Reasonable Action
Welcome! Below is an article by permission of Bill Huff, Editor of the SAP Fellowship news letter "Reasonable Action". Thank you Bill and SAPF. This usually 24 page newsletter comes out about every other month. Below is a small sampling of the many excellent articles from our news letter available only to our members. You are in store for a treat! As members we receive some of the best insightful discussions on issues related to our liberty, as you will soon discover. As citizens of this historically great country of ours let's be sure it remains ours by taking "Reasonable Action"! Enjoy!
Jim
Exam Certified Independent Representative for the
Save A Patriot Fellowship
"Reasonable Action"
Newsletter of the SAPF
The following is a sample article from a past edition of the Fellowship newsletter, "Reasonable Action." (Subscriptions are available to SAPF members only.) All articles Copyrighted at Common Law by Save-A-Patriot Fellowship.
ARTICLE
AMERICAN LAWYERS WAKING UP?!
The combination of courage and honor is rare in the American Bar or on the Bench. It would seem many lawyers and judges believe they can make a comfortable living from their efforts well within the bounds of the status quo. No need to make waves until there is a real shortage of ambulances. With Fagin (the villain of Dickens’ Oliver Twist), they seem to agree: You’ve got to pick a pocket or two!
But once in a while new statesmen like Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams, arrive on the scene; those who still hold to John Locke’s philosophy that the common man needs no god-like rulers, that (left to himself with his property secured) he can manage to take care of himself quite well thank you:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
This is a far cry from the socialist co-dependent utopia envisioned by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Once in a while a new voice shouts: NOT WITH MY MONEY YOU DON’T!
Such a voice is that of one Steffan Bertsch, a Washington State Attorney who is prepared to shout his message from the rooftops. Steffan has put the governor of Washington, the Washington State Bar Association and various elected and appointed officials on notice that the IRS has been seizing the property of Washington State citizens fraudulently for decades.
We realize the facts Steffan has recently discovered are not new to our readership, but the way he is pursuing it and the degree of his tenacity and enthusiasm is refreshing. He has clearly broken ranks with many who claim to be practicing law. It would seem he now wants to enforce it.
Like the United States Marine Corps, we are looking for a few good men and women. If we had to reform all the lawyers and judges our plight would truly be hopeless. Those who have already given up, based on sheer numbers and the apparent lack of financial resources, are no more accurate in their predictions than they would have been in 1776. Tories are Tories for all sorts of reasons, none of them particularly honorable. As long as there are still those who will stand for the right in spite of the status quo, there will be both hope and ultimate success. Our role is to keep faith with those who steadfastly resist tyranny. The lone patriot who stands up and says THIS IS THE LAW, is the worst nightmare of the petty tyrant and the megalomaniac alike. He has his counterpart in every age. The anticipation of his appearance in greater and greater numbers is the reason we continue to teach the law with diligence and patience. In due season we shall reap if we faint not.
For some time we have been claiming that no reasonable and honest person can disagree with us after he has seen the documents and understood the situation regarding tax law from our perspective. We stand virtually alone in advocating the application of the tax laws of the United States as written. While many other groups advocate abolishing the IRS, we simply advocate their being confined within lawful limits. We continue to emphasize that, although their ranks might be significantly reduced as they are relieved from the pressure of trying to collect certain taxes from those upon whom they are not lawfully imposed, they can still perform an important function if they can gather enough courage and competence to return to the original plan of taxing only foreigners [nonresident aliens] here and Americans living and working abroad [still absolute limits within our tax laws as written].
The most important areas now sorely lacking are in the knowledge, principle and resolve of our civil officers within the State governments. Who is the chief executive officer in any particular State? Every elementary school child should know the answer: the governor. But when we phrase it another way more in keeping with his constitutional responsibilities: What civil officer within the State government is chiefly responsible for the protection of life and property within his State and therefore duty bound to interpose, if and when the property or lives of the citizens of his State are being placed in jeopardy? The answer should be the same, but because of ignorance, compromise, or lack of principle, the aforementioned answer certainly doesn’t immediately come to mind or lips. The governors seem to be more conveniently disposed to crowd each other at the federal trough, putting their snouts where they don’t belong on more than one occasion.
