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Feb. 7, 2001 - Bill Cooper
57:46
Legality of taxes #4
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The End.
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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Our photography series is on hold, folks.
We've got more important fish to fry.
By God, we're going to fry them.
Our series, up until and including April the 15th, is exposing the criminal activities of the unconstitutional, unlawful Internal Revenue Service and their misapplication and tyranny through the use of the federal income tax against the American people.
Now, before we get started with the end of the series that we've been running this week, let me remind you that we need your donations.
If you get real worth from this broadcast, you must support it.
In other words, you've got to pay for what you're getting.
And for years, over ten years, I've supported all of our research, everything that we've ever done, and I can't do it anymore.
Because the warrants that the government has issued for my arrest and for the arrest of my wife in order to try to silence us, I can't go out and get a job.
I can't go speak somewhere and get a speaking fee.
We can't set up a table at symposiums and conventions and things and sell my book and Oklahoma City Day One and, you know, my tapes, broadcast tapes and videotapes and things like that.
The only way that we can continue to do what we've been doing for all these years is if you support this effort.
So if you feel that you're getting real work from this broadcast and from all the work that we do, from the website, from everything that we do, then you need to support it with your donations.
So send your donation to HOTT in care of 101.1 FM That's HOT, H-O-T-T, in care of 101.1 FM, PO Box 940, Eager, spelled E-A-G-A-R, Arizona, 85925.
That's HOT, H-O-T-T, in care of 101.1 FM, PO Box 940, Eager, Arizona, 85925.
Remember folks, we can only take cash.
Blank money orders are gold and silver coins.
And any combination you want to make it, we don't care.
Those are the only things that we can take.
Those are the only things that we can use.
If you send a check, I'm just going to throw it in the trash can.
It will never be cashed.
And, uh, so please don't do that.
Okay?
Well, we left off last night, uh, right before the, uh, or maybe they had already asked a couple of questions.
I'm not, I don't remember exactly, but, uh, tonight we're going to pick up in the question, uh, portion And continue and, you know, don't feel that you're not going to get anything out of this because Bill Benson gets back up and speaks for about a half an hour.
And what he says will just absolutely knock your socks off.
The man's like me.
He has no fear.
He drew his line in the sand.
He refuses to file.
He refuses to pay.
And like me, he has challenged them to come after him.
So, you're going to want to hear what he has to say.
Don't listen to all these people who tell you there's going to be some kind of a political solution.
That tell you that if we just keep waking people up and challenging the government and holding these symposiums and having speakers that the government's going to come around to their senses and they're going to do away with the income tax.
Bullshit.
If you believe that, you're not playing with the full deck of cards, you're living in fantasy land, you're lost.
Because I've been trying that for years, folks.
It doesn't work.
There's only one way to do it.
That's to draw a line in the sand, put a gun in your hand, and say, no more.
No more.
And if necessary, we must rise up in a civil war to restore constitutional Republican government and hang every one of those traitors by the nearest lamppost.
If you don't believe me, look back through history, and you'll see that I'm right.
Okay?
Now, you don't have to believe that.
But do some research.
And don't quote Gandhi to me.
Don't even quote Gandhi to me and tell me that they got away with non-violent civil disobedience.
No.
An awful lot of poor Indians died during their so-called civil disobedience protests in India.
Tens of thousands of people were shot down, killed, clubbed to death.
Nobody cared because they were poor Indians.
So, don't even quote, don't even cite Gandhi to me.
In the end, he was assassinated, killed.
And guess what the Indians did when they chased the British out?
They adopted the exact same form of government that the British taught them and had instituted in India.
And ladies and gentlemen, if you had studied India under the rule of Great Britain and study them now, you would see that they were much better off under Great Britain than they've ever been since.
And since, they've become very dangerous because they have atomic weapons.
Well, enough said.
Make sure you have pen and paper.
Make sure you've got whatever you need to make yourself comfortable so that you don't have to get up and run back and forth to the kitchen or wherever you've got to go.
And listen carefully.
You're going to learn an awful lot.
And remember, every night until, and including, April 15th, we're going to be doing this kind of programming.
You're going to hear things you never dreamed you would hear from anybody.
And we're going to prove to you.
And you know, here's my challenge.
It's always been there.
Listen to everybody.
Read everything.
Believe absolutely nothing unless you can prove it in your own research, including what I've said.
Or what anybody that you're going to hear as guests on this program said.
