trident submarine will be able to destroy 408 cities or military
targets with a blast five times that which was unleashed over Hiroshima.
A fleet of thirty Trident submarines would be able to deliver an
unbelievable 12,240 nuclear warheads against an enemy’s territory — or 30
times the number originally thought sufficient for strategic deterrence.
Clearly, if Trident attains the accuracies the Navy seeks, it will
constitute the ultimate first-strike weapon. Counterstrike at
26.
Once each nation possesses weapons capable of a first-strike, then the risks
of a nuclear war escalate in a geometric progression. The dilemma is that (1)
since each is capable of a first-strike which would presumably cripple the
other’s ability to retaliate, (2) since only 100
ABMs are allowed per side, and (3) since
cruise missiles and other systems can penetrate enemy territory undetected by
radar, then each side will be vulnerable to a crippling first-strike attack
thus tempting each side to devastate the “enemy” before the “enemy”
devastates them. This scenario of mutual nuclear insecurity is only years
ahead. Although the United States is ahead of the Soviets in developing a
first-strike capability, Counterforce at 59, it is only a matter
of time before the Soviets possess an effective first-strike capability.
Perhaps, in anticipation of that day, President Carter announced a
U.S. first nuclear
strike doctrine in his address to the General Assembly of the
U.N. from the
rostrum of the General Assembly on .
…I hereby declare on behalf of the United States that we will not use
nuclear weapons except in self-defense; that is, in circumstances of an
actual nuclear or conventional attack on the United States, our territories
or armed forces, or such an attack on our allies.
New York Times, Transcript of President Carter’s
Address to United Nations General Assembly,
p. A12.
The doctrine is extremely far-reaching:
It announces that the
U.S.
“will” use nuclear weapons (he did not say, for example, “might”
or “reserves the right” or similar words);
Nuclear weapons would be used also in case of attack by “conventional”
weapons;
They would be used also in case of attack by conventional weapons on
U.S. forces
stationed, flying over, or on the high seas, anywhere in the world — for
example, in situations similar to
the Pueblo
incident.
Mr. Carter did not use the language of Article 51 of the
U.N. Charter,
which allows individual or collective self-defense only “if an armed
attack occurs”; the formulation “in circumstances of an
actual attack” is not used in any pertinent international instrument.
Implicit in the phrase is that the
U.S. might use
nuclear weapons also if no armed attack “has occurred”, so that it could
conceivably cover also preventive use of nuclear weapons.
Since the doctrine announces first use of nuclear weapons regardless of
the results (perhaps a
U.S. Air Force
plane was shot at, but not hit?) and, in any case, severity, duration,
and character of the “actual attack”, is not discussed, the doctrine
violates the general principle of proportionality.
The doctrine does not explicitly state that the nuclear weapons would be
used exclusively against the attacking state. Is that omission
deliberate? In other words, is it a revival of Secretary of State Dulles’
doctrine of “massive retaliation of our own choosing”, that is, against a
nation which did not attack but which the
U.S. would
unilaterally hold responsible for the attack?
The doctrine does not say that the attack, to which the
U.S. would
reply with nuclear weapons, was illegal (If a
U.S. bomber or
a bomber of any
U.S. ally
would penetrate the territory of another state, the latter would act
legally in shooting it down).
The doctrine does not refer to the obligation to seek peaceful
settlement before taking such enormous steps, which would be in
contravention of Article 33 of the
U.N.
Charter.
This coupled with the authority of the President under the
War Powers Act, who is therein allowed
to engage in hostilities without declaration of war for a period of 60 to
90 days, violates the Hague Convention
No. 3 of
.
The American nuclear firepower outlined above provides ample basis for
concluding that such systems are violations of international law. (This
analysis was formulated by
Prof. John H.E. Fried,
Former Special Legal Assistant,
U.S. War Crimes
Tribunal, Nuremberg). Dr.
Fried, in a recent paper presented to the Ⅺth Congress, International
Association of Democratic Jurists in Malta, concluded that a first nuclear
strike is forbidden by existing international law because nuclear war (1)
has no rational war aim — its aim is destruction, (2) would prevent obedience
to fundamental rules concerning the conduct of hostilities, (3) would prevent
the carrying out of post battle obligations of belligerents, (4) would make
it impossible to respect the rights of neutral states. The danger of
accidental unintended nuclear war is paramount, causing the dictates of
public conscience to prohibit a first nuclear strike before it takes
place. (See also Art. 18, 1,
Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilians in Time of War
().)
