Cryer and Becraft reveal the REAL REASONS we need lawyers: the LAW often DOESN'T MATTER
Bob Hurt
Tom Cryer wrote the below response to my comments about the importance of knowing the law. You can see in my comments the request to Larry Becraft to address the questions of how to know the law and how to find a reliable authority on the law. Tommy answered the questions for him, and I do love the answer. Others loved it too. Such as attorney Peter Mancus.
Dear Tommy,
What your wrote below is erudite, insightful, and 100% accurate. Kudos.
I am fed up with laypersons in the Tax Honesty movement who think their judgment regarding these tax related issues is superior to mine for their non-meritorious reasons, who also have the gall to get ultra mean-spirited, snotty, and condescending with me the moment I voice a concern or disagreement with them. At some level, when they become exceedingly obnoxious, I am of the opinion when they are determined to jump into the fire and burn, with the blissful comfort of their self-imposed, arrogant, ignoramus, confidence of their convictions, I simply cannot stop them from doing what they are hell bent on doing.
-- Peter Mancus, Attorney at Law
I keep chiding attorneys for not doing more to help alleviate the legal problems of people BEFORE they get into serious trouble, particularly in income tax matters. And frankly, most lawyers don’t respond at all. Tommy, however, does, and it takes time to do so, for which I here and now thank him.
See the email thread below
Tommy points out that The People need lawyers the way the early settlers needed a mountain man or Indian for a scout and trail advisor because they knew that, while they could get to the West if they just kept traveling, theoretically, they had to watch out for opportunistic carnivores, buffalo herds, hostile natives, and robbers, thieves, and murderers along the way, not to mention cliffs, vertical mountains, huge rivers, swamps, vermin, starvation, sickness, freezing or burning to death, lying trail guides, avaricious wagon masters, bad whiskey, poker cheats, and so on.
How do lawyers learn about the legal equivalent to all those hazards? Experience.
And unless we non-lawyers somehow get the spare time and can shrink down to become a little mouse on the lawyer’s shoulder for a few years, we will NEVER get that kind of experience. Let’s say you have a foreclosure looming ahead. If you don’t sit in court with a bunch of judges in your circuit, you’ll never know which ones run the rocket docket and which carefully deliberate before handing your house over to a fraudulent servicer or lender. And when It comes your turn to go to court, the Chief Judge might roll the dice and assign a judge you never heard of to your case. Now what?
Unfortunately, all the attorney’s experience in the world will not let him win when the judge has determined he won’t. An attorney who alienates judges won’t win many cases. And SOMEBODY loses in every adversarial case.
Tom points out that lawyers don’t want lay lawyers to go out and learn the law and then muddy the legal water. He neglects to mention the harsh reality that most people live hand to mouth and can barely afford a pro bono lawyer – only the relatively rich can afford legal counsel. He also neglects to point a way around the fact that no matter how much a person with a good case pays a lawyer, the lawyer will almost never guarantee a win. I know of one lawyer who did that. His dad was the major partner in a big firm alleged to enjoy mob connections. The lawyer told the client that he owned the judge and could get any verdict he wanted. And he did indeed end up destroying the career of his opposing counsel, kangaroo all the way.
In order to keep people from mucking around in lawyer business, the legal profession must make legal services more easily affordable, and give a better guarantee of expectable justice.
When I talk to attorneys about this, they usually point to me and suggest I (and the rest of us) must fix that problem. They feel loathe to admit that THEY cause the problem and ONLY THEY will fix it, IF EVER it gets fixed. The problem really comes from rogue or crooked judges, and they come from the ranks of lawyers. This is a BAR and JUDGE related problem, and ONLY attorneys can fix it, in my opinion.
But, they will never fix it without our help. Why? Because they must belong to the bar in order to operate as attorneys, and if they buck against crooked judges they will get sanctioned and disbarred. If you have followed the Lawmen messages for the past year or two, you know the saga of Jack Thompson. He got huge FCC fines levied against Howard Stern and Two-Live Crew. They got big law firms to file complaints against him with the bar, and he ended up going through the most insane kangaroo court proceedings I could imagine, including having the Supremes ignore his pleadings. And the Supremes disbarred him a year ago. He sued them in federal court and lost. He lost the appeal. Now he works nearly full time battling to get his bar membership back. He will file a claim against the FLA and BAR insurance companies. And he wants to get the US Supremes to hear his case. Rots a ruck.