But let me tell you this.
If you can find a law, any law, passed by anybody that requires you or me or anybody else to file and pay the income tax, And you can present it to me.
I'll read it on the air, I'll apologize to the world, and I'll be the first one lined up to file and pay my income tax on April 15th.
And that's been my challenge for years and years and years.
The IRS can't produce it.
Congress can't produce it.
The senators from the state of Arizona can't produce it.
None of the representatives from the state of Arizona can produce it.
The police chief, the head of the DPS, The police chief in Springfield?
None of these people can produce it.
The mayor can't produce it.
The president of the United States can't produce it.
And I'm going to tell you something else.
You can't produce it either, but go and try.
Go and try.
I hope you can, because if you can, there's a solution to all of this.
But you can't.
And you won't.
And when you find that out, you're going to arrive at a moral dilemma.
You're going to have to sit down and say, there is no law.
Cooper can't find it.
The President can't find it.
The IRS can't find it.
And don't forget to call the IRS and ask them.
Call the United States Attorney, where you live, and ask him.
Call the judge.
Ask the judge.
Ask your mayor.
Ask your senators and your representatives in Washington, D.C.
None of them will be able to give you the law.
And if they can't, You have a moral dilemma.
You're going to have to make a decision.
Am I going to bow my knee to tyranny and file and pay on April 15th this terrible extortion?
This criminal robbery of me and my family?
Am I going to do that?
Or am I truly Going to be an American and stand up and draw the line and say, no, no more.
If you can't produce the law, I'm not going to do it because I don't have to do it.
It's not required of me.
And there's nothing patriotic, ladies and gentlemen, about filing and paying an income tax that there is no law that requires you to file and pay because when you say that, all you're doing is making excuses for your cowardice.
And in light of all of these things, if you file and pay on April 15th, you are in fact a miserable coward.
And it's beyond me how you can look yourself in the mirror in the morning or how you can face your wife and children
because you are complicit to the crime and you are stealing from your own family.
Here's a question for Dan Mitchell.
Thank you.
Where does the 20% national tax estimate come from?
Without the cost of the bureaucracy of IRS, we should be able to make it much lower.
7 to 10% or lower.
Well, the IRS is a very big bureaucracy, but even once you factor in even the non-IRS tax Compliance costs that the government has, you're basically dealing with a maximum figure of 10 to 13 billion dollars, which, considering that we have a budget of, what, 1.8 trillion?
Frankly, just, you know, getting rid of 95% of the IRS, which a good tax reform plan could do, isn't quite, in and of itself, going to save enough money to allow a noticeably lower rate.
Now, there is another aspect to this, though, which is the fact that you're going to get rid of all the compliance costs imposed upon the private sector.
The Tax Foundation here in Washington estimates that the compliance costs of the income tax alone exceed $150 billion.
That's the lawyers, the accountants, the man hours, and so on and so forth, that it simply takes just to get your tax return to Washington.
That's not the money that you have to give the government.
That's simply what it costs you to give the money.
It's sort of like a tax on a tax.
And all that money, or the vast, vast majority, over 90%, again, according to the Tax Foundation, of those costs will disappear under a low, simple, fair tax system like a retail sales tax or a flat tax.
And so, unquestionably, you know, that's a big amount of money, but again, compared to $1.8 trillion, not going to make a big, big difference.
The two things that you have to keep in mind when you're looking at what the rate would be for a low, simple, flat rate tax system I think we should go back to the enumerated powers that our founding fathers gave to the federal government, and then we wouldn't have a lot of the programs and agencies that the federal government has, and we could have a much, much lower tax rate.
But maybe we're not going to win those battles.
And then you also have to factor in when you're setting that tax rate.
Are we going to consider the real world to be real?
And by this I mean that if you get rid of our current tax code which punishes work, which punishes savings, which punishes investment, which has these huge compliance costs, you are going to get a faster-growing economy.
And when you have a low rate and people are working and saving and investing more, and when people are bringing their money back to America from tax shelters and from tax havens, You are going to generate more economic activity, which means you're going to have what's called the supply-side effect.
Now, the media has demonized that so-called supply-side effect, but it's very real and very true.
And let me give you just one little set of statistics here.
In 1980, when the top tax rate was 70%, the evil rich, the top 1%, were paying 17% of the tax burden.
one percent were paying seventeen percent of the tax burden.
Well by 1988. The top tax rate had fallen from seventy percent all the way down to.