International Law Imposes a Duty Upon Individual Citizens to Disassociate
Themselves from Violations of Such Law
Since the Nuremberg principles have become a part of international law, the
notion of individual responsibility for war crimes has achieved wide
acknowledgment. (See below). Under the Nuremberg Charter, it is
no defense to claim one was merely following orders. Nuremberg
Charter, supra,
Art. 7. Individual
responsibility attaches if “a moral choice was possible”.
Ex Parte Quirin 317
U.S. 1
(1942).
Professor Falk has found that case law developing during the War Crimes
Trials after World War Ⅱ “established that the zone of individual
responsibility for crimes against peace extended well beyond principal
policy-making and state leaders.” Falk, “The Nuremberg Defense in the
Pentagon Papers Case”, Crimes of War (Falk, Kolko and Liften,
eds.,
) 231. See,
e.g. “The Ministries Case,” Ⅻ–ⅩⅣ,
Trials of War Criminals (). In
the Flick Case, which involved prosecutions of German
industrialists, the War Crimes Tribunal stated:
[I]t is urged that individuals holding no public offices and not
representing the state, do not, and should not come within the class of
persons criminally responsible for a breach of international law. It is
asserted that international law is a matter wholly outside the work,
interest, and knowledge of private individuals. The distinction is unsound.
International law, as such, binds every citizen just as does ordinary
municipal law… The application of international law to individuals is no
novelty.
Quoted in Ⅱ The Law of War: A Documentary History 1283 (L.
Friedman ed.
) (hereinafter Friedman).
Furthermore, the Tokyo War Crimes Trial Decision, reprinted in
Friedman at 1029, suggests that anyone with knowledge of
illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential
criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative
measures to prevent the commission of the crimes. (emphasis added).
Under these considerations an individual American citizen is in violation of
international law if he or she consents to cooperate with any government
which produces, possesses or uses nuclear weapons. (Part of the material
included here is from Graber, “The International Law Defense”,
Pacificus Papers,
Vol. 2,
No. 5, Colorado Springs,
Center on Law and Pacifism, ).
The Applicability of International Law to Taxpayers is Proven
The payment of war taxes to the United States for the years
would have
constituted complicity in the commission of crimes against peace, crimes
against humanity, war crimes in Vietnam and in nuclear planning. A moral
choice to refuse to be in complicity with the commission of such crimes was
available to the Petitioner and he exercised that choice and refused to pay a
war tax. On the point of the nature and extent of individual responsibility,
the Nuremberg Judgment states: “The very essence of the charter
is that individuals have international duties which transcend the national
obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.”
F.R.D.
69, 110 ().
Fundamental fairness requires that the Petitioner be permitted to rely on
any argument arising from his accountability under international law. That
such a policy extends to the Nuremberg Principles is confirmed by the former
Assistant General Counsel for International Affairs of the Department of
Defense, who acknowledged that “from an international criminal law point of
view… the Nuremberg norms are part of our municipal law and may be enforced
by our courts.” Quoted in Falk, A Global Approach to National
Policy, 112 (). However, Petitioner
has not been given an opportunity to present evidence concerning the
questions of fact contained in this Writ before any court.
Individual liability is determined on the basis of knowledge of war crimes
coupled with inaction. See “The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Decision,” Ⅱ The
Law of War: A Documentary History, 1029 (Friedmann
ed.
). It follows, then, that anyone with
knowledge of war crimes and the opportunity to do something about it is
potentially criminally liable unless that person takes steps to prevent
further commission of the crimes. Even if these principles do not impose an
affirmative duty to act, the imposition of criminal liability on persons
having knowledge of war crimes must create a right in persons to act in a
prudent manner in an effort to halt what they reasonably believe to be
international crimes.
In a due process sense, it is enough that the Petitioner reasonably believed
that the domestic law was superseded by international law. Because domestic
law must be construed in conformity with international law whenever such a
construction is possible, Borchard, “The Relation Between International Law
and Municipal Law,” 27 Va.
L.
Rev., 137
(), it violates due process to subject the
Petitioner to possible criminal liability for tax deficiency in the face of
the contradictory claims on his behavior posed by the domestic and
international law. Due process does not permit the imposition of criminal
liability for tax deficiency (which is possible under the Internal Revenue
Code) for an act intended to terminate complicity in war crimes and its
preparation when the act was justified under relevant principles of
international law.
