OA12: Tax Protesters, Sovereign Citizens, and Other Wackiness

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 12. How are you doing, Andrew?

0:01:22 Andrew: I'm great. How are you, Thomas?

0:01:24 Thomas: Doing well. I'm so excited to be back. All right. You know, let's just get right into it.

0:01:29 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:01:38 Thomas: Listener Matthew Maxon asks, that's a pretty cool name by the way. I feel like he he should have a TV show or something.

0:01:45 Andrew: Yeah, it's almost max power, so.

0:01:49 Thomas: Matthew Maxon asks, Matthew Maxson, detective who plays by his own rule, asks, Maxon,

0:01:56 Andrew: Nice, yeah. You're off the case, Maxon.

0:02:01 Thomas: You just push too hard. Sometimes you don't know when to stop. So Detective Matthew Maxdon asks, "Why are lawyer fees so expensive?" I like that. That goes with this, so he's a detective, but he's tired of paying too much for lawyers, uh,

0:02:15 Andrew: This is a great question. It's one that hits me personally because I have, A, I mean, mean, I charge fees now, but I have been... when I when I got out of law school, I worked for one of the largest law firms in the country, Covington and Burling based out of D.C. They have offices around the world. And then I left there and went to Zuckerman Spader, which has four or five offices. So, you know, it was a, it wasn't me. It was a major downsizing as far as I was concerned. But it is still you You know, they have more than 100 lawyers spread across D.C., Florida, New York.

0:02:19 Thomas: That's Too many lawyers, no one should have that many. I'm good with the one, I'm gonna

0:02:58 Andrew: Yeah. The reality of the situation is my friends who are still at Covington and Burling, some of them are billing out at $1,000 an hour, which is number a that's sort of hard to imagine. You know, my former rate at Zuckerman and my friends there is, you know, over $600 an hour. So there certainly is, I mean, it was one of the impulses for me to go off and start my own firm was really the opportunity to work with smaller businesses and individuals and charge less. So there is a tremendous market that is really driven by the fact that the bread and butter for these corporate firms, firms that represent corporate clients like Covington, like Zuckerman, is Fortune 500 companies that are not particularly price sensitive except in sort of the worst economic downturns.

And I got to tell you, I mean, there were certainly times in the 2000s, 2001, 2006, 2007 timeframe where, you know, even your huge clients get a little bit sensitive over price. That certainly is part of it. And those firms tend to recruit heavily at places like Harvard, at Ivy League law schools. Uh, and so, you know, there is kind of this, uh, two Americas where, you know, a lot of lawyers are being swept up into a system that, uh charges a lot of money and pays out a lot money. And, and, and it's, it's a real problem, uh for, um, you know, for the average person, like, you know, like detective Maxon, where you're,

0:02:58 Thomas: Oh, My gosh, Because

0:04:31 Andrew: You're saying, you know, you've taken the, the people who ought to be, you you know, sort of the lawyers out there, you know, the ones with the best credentials and kind of swept them into a system that makes it difficult for ordinary people to access.

0:04:44 Thomas: Let's Say Detective max and tackles a perp and the Perp is injured and he needs represent. Yeah. I was going to ask you, um, what about like, I guess I've never looked at price. Like, you know, you mentioned how much you charge. You mentioned these big firms. I've ever looked just what's a run of the mill. If I just opened the phone book and, and looked at, you Know, triple a lawyers or something, I just found something. What would, what would I be paying?

0:04:47 Andrew: Right, no, that's exactly right.

0:05:09 Thomas: Do you think a hundred bucks an hour, 200.

0:05:07 Andrew: Yeah, well, it depends. Well, I mean, it depending on, number one, if they charge an hourly rate. I do, a lot of lawyers do, But in particular, obviously, I think you've heard about lawyers that charge on a contingent fee basis, which is almost always in the personal injury context. And it is the classic sort of risk-reward scenario because a contingency lawyer is going to charge you typically a third of your recovery if you settle and 40% if you go to trial. Kind of the equivalent of, you know, a short term loan, right? You know, you get out of having to pay any upfront costs.

