SOCIAL SECURITY--OFFICIAL EXTORTION
by Kirk Brothers
CLICK HERE to return to Index
INTRODUCTION
It is obvious to anyone with the brains of a box of rocks
that America is in a state of crisis of "nuclear" nature, and is
rapidly approaching the point of critical mass.
By "nuclear" we mean a crisis that goes to the core, root,
or nucleus as its cause--not a minor problem based upon peri-
pheral and/or irrelevant issues. If one, either optimistically
or sophistically, maintains that the evidence of a crisis is not
yet clear, consider for a moment the sobering fact that in the
last Presidential election, less than forty-nine percent of the
electorate bothered to vote.
How significant is this fact? Well, before the election,
Clinton campaign aides were talking in enthusiastic tones about a
"landslide" victory of a sixty-percent majority. Let as assume,
for the sake of argument, that Clinton did, in fact, win sixty
percent of the votes cast. Sixty percent of less than forty-nine
percent means that, in fact, he was supported by less than thirty
percent of the American people. A full seventy percent, propor-
tional to the votes actually cast, found Clinton so lacking in
leadership that they failed to vote for him.
Dole's humiliating defeat becomes more pronounced if it is
borne in mind that he won the support of only forty percent of
less than forty-nine percent--or less than twenty percent of
eligible voters.
In short, roughly three out of four voters as a whole
rejected both the Democratic and Republican platforms and
candidates alike. The fact of this record-low turnout by voters
cannot be ignored by any thinking person as being trivial or
irrelevant. Leaders of both parties, however, naturally prefer
to gloss over harsh realities--including public sentiments
expressed before the election, which clearly showed widespread
hatred for our present political choices.
One well-known Hollywood actor commented that choosing
between Dole and Clinton was like choosing between being kicked
or gouged. His remarks were not an isolated example--one highly
respected news commentator, when the final results were known,
expressed his vie that Clinton was a bore without a creative bone
in his body, who will give us four more years of God-damned
nonsense. The newsman later apologized to Clinton, presumably
under coercion to do so (which will be hotly denied)--in itself
is a significant fact of the political realities of our time,
here in the land of the free.
WHAT IS THE REVOLUTIONARY RIGHT?
The phrase was coined in the hope that it might become a
rallying cry for Libertarians who believe that it is time that
we, the People of the United States, in order to form a more per-
fect union, establish justice, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, must get our Oedipal-
incestuous government off our backs (we use the compound
adjective in its complimentary sense).
THE REVOLUTIONARY RIGHT accepts as a given that Americans
have a historical mission to perform in demanding--by force if
necessary--broad, genuine, and incorruptible reconstruction of
the slimy and stinking cesspool of American politics. The name
is derived from Lincoln's first inaugural address:
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people
who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the
existing government, they can exercise their constitutional
right of amending it, or THEir REVOLUTIONARY RIGHT to dis-
member or overthrow it."
If the great Republican's rhetoric sounds radical to modern
ears, consider the words of the great Democrat, Thomas Jefferson,
in letters to (a) James Madison and (b) William Smith:
(a) "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good
thing, and as necessary to the political world as storms to
the physical."
(b) "What country ever before existed a century and a half with-
out a rebellion?...The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of tyrants."
THE REVOLUTIONARY RIGHT is forced to the unhappy conclusion
that our government at all levels is unspeakably corrupted by
partisan politics--that our bureaucracy becomes more and more
intrusive and coercive with every passing year--and that our
Courts, AS WE SHALL PROVE, knowingly and maliciously subvert
clearly-written Constitutional rights to a Judge's personal
theories of political correctness.
We hold that the American people feel betrayed and exploited
by bureaucracy running amok--and the people are correct. We be-
lieve that the United States is headed for civil war in the next
20 years if our politicians do not wake up, smell the coffee, and
take drastic corrective action immediately.
We hold that the existence of organized armed militias, and
an inevitable clandestine fringe of terrorists with bombs--plus
the various incidents of bloody confrontation between sincere
political dissidents and a power structure which WE SHALL PROVE
IS UNBRIDLED TYRANNY--are setting the stage for bloodshed on a
massive scale, unless our nation's drift toward Big Brother
socialism is decisively halted by sane and responsible leaders.
