"Laws, Taken To Absurdity, Become Slavery"

from "In Defense of Rural America"

By Ron Ewart, President

National Association of Rural Landowners

and nationally recognized author and speaker on freedom and property rights issues.

As published on Newswithviews, June 19.2013

https://www.newswithviews.com/Ewart/ron107.htm

This article is also available on our website at https://www.narlo.org/idarchives/063013.html

"By just sheer numbers, the more laws that are written, the less likely the entire population will even know about the laws, or understand them, or know of their consequences or penalties for violation, much less be in compliance with them. The consequence of too many laws is that huge segments of the public are totally unaware of their existence or their effects. And yet, under the law, ignorance of the law is not a defense. Then, when the hapless individual comes face-to-face with the law, it results in anger and frustration for that individual and a spiraling degradation of freedom and liberty for all of us. And worse, the more laws there are, the more opportunities for emotionally and financially draining lawsuits between aggrieved parties, egged on by lawyers who make their living off of human weaknesses and interpreting laws that no one else can understand." Ron Ewart

Every day, government tightens the screws on the American people by passing and then enforcing new law, after new law, after new law. All these laws cover every aspect of human behavior. There is now nothing we do that isn't covered by some law, restriction, or regulation. Politicians, local, state, or federal, never saw a new law to restrict the people they didn't like.

Take for example the IRS Code that one source estimates to contain 73,608 pages. The code changes dramatically every year with the Congress passing one social engineering law after another. With the IRS now being the policeman for Obama's HellCare system, it could grow by another 70,000 pages.

Every year, taxpayers dutifully sign the "perjury statement" on the back page of Form 1040 wherein it states:

"Under penalty of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief they are true, correct and complete."

Perjury is serious. Under federal law, perjury is a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to five years.

Ladies and gentlemen, how could a taxpayer know that their income tax return was true, correct and complete when there is no way a normal, reasonable and prudent person could possibly understand all of the tens of thousands of conflicting, confusing, contradictory and convoluted tax laws, even if a tax professional prepared the return for them? By signing the perjury statement on Form 1040 you could be unknowingly committing perjury when there is no way you could possibly understand all of the constantly changing tax laws contained in the IRS Tax Code, nor could you ever understand them in your lifetime. Further, it is highly questionable just how much the tax preparer knows about the tax code that prepares your tax return for you. You have know way of knowing whether he or she gets it right and yet YOU are signing the perjury statement.

Agents for the IRS don't even know how to interpret the tax code because of its complexity and it's been proven over and over again that if you ask 10 different IRS agents for a determination of a specific tax question, you will get 10 different answers.

One other thing. In a court of law, anything you say or write can and will be used against you. Anything you put on your tax return can and will be used against you. Under the tax code you can be found guilty by a unilateral decision of the IRS and remain guilty, subject to fines and imprisonment, unless or until you can prove your innocence. When you sign the perjury statement on Form 1040, you waive your 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination, because if the IRS decides that you have made a mistake on your return, they can, in their sole discretion, construe that you did so on purpose and thereby make you subject to the penalties of perjury. In such event you would be forced to prove your innocence, wherein any other case of law, it is the government's duty to prove your guilt. This isn't being a good and compliant American citizen. This is being an American slave.

While you are dutifully paying your taxes and signing the perjury statement on Form 1040, the IRS is handing out over $46,000,000 in tax refunds to 23,994 illegal aliens, all at one address in Atlanta, GA, not to mention giving Conservative groups a bad time. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Feel better now?

(see: https://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/irs-sent-46-million-in-tax-refunds-to-23994-unauthorized-aliens-all-at-the-same-address-in-atlanta/)

A Disclaimer: The above information about the IRS perjury statement on Form 1040 is only to enlighten the reader about this one specific issue. We are not recommending, advising, or counseling anyone to do anything else but to follow the law. In addition, if you don't sign the perjury statement on Form 1040, the IRS can fine youi $5,000 each person signing the return (or not signing the return), per occurrence.

The foregoing just describes the IRS tax code for one very simple case. There are millions of other laws that control everything we do, consume, drive, pay, live, procreate and eliminate. Many laws are written at the insistence of lobbying or special interest groups with very narrow and purposely hidden agendas. The public never has an opportunity for real input and society as a whole is not benefited. Partisan politics often compromises a new law into meaningless, often conflicting legislation (think IRS tax code), leaving loopholes over which lawyers can argue over for decades at taxpayer's expense, or taxpayers can be tripped up and their lives ruined.

Every time legislators write a new law, no matter at what level of government, they immediately trigger three very costly events: 1) Increase government employment to analyze, research and study not only the science or existing law to justify the new law, but to monitor the effects of the law; 2) Increase government employment to administer or defend the law; and 3) Increase government employment to enforce the law.

Therefore, each new law adds to government employment and government continuously grows, along with the cost, exponentially. Further, many laws can and should trigger a constitutional test. Unfortunately, constitutional tests are rare but in such event, very expensive lawyers get involved on both sides to argue their case before lower courts and then on to a state Supreme Court, appellate courts and ultimately the Federal Supreme Court. In almost all cases the taxpayers pick up the tab, all the result from passing just one more new law.

Resist! Resist! Resist!

Nevertheless, a few people are finally waking up to all this law passing and taking action to thwart the lawmakers and the enforcers, by resisting through every lawful means. Take for example, the story of Andrea Elliot of New York state, who "esplained" it to a couple of nosy agriculture enforcer/inspectors.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"NY Dairy Farmer Turns the Tables When the Ag Inspectors Arrive for a Mystery Visit"

Andrea Elliott had been writing emails to farm associations, her Congressman, and members of the U.S. House and Senate agriculture committees-- -all urging that a proposed farm bill not include funding for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). She and her husband, Jim, own a dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and she made it plain in her notes that she is adamantly opposed to registering the farm's 80 cows under the federal program.