But the net effect is that, you know, what you think after, you know, once you've, you know, paid taxes, and you've given 40% off the top to your lawyer, you know, particularly if the damages are tied to the damages you've actually suffered, which, you know, it's pretty easy, a lot of people think about cases as having huge, you know, punitive damage components and huge, um, inflated pain and suffering numbers because those are the cases that make the news. But your average case is going to be tied to, you know, the actual injuries that that you've suffered. And so if you get back your medical costs and then you're really getting back 60% of those medical costs, it

0:05:17 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, sure. Right. Oh, okay. Hmm,

0:06:35 Andrew: Can be a rough spot.

0:06:36 Thomas: Yeah, that makes sense. I was going say it's like those deals you hear about where someone recorded an album or something and played an instrument on it, and they're like, well, we could give you points, or we could just give you 200 bucks. And they're, like, I'll just take the 200 bucks, and then and the thing explodes and he could have made millions. That sort of thing.

0:06:50 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and topic for a future episode, we are definitely doing pursuing the law of music or music and the law. We have so many

0:07:05 Thomas: Yeah, there's one law. Oh, okay. There's one law that you learn in lawyer school.

0:07:09 Andrew: Great cases out there. But before we leave Matthew's question, I want to pass along a story because it actually, I had two separate people talk to me about cases that involved people hiring lawyers this week that really kind of got my blood boiling. And they were both cases of cases that I would say involving individuals who were fairly desperate, right? One was an immigration matter involving somebody that had overstayed their work visa. And the other one was a debt collection matter. So these are very, very small dollar value cases, but things that that are of really critical importance to the people who are seeking lawyers. And in both cases, got charged or quoted really exorbitantly high dollar values for what should be really simple amounts of work. And I feel like when I see that happening and I see people being taken advantage of, I mean, that shouldn't be a part of our profession, right?

0:07:11 Thomas: Yeah. I

0:08:09 Andrew: Right. Like we have internal codes of ethics and for all the law jokes and lawyer jokes and like I love them and I'm happy to, you know, have people make fun of me and make fun of myself, the average, I truly believe the average person out there who is who is a lawyer is is is doing it, is trying to help and serve the community, and and the folks who aren't, it really, you know, that that hits me kind of personally. So let me give you the kind of a general, again, don't take legal advice from a podcast, but in general, you should know, number one, every lawyer should be willing to meet with you for an initial consultation, and that initial consultation should be free. If they try and charge you for that, you shouldn't. You should walk out.

0:08:51 Thomas: Like this. This is really good advice that people out there will use. I mean, people encounter the law all the time. I've been lucky. I haven't been sued yet. But I mean just everyday people, there are all kinds of times they're going to need a lawyer. One thing that I love about this show is that I really do do think that you're helping people a certain amount, you know, like it might not, everything's not going to apply to everybody, but when when we have, quite you a few listeners, there's... there's gonna somebody out be there who can use this help, so that's really cool.

0:08:52 Andrew: Yeah.

0:09:18 Thomas: Did

0:09:18 Andrew: You should always treat hiring a lawyer the way you would hiring a surgeon. You are always entitled to shop around. You are always to a second opinion. No reasonable lawyer will be offended when you come in and say, hey, I am looking at a couple of different lawyers right now. Feel free to ask questions and say, you know, I talked to Andrew and he said, you know, X, Y, Z, how does that sound to you? I don't have nearly enough clients who say that to me.

0:09:45 Andrew: But I would not, I would not be offended.

0:09:44 Thomas: Yeah. Will he say, don't take legal advice from a podcast? Come on, man.

0:09:48 Andrew: Yeah. It doesn't work as well. I can't say in my conference room, like, don't take legal advice from me. No, wait, do, do. But that way, that also helps you in terms of price shopping. And the third thing I would add, and boy, this kills me to say, but feel free, you know, to ask when a lawyer quotes you a rate, you ask, is this your best rate? Can you discount this rate? Or in particular, ask, can I get a cap on the absolute number of hours? If a lawyer says, I charge $395 an hour, and I estimate that this task will take five hours, uh, say, okay, well, can I get a cap that says, you know, you're not going to charge me more than, you Know, $2,000, which would be, you Know, about five hours on the end of that. Um, And, and all of those are, you Know, valid negotiating techniques that are in your corner. Um,

0:09:56 Thomas: This is so handy.

0:10:42 Andrew: Yeah, even I though there's a little bit there that's against my self-interest.