America has become a travesty of the ideals we were taught
in childhood--only to learn that, in the adult world, our elected
and appointed officials hold all ideals in contempt, to satiate
their rapacious drive for power.
We advocate heading off the violence that must otherwise
erupt in a few short decades at the most, by taking an orderly
series of steps to drastically revise the Constitution of 1787.
For obvious reasons of self-serving expediency, any such
sane and modest proposals will be hotly rejected by our leaders,
who expend much energy, and considerable ingenuity (translation:
shyster tactics of half-truths and whole lies), in trying to pin
the blame on everyone but themselves and their own parties.
WHO IS TO BLAME?
It is regrettable, but apparently true, that most Americans
are either too stupid or too lazy (or both) to even read--much
less seriously study--history and, as Santayana said, those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But one
thing should be clear to even the most ignorant American--every-
thing that exists must have a cause, and the dismal condition of
American social and political life did not spring into life
spontaneously. It is a direct result of prior political causes.
Unfortunately, because most Americans cannot relate to
things that happened before they were born, they tend to blame
today's problems on a politician's speech last month, or a law
passed last year, or a veto by the most recent President of the
opposite political party. But if we are to pin responsibility
for the degradation of our nation's great promise upon the one
true culprit, we must go back more than sixty years, to the
election of our thirty-second President, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
We of THE REVOLUTIONARY RIGHT make no bones about the truth:
the appalling state of American political and social life must be
laid on the doorstep of the man long buried with honors and
exalted--if not almost deified--in his memorial in Warm Springs,
Georgia. We will show that FDR's legacy was a curse upon the
United States in the form of an insidious, pernicious and
debilitating, if not evil, social and political philosophy.
THE LEGACY OF THE NEW DEAL
FDR, to give him credit for sincerity, had the very best of
good intentions, with which the road to hell is paved. He was an
idealistic pipe-dreamer with Socialist leanings, and gifted with
oratorical talent that could sell you the paint off your own
walls.
He combined charisma with his own version of Norman Vincent
Peale's power of wishful thinking and denial of reality, with
deadly consequences upon our nation's fiscal integrity and
acceptance of individual responsibility. If this seems an overly
broad condemnation, let us be a bit more precise.
Roosevelt apparently never learned--or cared about knowing--
any of the basic hard facts of economics, such as:
1) you cannot get something for nothing--nothing is free;
2) you cannot get rich by borrowing spending money;
3) you cannot balance the books by writing a staggering sum
in red ink and saying, "and that's the deficit".
FDR's denial of reality apparently blinded him to the fact
that we are NOT, as he said, "merely borrowing money from our-
selves". For more than a half century our lying and cheating
politicians in Washington have been borrowing from future
generations--taxation clearly without representation--running up
a bill that our posterity will never be able to pay.
The inexorable laws of mathematics are already catching up
with Social Security and Medicare. Mathematics, and other laws
of nature, were ignored by FDR and his flunky Congresses, who
passed a series of social reforms based upon the sentimentality
of Charles Dickens' Victorian novels and the morality of the
legendary Robin Hood. Robin Hood may have robbed the rich to
give to the poor, but nobody audited Robin Hood's books.
Roosevelt pooh-poohed the inescapable consequences of
uncurbed deficit financing, saying that "we have nothing to fear
but fear itself"--the "big lie" technique expounded in Nazi
Germany by Propaganda Minister Goebbels. In fact, our nation has
been fiscally and morally bankrupt for a half-century as part of
FDR's legacy, and our political and social ills are merely
Roosevelt's Socialist chickens coming home to roost. Again let
us be a bit more precise.
Roosevelt called himself a liberal. He was not--nor are his
many adulating defenders. Voltaire was a true liberal--he once
wrote, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the
death your right to say it." Today's so-called liberals' motto
appears to be, "I disagree with what you say, so shut up."
The long-range effects of FDR's misguided, but politically
successful, economic policies were foretold by Spengler in
DECLINE OF THE WEST, and the ultimate consequences of Socialism
in general were depicted in chilling fictional tones in Orwell's
prophetic novel, 1984.