She received a call from an inspector with the New York Department of Food and Markets in Albany that he planned to come by the farm for a special inspection, based on "a complaint" made to the department's Division of Milk Control and Dairy Services.

Andrea couldn't imagine who might have complained, and what the complaint might have been about. Her farm, Crystal Brook Farms, sells nearly all its milk to a local creamery for pasteurization. She sells a few gallons of raw milk occasionally to individuals who stop in with their own containers, under New York rules that allow the sale of 25 gallons a month without a permit.

On a Tuesday the inspector, Bradley Lyle Houck, arrived from Albany, two hours away, together with her regular local dairy inspector, and Andrea was prepared. As soon as they arrived, "I turned on my video camera. I think that made them a little uncomfortable. "

Then, she says, "I asked the state inspector to fill out my form." Her form is a three-page "public service questionnaire" that asks for the inspector's identity, his principal reason for doing the inspection, how the information he gathers will be used, and other such data. "He shook his head and refused," says Andrea. "He said, 'I have to be authorized by Albany.'" He tried to make a call on his cell phone, but couldn't complete the call because the farm area has no cell reception.

Andrea persisted. I said, "This is our property and I can require you to fill it out."

NOTE: Andrea is right. There is federal law to back up her assertion. (See Public Law 93-579 as codified under 5 USC Section 552(a).

The agent offered his state ID and badge.

Andrea moved on. "I asked him why he was here and he said a complaint was received in Albany. "What was the complaint? "He said he couldn't tell me."

Who filed the complaint? He wouldn't tell me. He just wouldn't go any further. He said "all complaints that come into Albany are treated as confidential. "

"I asked him what statute allows a complaint to be treated as confidential. He said he couldn't quote a statute." At that point, the inspector asked if they could talk off-camera. Andrea declined.

"He said, 'I guess the best thing would be for us to come back another time." The two got back into their car and took off.

Andrea adds, "At no time did I deny him the inspection. I didn't ask him to leave. All I did was ask him for specific reasons for the inspection.. .I have a right to know who my accuser is."

Andrea seems to have added an entirely new dimension to the agricultural inspection, especially one with such an intriguing coincidence connecting it to NAIS.

Did Andrea win a small victory, you bet. Because she resisted. Will the inspectors be back? Probably. Is Andrea prepared? Of course, because she believes in the sanctity of her property and God-given property rights and is willing to defend them by challenging and questioning the government enforcer/inspectors' authority.

Do what Andrea did. If government agents do show up, take pictures, record their voices, use a video camera or other device and get them on the record. Don't be shy. Ask them for their ID and photograph it? Get the license number and description of their vehicle. Ask them if they have a warrant? Question why they are there, what is their legal authority to be there, by local, state or federal statute and have at-the-ready a Public Service Questionnaire for them to fill out and sign. If they do fill it out, make sure they sign and date it. If you don't feel comfortable with them being on your property, you have the right to ask them to leave and not come back. Tell them that if they do come back, you will swear out a trespass complaint against them. If you are interested in knowing more about trespass law, check out our website page HERE. We also have a strongly-worded statement you can read to any government agent that comes on your property on our website HERE. In addition to trespass law information and the above statement, we have prepared a Public Servant Questionnaire that is available HERE. Know your rights or government will trample all over you.

If people just blindly comply with every law and every edict handed down by government, no matter how unreasonable or how stupid the law, or even whether the law is constitutional, Americans risk being enslaved by millions of laws about which they know nothing, just like a spider wraps his hapless victim in a cocoon of silk, preparing it for future dining.

All this law making and enforcing is not going to stop unless the American people get their backs up and vigorously resist it. If government is left to its own resources, Americans will eventually find themselves in a police state, if we aren't there already. There are powerful national and international forces at work here and it is going to take the power of the masses to stop it, that is if the masses can ever come together on anything. Don’t let yourself be wrapped in a cocoon of laws created by a government that has gone mad with law making. Resist! Resist! Resist!

There is an inviolate law in nature. Complexity in organisms can lead to the emergence of order. Biological evolution and diversity of life on Earth is a result of that law. However, it has also been shown that too much complexity in these organisms, in almost all cases, leads to chaos and finally extinction.

Ultimately, if we continue on the path we tread, we will become as a rogue spider, spinning a web from which we shall be forever entwined. Could that be our final destination? Are we to choke on our own obsessive/compulsive drive to complexity through law creation, or can we learn from the laws of nature?

Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO) (https://www.narlo.org) a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State and dedicated to restoring, maintaining and defending property rights for urban and rural landowners. Mr. Ewart can be reached for comment at ron@www.narlo.org or by 'phone at 1-800 682-7848.

NOTE: Feel free to forward this e-mail to others you know, if you deem it appropriate. If you would like to be added to our e-mail list, simply insert ADD in the subject line and return the e-mail to us. Be sure to include your full name, county and state you live in at the top of the e-mail. We do not send our column to blind e-mail addresses.

If you have received this message for the first time, or you have decided you no longer want to receive our "In Defense of Rural America" column, insert REMOVE in the subject line and return the e-mail to us. Your e-mail address will be removed immediately.

To Publishers: You have our permission to re-print this article (or excerpts therefrom), provided we are given credit as the author and our website (www.narlo.org) appears with the article, or the excerpt. It is not necessary to include the banner with the article.