No question about it, the rich got by far the biggest tax cut during the 1980s.
And what did that mean for tax collections from the rich?
Remember, in 1980 they were paying 17%?
What were they paying in 1988?
According to all the class warfare people who said the rich made out like bandits, their share of the tax burden must have dropped to what?
10%?
5%?
It turns out that according to IRS data, The top 1% went from paying 17% of the tax burden when the rate was 70% to paying 27% of the tax burden when the rate had dropped to 28%.
Unambiguous, clear proof that if you want to soak the rich, cut tax rates and bring them low so people have no incentive to hide, shelter, and under-report their income.
And what that shows in sort of a global economic sense is that If you have a low, simple, fair tax system like you get with a retail sales tax or a flat tax, you can have a rate significantly below what's called the revenue neutral static rate, which of course assumes that people don't react to the tax code.
And so whether or not it can be 20%, whether it can be 15%, whether it can be 17%, you know, I don't know the exact answer because We do have to figure out what size of government we should have, and we do have to figure out what the projected new economic activity from a fair low-rate tax system would be.
So I picked 20% more just as an illustration, but that will give you a rough idea of where it can be.
Let's not forget that the income tax and the payroll tax account for about $1.5 trillion.
And to replace that, you're not going to be able to get away with a 10% tax unless you're going to reduce the size
of government, which in and of itself, of course, is a good thing.
Applause And there's a question for me.
you We have attended this very informative symposium and we would like to know what is next.
The IRS and the federal government have refused to acknowledge the invitation to attend and rebut the research presented here today.
What happens next?
It is very disturbing to me personally and to the foundation that we have presented this evidence to the government, to the president himself, and to the leaders of the two houses of Congress.
In May, again in May, a very respectful letter submitting copies of these reports and requesting that they be here to participate in the symposium.
We need to get to the truth.
No response.
In early June, a follow-up letter.
No response.
It's a very serious matter.
Jefferson said, when government steps outside of the boundaries that the people have put around government, when they take one step outside, he said, they take possession of a boundless field of power not capable of definition any longer.
No longer capable of definition.
So, fundamentally, it's a question of sovereignty.
Who's sovereign?
Are the people sovereign, or is the government sovereign?
Can government act unrestrained, outside of the limits that we, the people, have placed around it?
Very heavy question.
It's not the first time, not the first time that government has ignored, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the will of the people, as expressed in our constitutions, both state and federal.
Government is, in the minds of many, out of control of the people.
There is a need to bring them back under control.
Not just on this issue, but in many other issues.
So it's a question, I think, what do ordinary citizens do?
Ordinary non-aligned citizens do when they are confronted with governmental wrongdoing.
Larry Becraft, as you have heard, was the attorney representing Plaintiffs, in a series of cases, 1985 and 1986, I have reviewed those cases.
I'm in my 20th year of closely evaluating governmental behavior, comparing that behavior with the constitutions, state and federal, and then confronting, before the courts, improprieties, conflicts, behavior by the government that seems to be outside of these boundaries.
So I was very interested on the 16th Amendment, On this issue, what have the courts said?
What's happened in the courts?
And so I reviewed these cases.
I was delighted to see Larry Beecraft's name as an attorney representing plaintiffs in most of those cases.
And that's why he's here today.
But as I... I was startled, stunned by what I'd read.
It's clear if you read those cases, you line them up and you read one after the other, you see precisely when Bill Benson's evidence first made its way into a case.
And when it was first presented, the argument of the attorneys was, there's no 16th Amendment!
Look at all these procedural errors!
And the courts ruled, Court of Appeals ruled dismissing the cases based upon a doctrine, the doctrine of conclusive presumption.
What they were saying was, look, the Secretary of State back in 1913 declared, proclaimed it ratified.
The 16th Amendment was ratified.
That's it.
Case closed.
It was interesting as you read the cases, the attorney said, went back into court on another case and they introduced another argument.
And they said, but the Secretary of State committed fraud in making that proclamation.
Now this is a more serious charge.
One that's more difficult for the courts to say, you know, to apply the conclusive presumption argument to.
And it was in those cases that the Federal Court of Appeals said, this is a political question.
Can you imagine?
Co-equal independent branch of the government, the judiciary, saying it's a political question.
They're presented with the facts.
They know what the law is.
If you apply the law to the facts, that's the job of the court.