0:10:45 Thomas: Yeah, I was gonna say, next time... Next time I need something from you, Andrew, I'm gonna utilize your best negotiating tactics and really just hammer, bring the hammer down.

0:10:47 Andrew: I think you're doing okay.

0:11:00 Thomas: Look, they don't know that. We could have gone with the premise that you were charging me exorbitant fees to do the simplest lawyer task.

0:11:06 Andrew: So I realize we've wandered a little bit afield from the question, but I mean, I do sympathize with our hard-boiled detective that But, um, I I've really, I've really picturing like the Maltese Falcon now, but, um lawyers are expensive. Uh, and what I would say is, you put the same kind of work and the same kind of, uh thought into, uh choosing a lawyer that you would into choosing anybody else who is working for you.

0:11:34 Thomas: Right. Yeah. To so I, if we had more time, which we don't, so topic for another show, I wasn't going to ask about like pro bono work and, you know, when, why lawyers do it and when and who's doing it and what, how that works, but maybe we can cover that another time. I think we should probably get over to our main topic.

0:11:53 Thomas: I love this one. This is so great. Great. Andrew, if I say the magic words in the right order, can I not pay any taxes? I'm really hoping this turns out to be one of the myths that you're like, yep.

0:12:04 Andrew: Um. Yeah, no, it, as it turns out, uh, there is a secret cabal of lawyers, uh, we meet, uh, once a month, uh, and, uh, we discuss how to keep the public from uttering the correct words that lets a that lets them into the system whereby they never have to pay taxes again.

0:12:19 Thomas: I knew it. Wait, hold on. Is your Life in danger right now for revealing this? We're going to need to do, I'm going to change your voice. So it's like, well, there's a secret rich cabal of lawyers. Oh, another reference?

0:12:31 Andrew: I, I believe Louisiana is the pelican state, uh, that That's our That's our, that is our recovery phrase, right? I'm sorry, that's from Fletch, but anyway, um.

0:12:37 Thomas: Oh. I've seen Fletch, I can't quote it though, but okay.

0:12:44 Andrew: There are really two kinds of, um, of sort of crazy people that are out there propagating the myth that you don't have to pay your taxes, and that there's a secret law that allows you not to pay your taxes. The first are a long-standing group of people that are called tax protesters. The first I ever heard of them was through a fellow named Irwin Schiff, who started in the 1970s by selling, um, you know, mimeographed books that were like, you know, the, the secrets that they don't want you to know, um, and I suppose, uh, not included in, uh, Schiff's book of secrets was the fact that he's been in and out of jail, uh, repeatedly for tax fraud, um.

0:13:26 Thomas: That One, he really didn't want people to know.

0:13:29 Andrew: Yeah. But They might have wanted you to. And then recently, we have an even more exciting group of morons that are part of the sovereign citizens movement. And these people overlap, and they overlap in some hilarious ways. What both tend to have in common is a belief that the law works like casting a magic spell. And I'm not that funny, as we know. I mean this 100% seriously. They think that using words in particular order conveys a sort of secret legal loophole, and that even though there's this vast conspiracy, that you can force the court into breaking out of its conspiracy if you say the Right words in the right order.

And so we should start with – and we did talk about this a little disjointedly on our appearance on Cognitive Dissonance. Look, there is an amendment to the Constitution and there is a section of the U.S. Code that says you have to pay your taxes. Right. So, you know, we could start with either one of those. Why don't we start with the Constitution as originally written in 1789? Did not provide for the federal government to impose an income tax on its citizens. So one of the places where tax protesters often start is by quoting from the Founding Fathers, is by coding from any Supreme Court case before 1913.

0:14:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:15:09 Andrew: And it will not be hard for you to find a lot of law before 1913 that says the federal government has no power to levy an income tax on its citizens because it didn't. Um, and in 1913, we passed the 16th Amendment to the Constitution through the process we talked about in the last episode of Opening Arguments. Uh, it was ratified by three quarters of the states. Uh, and the 16th Amendment says, uh, that Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without apportionment among the several states and without regard to any census or enumeration, right? That's pretty darn clear, um, and it's amended, it's a part of our Constitution now, uh.