The normal course of events is bringing the right kind of people to us on an ever increasing basis. The Save-A-Patriot Fellowship is the natural place to go for those who would advocate a return to the rule of law with a comprehensive understanding of the tax laws playing a fundamental role. The old math says that government cannot act unconstitutionally if it cannot be funded except by the means and within the strict limits set by the Constitution. All other conjecture about controlling the size of government without limiting its funds (although they may sound sophisticated or even "new"), is the quintessence of naiveté.
An S.A.P. member who is also an independent representative of the Fellowship, has for some time used the services of a certain lawyer, Steffan M. Bertsch of Lake Stevens, WA. Steffan like most other lawyers trained in our law schools, was never taught much with regard to the limitations of the taxing provisions of the United States Constitution and the tax laws made in pursuance thereof. Steffan provided quality service in other matters of law and therefore our member patiently waited for good opportunities to pass along information about the tax laws. This finally resulted in Steffan’s making a commitment to spend a little time in the law library so he could help his "misguided" client free himself of his obviously meritless ideas about the tax laws. When the opportunity arose, Steffan was off to the law library to disprove the thesis expounded in our familiar flyer containing twenty-eight facts about the tax laws, the Constitution, and the misapplication of tax law, that has factored heavily into our present national malaise. We are never surprised at the results of these excursions into the law library to prove us wrong, but we are delighted by the results in the case of Steffan Bertsch. It seems Steffan doesn’t believe in keeping a new found truth to himself. In fact, he has every intention of teaching it on the radio talk show he personally hosts.
After realizing what he had found, Steffan decided it required action, not only by himself, but by the Governor of Washington, the Attorney General, the Bar Association and finally the Media. He resolved to put the civil officers of his State on notice that the IRS is routinely seizing property from the citizens of the State under color of law. Before laying his case out before the public, Steffan chose to write various individuals and the Bar Association of Washington State giving them every opportunity to get involved with him in the effort to restore the liberties of his fellow citizens. Each was asked to respond by either correcting his [Steffan’s] errors (if indeed he could be shown to be in error), or engaging themselves in the proper enforcement of the law regarding citizens’ property rights and due process.
The purpose of this article is to pave the way for the next reasonable person, lawyer or not, and the next, and the next, to a better understanding of the law and the facts. Steffan, like many of us at first, wanted to know whether he was going out of his mind. How could all this information be hidden for such a long time? How could a fraud on this scale be pulled off? There must be a hook somewhere.
I remember a tape I heard some time ago about a former CIA agent who had run afoul of the status quo and part of the consequences were that his neighbors became aware of his secret alter ego. He related how one of his long-time neighbors walked up to him and said, "I never knew you were a secret agent!" To which he replied, "That’s the idea... it’s supposed to be a secret."
The tax laws of the United States, are not supposed to be a secret. In fact, they are not. But because of decades of obfuscation and government agents who misapply the law, willfully or ignorantly, and the help of a co-opted tax industry, the public is functioning as though they are cosmic top secret.
Long ago Shakespeare had coined: "Tho’ this be madness, there’s method in it." Once in a while someone comes along who can make sense out of apparent nonsense. Someone is presumptuous enough to insist that in a nation of written laws only, the people must be able to understand the laws in order to obey them; that lawful government must be limited to the protection of life and property. Someone is naive enough to believe the ancient maxims of law and persistent enough to dig down to the bedrock of absolutes through the rubble of decades of decline brought on by relativism and deliberate obfuscation. It is our hope that Steffan will continue to have the irreverence for arbitrary authority that drove Thomas Paine and the fire of liberty that burned deep in the hearts of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams. Would to God that we might see more men in our age. It wouldn’t bother us one little bit to find real men and women who are also lawyers and judges. The insidious metastasis of socialism has eaten away enough of our national substance by itself, but the real travesty is in our allowing its growth without even the assent of our written laws. Socialism is repugnant to our Constitution therefore it could never go through it - only around. America labors under imaginary chains. Our liberties are being surrendered through ignorance - not law.