Fundamental role of the judiciary, in my opinion, is to see that the other two branches, the political branches, are kept in their constitutional places.
It's a political question.
Go talk to Congress about it.
Of course we heard they went to Congress and they said it's up to the courts.
Isn't one of the definitions of treason, I hesitate, I don't like to use the word, but isn't one of the definitions of treason when two or more of the branches work together cooperate in a collective decision to deny people.
Their constitutional rights.
So what to do.
Thank you.
Very disturbed that the federal government has not responded, either to Joe or to this foundation.
What to do next?
Here's what I will be recommending to the board of our foundation, the We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education.
And it's the board of its sister agency, or sister organization, the We the People Congress.
One is an educational organization, its sister agency, the Congress, is set up to lobby for more political Engage in political activism.
But this is what I will be recommending as a result of what we've heard here today and yesterday.
We'll be recommending that we do everything we possibly can in our power to get people across the country to demand, you know, the way the system is designed to work, if you need reform, You can get reform through the political process, so we should go to the legislative branch and we should put pressure on the branch to hold a congressional hearing on this evidence and to subpoena.
Issue a subpoena.
Get the most knowledgeable people from the government to attend and to argue against these conclusions.
This organization, of course, they conduct the symposium.
It would be more difficult for them to conduct a congressional hearing and a congressional sermon.
But we should also, the way the system is designed to work, so let's respect it, of course, we can get relief, people can get relief through the judicial process.
And what has come to mind is the approach that Vietnam veterans took on the Agent Orange issue.
Individual Vietnam vets, they couldn't get anybody's attention, you know, to their plight and to their problem.
Individually, they filed lawsuits in federal district courts and were well-coordinated all over the country.
Hundreds of lawsuits were filed, basically the same claims, by different veterans.
And, of course, they were all consolidated before the D.C.
Circuit.
A lot of attention was devoted.
Decisions were now being made in the courts with glaring lights I think maybe we need to do the same thing.
People need to file cases in federal district courts across the country, trying to get a declaration, trying to get the courts to do their job, look at the facts, look at the law, what happened, was the 16th Amendment declared whether It was properly and legally ratified or not, and declare whether or not there is a statute that compels people to pay, file and pay an income tax.
We should do that.
But, this is a very heavy decision, obviously, for the political branches.
They're going to need some encouragement, in my opinion, if Congress, if the political branches refuse, and we continue to get the of insults that we've gotten from Congress and the judiciary, Joe Bannister and Bill Benson, Larry Becraft, Bill Conklin, have gotten over the years on this issue, then maybe it will come down to some sort of civil disobedience, a la Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
So as a foundation I will recommend is that we reserve the large ballroom for in this building here at the National Press Club at a day early in September right after Labor Day and we invite all of the good government constitutional Activism or constitutional activist organizations at the state level and at the federal level to send representatives to a summit meeting where an attempt is made to put a collective foot down against the tyrants of our day.
Just as our forefathers did in the Revolutionary War and as Mahatma Gandhi did as well.
And between now and then, that day in September, we get this evidence out.
We get these arguments out to all of these organizations.
We ask them to send a representative.
And we attempt to enlist the support of all right-thinking, concerned Americans through these organizations.
They have been struggling against one issue or another.
Governmental wrongdoing in one form or another for a long time.
See if we can't... Right is right.
Maybe an income tax is the best way.
Maybe it is good for America.
But we live under the rule of law.
Let the people's representatives debate that question, as apparently they did in 1909.
And then let's follow the rule of law.
Let's get the states to ratify it.
But let's not tolerate the current situation any longer.
There are simply too many people being hurt.
So that's what I will do.
That's what this organization will do next.
We'll get that word out on our website, GiveMeLiberty.org, get you to the website of these three organizations, the Foundation, the Congress, and another organization called the Old County Taxpayers Association.
Between those three organizations, which sort of represents a triple threat offense to governmental wrongdoing, but we'll get the word out and we will schedule early in September a summit meeting, see if we can't get the support of many Americans behind an effort to get Congress to do their job and to get the courts to do their job.
And to be prepared, should they fail, to do, to perform the primary role that we've established for them, then to engage in, if we have to, hopefully it'll never come to this, but Engage in some sort of civil disobedience.
Are there any other questions before we close?
Do we have time?
Some time.
Question.
I'll...
Will Bill Benson tell us what he has suffered at the hands of the U.S.
government and what about his health?