0:15:19 Thomas: Huh. Yeah. So was this like World War One? I'm suggesting, I'm, we just needed some money, and what I'm wondering now is how interesting it would have been if there never was a World War I. Like, would we still not have, you know, if we could have avoided all these giant expensive conflicts somehow, would we not be paying federal income taxes?

0:15:53 Andrew: Exactly. Yeah.

0:16:05 Andrew: No. Well, think about, in addition to World War One, you 1913 was right, uh, sort of marking the shift of the United States to, you know, a fully industrialized economy, right? Like, you had the, uh, assembly line, you had interchangeable parts, you had, you know, this was really kind of kicking off, uh, industrialization in the United States, and and all of that, uh, I think, um, you know, kind of renders the, um, agrarian model, which, you know, a lot of non-tax libertarians are sort of, in my view, you know, kind of stuck with this, um, you know, agrarians a model of the United United States that, that works when, you know, you don't have, you don't have industry, you don't have, uh, you know, massive wealth generation.

0:16:53 Andrew: And when you have massive wealth generation, you know, you need an infrastructure, uh in order to support that. I think, I think we would have had this coming in. Yeah.

0:17:00 Thomas: Right, not to mention regulation and, yeah,

0:17:03 Andrew: All of that. Right. Yeah. And exactly.

0:17:04 Thomas: Stuff that the federal government needs to take care of.

0:17:07 Andrew: Um, so I think this was coming regardless. Uh, but, but certainly world war one Is a good, it might've have been. I mean, remember that this is also a time where, you know, you have a viable, if minority, socialist movement in the United States at the turn of the century as well. So, you have all of those political pressures sort of coming to bear, and align with the passage of the 16th Amendment. So it couldn't be more clear, right? It says, Congress shall have the power to take a tax on incomes from whatever source without the states apportioning it and and without having to do any other thing. Uh, and then the enabling legislation is 26 United States Codes starting at section one. And it says there is hereby imposed on the taxable income of, and then it goes through, you know, individuals, married people, individuals filing singly, heads of household, you know, all the categories that you check between on your 1040 are drawn from this section of the code.

Um, so, uh, the idea that there is no law that says you have to pay your taxes is just, it's just nonsense. It's usually quote mined. We talked about this on Uncognizance as well. So I won't go back into the Flora case, but, you know, there is a 1960 case

0:17:10 Thomas: Okay, but maybe it would've been later.

0:17:35 Thomas: Yeah,

0:18:21 Andrew: That says our tax system is based upon voluntary assessment and payment and not upon restraint. And,

0:18:27 Thomas: Right, and so some people think that's the magic word. Oh, if I take this into court and I say, look, voluntary, well, I decline.

0:18:36 Andrew: Well, there is, one of the devices that Irwin Schiff used to encourage people to do was to file what he called a zero tax return. Return. And it was exactly what it sounds like, which is to say, because it was all based on voluntary, you know, there's a law that says you have to fill out a tax return, but why don't you just go in and report your income is zero? And now, you're voluntarily participating in the process and ha ha, by their rules, 39% of zero is zero. And I don't have the citation, but there's is also a law that prevents you from falsifying your tax returns. So that was a really, really spectacularly stupid idea and got a lot of people and convicted. That kind of handles the, the voluntary aspect. And I'm sure we can, I want to talk more about the tax protesters, but I wantto talk about their sort of crazier cracked up cousins who are the sovereign citizens. Because this is just amazing to me. But there are, I mean, have you heard of these folks before, Thomas?

0:18:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:45 Thomas: I don't think I have, actually, besides what little, you know, you've talked about this whole thing.

0:19:51 Andrew: Yeah. So there are people who believe that are citizens, which is to say they are not legally bound to the government of the United States for various reasons. And I want to talk about the most hilarious reason why they think they're not bound. But so, in other words, they think that they reside in the United States, but they remain a sovereign nation unto themselves. And so they kind of have this notion of engaging in diplomacy, right, where if they say the wrong thing, they will accidentally subject themselves to the jurisdiction of The United States. States and so If they don't, right, if they, if they avoid saying that, then the United States has no jurisdiction over them and they don't have to pay their taxes. And in addition to that, like, there's... there's some, um, amazing videos and I'm going to try and link to some in the show notes, uh,

0:20:19 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, great.

