Pubdate: November 1998
Source: Vanity Fair
Page: 96
Copyright: 1998 The Conde Nast Publications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.vanityfair.com
Author: Gore Vidal

THE WAR AT HOME - Part III

	By and large, the Sherman anti-trust laws are long since gone. Today three
companies control 80 percent of the total beef-packing market. How does
this happen? Why do dispossessed farmers have no congressional
representatives to turn to? Why do consumers get stuck with mysterious
pricings of products that in themselves are inferior to those of an earlier
time? Dyer's answer is simple but compelling. Through their lobbyists, the
corporate executives who drew up the "adaptive program" for agriculture now
own or rent or simply intimidate Congresses and presidents while the courts
are presided over by their former lobbyists, an endless supply of
white-collar servants since two-thirds of all the lawyers on our small
planet are Americans. Finally, the people at large are not represented in
government while corporations are, lavishly.

	What is to be done? Only one thing will work, in Dyer's view: electoral
finance reform.  But those who benefit from the present system will never
legislate themselves out of power. So towns and villages continue to decay
between the Canadian and the Mexican borders, and the dispossessed rural
population despairs or rages. Hence, the apocalyptic tone of a number of
recent nonreligious works of journalism and analysis that currently record,
with fascinated horror, the alienation of group after group within the
United States.

	Since the Encyclopedia Britannica is Britannica and not America, it is not
surprising that its entry for "Bill of Rights, United States" is a mere
column in length, the same as its neighbor on the page "Bill of Sale,"
obviously a more poignant document to the island compilers. Even so, they
do tell us that the roots of our Rights are in Magna Carta and that the
genesis of the Bill of Rights that was added as 10 amendments to our
Constitution in 1791 was largely the handiwork of James Madison, who, in
turn, echoed Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights. At first, these 10
amendments were applicable to American citizens only as citizens of the
entire United States and not as Virginians or as New Yorkers,  where  state
 laws  could  take precedence according to "states' rights," as
acknowledged in the 10th and last of the original amendments. It was not
until 1868 that the 14th Amendment forbade the states to make laws counter
to the original bill. Thus every United States person, in his home state,
was guaranteed freedom of "speech and press, and the right to assembly and
to petition as well as freedom from a national religion." Apparently, it
was  Charlton Heston who brought the Second Amendment, along with handguns
and  child-friendly Uzis, down from Mount DeMille. Originally, the right
for citizen militias to bear arms was meant to discourage a standing
federal or state army and all the mischief that an armed state might cause
people who wanted to live not under the shadow of a gun but peaceably on
their own atop some sylvan Ruby Ridge.

	Currently, the Fourth Amendment is in the process of disintegration, out
of "military necessity"- the constitutional language used by Lincoln to
wage civil war, suspend habeas corpus, shut down newspapers, and free
southern slaves. The Fourth Amendment guarantees "the right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things
to be seized." The Fourth is the people's principal defense against
totalitarian government; it is a defense that is now daily breached both by
deed and law.

	In James Bovard's 1994 book, Lost Rights, the author has assembled a great
deal of material on just what our law enforcers are up to in the
never-to-be-won wars against Drugs and Terrorism, as they do daily battle
with the American people in their homes and cars, on buses and planes,
indeed, wherever they can get at them, by hook or by crook or by sting.
Military necessity is a bit too highbrow a concept for today's federal and
local officials to justify their midnight smashing in of doors, usually
without warning or warrant, in order to terrorize the unlucky residents.
These unlawful attacks and seizures are often justified by the possible
existence of a flush toilet on the fingered premises. (If the warriors
against drugs don't take drug fiends absolutely by surprise, the fiends
will flush away the evidence.) This is intolerable for those eager to keep
us sin-free and obedient. So in the great sign of Sir Thomas Crapper's
homely invention, they suspend the Fourth, and conquer.

	Nineteen ninety-two. Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Hartford Courant
reported that the local Tactical Narcotics Team routinely devastated homes
and businesses they "searched." Plainclothes policemen burst in on a
Jamaican grocer and restaurant owner with the cheery cry "Stick up,
niggers. Don't move." Shelves were swept clear. Merchandise ruined. "They
never identified themselves as police," the Conrant noted. Although they
found nothing but a registered gun, the owner was arrested and charged with
"interfering with an arrest" and so booked. A judge later dismissed the
case. Bovard reports, "In 1991, in Garland, Texas, police dressed in black
and wearing black ski-masks burst into a trailer, waved guns in the air and
kicked down the bedroom door where Kenneth Baulch had been sleeping next to
his seventeen-month-old son. A policeman claimed that Baulch posed a deadly
threat because he held an ashtray in his left hand, which explained why he
shot Baulch in the back and killed him. (A police internal investigation
found no wrongdoing by the officer.) In March 1992, a police SWAT team
killed Robin Pratt, an Everett, Washington, mother, in a no-knock raid
carrying out an arrest warrant for her husband. (Her husband was later
released after the allegations upon which the arrest warrant were based
turned out to be false.)" Incidentally, this K.G.B. tactic - hold someone
for a crime, but let him off if he then names someone else for a bigger
crime, also known as Starr justice - often leads to false, even random
allegations which ought not to be acted upon so murderously without a bit
of homework first.  The Seattle Times describes Robin Pratt's last moments.
She was with her six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece when the
police broke in. As the bravest storm trooper,  named  Aston,  approached
her,  gun drawn, the other police shouted, "'Get down,' and she started to
crouch onto her knees. She looked up at Aston and said, 'Please don't hurt
my children....' Aston had his gun pointed at her and fired, shooting her
in the neck. According to [the Pratt family attorney John] Muenster, she
was alive another one to two minutes but could not speak because her throat
had been destroyed by the bullet. She was handcuffed, lying face down."
Doubtless Aston was fearful of a divine resurrection; and vengeance. It is
no secret that American police rarely observe the laws of the land when out
wilding with each other, and as any candid criminal judge will tell you, per-
jury is often their native tongue in court.