You told us that you had gathered this evidence at your personal expense and time and that it was submitted to the courts and to all federal judges, all congressmen, Told us that there was no response. Especially from
Congress but what was the court's response and what happened to you what's the rest of the story.
The rest of the story ladies and gentlemen. Is that when I did the research on the sixteenth amendment.
When I. Filed a suit against the state of Illinois for corruption committed in that state.
and And why I believe that a sales tax that would give the states money to give back to the federal government, in my personal opinion, is wrong.
And I can say that from experience.
Because when I was an investigator for the Department of Revenue, It was my duty and responsibility to collect the excise tax, the tax that you pay when you went to the gasoline station, the grocery stores, the liquor stores, or whatever commodities that you purchased.
It was my bitter, bitter experience to find that some of these people that were involved in collecting the excise tax that you paid, after they owed about three million dollars to four million dollars, would come to the Department of Revenue and talk to the attorneys and say, look, let's make a deal.
They sold three million dollar cases down the river for $250,000.
That's my fear with the sale tax.
If it goes to the states to collect, the states are going to do nothing more.
They'll have more money to play with than they had when I was with the Department of
Revenue.
When I began to talk about the 16th Amendment, when I began to view the 16th Amendment as
Before the book was even, before I even got it from the printer, I was in the, Mr. B. Crack's country, Birmingham, Alabama, giving a speech before a large number of people.
I had the computer printouts of the research that I did in volume one.
And I received a call that evening from Mrs. Benson, and she said, it's extremely urgent that you call Washington, D.C.
immediately.
I had a home telephone number.
I had two telephone numbers to contact an attorney who worked for a senator.
And I said, as far as I'm concerned, I have far more important work Then contact that senator or contact his attorney right now.
But I did it the next day.
And lo and behold, to my amazement, I was told, and there's a third party witness to the telephone conversation who is a Baptist preacher, the attorney He said, Bill, we know what you're doing.
You cannot.
Believe me, he repeated, you cannot permit that book to get into the hands of the kooks
out there.
I said, Warren, as far as I'm concerned, there may be kooks out here, but the majority of
the kooks are in Washington, D.C.
and the capitol.
He said, Do you not understand what I'm offering you?
I said, Of course I do.
He said, Have all the books printed that you want.
Name your price.
We'll pay it.
But then we want all of the certified, notarized documents that you have and for you never, ever to again speak about the 16th Amendment.
And I said no.
He said, Do you understand you never ever have to work another day in your life?
You can take care of your family.
And I said, what about the rest of the people in the country?
That's what this is all about.
Not just about Bill Benson.
It's about my children, my grandchildren and every one of yours.
Every person in this country.
I didn't do this piece of research work on the 16th Amendment.
Because I was going to make money off of it.
That was not the idea.
There hasn't been any money made off of it.
Everything's gone right back into what I'm doing, as far as traveling, speaking, etc.
When I, as I told you previously, won my case against the state government, it was a bitter blow for them.
Very bitter.
To have one individual like Bill Benson and one lonely attorney win a major case like we did from the state.
The state of Illinois spent in excess of two million dollars trying to fight and beat me and they lost.
I know the figure Because I know where the records are.
I know when they hire outside contractors, as far as attorneys are concerned, they must have invoice vouchers that they produce every month.
And they must have contracts.
So the state of Illinois, the capital of the state of Illinois is Springfield.
And I would go to Springfield and pull all the vouchers.
So we kind of knew what those lawyers were doing a little bit before they were doing it.
After the case was over, the government and one of the attorneys that was involved in the lawsuit, and he was very angry with me because I had arrested his secretary.
At that time we were involved in the excise tax as far as cigarettes are concerned, bringing them from one state to the other.
My partner and I did not agree with the law and we so made our objection to the director.
The director said, I want you to go out there on the third and fourth of every month when those elderly people have their social security checks and purchase cigarettes and take their cars, lock them up, if they have purchased enough.
Because the law in the state of Illinois says that if you purchase ten cartons or more, you're subject to arrest.
I used to post bond for some of these people because I did not agree.
I had Chicago policemen, Chicago firemen, ambulance trucks that were coming out to the cigarette stands And I said, no, this cannot be.
If I have to arrest the individual in front of that policeman, behind that policeman, I'm going to arrest that policeman.
At one time, I chased a Chicago sergeant in full dress uniform in a Chicago marked police car, and I had a A siren and a red light in my car, in an unmarked car.