One might ask, (and neophytes commonly do): "Well, if the written laws don’t allow them to tax us directly, why don’t they just fix it so they can?" While this seems like a simple common sense issue, asking it indicates that more education is necessary. If, as we contend, the IRS has been misapplying the law, not blatantly disregarding it altogether, any effort to "fix it" by creating new requirements in the written laws, would seal our argument that the Emperor is in fact naked; that since the inception of the de facto income tax, after the non-ratified and illusory Sixteenth Amendment, which is relied upon by the tax industry [an oxymoron] as the original fountainhead of "direct" income taxation within the States of the Union, lie has been gingerly placed upon lie, to form an artifice that only appears to be sophisticated when it is actually more compound than complex [just like this sentence]. Nevertheless, the dutiful repetition of the credo that the Sixteenth Amendment created some new power to tax citizens (when in fact the United States supreme Court has held that it "conferred no new power of taxation"), provides a basis for faith for those who have a vested interest; who want to be profitably deceived. It might be stated: the tax guides designed by the IRS to "explain" the tax laws, have become the opiate of the tax industry. These provide the little catechisms so necessary for them to inculcate their doctrines religiously. As long as they can feed themselves on lies, they may be able to keep a conscience from sprouting. In that context, the written law appears at first heretical to them. In most cases they wouldn’t recognize it if it bit them, having never so much as seen it.
Martin Luther had his ninety-five Theses, and we have our twenty-eight Facts (and now our Just the Facts video), and they are not going away. Every time an honest lawyer, who has been deceived by the establishment, discovers these truths and (as in the case of Mr. Bertsch), is in possession of a solid backbone, we are one more good legal mind closer to victory. You see, there are many lawyers, and even IRS employees, who want their children and grandchildren to grow up in a land of liberty, just as we do. They only need to see the information that has been systematically withheld from them. When the right ingredients and conditions are combined, the rest is spontaneous combustion.
Breaking the Case-Law Umbilical Cord
We keep rehearsing a few basic principles of law that are absolutely essential:
1) Case-Law [so-called] is only binding upon the litigants to any given case. This is only a re-affirmation of our fundamental Republican doctrine of the separation of powers. Legislators make laws, judges adjudicate cases. If we give assent to judge-made law at any level, we contribute to the beginnings of judicial tyranny. First among those to condemn this perversion should be all those who hold offices within legislative bodies. To allow judges to set aside legislation routinely [de facto] is to be guilty of non-feasance in your office as a legislator. By the same token, allowing the President to write executive orders which in many cases represent efforts to circumvent the legislative process carried on by those representatives closest to the People, is to allow a train of impeachable offenses.
2) We are a nation of written laws only. Laws not written do not exist.
3) Laws not written in clear language understandable by the common man are said to be void for vagueness. If you are bound by a law you must be able to understand it, since, ignorance of the law is no excuse. For any member of the judiciary to claim a law cannot be applied in its clear legislative intent; that it can only be explained by a member of his profession, is to admit it meets the criterion of being void for vagueness. Although this is nothing more than common sense it escapes most Americans because of decades of impeachable judicial activism.
4) Besides not being able to make law, judges are given no special powers of "interpretation" which could allow them to apply law to any given case in such a way as to depart from the original intent of the legislator because the intent of the law is the force of the law.
In light of the above, what should be the response of a jury when a judge pompously says, I’ll explain the law, you are to concern yourselves only with the facts of the case?
In George Bancroft’s History of the United States, Vol.2, p.557, we read of an historical counterpart to our present stock of judges: When New York refused to vote salaries to Pratt, its chief justice, unless he should receive an independent commission, the board of trade, in June 1762, recommended that he should have his salary from the royal quit-rents. "Such a salary," it was pleaded to the board by the chief justice himself, "could not fail to render the office of great service to his majesty, in securing the dependence of the colony on the crown, and its commerce to Great Britain." It was further hinted that it would insure judgments in favor of the crown against all intrusions upon the royal domain by the great landed proprietors of New York, and balance their power and influence in the assembly. The measure was adopted. In New York, the king instituted courts, named the judges, removed them at pleasure, fixed the amount of their salaries, and paid them independently of legislative grants. The system, established as yet in one only of the older provinces, was intended for all. "The people," said this chief justice, who was transplanted from Boston to New York, "ought to be ignorant. Our free schools [not government-controlled schools] are the very bane [poison] of society; they make the lowest of the people infinitely conceited."