	The I.R.S. has been under some scrutiny lately for violations not only of
the Fourth but of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth requires a grand-jury
Indictment in prosecutions for major crimes. It also provides that no
person shall be compelled to testify against himself, forbids the taking of
life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or the taking of
private property for public use without compensation. 

	Over the years, however, the ever secretive I.R.S. has been seizing
property right and left without so much as a postcard to the nearest grand
jury, while due process of law is not even a concept in their singleminded
pursuit of loot. Bovard notes:

	Since 1980, the number of levies-I.R.S. seizures of bank accounts and pay
checks-has increased 	four-fold, reaching 3,253,000 in 1992. The General
Accounting Office (GAG)estimated in 1990 	that the I.R.S. imposes over
50,000 incorrect or unjustified levies on citizens and businesses per
year. The GAO estimated that almost 6% of I.R.S. levies on business were
incorrect.... The I.R.S. 	also imposes almost one and a half million liens
each year, an increase of over 200% since 1980. 	Money magazine conducted a
survey in 1990 of 156 taxpayers who had I.R.S. liens imposed on 	their
property and found that 35% of the taxpayers had never received a
thirty-day warning notice 	from the I.R.S. of an intent to impose a lien
and that some first learned of the liens when the 	magazine contacted them.

	The current Supreme Court has shown little interest in curbing so powerful
and clandestine a federal agency as it routinely disobeys the 4th, 5th, and
14th Amendments. Of course, this particular court is essentially
authoritarian and revels in the state's exercise of power while its
livelier members show great wit when it comes to consulting Ouija boards in
order to discern exactly what the founders originally had in mind, ignoring
just how clearly Mason, Madison, and company spelled out such absolutes as
you can't grab someone's property without first going to a grand jury and
finding him guilty of a crime as law requires. In these matters, sacred
original intent is so clear that the Court prefers to look elsewhere for
its amusement. Lonely voices in Congress are sometimes heard on the
subject. In 1993, Senator David Pryer thought it
would be nice if the I.R.S. were to notify credit agencies once proof was
established that the agency wrongfully attached a lien on a taxpayer's
property, destroying his future credit. The I.R.S. got whiny. Such an
onerous requirement would be too much work for its exhausted employees. 

	Since the U.S. statutes that deal with tax regulations comprise some 9,000
pages, even tax experts tend to foul up, and it is possible for any
Inspector Javert at the I.R.S. to find flawed just about any conclusion as
to what Family X owes. But, in the end, it is not so much a rogue bureau
that is at fault as it is the system of taxation as imposed by key members
of Congress in order to exempt their friends and financial donors from
taxation. Certainly, the I.R.S. itself has legitimate cause for complaint
against its nominal masters in Congress. The I.R.S.'s director of taxpayer
services, Robert LeBaube, spoke out in 1989: "Since 1976 there have been
138 public laws modifying the Internal Revenue Code; Since the Tax Reform
Act of 1986 there have been 13 public laws changing the code, and in 1988
alone there were seven public laws affecting the code." As Bovard notes but
does not explain, "Tax law is simply the latest creative interpretation by
government officials of the mire of tax legislation Congress has enacted.
I.R.S. officials can take five, seven, or more years to write the
regulations to implement a new tax law-yet Congress rontinely changes the
law before new regulations are promulgated. Almost all tax law is
provisional-either waiting to be revised according to the last tax bill
passed, or already proposed for change in the next tax bill." 

	What is this great busyness and confusion all about? Well, corporations
send their lawyers to Congress to make special laws that will exempt their
corporate profits from unseemly taxation: this is done by ever more
complex--even impenetrable-tax laws which must always be provisional as
there is always bound to be a new corporation requiring a special exemption
in the form of a private bill tacked on to the Arbor Day Tribute. Senators
who save corporations millions in tax money will not need to spend too much
time on the telephone begging for contributions when it is time for him-or,
yes, her-to run again. Unless-the impossible dream-the cost of elections is
reduced by 90 percent, with no election lasting longer than eight weeks.
Until national TV is provided free for national candidates and local TV for
local candidates (the way civilized countries do it), there will never be
tax reform. Meanwhile, the moles at the I.R.S., quite aware of the great
untouchable corruption of their congressional masters, pursue helpless
citizens and so demoralize the state.
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Checked-by: Patrick Henry