0:20:53 Andrew: That are talking about, you know, you DON'T have TO pay speeding tickets either, and you DON'T have to, you know, appear for bench warrants right, well, you know, yes, because you're a sovereign nation. And They're extending you, you know, diplomatic immunity. Like, didn't you see Lethal Weapon Too? Like that means, you can, you run around and shoot people and everything. So the, the most amazing thing, I cannot tell you how much research this took to figure this out. Um, they believe that, that your birth certificate sets up a fictitious legal corporation. Okay. Here's, and here's how it works. As far as I can tell, if we have any sovereign citizens in our listening audience, please, um, send us an email to, uh, openarguments@gmail.com. Uh, because if I'm getting this wrong,

0:20:59 Thomas: Yeah, but you can use the roads, though. That's cool. You just don't have to pay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:43 Andrew: I would love to.

0:21:44 Thomas: It's a trick. If you send an email, you're no longer sovereign.

0:21:45 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to know the crazy. I love this because the one website I saw that was making this advice used, you'll appreciate this. They said, well, let's look at what the legal definition of certificate is. And they pulled out a banking dictionary, right? Right. And it says, you know, certificate is, you know, a device for the transfer of wealth and, you know, an instrument for, right. Which, I mean, you think about in your profession, right? Like that, that certainly is one use of the term.

0:22:02 Thomas: Oh, my, gosh.

0:22:21 Andrew: But, you know, it also just means, yeah,

0:22:17 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, there's another use of it, which is certifiable, but that's another story.

0:22:26 Andrew: It means a piece of paper, right, but, but in the banking industry, which is what they're quoting, right a certificate, right like a certificate of deposit does indeed mean, you know, you are transferring ownership, so they say when you have a birth certificate, you are now transferring the ownership of you as a sovereign entity to this fictitious corporation. And uh, Yeah.

0:22:28 Thomas: Yeah, Uh-huh. So it's a receipt, essentially. Like so.

0:22:47 Andrew: Exactly. And, and the, um, the evidence of the conspiracy is your birth certificate is issued in all capital letters. Your name will be spelled on that in all capital letters, and then they say, say, this is the doctrine of Capitis Diminutio Maxima, okay? The Latin phrase, Capitis Diminutio Maxima. And it means the maximum loss of status, okay. And as it turns out, if you look up that Latin, it does indeed mean the maximum lost of status. But the sleight of hand that they're engaging in here is that it doesn't have anything to do with capital letters, right?

0:22:47 Thomas: Yeah, oh, My gosh. Oh, my,

0:23:27 Andrew: They're just saying, like, capital letters and capitis kind of sound similar, and Capitis Diminutio Maxima means maximum loss of status. So when you subscribe to something and accept anything that is written in all capital letters, you are selling yourself into slavery and you are giving up all of your rights. And, way, you can tell these sovereign citizen people is they will appear in court and they will designate themselves on their papers with their name in all lowercase letters, and they'll put a punctuation mark, usually a colon, after their first name. Okay. So one example of this is there's a case called Nonnie Chrystal versus Huntington National Bank, which I will link in the show notes.

0:24:18 Andrew: And the woman who did this identified herself in court as ambassador, lowercase N-O-N-N I-E colon space C-H-R-Y-S-T-A-L of Satellite Beach, Florida, Republic, near, and then they put their zip code in brackets, right? Right. Three, two, nine, three, seven. And they think that by doing this, they have evaded the kind of magic like and their proof is they'll say, you have summoned me here and issued this piece of paper. And because, Thomas, you know this all too well, it's come from a government agency, so it's automatically printed, and it's printed in all uppercase letters, and the database is not equipped for a colon, because real human beings don't have colons in the middle of their name. And so they'll say, I am Ambassador Lowercase Nonnie, and this is referring to me as Uppercase Nonnie. And so therefore, it's not, and I refuse to engage in Capitus Diminutio Maxima, and I'm not going to contract all of my rights away by accepting this all uppercase summons. Um, I will tell you, uh, the punchline is, it does not turn out very well for Nani in court.