As Steffan continued his researches into the written tax laws, he was particularly struck by the implications of the following section from the Internal Revenue Code:
§6331. Levy and distraint. (a) Authority of Secretary. If any person liable to pay any tax neglects or refuses to pay the same within 10 days after notice and demand, it shall be lawful for the Secretary to collect such tax (and such further sum as shall be sufficient to cover the expenses of the levy) by levy upon all property and rights to property (except such property as is exempt under section 6334) belonging to such person or on which there is a lien provided in this chapter for the payment of such tax. Levy may be made upon the accrued salary or wages of any officer, employee, or elected official, of the United States, the District of Columbia, or any agency or instrumentality of the United States or the District of Columbia, by serving a notice of levy on the employer (as defined in section 3401(d)) of such officer, employee, or elected official. If the Secretary makes a finding that the collection of such tax is in jeopardy, notice and demand for immediate payment of such tax may be made by the Secretary and, upon failure or refusal to pay such tax, collection thereof by levy shall be lawful without regard to the 10-day period provided in this section. [emphasis added]
The above statute comprises the expression of the extent to which an IRS levy can be made upon the accrued salary or wages of any officer, employee, or elected official, of the United States, the District of Columbia, or any agency or instrumentality of the United States or the District of Columbia...
Just in case you are not yet seeing or understanding the significance of the above section, please realize that in the absence of a corollary statute in the written law conferring levy authority over the salaries or wages of citizens within the States of the Union, it does not; it cannot exist. Could this mean the IRS is seizing the wages, salaries and property of citizens within the States without authority under the law?
Consider how the above statute [6331] can only make some sense because the government has limited authority over property already in its lawful trust [the wages of its own employees for example]. It must be realized however, that there are many additional lawful provisions that would prevent the IRS from levying even the wages of its own employees, if all of the laws were to be scrupulously obeyed.
If the IRS has any lawful authority to seize the property of citizens within the states of the Union, it should be no problem at all for them to produce a written statute conferring such lawful authority. Is it not reasonable to insist on properly delegated authority from any federal official who would claim you owe a certain tax? The position that asks: "What law, where is it written?," cannot be that of a protester, only a responsible citizen who holds to the thoroughly American creed of asserting rights in accordance to the law. Can an American citizen living and working within the States of the Union meaningfully protest a tax that applies only to foreigners here, or American citizens living and working abroad?
The Pontius Pilate Connection
There are many possible responses to the truth. It can be denied and explained away with great skill. Yet it reappears again and again. Pilate symbolically washed his hands, but was unable to cleanse them. Our lawyers can face the truth and make the most artful attempts to obfuscate or absolve themselves, but they will not escape ultimately. Their efforts at "plausible denial" are beginning to look more and more ridiculous.
The gauntlet is being thrown down by this very courageous attorney become vocal patriot. His career and reputation are now on the line. I have conferred with him on the telephone and in agreement with him and our most illustrious ancestors, reiterate: "We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery."
Just the Facts is all it will take for any other honest vertebrate lawyer or judge to come out for liberty. As more and more Americans become fully informed citizens and jurors, creating the political pressure for the establishment to realign itself with the law, we expect to witness the swelling of our ranks from the legal profession and the political arena as well. However, the individual sovereign citizen must lead the way.
We were heartened to realize recently, that the number of lawyers who belong to the American Bar Association is dwindling over the past few years. If the Bar Association wants to do something not only to increase but to improve its membership, it should examine all of the law and the facts as expounded in our materials and media, and resolve to take a stand more in conformance with our original liberties than their own financial, personal or career interests. While it is painfully obvious that we don’t need more lawyers, it is even more painfully obvious that we need more Patrick Henry’s; more lawyers who are consummate patriots in the classical sense - Statesmen before the Bar.