If a citizen had to pay Thompson to defend them in a similar way against injustice, it would easily cost them a million dollars. And so far, the citizen would still lose.
Tom points out that getting competent counsel amounts to something of a dice roll. Let’s add this up. Somebody loses half the time. Incompetent or crooked attorneys bilk their clients and the clients lose. Crooked judges and connected law firms make good lawyers lose. Since attorneys have such a shot in the dark chance of winning, it seems a mite facile for Tom to say “stay out of lay-lawyering – hire us real lawyers.”
Maybe the situation calls for some kind of hybirid lawyering model in which the law lawyer can play an important role. If real lawyers ran community training programs to teach people how to stand up in court under the withering condescension of a torturous judge, and the sliminess of an unethical opposing counsel, lay lawyers might do a better job than Tom and Peter and Larry imagine. We can’t know that because I haven’t seen any such thing anywhere.
I say the situation demands a solution other than and in addition to Tom’s and Peter’s and Larry’s implications or direct suggestions that we non-lawyers stay out of the law. I believe they need to encourage everyone to get involved in the law, spend time in court watching the proceedings, study the law, like the Jurisdictionary course, and meet with friends and neighbors to review the materials and role play. We can all buy the books law students use, and if we look hard enough we can find courses. For example, check out this Chicago University School of Law Trusts and Estates course:
http://laws45201tande.wikispaces.com/
I have intended with my comments not to deter you from reading the stuff below from Tommy and Larry, but rather to say they talked around an important subject, but did not propound solutions that work. Yes, we should seek legal counsel for a strategic approach because they spend their life in it. At the same time, attorneys need to help us FIND a competent attorney from whom to seek such advice or actual representation. The legal profession adroitly hides information about who does and does not exhibit honesty and competency in the law. Where’s the solution to THAT problem? I just want to point out that while Tom and Larry make excellent points, with which I agree, they did not tell all the story, and we really need a better solution than what they imply or suggest, perhaps a hybrid of the unachievable ideal mixed the very achievable practical.
And I applaud Tommy and Larry for their contributions through Truth Attack, Tea Party Squared, and ongoing, rather profound efforts to educate those of us have the time and interest. God bless them for the considerable energies and the heart they put into that work.
Now, for Tommy’s comments…
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Bob Hurt
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From: Crye...@aol.com
[mailto:Crye...@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 10:39 AM
To: b...@bobhurt.com; bec...@hiwaay.net
Subject: Re: regarding Teknosis article "Larry Becraft analyzes the
legal bases of Mer...
Bob,
I wish I had time to teach everyone how to find the law and when to rely on and when to question authorities, but that would be about a five to ten year course, at a minimum. Why not ask a medical doctor to educate the public on how to discover a cure for cancer? Believe it or not, that would be more attainable a task.
The law is not like learning math. Math, physics, chemistry, etc., all work on laws that are rigid, unchanging and without exceptions. With the law there are different layers, every "rule" having exceptions and every exception having others. When an attorney graduates and passes the bar he knows more law than he ever will again, having just crammed three years of study up front for the bar exams. But even then he doesn't have a working knowledge of it.
It takes years of experience, research, trial and error for him to understand the human, political, sociological and psychological components in the system that administers that law. Although I don't necessarily advertise the fact, I make greater use of my education in psychology, sociology and political science than I do of my legal training.
Cases don't present a clear picture of the law any more than a car or a toaster presents a clear picture of steel or plastics. The law is only one of the raw materials that go into the processor we call our judicial system.
People need to be informed of what the law demands of them and to what the law entitles them, but that does not mean they all need to be able to do what lawyers do. We need to know when to go to the doctor and when time for a procedure comes we need to be informed of benefits and risks before deciding to consent to the procedure. But we do not need to understand all of the medical considerations to the point of being able to perform the procedure ourselves. We have doctors to evaluate our situation and to make recommendations for remedies, inform us of the risks and benefits and to then administer the treatment or conduct the operation.
The same goes for the law, maybe even more so. Although medicine, like law, makes no guarantee of a favorable outcome, it is more predictable than the legal process because the laws that apply are not as flexible and are not acted upon by as many outside dynamics. Lawyers do not operate in a sterile environment.