0:24:39 Thomas: Gosh, yeah, I was gonna say how does this last, you know, cuz, like, the first time someone tries some of this nonsense, don't they just go, yeah, anyway, you need to pay your speeding ticket? Sorry

0:25:45 Andrew: It, it happens. It, not only does, does that happen, but they're actually, uh. Segments of the IRS, They uh? Pass around a circular in which the IRS gives advice to local agents for how to, um, to engage in audits properly and that sort of thing. And those circulars will say things like, um. This argument, when you're reviewing a tax return, if somebody says only certain types of taxpayers are subject to income and employment taxes and sovereign citizens are not, that's frivolous and should be fined $5,000 on the spot. And these things are made public. And, you know, they are, you can read them on the IRS website. Is just crystal clear. But these people have kind of fallen into this alternate universe where, you know, there's a vast conspiracy. And so, of course, they're going to tell you that, you know, you're going be found guilty. But you can get around that. It's only the suckers who get caught. And you can around that, by disputing the jurisdiction of the court.

0:26:37 Thomas: I love how, basically, anything that happens, if if you're a conspiracy minded person, you could just say, oh, well, of course, that's what the, whatever they, uh, they, they told me I need to pay my ticket. Oh yeah. Well, of coarse they would say that. Yeah, of coorse.

0:26:52 Andrew: Is evidence for the conspiracy. Yeah.

0:27:04 Andrew: I, you know, when, when I encounter a conspiracy theorist, I mean, usually the first step in our conversation, as I will say, I want you to think about the Watergate break-in, right? And I want to think about the number of people who knew about the Watergate break-in, and that was like six people, and it was undone by a janitor, right. Right. So when you tell me there's a giant conspiracy with, you know, 35 million people involved that extends to every level of the government, then I'm going to say, like, look, so you're saying that the clerk of the court making $28,000 a year is in on this conspiracy.

0:27:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:42 Andrew: All right. Let's go talk to somebody who was fired from their position as clerk of a court. Right. Like, OK, now they got no they've got no interest in, you Know, but, you KNOW, the lizard people have gotten to them, too. Too. And, you know, and at some point, like, you know, you just give up.

0:27:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My thing is if I work for the government, I really would, you know, when they approach me and they're like, okay, we're letting you on the inside of this vast thing. I'd be like, hey, you don't have time. I'm sorry. I don't know. Of, I don't, this is just a job for me. I'm not interested in perpetuating a mass conspiracy. Like, I just kind of want to punch the clock, come in. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna. Yeah.

0:27:58 Andrew: Yeah, you know, I, I have a perfectly valid podcast that I could be recording instead of this. I mean, yeah. And and and look, it goes beyond that, right? Because these these people are suggesting that, you know, this conspiracy is not just a conspiracy not to pay your taxes, but, But, you know, to falsely imprison some people, right? Like, and what would that take you, right, like you work for the government, Thomas, like if your boss came to you tomorrow and said, okay, I'm going to need an addition for you to submit these, you know, revenue projections and expense reports for the fourth quarter. I want you to make sure that Bob has a misfortunate accident on the way home from work tomorrow. Like, right.

0:28:21 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I'd be like, I, I would say, you want to know, I'd say, say hey, man, I'm in budgets. You wanted the uh, evil uh, conspiracy perpetuator section of our company. That's, but yeah, you got the wrong, wrong division here.

0:29:10 Andrew: Yeah, I think it's just it is not in your job description. It's not in my job description, but, you know, but the belief persists.

0:29:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, and government Work just is the opposite. I mean, it's completely the opposite. The government work is like, it is so protected that I have worked in a private company compared to government. A private company, the CEO, all that, I think they are sort of the a king, you know, there's just that whatever they say goes. Working in government, even the highest boss that you could talk to, it's like they're still, their job could go at any minute, or they could, there's not, they're not, they don't get to just do whatever they want, you know. It's all so regulated.

0:29:47 Andrew: Yeah.

0:29:47 Thomas: And there's all, you know, that's funny. It's the opposite. Of What you would, you know, what these people think.

0:29:48 Andrew: Exactly. Exactly. Um. So. I, I thought I would hit one more fun, um, tax protester argument. And that, and again, that, that I think because, so in my mind, the, the thread that unites all of this is, uh, is not just quote mining, but a view that like the law is this sort of arcane minefield. And that If you utter the right words, yeah.

0:29:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Who Who Set this up Like who

0:30:15 Andrew: Again, the Illuminati working in concert with the lizard people, you know, under the tutelage of the reverse vampires.

