Judicial Terrorism: The State vs. Robert and Danille Kahre

Judicial tyrants, now as then: U.S. Federal Judge David Erza (left); German National Socialist Judge Roland Freisler (below, right). Any resemblance to the legendary gangsta accountant Herbert Kornfeld (further below, right) is ... somehow oddly appropriate.

German dissidents Hans and Sophie Scholl were half-way through their show trial before the notorious Judge Roland Freisler when their parents Robert and Magdalene arrived at the courtroom.


The outcome of the trial wasn't in doubt; Hans and Sophie -- who were on trial along with their compatriot in the White Rose resistance, a young father named Christoph Probst -- had admitted to composing and distributing seditious leaflets urging opposition to Hitler's war and domestic tyranny.


As Christians the Scholls understood their duty to the truth; as German patriots they understood the necessity of bringing down the regime that was destroying their homeland. Hans and Sophie had learned their values from their parents, but the intrepidity with which they defended them was their own.



Denied entrance to the courtroom, Magdalene pleaded with a guard: "I'm the mother of two of the accused." "You should have raised them better," sneered the guard in an act of malice that was both deliberate and gratuitous.


The circumstances were different, and the sentence imposed on the victim much less severe than execution via guillotine, but there was more than a hint of the same cruel statist sanctimony in the lecture given by U.S. District Judge David Ezra when he sentenced Danille Kahre to five years' probation earlier this month.



At the time he pronounced sentence on Danille, Ezra -- who was less histrionic than Roland Freisler, but just as contemptible in his dogmatic collectivism as that Communist-turned-Nazi jurist -- had already sentenced her husband, Robert Kahre, to fifteen years in prison. Turning to the subject of the four Kahre children, Erza insisted it was Danille's duty to teach the children to serve and worship the government that is tearing their family apart.


Danille must not allow her children to experience "hatred for government or for people who participate in government," Ezra pontificated: "If, as a result of that trauma [of seeing their parents unjustly imprisoned], that turns them [the children] against their own country and leads along a path of hate and retribution, they will have lost their promise."


This man is not a criminal: Robert Kahre (in blue button-down shirt) following the federal jury's verdict.



Like the sibling freedom fighters Hans and Sophie Scholl, Robert and Danille Kahre understand that the government ruling us is our country's deadliest enemy. This authentic patriotism is as inscrutable to David Ezra was it was to Roland Freisler, and for the same reason: Each of those judges was a creature of the regime he served, and both of them defined "justice" as vindicating the power of the state in any and all circumstances.


After being acquitted on the basis of the same facts in a previous trial, Robert and Danille Kahre were found guilty by a federal jury of "tax crimes" -- a charge that describes the efforts of productive people to avoid having their honestly earned wealth stolen from them by the world's most vicious criminal syndicate. In this particular case, the method used by the Kahres -- owners and operators of a large and successful construction company -- protected their earnings, as well as those of the people with whom they worked, and underscored the pervasive criminal fraud practiced by the regime.



In operating their construction business, the Kahres paid workers as independent contractors, rather than "employees," in gold and silver coins minted by the U.S. government. The employees were able to sell those coins -- which were assigned a face value by the government, not by the Kahres -- at the much higher market value. The contractors then claimed a tax liability based on the government-assigned face value of the coins, not their value in Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs).


This is, if you will, the obverse of the government's claim that gold and silver minted currency are "legal tender" only for their face value. The Kahres simply reverse-engineered the logic of the legal tender laws in an entirely defensible application of the commandment to render unto Caesar only that which is Caesar's: If the government is content to perpetuate the fraud that a Gold Eagle fifty-dollar coin is worth only that amount, and not the $1171 and change it presently commands on the market, then the tax liability of that coin should reflect its fraudulent face value.


The Constitution has never authorized the federal government to create "money" in any fashion, let alone that of printing tastelessly decorated rectangles of rag paper it calls "dollars." The Constitution permits only the use of gold and silver as legal tender. Contrary to popular assumption, the function of "coining" gold and silver does not mean that the government was authorized to "issue" money of any kind.

Free Market defender and aerospace engineer Bill Denman cues up a lecture, recorded on reel-to-reel audiotape, by economist Dean Russell of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). Among Dr. Russell's numerous invaluable contributions was his translation of Frederic Bastiat's irreplaceable treatise The Law from French into English.



Financial analyst and monetary historian Bill Denman points out that "coining" money "is simply a metal stamping process and regulating the value thereof is determining the size, weight, and firmness of the coin and stamping that information on its face."