This may sound patrician, but people need to leave lawyering to lawyers just as they leave medical treatment to doctors. If they have doubts as to their rights and duties they should consult a competent and reputable (getting harder to find, I'll grant you) attorney to research the issue and explain his findings. His recommendations will not be limited to the law alone, which is what a layman doing his own research may conclude. An attorney's advice will take into account the law, how it is interpreted and applied (and how it is misinterpreted and misapplied) by the courts, procedural obstacles, the weight and admissibility of evidence, the risks and a host of other forces at play in the real world. While a layman may act upon reliance on the raw material the attorney will advise on the basis of the finished product.
I try to educate people on the substance of the law but to advise them on the realities of the legal environment. For example, I once had a client come to me wanting to sue a judge for mishandling his case. In my opinion letter I pointed out and verified the many excesses and abuses that had been committed by the judge. I also pointed out that Louisiana's judicial immunity statute did not protect the judge because he had exceeded his authority, placing himself outside the "umbrella" of the statute.
However, my research also showed that the Louisiana courts, including the Supreme Court, totally ignored the limited state immunity statute and, instead, applied the inapplicable federal blanket immunity statute. While the law provided for one thing, other factors led me to advise him to take his complaint to the Judicial Commission because a law suit would have been unsuccessful. The client followed that advice (unfortunately, attaching my letter which was forwarded to the judge with the complaint). The judge ended up being forced to resign (and still refuses to speak to me--so what?). A failed law suit, based solely on the letter of the law, would have only reinforced the judge's perception of himself as above the law.
Another example you know about is that while I endeavor to inform people that the IRS is lying to them about the law and to explain the law to them, I also advise them to avoid singular legal combat by complying, for now, with the IRS's demands. I do that because I know there is a bridge out on the road to court, something you won't find in the law books. I also know that the solution is going to be political, so I urge them to, instead, devote their energy to informing their neighbors and friends and recruiting them to apply political pressure to force a rebuilding of the bridge.
If people want to understand the law, then have them get that understanding from those who not only know the law, but understand it and the process it undergoes between client decision to initiate and court decision to adjudicate. I know we tell them to rely only on primary authorities, but those authorities need translation and they need to be understood in the context of the system that applies them.
We don't need for people to go out and read law, draw erroneous conclusions and then confuse and mislead others. "Lay lawyers", as Pete Hendrickson likes to call himself, are just as dangerous and counterproductive as "lay surgeons". Look at how many people have been fined thousands of dollars or, worse, prosecuted and imprisoned for following his "lay advice". Look at what happened to him for drinking his own "lay kool-aid". Not only did he get the law wrong with his inclusio ab exclusio misapplication, he got the advice wrong, telling people to put themselves in harm's way, pushing them under the bus. How many of those people would still be working for the cause if it weren't for the adverse results of a lawyer wannabe's bad advice?
What lawyer would tell people the UCC, state commercial transactions law, trumps federal tax law? What lawyer would tell people that there is a secret body of law hiding a Straw Man? What lawyer would mistake a "reorganization" for a bankruptcy? What lawyer would fabricate a non-existent use for a for-use-by-corporations-issuing-original-issue-discount-bonds-only interest reporting form as a draft or some kind of financial weapon?
These people remind me of the Japanese propaganda machine that had the Saipan natives so convinced that Americans would rape, torture and murder them that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them leapt from cliffs, many after throwing their children and babies over. Senseless waste, senseless destruction of humanity, all for the sake of manipulating and maintaining control of others. At least the Japs did it for their "god", the emperor. These people are doing it for profit, self-aggrandizement, the government or all three.
What we need is more lawyers who are aware of the schism between the IRS myths and the law itself. If your people want to make a difference they can do far more good in far less time and with virtually no effort by submitting the six challenges I sent your lying friend to every lawyer they can find and doing the same with every IRS agent they come into contact with.
If and when the legal community wakes up and becomes aware of the fraud it will be over.
I've copied this to my list of attorneys in the movement in hopes they might chime in pro or con on my comments. I know you're going to ask, so will go ahead and let you know that you are welcome to forward it to your people, as well.