I chased him at 90 miles an hour and I knew I was going to catch him because he had to go through the toll gates.
And we were not both going to go through there at that speed.
I think it was foolish of me to do that, but my partner was behind me.
He couldn't get ahead of me.
When he stepped out of that vehicle, he said, Don't you understand who I am?
Do you see these stripes?
I said, Sergeant, the only thing I want from you is your driver's license and your identification.
I said, I know how much you have purchased as far as cigarettes are concerned.
You haven't purchased enough to break the law or else Your squad car would go into the Sheriff's Audit Pond, like everyone else's, and you would go to your precinct and be locked up in your own jail.
That wasn't bold, I don't think.
It wasn't trying to be a hero or a martyr or anything of the sort.
It was being fair with each and every individual.
Ambulances had no business out there.
So, yeah, federal government, state government were very, very angry at Bill Benson.
And in 1980, in 1981, I had an insurance company settlement.
In the nineteen eighty one. I had an insurance company. And the attorney that worked.
Of the case that we won.
I wrote a letter to the first assistant United States Attorney, Joan Bainbridge Safford in Chicago.
And he says, Dear Joan, I believe I know how to get these turkeys, including my lawyer and myself.
He says, and I'll help you in every way I can.
I was indicted for willful failure to file income tax returns for the year of 1980 and 81.
I didn't have to file returns.
There was no requirement to file returns for those years as far as that money is concerned.
But they got to the insurance company.
The insurance agent took the witness stand and my attorney asked him, where is Mr. Benson's W-2, W-4?
Where are all of his credentials that he has from your company?
I want to see everything.
He put his head down for a couple minutes and he said, um, nothing for at least two minutes.
The attorney said, do you not understand my question?
And he says, yes.
He said, I lied when I testified before the grand jury.
With that, that case should have been thrown out, period.
But it was not.
Judge Paul Plunkett said maybe he lied and maybe he didn't after the jury was sent out of the room.
And there was a big argument.
And then, of course, the transcript was read back from the court reporter.
And he says, this case is going ahead.
To make it a little bit shorter, the jury did find me guilty because I didn't file a tax return.
And I spent 15 months and 5 days in prison in Rochester, Minnesota.
After fifteen months and five days, the appellate court for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed my case.
The government was still going to get me one way or the other if they could.
They went to the judge and said that Mr. Benson has filed an appeal before the appellate court.
It would be like O.J.
saying, huh, I have just been found not guilty.
Let's try it again.
Maybe you can find me guilty.
When you have a reversal like that, when your case is reversed, you win, the government has to go back in to the appellate court and try and win their case back against you so maybe they can prosecute you.
And they did that.
They not only went to the three-judge panel.
They were denied after a period of time.
They went to the embaying panel, then the proper panel to go through, and they were also denied.
Then they went to the courts of the court, instead of going to the Supreme Court, which was our only option, and said, we want you to set this case for a new trial.
And the clerk says, no, we cannot, because it's been reversed.
So they went to one judge, one judge in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Mannion.
Judge Mannion then changed the order and said it shall now read reversed and remanded.
So I find myself back into court a second time.
Now I'll back up a little bit because the first time I was in prison in 19...
Uh, 68, I became ill with encephalitis.
That's caused by a mosquito bite.
And a lot of times it causes you to have seizures.
It causes you to sleep a long time during a day, maybe two days at a time or so.
And the government and the institution knew that.
I was doing very, very well with the prescribed medication by the doctors.
But when I got into the institution, they took the medication away.
And they said, we're going to give you something that's going to take care of your problem.
I said, no, you're not.
I'm not going to accept it.
I had four guards walk into my room, because they didn't call your room a cell.
It was a room.
It was something you took care of, if you could, and the whole thing.
The four guards held me down.
Three nurses came in.
Three nurses were all over my body.
And when I got hit with the needle, that was goodbye.
The inmates got a hold of my small telephone book and called Mrs. Benson and told her, you better get into this institution to find out what's happening to Bill.
I had edema so bad I was three times the size that I am now.
They couldn't put clothes on me.
I couldn't see.
I couldn't hear.
I couldn't walk.
I couldn't talk.
When Mrs. Benson got in, the doctors and the warden fought like crazy to keep her from seeing me.
But she fought just as hard and she got to see me.
my daughter was 38 years old and I didn't know her.
When the question was asked, would I do it all over again?