In , at Nuremberg, Germany, the United
States participated in the prosecutions of persons under principles of
international law imposing criminal liability for deference to municipal law
when they knew, or should have known that their government was
committing violations of international law. It violates the most basic
principles of fundamental fairness and due process for the United States,
while continuing to participate in the punishment of persons convicted of
violating the Nuremberg Principles, to refuse to acknowledge the right of
taxpayer to refuse war taxes in violation of municipal law established by the
Nuremberg Military Tribunal [sic].
Arguments Invoked Against the Applicability of International Law are
Invalid
Usual rebuttals to the international law argument are stated as follows:
(1) “International law does not apply to American courts unless it concerns a
treaty not superseded by a statute.”
As presented aforesaid, this is not so and moreover in the instant case
insofar as the Nuremberg Charter is concerned it has been made part of
domestic law by its incorporation in 59
U.S.
Stat. 1544. (2) “The provisions of the Nuremberg Charter are strictly
limited. Crimes Against Peace only apply to ‘major’ war criminals, and War
Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity are limited to wartime.” In respect to
Crimes Against Peace, Petitioner argues that 18
U.S.C. 960
makes any person within the United States criminally liable. In
respect to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, The Report of the
International Law Commission () at
Principle Ⅵ, paragraph 122 states that “The Tribunal did not, however,
exclude the possibility that crimes against humanity might be considered
before a war.” Finally, as to all three classes of Nuremberg crimes, the
limitation placed upon the jurisdiction of the then court by itself were
self-imposed flowing from its discretionary power due to a desire to strictly
construe the charges because of the initial use of the Charter, the
ex post facto charge against its use, giving the benefit of
the doubt to defendants for that reason. The literal words of the Charter do
not make such discretion mandatory upon future judges or interpretors as this
Court.
International law is progressive. See 2 Mueller, International Criminal
Law, () at 263. No such conditions
apply 35 years later and individuals such as business men and women, ordinary
soldiers or members of war organizations would have been of a sufficient
status then and now to be considered an accessory. See Ⅱ Whitman, Digest
of International Law 885–87, . The
last paragraph of Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter concerns complicity and
states that “…accomplices participating in the formulation… of a common plan
to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed
by any persons in execution of such plan.” See also Mueller at
269. (3) The argument is tirelessly repeated that International Law prohibits
only the use and not the possession of nuclear arms. But the
aforesaid chronology of applicable international law provisions vitiates that
myth. “First Strike” planning puts the lie to that rebuttal forever. If the
law must wait on “use” in this type of case there will be no law or people
left to adjudicate. (4) Finally, these arguments are usually rebutted, if all
else fails, on the basis that they are political in nature and
non-justiciable. This rebuttal is spurious on its face for this Petitioner’s
plea is a plea much more than political. It is a plea for humanity and against
the super-powers of the
U.S. and
U.S.S.R., lest we find our planet destroyed for want of “legal standing”.
Thus the involvement of the United States in Vietnam war crimes and the
formulation of current plans for nuclear war violate international and
constitutional law, and will make Petitioner an accessory to both and
criminally liable if he is forced to pay war taxes for said plans and
preparations. Thus Purvis concludes his argument on international law.
Durland noted that Purvis also made an argument that a domestic statute that
said “Whoever within the United States knowingly begins or furnishes the money
for any military enterprise to be carried on from thence against a territory
or dominion of any foreign state or people with whom the United States is at
peace shall be imprisoned,” also applied to his case.
The law of war is so adorable.
I can’t help but shake my head, sigh, and give a bittersweet smile at the
well-intentioned ridiculousness of it all. I almost sympathize with the White
House torture lawyers who looked at international law and found it “obsolete
and quaint.” Apparently the cutting edge international law thinkers a century
ago seriously contemplated a scene in which officers would lead their troops
to battle with something like, “Okay everybody, to the trenches… but don’t
forget that it’s forbidden by law to kill or wound treacherously!”
And after the 20th century played itself out
anyway, we’re apparently still supposed to take the Hague Convention
seriously.
But there is still something satisfying in trying to hold the
U.S. government to
the principles it so pompously crafted as it was collecting scalps after World
War Ⅱ — watching those principles dissolve in a reductio ad
absurdum where the absurd part is expecting Uncle Sam to agree that what’s
good for his own goose is what was good for der Adler.
Durland complains that “The Supreme Court refused to hear
Purvis and probably will continue to refuse to
recognize the law because the court acts solely out of power when confronted
with morality.” While his conclusion may be valid, I think there may be more
to it than this.