Try to remember one of the principles of Big Brother's
brain-washing dictatorship. In the novel, the use of traditional
words with traditional (realistic) meanings was prohibited in
favor of "Newspeak"--the foundation for "political correctness"
--in which unpleasant truths were sugar-coated (a subtle form of
denial of reality) to make Big Brother and his henchmen look
benevolent. What evidence of "Newspeak" do we see in our lives
every day? Here are just two examples.
1) It is politically incorrect to use any word that implies
a gender--such as actress, waitress or, in the masculine
sense, chairman. An actress has become an actor, and both
waiters and waitresses (you know the difference when these
traditional terms are used) are both known as "servers" but
not the traditional "servants", which implies an inferior
status.
The taboo against "chairman" (the "correct" term is now
"chairperson") is an illustrative example of feminist
activism carried to the heights of inanity. These women
(and some men) appear to have never learned that "man" is
a biological class which includes both genders. Just as
felines and canines are commonly known as cats and dogs
of both sexes, homo sapiens is in common parlance quite
properly known as "man" of both sexes.
"Chairmen" of all-female organizations for generations saw
no indignity or incongruity in being addressed as "Madame
Chairman." Given time enough, the words "man" and "woman"
might themselves become taboo, replaced by "person" and
"woperson" (a bit of persiflage). Will the day come when
the navies of the world have a rank of "Yeoperson", and
foundries cast steel "personhole covers"? This is Newspeak
with a vengeance, and it is the language now taught in
schools as being "correct". It is also arbitrary, con-
trived, and utter nonsense.
2) It is politically incorrect to use any word that implies
that a person to whom it refers is inferior in any way.
Therefore, handicapped persons become "challenged," and
mentally retarded children become "special". In another
more insidious application, welfare RECIPIENTS have now
become welfare CLIENTS--a total misapplication of that
traditional term. A client in fact is someone who PAYS
for services rendered--not one who is paid as an act of
charity (oops! maybe "charity" is no longer correct).
An inevitable consequence of shifting one's thinking away
from the reality of individual NON-equality (the traditional
realistic use of language) is that an individual who refuses to
conform to even the most basic societal norms of behavior becomes
"troubled", and it is implied that somehow society has "failed"
in its "duty" to help each and every person achieve lofty goals
which are tacitly (no matter how ludicrously) presumed to inspire
each and every citizen. The liberal virtue of tolerance has
degenerated into the vice of permissiveness.
Therefore, murderers are routinely characterized by their
lawyers as being somhow misunderstood victims, and not simply
evil. So-called "bleeding heart" newspersons (often of the
female variety) play up the emotional--especially the tragic--
element in stories of crime and criminals. The result is that
most Americans have lost whatever respect they had for self-
reliance, or willingness to accept a responsibility for every
right--the principles upon which our forebears created our nation
two centuries ago.
Why is FDR to be held at least partially accountable for
this degradation of moral fiber? Simply because acceptance of
his Socialistic ideal of cradle-to-grave economic security makes
people too lazy to create their own security--insofar as security
might be attainable. FDR attempted to institutionalize charity
as a legitimate aim of government, and the keystone of his
presidency was undeniably the Social Security Act.
WE SHALL NOW PROVE BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT that Social
Security violates the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of
1787. Our proof is in the form of a legal argument, or Memo-
randum of Law, and we respectfully challenge each and every
reader to find even the slightest error in our logic and/or stare
decisis.
QUESTION ASKED
Does enforcement of the Social Security Act deprive a person
of property without due process of law?
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
Amendment V of the Constitution of the United States
mandates that no American shall be deprived of property without
due process of law.
It will be shown that:
a) the Social Security Act, in its entirety, comprises a
coercive contract within the meaning of UNITED STATES V BUTLER,
297 U.S. 1, (1935);
b) by definition of terms, enforcement of a coercive
contract comprises the crime of extortion;
c) therefore enforcement of the Social Security Act
comprises, in effect, the crime of extortion by the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS), and deprives every taxpayer of money (a
form of property) without due process of law, in violation of the
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
AUTHORITIES CITED
U.S. Constitution, Amendment V
Clarke v Commissioner, 1957 TCt 861
United States v Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1935)
Helvering v Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1936)
Steward Machine Co. v Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1936)
United States v Lee, 455 U.S. 252 (1982)
ARGUMENT
Social Security is a scheme of bilateral and unilateral
financial transactions between taxpayers and government. Such
transactions imply Common Law contractual relationships which are
subject to the inviolable rule that each and every lawful
contract must be consensual.