Tom
In a message dated 11/29/2009 7:19:04 P.M. Central Standard Time, b...@bobhurt.com writes:
Larry, I’ll post your very lucid comments to the Lawmen list, but I wonder if you might address two issues:
1. How to Know the Law
2. How to Rely upon Authority
Knowing the law presents profound difficulty to newborn patriots, and everyone else for that matter. You have said something like “all you have to do is look it up.” That sounds good, but LOOK IT UP WHERE?
Patriots don’t have access to Lexus Nexis and Westlaw or any other single-source, reliably comprehensive on-line database of law. Yes, the law library provides limited access (which must include the cost-effective ability to print it or check it out and take it away for study). But you cannot get all of it there, and many people who cannot venture forth into the community for health reasons cannot use the law library.
For example,
· Several volumes of the Statutes at Large and numerous statutes have simply disappeared, and nobody knows what happened to them.
· Florida Statute 2.01 claims the English law as of 4 July 1716 has force and effect in Florida to the extent it does not conflict with the CUSA or laws of the US or Florida. I’ve looked high and low for the English law applicable today and I cannot find it. Now what?
· Judges whimsically seal or block from publication court cases and rulings every day in the USA as a matter of policy or government interest. In spite of the fact that our laws depend upon stare decisis we cannot find those elements of common law, and so we cannot know it. Most assuredly, the judges hide these rulings in order to prevent people from obtaining remedy.
· The US Code in the titles that Congress has not passed into positive law obviously differs from the underlying statutes to such an extent that Congress does not trust the accuracy of the code. Otherwise, Congress would pass it into positive law. And yet, Congress has not admitted in what areas it has found difference of flaw. Thus the people cannot trust those titles of the USC. Until you and John Roland posted the Statutes at Large and IR Statutes and rules, the people could get the real thing only at a law library (ugh). And every single questioner of the relevant law has to undertake a monumental project to learn the statutes and public laws and compare them to the USC to distinguish the falsities from the facts. Who has any interest in doing that when the courts routinely say the law means something other from what it says?
You have declared that if the U.S. had gone bankrupt, we would know it from the court filings. Well if a creditor and debtor settle their dispute amicably, they don’t take it to bankruptcy court. If the government collected all the metal-backed currency before its creditor called the loan, and the creditor took that and other concessions amicably, why would they need a bankruptcy hearing to settle the dispute? The fact that a bunch of law allegedly exists which we cannot find PROVES that the bankruptcy could have happened secretly in a court, and the court could have sealed its records of the case for eternity.
So your argument has a serious flaw in it and you never seem to address it (though I admit I have not read all you have written). And I would not know this had I not personally contacted the law college library and the national archives in search of the missing statutes and common law, and had I not read over the Florida Supreme Court’s hearing documents regarding J.A. Rule 2.420 that blocks public access to certain court case documents. MY research turned this up, and I imagine yours has turned up even more, to prove WE CANNOT NECESSARILY KNOW THE LAW.
As for the authority in the law, we want to believe the court rulings, but judges seem to be such lying bastards in tax matters that we simply cannot trust their rulings, particularly when many of them fly in the face of Supreme Court rulings. You really cannot blame people from running to self-appointed gurus like Roger Elvick, Jean Keating, Sam Kennedy, and Winston Shrout for a solution. People know they themselves don’t have the competence to fight the IRS alone, particularly not when it costs them $5000 for propounding a frivolous argument, and the IRS has slammed every possible door shut on the remedies that they can.
Tax lawyers don’t do a damned bit of good for the tax honesty movement because you only tell them what they cannot do to fight the IRS, not what they can and must do, not that it would matter much, for tax attorneys like Tom have their own problems preventing the IRS from stealing them blind. Do you see tax lawyers banding together to offer patriots solutions against the abuses of the IRS BEFORE the DOJ hauls them into court? NO. And what solutions do get offered by attorneys cost so much that typical tax protestors haven’t the money to pay. Apparently lawyers hate giving seminars for the feckless so as to save them money. What seminars I have seen them give don’t offer any specific solutions.