Durland’s “writ” is strangely writ. It is hard for me to imagine Durland
expecting the Supreme Court justices to be impressed by his citations of a
Playboy interview with George McGovern or a
Progressive magazine estimate of the size of the
U.S. nuclear
arsenal. Much of the discussion of arms technology and arms control
difficulties seems not to have much to do with the legal argument and would be
more at home in a for-the-choir think tank article. There’s precious little
citation of legal precedents but plenty of quotation of books and essays and
law review articles and appeals to “the most basic principles of fundamental
fairness” and the like.
Perhaps it wasn’t really intended for the audience to which it was ostensibly
delivered, but then why go through such fuss? It seems to me if you’re going
to bother to try to take a legal argument up the court system, you ought to
try to craft it in a form that will be persuasive to judges. As it is, because
Purvis lost his case and was unable to get the courts to take his argument
seriously, the legal legacy of Purvis
v.
Commissioner is as a precedent for the idea that
…the act of paying taxes does not amount to complicity in any war crime
committed by the Government. [The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals citing
Purvis in its ruling against war tax resisters
Robert and Linda Randall in ]
Robert Randall has been investigating the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”) from the perspective of a war tax resister looking for new ways of interfacing with the tax code.
He recently wrote up his findings for the wtr-s mailing list.
His conclusion: “the Affordable Care Act, in addition to offering many of us health insurance when before we could get none, also offers new possibilities for war tax resisters to reduce, convert, or even eliminate taxes which go to war.
We should include this method in our long list of methods for doing wtr and encourage our counselees to seriously consider the pros and cons of using this law.
We should also develop additional strategies using the ACA…”
Randall explains the complicated steps you need to take to enroll for insurance in a way that is most efficient for getting ACA tax credits.
He also describes a variety of techniques you may be able to use to make the ACA supplement your chosen form of tax resistance.
Some links of interest:
Tax Resistance Heats Up in the U.S.
Allen D. Madison of the University of South Dakota Law School has written up a good summary of The Legal Consequences of Noncompliance with Federal Tax Laws [in the U.S.].
There’s an important difference between what the IRS can do and what it will do, but if you want to know what it can do, this paper is an authoritative source.
If Stephen Miller and Steven Bannon and Trump continue to run the country and
we have international wars and we have a government that won’t comply with
court orders, we are going to need tax resistance. Tax resistance is the kind
of thing, like general strikes, that people toss around really easily and
say, “We should just not pay our taxes,” but, again, I think this moment is
pretty unique in American history. Tax resistance has been a part of the
history of the United States of America since the beginning… Like a general
strike, it [can] happen if everybody is going to do it. People need to get
together and create a means by which folks can actually feel comfortable not
paying their taxes, putting it into a separate account and getting receipts
for it and all doing it together as a collective political statement.…
Tax resistance is something [with which] we can break their backs, and when
and if it is time, we should do it together.
A group of people in the Netherlands called “Belastingstaking voor Klimaat” (“Tax Strike for Climate”) have decided to no longer “silently pay for global warming” via government subsidies of fossil fuels.
They are refusing to pay 5% of their income tax, as that is their rough estimate of how much of central government spending (and tax breaks) subsidizes CO2-generating companies: about €17.5 billion per year.
They are also using the official tax adjustment and appeals process to press their claims
The “Don’t Pay U.K.” has been ramping up its public protests. One of their tactics is to stage protests in warmed public buildings (to highlight how prohibitively expensive it is to heat their own homes). In one action, the protesters sang a song to the tune of Your Cheatin’ Heart including the lyrics “your heating chart will tell on you”.
American war tax resisters Robert Randall and Marjorie Nelson have died.
Randall was a regular participant at NWTRCC events like their periodic national meetings and the School of the Americas protests, and is one of a small, select group of war tax resisters who have had their homes seized by the IRS for their refusal.
Marjorie Nelson worked as a physician with a Quaker war relief program in Vietnam during the American war there, and survived 50 days as a prisoner of war after she was captured during the Tet Offensive.
In she tangled with the IRS in court after the agency hit her with a “frivolous filing” penalty for taking a “war tax deduction” on her tax return.
In response to a surge in Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship, the U.S. Department of State abruptly raised its fees for processing such renunciations from $450 up to $2,350 some years back.
Now, in response to a lawsuit by some expats who claim this amounts to unjust coercion and a violation of their 5th and 8th Amendment rights, Rina Bitter, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, told the court “the Department intends to pursue rule-making to reduce the fee for processing CLN requests from the current amount of $2,350 to the previous fee of $450.”
Before “Abu Ghraib” and “Guantánamo” and “extraordinary rendition” became the shorthand ways of referring to America’s torture policy, those in the know used the phrase “School of the Americas” to mean much the same thing.