Social Security tax is collected simultaneously with Income
Tax, using one tax-return form, but the two taxes may not be
merged. The Tax Court ruled in CLARKE V COMMISSIONER that Social
Security tax is not part of Income Tax, but part of a separate
revenue raised to finance benefits paid under the Social Security
Act.
Therefore, Income Tax per se has Constitutional authority
under Amendment XVI, while Social Security Tax has only statutory
authority, as the financing portion of a specific "tax and spend"
legislative act.
But participation in Social Security is compulsory. There-
fore, if Social Security be a contract, it is also a coercive one
by virtue of its compulsory nature.
Most Social Security transactions are bilateral, and most
beneficiaries are retired pensioners who had paid taxes into the
funds for years in order to receive their benefits.
U.S. V BUTLER concerned the Agricultural Adjustment Act
(AAA), a New Deal program which preceded the Social Security Act.
In finding the AAA unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled:
"There is an OBVIOUS [emphasis supplied] difference between
a statute stating the conditions upon which moneys shall be
expended, and one effective only upon the assumption of a
contractual obligation to submit to a regulation, which
otherwise could not be enforced." (297 U.S. 3, #17)
Thus, the fact that most transactions are bilateral, the
fact that benefits vary, and are calculated so as to reflect the
amount of tax paid by each beneficiary, the fact that each
beneficiary is assigned a unique numbered account to record the
tax paid and benefits due, and the fact that the government has
committed itself to pay such benefits, lead inescapably to one
conclusion: that the bilateral transactions of Social Security
comprise an implied de facto contract.
The government is obviously the offeror, the taxpayer the
offeree, and the moneys exchanged comprise mutual consideration.
The one element missing for a valid contract is consensuality.
It is obvious that taxpayers may not compel the government
to pay retirement benefits: the government, in the text of the
Social Security Act, has de facto assumed a contractual
obligation to do so. The tax paid and benefits received by
bilateral participants are linked by cause and effect, and not
merely a fortuitous coincidence of taxing and spending. The
cause/effect relationship between tax and benefits clearly proves
the fact of mutual consideration.
However, some Social Security transactions are unilateral:
some beneficiaries are younger than normal retirement age, and
perhaps have never made any payments into the funds. It might be
suggested that unilateral transactions of Social Security are
non-contractual because the element of mutual consideration is
absent.
The definitive answer may be found in BUTLER, in which the
Supreme Court rejected the tax-and-spend argument as a defense of
the AAA program.
The AAA was a scheme intended to raise the price of farm
products by reducing agricultural production. All AAA trans-
actions were unilateral: from wholesale grocers to government in
the taxing and from government to farmers in the spending.
Butler was a grocer who was taxed on produce he handled in
order to pay farmers not to grow crops. Butler raised a Tenth
Amendment question of abuse of legislative powers, which the
government defended as a proper exercise of Constitutional powers
to tax and spend under the "general welfare" phrase of ARTICLE I,
#8.
The Supreme Court ruled that the AAA was an unconstitutional
abuse of the power to tax, on multiple counts, and an abuse of
the power to spend, also on multiple counts.
In specific reference to the tax portion of the AAA, the
Supreme Court wrote:
"A tax...is an exaction for the support of the government;
the term does not connote the expropriation of money from
one group to be expended for another." (297 U.S. 1, #2)
"...the phrase, 'to provide for the general welfare,' is not
an independent provision authorizing Congress to enact wel-
fare statutes, but is a qualification defining and limiting
the power 'to lay and collect taxes,' etc." (297 U.S. 2,
#13)
It is self-evident that the above points apply word for word
to the Social Security tax as well as to the AAA tax.
In addressing the AAA spending program, the Supreme Court
ruled that the AAA established an implied contract with farmers
to comply with AAA regulations. Furthermore, the Court ruled
that the payments to farmers comprised a form of coercion--in
plain words a bribe--to induce compliance with the contract
implied by the transactions, so that a farmer's apparent freedom
of choice was illusory.