Section 14 of the 1792 United States Coinage Act specifies that "it shall be lawful for any person or persons to bring to the mint gold and silver bullion, in order to their being coined.... And as soon as the said bullion shall have been coined, the person or persons by whom the same shall have been delivered, shall upon demand receive in lieu thereof coins of the same species of bullion which shall have been so delivered, weight for weight, of the pure gold or pure silver therein contained...."


"In other words," summarizes Denman, "anyone who owns gold and silver bullion (not just the mining companies) can take it to the mint and have it converted into certified coins and then spend them into circulation. It is not necessary to have government, or banks, `issue' currency" -- that is, it is not necessary under the terms of the Constitution and the 1792 Coinage Act, which is still in effect.


Under the existing "legal tender" laws, and the system of inflatable fiat money inflicted on our nation in 1913, spending constitutional money at the government's artificial face value would be suicidally stupid. But the very existence of government-minted gold and silver coins is usefully subversive of the official fictions on which the Regime's fraudulent monetary system depends.


In 1985, Congress passed the Gold Bullion Coin Act, which instructed the government to mint and circulate gold coins in denominations of $50, $25, $10, and $5. This produced an anomalous result: The same government that was issuing worthless Federal Reserve Note scrip was actually circulating constitutional currency as well (albeit in a fashion far removed from that authorized by the Constitution). This created a de facto dual monetary system, a fact not lost on the Kahres and a few others who understood the implications.


As Liberty Watch magazine pointed out more than a year ago, the supposedly criminal "tax fraud" practiced by the Kahres was actually perfectly legal under the dual system created by the feds: Given that there were two systems with two wildly different standards of value, which one was the correct standard for measuring taxable income? Nothing in any law or precedent dictated that it was necessary to use inflated FRNs for that purpose.


Accordingly, the Kahres paid their contractors in real money, thereby effectively wiping out their tax liability under the rules that the government itself had established. Nothing in federal law (including the "laws" dealing with the income tax, or federal court precedents) prohibits what the Kahres did in opting to paying those who did work for them in real money, and then turning the Regime's fraud against itself.

Stormtroopers strike: A joint state-federal goon squad attacks the Kahre family business, May 29, 2009.

It must not be forgotten, however, that government is a criminal enterprise that enjoys an effective monopoly on interpreting the laws that supposedly restrain it.


Tax "evasion" is a supposed crime that injures nobody but the parasite class, but that is the class that operates the state's apparatus of coercion, extraction, and propaganda.


This is why on May 29, 2003, a platoon-sized (or larger) paramilitary force, exhibiting the boldness such people display only when they're serenely confident that their targets are unarmed and helpless, assaulted the Kahre family's Las Vegas business office.


Acting on a warrant subsequently found to be legally defective, the strike team, a pack of militarized mouth-breathers from the FBI and several local SWAT teams, busted down an unlocked chain-link gate in an APC before swarming the property.


Computers were seized; helpless senior citizens and women were brutalized and held for a prolonged period in 109 degree weather, forbidden to get a drink or use the bathroom. One of the victims (Kahre's sister) was so severely abused that she required medical treatment. Security cameras were disabled in an unsuccessful effort to suppress the details of the criminal assault. Kahre himself was arrested by a separate task force while conducting business at his bank.


All of this was done, remember, to someone who was not accused of a violent crime. Had Kahre been a criminal kingpin accused of victimizing others through violence and fraud, he would have been treated with much greater deference by the Feds -- perhaps as a gesture of "professional courtesy."


The same Regime that has lavished trillions of dollars on politically connected swindlers at Goldman Sachs has no moral standing -- or legal authority -- to punish the Kahres. But when has any criminal oligarchy -- be it Nazi, Soviet, or US-federal -- required actual authority to carry out its crimes?


Like Roland Freisler, David Erza is a sycophant in robes, a servant of a dying Regime.


"You know the war is lost," Sophie Scholl chided Freisler during her trial. "Why don't you have the courage to face it?"


Ezra is intelligent enough to recognize the truth about the system whose bidding he did in sending Robert Kahre: The monetary regime created in 1913 -- a system of institutionalized fraud, expropriation, and deceit in the service of war and tyranny -- simply cannot endure. What eventually replaces it may be something even worse, but its trajectory is set, and its destruction is inevitable.


Teach your children well: Danille Kahre comforts her two-year-old son Landon, whose father was sentenced to serve fifteen years as a political prisoner.


I earnestly hope that Danille Kahre spends every day until the Regime's overdue and well-deserved demise tirelessly cultivating within her children a righteous and proper hatred for it and all its works and pomps, as well as a principled contempt for the invertebrate and despicable specimens who serve it, of whom David Erza is a suitably wretched example.


May each of us blessed with the responsibility of raising children do likewise.