No, I cannot force tax attorneys like you and Tom to set up training to help people with a strategy for beating the IRS in their personal income tax situations, but I cannot help noticing that you have the basic skills for it AND people need it. For example, you could teach people how to attack the individual IRS agents for errors and violations of collection procedure and law, and for putting lies and freeze codes into the IMF. You could can a lawsuit for attacking the agent for that very reason, after trying to get him fired through TIGTA.
And that constitutes just ONE ares of suggestion. You could teach people how to attack judges for their due process violations in tax court and USDC, especially since judges cannot sanction or disbar ordinary people the way they can do to lawyers.
Larry, your letter below needs to address the above issues. A number of people complain to me that you and Tom are shills for the IRS BECAUSE of the above issues, and perhaps other things I haven’t mentioned. They don’t understand why you don’t come forth with cogent recommendations for them to prevail against the IRS BEFORE going to court. You probably would settle a lot of upset by explaing the answer to that.
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Bob Hurt
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From: Larry Becraft [mailto:bec...@hiwaay.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 7:05 PM
To: dr.no4change
Subject: Re: regarding Teknosis article "Larry Becraft analyzes the legal bases of Mercier's Invisible Contracts"Dan,
I have been involved with the organized freedom movement for 30 years and not only have observed virtually everything that has happened in it, good and bad, I have made more than a substantial contribution to it, too often being wrapped up in its very real battles. My experience teaches me this: at some stage in their life, virtually every participant in the movement realizes that something “is afoot” not only with the govt but also the course and direction of our country, and he decides to take action. These people understand that they are standing at a very important fork in the cross-roads: the road to the left leads to slavery, while that to the right is the road to liberty and freedom. Once they have this epiphany, they charge down the road to liberty.
But most of our fellow Americans, suffering from an avalanche of propaganda, have taken the road on the left, Slavery Road. Our task is to expose to these unfortunates the road to the right, Liberty Road. However, the captains of Slavery Road have lots of cops on it, watching for any liberty-lovers who may expose the message of liberty to the rest of the slaves. Liberating slaves is perhaps the highest of crimes.
The message of the movement sent to the slaves needs to be motivating and substantive. Yet, too much of the various messages coming from our side right now border on the ridiculous and crazy. The captains and cops of Slavery Road laugh at legal arguments like the UCC, “we are Brits,” the redemption process, “everything is admiralty”, the Forms 1099-OID process, names in CAPS, the 1933 bankruptcy, strawmen, birth certificates, etc. It appears that a large numbers of the newly freed slaves are exposed to these insane arguments promoted by some of the “legal” gurus and, being gullible, they fall for these arguments. However, I analyze these arguments and too often I find that assertions are made without the support of any authority, but then if there is cited authority, most of the time I find that when you look up that cited authority, it has absolutely nothing to do with the asserted proposition. Let me be brutally frank: this is lying!!! But, once the novices are exposed to these legal arguments, it is almost impossible to convince them of the errors in their beliefs, and attempts at education are viewed suspiciously, often resulting in the erstwhile educator being falsely accused of being a cop on Slavery Road.
Part of the message of the freedom movement involves law, because law is used by the cops on Slavery Road to control the slave and free alike. But, educating one and all with phony legal arguments having neither substance nor merit accomplishes nothing but harm. The UCC argument had no substance or merit, yet it had a life inside the freedom movement of probably 14 years. Countless numbers of people in the movement were essentially neutralized because they held such beliefs. Nobody can point to anything of substance that was positively accomplished by the UCC crowd, altho it must be noted that other slaves negatively viewed the people in this movement as nuts and flakes as a result. Promotion of similar arguments like those noted above have and will accomplish nothing, and the “downside” for the movement is being labeled as quacks and freaks.
Given a choice between slavery and freedom, most human beings will chose the latter, and rightly so. Liberty and freedom are precious and beautiful as opposed to the misery and suffering of slavery. With such a wonderful message, why we do permit this message to be sullied via crazy legal arguments? Until we address and remedy this important matter of nonsense legal arguments, this movement cannot be effective.
Larry
dr.no4change wrote:Thank you for this great article.
Kindest regards,
Dan
p.s. – I am considering editing the title of your article to read, “Larry Becraft analyzes the legal [basis] of Mercier's Invisible Contracts”
Really? Invisible Contracts?
Larry Becraft analyzes the legal basis of Mercier's Invisible Contracts. Avoid the mire of patriot myths.