"There is an obvious difference between a statute stating
the conditions upon which moneys shall be expended, and one
effective only upon the assumption of a contractual obliga-
tion to submit to a regulation, which otherwise could not
be enforced." (297 U.S. 3, #17)
"The tax, the appropriation of the funds raised and the
directions for their disbursement, are but parts of a plan
--the means to an unconstitutional end....The regulation of
the farmer's activities...is in fact coercion." (297 U.S.
3)
Therefore it has been shown that the Social Security Act,
including both bilateral and unilateral transacions, is a
coercive contract within the meaning of U.S. V BUTLER.
It is well known that in several cases subsequent to BUTLER,
the Supreme Court denied challenges to the Social Security Act--
but it must be noted that in each and every such case, the
question before the Court failed to focus on the Common Law of
Contracts and the meaning of BUTLER in the context of the Fifth
Amendment rather than the Tenth.
The three most commonly-cited precedents in defense of the
Social Security Act are as follow:
Helvering v Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1936)
Steward Machine Co. v Davis 301 U.S. 548 (1936)
United States v Lee, 455 U.S. 252 (1982)
In NONE of these major decisions (nor 16 other minor cases
which are often cited by government lawyers) did the Supreme
Court state that a tax is NOT necessarily an exaction for the
support of the government, and that the term MAY connote the
expropriation of money from persons who HAVE earned it, in order
to give money to persons who have NOT earned it.
Furthermore, in NONE of these cases did the Supreme Court
hold that the "general welfare" phrase of ARTICLE I, #8, PERMITS
forcible redistribution of wealth in compliance with some
*unproved economic theory and/or vague moral philosophy.
In addition, in NONE of thse cases did the Supreme Court
declare that, while regulation of a farmer's [economic] activity
is, in fact, coercion, regulation of a NON-farmer's economic
activity is, in fact, NOT coercion. And finally, in NONE of
these cases did the Supreme Court affirm that it is permissible
for the government to bribe any citizen to obey any law.
BUTLER implies the obvious: that valid laws are enforceable
absent any contractual obligation to obey them. Would any
District Attorney dream of paying a felon not to rob a bank?
Thus the question raised herein is apparently novel, but is not
without precedent, and the merits of argument herein are clear.
It will now be shown that the present argument is, in fact,
unanswerable. Proof of this point is to be found in a single
word in BUTLER which has been twice cited, namely:
"There is an OBVIOUS [emphasis supplied] difference between
a statute stating the conditions..." etc. (297 U.S. 3, #17)
First, because Supreme Court opinions are not written for a
popular audience, but for persons practicing law, it must be
inferred that an implied contract is OBVIOUS to each and every
member of the legal profession.
Second, because the Common Law of Contracts is tacitly pre-
sumed by the Supreme Court to be OBVIOUS to every lawyer, it fol-
lows that an implied contract is identifiable as such prima
facie.
Thus, any argument to the effect that the contractual nature
of Social Security is unclear must be rejected. Contracts must
be presumed to be a fundamental part of every lawyer's special
knowledge, because the Supreme Court has ruled that implied
contracts are OBVIOUS.
Therefore it may not be denied that bilateral transactions
of Social Security comprise implied de facto contracts;
unilateral transactions comprise implied de jure contracts; and
all such contracts are de jure coercive.
Enforcement of a coercive contract comprises the crime of
extortion. The crime of extortion by government officials is a
blatant denial of due process. Therefore it is shown that Social
Security is unconstitutional as applied, because enforcement
infringes Fifth Amendment rights of property and due process.
Q.E.D.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
If you are distressed at the possibility of a Court test of
our argument--fear not! There will be no successful challenge to
Social Security, no matter how many concerned Americans might
unite in a class action to force the issue.
Why not? Because, based upon our indisputable proof that
Social Security is unconstitutional, WE SHALL NOW PROVE by the
standard of probable cause that Judges routinely suppress Consti-
tutional rights in order to favor partisan political theories,
and maintain the corrupt status quo. Our proof consists of
damning excerpts from documents suppressed by District and
Circuit Courts, showing OUTRIGHT LIES BY JUDGES when asked to
rule on our Social Security Memorandum of Law. It will be a
revelation that our judges, politicians, and news media don't
want you to see.