A Quick Note --

Please forgive the long hiatus. Yes, Thanksgiving occupied a great deal of my time and attention. But I've also been job-hunting, which is a time- and labor-intensive undertaking even in a good job market.


At the bottom of this edition of Pro Libertate you will notice a PayPal widget. After three years and hundreds of essays, I'm finally putting out a tip jar. I earnestly hope that those of you who find my work worthwhile can arrange to send small but regular donations. In any case, I remain very grateful for the help and support many of you sent to my family during my recent health crisis. Thank you so much, and God bless.




Don't miss Pro Libertate Radio each weeknight from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time (7:00-8:00 Central) on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

How "Justice" Operates Under A Criminal Regime

Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves. --

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II, scene 2



It's time to play that time-honored children's game, "One of These Things is Not Like the Others." In this case we're going to examine three case histories of people accused of a supposed offense called "tax evasion."

"It's all in the wrist": Treasury Secretary and Goldman-Sachs bagman Timothy Geithner demonstrates his technique for picking the taxpayer's pocket.



Our first example involves Mr. Timothy Geithner, who refused to pay Medicare and Social Security taxes for several years -- despite the fact that his employer would have reimbursed him for the tax expenditures. A 2006 audit revealed other irregularities in Mr. Geithner's tax history, including dubious dependent-child deductions.



Despite these, ah, irregularities, Geithner was confirmed by the Senate as the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, which collects tax revenues for -- among other things -- redistribution to Geithner's colleagues and former co-workers on Wall Street.


Sure, tax revenues are spent on other purposes, such as interest payments on the federal debt and killing harmless foreigners. But since the Congress made the Treasury Secretary the de facto economic dictator a year ago, servicing politically connected Wall Street criminals has become that department's primary mission, one that has devoured trillions of dollars in wealth.


*Burp* Taxes are for other people: Tax-feeder Charles Rangel briefly lifts his snout from the congressional trough to pose for a photo.


Next, we turn to the case of Mr. Charles Rangel, a resident of New York, who refused to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income from properties he owns in the Caribbean.



Rangel's first impulse was to share -- no, to give outright -- most of the blame for his tax evasion to his wife, Alma, who manages the family finances.


With equal generosity he tried to cut in the Spanish-speaking tenants of the property for a slice of the blame as well: "Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they'd start speaking Spanish," he insisted.



Rangel's problems continued to accumulate when it was pointed out that his tax evasion was undertaken in order to facilitate other forms of fraud: He couldn't accurately report his Caribbean income and qualify for "hardship"-case rent controls on properties he maintained in New York City, or the special "homestead" tax exemption he claimed on his property in Washington, D.C.



Despite those infractions, and others involving congressional financial disclosure rules, Rangel has retained his job as a New York Congressman and, more importantly, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is where tax laws that govern other people are written.



The third case we'll examine is that of New Hampshire residents Ed and Elaine Brown. Convicted of "tax evasion" and "resisting arrest," Mrs. Brown, 68, has been sentenced to thirtyfive years in federal prison -- an effective life sentence.


Her husband's sentencing has been deferred until he has undergone a "psychiatric evaluation": As was the case with political prisoners in the former Soviet Union, Mr. Brown is suspected by state authorities of being clinically deranged because of his eccentric political views. Chances are pretty good that if he avoids prison, Ed Brown may be institutionalized for the rest of his life.



Obviously, the case of Ed and Elaine Brown is different from those of Geithner and Rangel, since they're not part of that sanctified stratum of society entitled to live at the expense of the rest of us. They, like most of us, belong to that class of people whom the law fails to protect, rather than the class that the law fails to restrain.



Unlike Timothy Geithner, the Browns aren't involved in stealing huge sums of money. Unlike Charlie Rangel, they're not involving in imposing "laws" that justify the pilferage of privately earned wealth.


The Browns stole from nobody, inflicted no harm on anybody, and spent most of their lives (with the exception of one matter discussed below) providing honest services to other people in mutually beneficial transactions. None of this is true of the likes of Geithner and Rangel, for whom plunder has proven to be a lucrative and respectable career.



Like Geithner and Rangel, Ed Brown -- as a very young man -- once tried to enrich himself through theft, only to be caught, tried, and imprisoned for that crime. In 1976, Brown was given an unqualified pardon for that crime, which he committed as an 18-year-old. He then built a business as an exterminator.



For her part, Elaine built a large and successful practice as a dentist. Neither one of them lived at the expense of other people; they were producers, not parasites. In 1996, the Browns decided that they wouldn't permit the likes of Geithner and Rangel to continue stealing from them in order to enrich political favored cronies and constituents. So, like Geithner and Rangel, the Browns stopped paying their taxes.

Armed robbery: "Law enforcement" agents steal Elaine Brown's dental practice, June 7, 2007.