According to a recent article in the Washington Post: "The ABA also has lost market share. While the number of lawyers in the country has soared to more than 946,000, the association now has 36 percent of the licensed lawyers among its ranks, versus 45 percent in 1991."
In the legal profession, we seek more honest lawyers who will truly weigh all of the evidence. We can now predict their response to the preponderance of incontrovertible evidence we now possess.
In the political arena, we seek statesmen - not mere politicians; lovers of the Constitution and liberty; defenders of life and property.
Among bureaucrats, we seek those who are teachable; who are willing to submit their personal ethics to the highest standards (as are clearly set forth in the government code of ethics that most of them can see on posters in all the federal buildings. Number IX in that code of ten commandments states: I will expose corruption wherever it is found). The last phrase of number X summarizes what we expect of government personnel: ...ever conscious that public office is a public trust. To see the rest of the document, do your homework. Go to a law library and ask for House Document 103, 86th Congress of the United States, passed on July 11, 1958.
Finally, the individual citizen must realize that governments are always the reflection of the quality of the people to one degree or another. In a certain sense then, all governments are "representative." If the people are slavish the government will become tyrannical. This is a simile to nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum. If the people nurture a burning desire for liberty with individual responsibility, they will not be dominated for long.
Steffan Bertsch followed a simple procedure that must be repeated many times if we are to reach our goal of a fully informed citizenry. Steffan proved himself honest enough to look at Just the Facts. Whether you use our video, the Believe It or Not Flyer or some of our other materials, you should take great comfort in knowing that we only need to get our message in front of the rest of the people who like Steffan, are willing to consider all of the evidence. The battle is over from an informational standpoint. This is the most important time for the membership to get the available resources into the hands of every American. Who knows, some lawyer or government employee you know (perhaps another firebrand like Steffan Bertsch) may be waiting for someone like you; someone he already knows and respects; to say: "Are you certain you have considered all of the evidence?" That was all it took for one of our members to start a fire in Washington State.
STEFFAN'S PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
An Everett attorney, Steffan M. Bertsch, has spent over eighteen months examining the Internal Revenue Code and its regulations and has concluded that there is no authority for the IRS to seize any personal or real property in Washington State for alleged income tax liabilities from most citizens. Bertsch charges that the agency has been seizing property for decades through numerous deceptions and strong-arm methods, and has conducted an ongoing fraud that nearly everyone in the state believes is legal. The state of affairs is this: The IRS is operating outside the law and has placed the citizens of Washington State under governmental anarchy.Beginning in March of 1996, Bertsch sought the aid of the Attorney General of Washington, Christine Gregoire, in exposing the fraud. Ms. Gregoire’s office researched the issue and attempted to defend the unlawful acts of the agency, but has been totally unable to rebut Bertsch’s charge of fraudulent conversion of property by the IRS.On May 1, 1996, Bertsch also sought the aid of Edward Shea, the president of the Washington State Bar Association, to expose the fraudulent activity of the IRS seizing property without lawful authority. To date, the Bar Association has remained silent, which, considering the gravity of the charges, is most troubling. However, since the bar association, with the entire legal braintrust of the state at its disposal has been unable to respond, it is reasonable to assume that the bar association cannot defend the charges against the IRS in Washington State made by Bertsch.In April of 1996, Bertsch began correspondence with Governor Lowrey in an effort to halt the illegal seizures by the IRS in Washington State. The governor responded that "Because the issue raised is a federal matter, it is out of my jurisdiction as governor." Governor Lowrey added that, "I hope your efforts to resolve this matter prove worthwhile."The fraud Bertsch charges is too severe for the Bar Association to acknowledge, too egregious for the Attorney General to defend it, and originates from too great a power for the governor to act upon it. The duty of exposing a systematic fraud that only Charles Ponzi could admire falls upon the media.[Transcribed - RA Staff]
A Personal Invitation
I invite those of you who currently may be experiencing challenges with the IRS or just wish to explore your options under the law to message me at:
We will be glad to get back to you.
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