No Passport For You! « de oppresso liber

Eric Blair wrote on Activist Post that this was akin to “Keeping the Slaves on the Plantation.”

Senate Bill 1813 passed by a vote of 74 to 22 on March 14th. It was first introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to “reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs, and for other purposes.”

But, as politicos do, there is a section in the bill that has absolutely nothing to do with the bill it’s in. But you’d be hard pressed to find it in the 1,679 page bill. Seriously, the entire Constitution, with all Amendments, can be printed in a fairly large font on 17 sheets of paper. Let me phrase that another way. The document that establishes the entirety of the United States government is 1% of the length of this bill.

Section 40304 of the legislation states that any individual who owes more than $50,000 to the Internal Revenue Service may be subject to “action with respect to denial, revocation, or limitation of a passport”.

However, there does not appear to be any specific language requiring a taxpayer to be charged with tax evasion or any other crime in order to have their passport revoked or limited — only that a notice of lien or levy has been filed by the IRS.

Of course, these figures are generated by the IRS which places the burden of proof on the individuals to prove that they don’t owe what the IRS says they owe. Consequently, they can arbitrarily determine any figure they wish to impose on a citizen without much recourse for the accused.

So, let’s get this straight. You are having your rights revoked not because you have committed a crime, but because you owe a debt. Perhaps Eric is right, this is like “keeping the slaves on the plantation.” And to think that they laughed at Ron Paul when he said fences would be used to keep us in.

You should head over to The Story of Your Enslavement to get an idea of the driving force behind this.

Aaron Graves

Aaron Graves is a veteran and a staunch libertarian, consistently breaking ranks with his Conservative friends on social issues, and with his Liberal friends on economic issues. He is also the guy that wrote the crap that you just read. Sic Semper Tyrannis