In January 2007, the Browns were "convicted" of the supposed crime of tax evasion and invited to turn themselves in for imprisonment. They impudently scorned that generous invitation, choosing instead to barricade themselves inside the home the Feds planned to steal from them and letting it be known that they would use lethal force to defend themselves against any federal aggression.


The Browns' Plainfield, New Hampshire home -- invariably referred to as a "compound," the preferred description of any dwelling in which live people the government intends to kill -- was surrounded by paramilitary troops from the U.S. Marshals Service.


In short order the home also became a focal point for armed private citizens who intended to support the Browns in the event of an armed assault and, more importantly, to be on-scene witnesses to help deter any potentially murderous aggression by the Feds.



While the Browns were occupied at their home, a small army of heavily armed federal agents seized Elaine Brown's dental office -- an act of felonious armed robbery. Unfortunately -- albeit predictably -- the throng of Brown supporters was seeded with paid federal informants, two of whom, posing as supporters, gained access to the home and arrested the middle-aged couple without incident.


Put on trial for eleven felony weapons and "conspiracy" charges, the Browns were found "guilty." That is to say, the court demonstrated that the Browns threatened to use the same means to defend their lives and property that were to be employed by those seeking to deprive them of the same.


The Browns had assembled an enviable arsenal of firearms, ammunition, bullet-resistant clothing, and homemade explosives (or, as the federal prosecution insisted on describing the pipe bombs, "improvised explosive devices" -- a term intended to evoke the image of "terrorists" detonating hidden weapons while fighting U.S. troops in Iraq).



Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold Huftalen, who presided over the prosecution, initially sought a prison sentence of up to 44 years for the Browns. Holding aloft one of Elaine's handguns, Huftalen simpered that "This was not a small, dainty, self-defense handgun," describing it instead as a heavy weapon "designed to kill 17 people without reloading."


Given the indignation with which Huftalen invested every lisping syllable of his presentation, one might think that the weapons possessed by the armed federal agents surrounding the Brown home were designed to tickle people. But Huftalen, as a servant of a criminal regime, assumes that only the state has the right to use or threaten lethal force, and that its victims commit some variety of terrorism when they arm themselves with implements of self-defense more effective than Q-tips or Nerf balls.



"Mr. and Mrs. Brown did not engage in a principled dissent against laws they felt to be unjust," pronounced federal Judge George Singal as he imposed the sentence. "Let us not be fooled. The conduct engaged in by Mrs. Brown was purely criminal."


To be "criminal," conduct has to inflict demonstrable harm against an identifiable victim.
Neither Huftalen nor Singal can describe a single instance of palpable harm that resulted from the refusal of the Browns to pay income taxes, or from their acquisition of the means to defend themselves and their home from the criminal syndicate bent on stealing their property and, if necessary, murdering them.


Even if we were to accept the premise that tax "evaders" injure the "public good" by withholding their wealth from the public fisc, how can it possibly be a greater crime for the Browns to deprive the Feds of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, while the unpunished tax "evader" Timothy Geithner shovels out hundreds of billions of dollars to con artists on Wall Street?


Yes, the Browns threatened to shoot or otherwise kill anybody who tried to harm them. This, coupled with the presence of a large number of witnesses, is probably the only thing that saved their lives.


Thus it is of some interest that Huftalen (as reported by the Nashua Telegraph) chose to seek a life sentence for Elaine Brown -- despite the fact that she had never harmed a living soul, and despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking her to the explosives in the Brown household -- "in order to deter Brown supporters [and, presumably, other Americans] from engaging in similar conduct."


It's worth remembering that tax evasion, far from being a crime of any sort, is among our nation's oldest and most sacred political traditions. The War for American independence from Great Britain was carried out by people who engaged in exactly the same kind of "criminal" conduct for which Elaine Brown will spend the rest of her life in prison, and for which her husband may end his days in the American equivalent of the Soviet psihuska.


Sure, the government ruling us -- the same one that not only countenances, but promotes, the monumental criminality of Geithner, Rangel, and their ilk -- calls tax evasion a "crime" when it is carried out by people outside of the privileged caste.


Real crimes involve some variety of force and fraud to deprive someone of something to which he is entitled. Nobody is entitled to take the property of another through taxation, even if such pilferage is "authorized" by a majority of 300,000,000 to 1. The course pursued by Ed and Elaine Brown may have been unwise, but it neither picked my pocket nor broke my leg.


Pocket-picking and leg-breaking are the veritable job descriptions of those who seized the Browns' property, kidnapped them, and are preparing to detain them for the rest of their lives. This is how "justice" operates under the Robber State that afflicts us.




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Dum spiro, pugno!