You bet I would.
In a heartbeat.
There is no question about it.
Because this issue of the income tax, the 16th Amendment, the government cannot prove me wrong.
From 1981 to present day, I haven't been bothered by any of it.
From 1981 to present day, no one has said, Mr. Benson, where's your tax return?
No one has come to the door, knocked on the door, and said, Mr. Benson, we want to talk to you.
No one.
Who is right?
Are they right?
I personally made a copy of all 17,000 documents for the federal court, for the judge, and for the prosecutor.
And they still have them in their possession since 1987.
See, they indicted me for 1980 and 1981, but not until April 13th of 1987.
I was there posted by them.
Because of the publicity, as far as Volume 1 is concerned.
That gave them a lot of problems.
No ifs, ands, buts, or questions about it.
It was a horrible experience to go through.
Because I ended up in a wheelchair for two years.
For fighting for what was right.
For fighting for what I proved.
For fighting for what I knew they could not disprove.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have to make a correction here.
A few minutes ago, Bill Benson said the first time he was in prison in 1968, He meant to say 1988, and that's the story that he was talking about.
He's an old man, and when you see the videotape, and by the way, you can order it from us at the same address I gave earlier for $20 postpaid to your door, the two videotapes set for $20.
But you'll see on the videotape that all of these years of fighting the government has taken its toll on Bill Benson.
The correct year was 1988, not 1968.
Any sort of a bribe from a government official, that was not going to happen.
Thank you.
.
Two years was a long time.
Fifteen months and five days in the institution.
The parole board on September the 27th had already paroled me, but the appellate court had reversed the jury's guilty verdict.
And what did they say?
I want you to listen to this.
The judge had abused his discretion in permitting the testimony to go on the way he did.
He tainted the minds of the jurors by listening to the IRS special agents.
We must reverse. So. The.
When I left that institute institution that I I found myself back into court again.
We went back in, and I was tried a second time, found guilty again a second time.
Same old, same old.
Same case, same everything.
Denial of due process.
We have heard denial of due process for the last couple days, and that's exactly what they did.
Denial of due process.
We argued due process with the judge, with the United States Attorney's Office, for many, many months.
We were in court in September of last year, and we had explained to the judge, I had served all my time, you cannot do anything.
Because they wanted to put me back in prison for 22 days.
And they did.
And they then sent me to Fort Worth, Texas.
Fort Worth, Texas said, We believe there's a very serious problem here, and this institution is not going to become involved in a false imprisonment lawsuit.
And a receiving and discharge clerk says, nor either am I. We now have an order from Judge Brady that said, that says, it was unlawful for me to put Mr. Benson in prison.
It was unlawful for me to put Mr. Benson on five years of probation because, you see, they wouldn't let me leave the Northern District of Illinois to talk to people like you, to go anywhere, to even visit my children, my grandchildren in the state of Michigan, Arizona, and California.
They refused to permit me to go anywhere.
Now, on my desk, at home, is a lawsuit prepared against these government officials.
And as soon as I get home, I will be in federal court and file it.
So David can't be the last.
Well ladies and gentlemen that's it for tonight.
But let me tell you something that in the federal court system, as far as income tax goes, David cannot beat Goliath.
David never has.
While 10 or 20 people a year may be acquitted In Tax Court.
Hundreds of thousands are destroyed.
Their businesses are destroyed.
Their families are destroyed.
Husbands and wives are divorced.
Children are taken from families.
Husbands and wives are thrown into prison.
Some people commit suicide because everything they've worked for in their entire life is destroyed.
Right before their very eyes.
They become a criminal in the eyes of their children and their family.
You have no idea the devastation, the desolation that the criminal Internal Revenue Service has wreaked upon this nation against people who were never required to file and pay the income tax in the first place.
And if you don't believe that, You bring me the law passed by anybody that requires you, me, or anyone else to file and pay the income tax.
And if you can't do that, you're faced with a moral question.
Am I a miserable coward and am I going to continue to file and pay?
Or am I going to stand with Bill Cooper and Bill Benson and other people who have got great moral character and who really care about this country?
And am I going to be willing to give my life for my country to resist tyranny?
And if you're not, and if you file and pay on April 15th, you're nothing but a stinking, rotten, crawling, slave, miserable coward.
And that's the truth.
Good night, folks.
God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night, Annie Poo and Allison.
I love you.
I miss you.
I dream of you.
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