“What little is known of Mr. Stack, a software engineer in his 50s, comes from a note he published on his software company's website. The site has since been removed at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” (In case you’ve managed to miss it, Joseph Stack is the one alleged to have flown a plane into an IRS office.) There’s a HUGE abuse of power by the FBI. I’m utterly outraged that this man’s last statements have been summarily removed at the FBI’s “request”. This isn’t a suicide note that was leaked to the press. This was a statement from someone who WANTED it published, who published it himself. Isn’t it just lovely to see his free speech rights terminated summarily?
No doubt the feds simply don’t want Stack’s story to be told. It makes it harder for them to lie and spin; to claim that his situation was an oddity or rarity. It was neither!
I’m rather proud of the media outlets that are publishing Stack’s materials on their own sites like this one. Kudos to them for letting Stack have his say! Like so many, he was not heard during life so it is only decent to at least let him speak in death.
Yes, I know that there’s at least one person other than Stack who has died. There are many who will say that person, an employee of the IRS is “completely innocent”.
Stack says: “Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough).” Sadly, I’m not sure he’s wrong. And is one “innocent” if they work for an abusive government? I’m not so sure they are. As the old saying goes: If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem. More so if you’re actively supporting the problem by working for it, by promoting it IMO. Even if the other person who died IS completely innocent, the innocent die whenever there is a revolution or uprising and we seem to have joined the world in being unable to advance reasonable change without those violences. I’m just a little startled at how few of these “going postal” incidences there are given the current circumstances in this country.
I’ve had thoughts of offing myself over the years. A psychologist told me once that suicide is “the easy way out” and I laughed right in his face. I think suicide is amongst the hardest things most people could do; let alone suicide/murder to make a point. Most will hold on to hope desperately and one who commits suicide has given up hope completely; one who commits suicide and kills others in the process has lost hope and is trying to make a point. It is too easy for us to dismiss such actions as those of zealots but some are ordinary people like Stack who have realized they have such limited options and this is their last plea for change and not for themselves but for others as they will be dead and gone.
I haven’t read the details of Stack’s fight with the IRS because I don’t need to. I was a tax accountant before going to law school. I worked for the IRS answering those calls to the 800 number while I was in law school (oh, the error rate is WAY higher than they admit but that happens when you hire people with mere 6 hours of bookkeeping and give them only a couple of weeks of training; I got gigged regularly for answering questions above my grade but never got gigged a single time for giving a wrong answer – not that most of the supervisors would have been qualified to know if it was right or wrong). But I have more personal knowledge of how abusive the IRS can be.
In the mid 90’s, I became very ill with autoimmune problems which are notoriously difficult to get diagnosed and, for which, there is little effective treatment. I closed my law practice voluntarily (will save the SBOT abusiveness story for another time). I had little income over the next several years but did receive a significant settlement on a personal product liability case in 1999. This settlement was entirely designated as pain and suffering and that means that not a single penny was taxable. However, it did earn some interest while it was invested. True that I did not get the tax returns filed for a couple of years. The tax due was $407. The IRS decided to tax the entire amount in my investment account (some of it they taxed multiple times) and they filed a lien against me for over $170,000 and started tacking on penalties and interest, of course. After a year of battling with them, I had multiple strokes. They weren’t the only stressor in my life but I can’t say the IRS didn’t contribute to those strokes. The IRS became even more obstinate after the strokes.
Funny thing about a huge lien like that, it tends to cause insolvency. I had moved to Texas after the strokes and was able to file bankruptcy so my dispute with the IRS would be heard in that court rather than in their “home court”, the Tax Court. The lien was released and I paid $407 but it took over 3 years. I KNOW that to be a very shortened version of what usually happens and with much better than average results.
God help you if you have followed the rules in your life and become ill or simply hit major financial problems in the US. If you don’t have boatloads of money, you will not be able to get even nominally decent medical care. Social Security will “delay, deny, and hope you die” before paying benefits and you won’t have much chance of getting them without the medical records you can’t get without boatloads of cash (and maybe not even if you have that). The sharks will be swimming to your door because they can smell the blood in the water and they are opportunistic bastards. Bill collectors won’t care that you can’t pay, they’ll take their pound of flesh in harassment if you can’t. It’s like being at the end of one of those big domino tumbling exhibits, standing behind the last domino like an ant stuck to the floor; hearing the rumbling and tumbling of the dominos and waiting for the last one to squash you.
You will really need the help of higher powers if you have outstanding student loans. The Department of Education keeps swearing that they will “help” but that is complete CRAP. They will turn your loans over to the MOST abusive collectors who aren’t restrained by collection laws because it is a student loan debt. Student loans are supposed to be abated or discharged for illness or disability. Don’t bother to try, they won’t do it. My loans were less than $100,000 when I graduated from law school with less than $2,000 from my undergrad education. They are near $300,000 now. It’s probably a good thing that I’m permanently disabled because that’s a hole I could never dig my way out of if I could go back to work. Do I need to mention what a deterrent it is to even trying to work part-time when every penny would go to them? I was reading of Dr. Bisutti’s $550,000 student loan debt the other day and all I could do was pray she doesn’t get sick or in a major accident!
It’s just plain funny that the 2 piddly “stimulus checks” I should have gotten were intercepted and set to the Department of Education!
Social Security Disability? What a complete joke. It took 12 years to get my SSD and, because I was disabled so early in my life, my benefits are less than $800/month AND they deduct for health insurance I can’t possibly use because I can’t even afford a co-pay when my net benefits are less than $700/month. I don’t know how the average person survives this crap because it’s certainly “taxed” my abilities and creativity to the max to do so. It’s a damned good thing I owned a home outright before all this because I wouldn’t be able to survive otherwise. I have no doubt the student loan guys will try to take that too if they see this blog!
But still I feel compelled to try to help others with what little energy I have because I know how little the abused have access to, especially in terms of legal assistance. No doubt that the Unauthorized Practice of Law section of the State Bar of Texas (SBOT) will be on my ass one of these days; no matter that they can't find it in their ability to provide legal assistance people can afford but interesting they have expanded their powers and can afford to go after anyone who tries to help others!
So today I will mourn for Joe Stack and have just a little envy of him for being brave enough or crazy enough to make his point with an airplane. I will hope that the government is listening even though I doubt it is. I will post a reference to this blog entry on my facebook page even though I’ve heard it reported that facebook is censoring such posts. And I will continue to wonder how many others of the walking wounded are out there, how many take their own lives quietly and without notice every day…