0:30:16 Thomas: Yeah. But They're really, really, um, um, responsive to magic words. That was the thing. Like, I don't, why wouldn't they've just set it up so there's no loophole? It's not hard.

0:30:31 Andrew: Yeah. And I don't, I don'T understand. I mean, I, I really, I mean I said the IllumiNati, but, but I mean when you think about kind of popular, like think about the Da Vinci Code. Think about sort of popular conspiracy literature is this idea that there just is an arcane set of rules. And like, well, obviously, you know, we can't not follow the rules, but if you too can outsmart us at the game, right, if you can beat death at chess or whatever, then, to the top.

So another great example of that that you see is there's a belief in the sovereign citizen movement that the Constitution only gave Congress jurisdiction over the District of Columbia and over various military buildings. And that's based on, again, see if you can spot this. This is Article 1 of the Constitution. It's paragraph 17. And it gives Congress the power of, quote, exclusive legislation over the District of Columbia and other places purchased with the consent of the state legislature for forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings. Okay. Have you spotted, right? Like the key word there is exclusive legislation, right, which is to say no state can tell the District of Columbia what to do. Only Congress can tell The

0:31:21 Thomas: Right. Right.

0:31:54 Andrew: District of Colombia what to That's what exclusive means. But exclusive doesn't mean it's the only thing Congress can do. Right. And that's how they're reading that word.

0:31:54 Thomas: Right. Again. Why Would They have written It that way, like If there were, there are Illuminati lizard people, they could have just written, we own everything and you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

0:32:05 Andrew: Right, right. Yeah. But no, but they have to follow, you know, that they've got to follow the code. And related with that is there's a similar provision. We actually, when we talked about standing, we talked about the Courts and Controversies requirement and Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the judiciary the power to adjudicate all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. And so from that has sort of spawned this belief that the only powers that a court has are either common law powers or admiralcy powers.

And that has merged with, there's, it was a bizarre Illinois state decision involving, I think, burning or flying the Illinois state flag. It's a weird case. It doesn't have anything to do with taxes. It doesn't have anything to do with the power of the government. But they quote mine this Illinois Supreme Court decision that basically says, if you walk into a courtroom and there's gold fringe on the border of the flag, then it's not really the American flag, but it's a secret admiralty flag. And it shows that you're in admiralty court and you're not in a court of general jurisdiction. And so you can then, I'm not, I swear I am not making this up, you can then heckle the judge and say, am I here on the common law or am I hier under a case of admiralcy?

And they've got like this weird argument that doesn't work, that if you're there on the common law, then, you know, you say, ah, well then the state is a party and you're the state, and you cannot be both the prosecutor and the judge, so you have to let me go, which isn't going to work.

Or if, if you default to, if the court refuses to answer you, then say, so, I, I presume then, because it's the only other option, that I'm here in an admiralty court, uh,

0:33:59 Andrew: And, uh, because I am not, you know, engaged in maritime commerce, uh, this court has no jurisdiction over me and has to let me go. And again, um, this, has never worked in the history of humanity. The only way in which it could possibly work, that I could see, uh, would be if a court were to decide that you were so mentally ill that you were unable to understand the nature of the charges that were being presented against you Um.

0:34:12 Thomas: Okay.

0:34:24 Thomas: Maybe I will try It then, yeah.

0:34:26 Andrew: Well, but, but let me tell you, it, I, I think this, this is another good topic for another show, uh, but the, um, mental confinement, uh, in the United States is actually, it's an issue. It's really important to me. It's important to a lot of lawyers, uh, where you have fewer due process rights. I mean, I look I know, you know, there was a, there was like Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor movie about, you know, uh, pleading insanity and, and, you know, basically getting to go to the loony bin for, for a couple of months and, and then, uh, and then get away with crimes. Um, but the reality is much, much worse, right? Like when you are involuntarily committed, um, lose, uh, your basic rights, um, because, you know, you have been adjudicated a danger to yourself, uh, and or to others.

Um, and it can be, you know, really, really devastating. So, I mean, we, you know, it's not to suggest we're not still going to joke about it when it's, you, you know, appropriate. Um, but, uh, but it can be really serious, and it is definitely not a good way out, particularly as the sovereign citizen people are, you know, encouraging you to do this for speeding tickets and stuff like

0:34:38 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:29 Andrew: That. Like, like I can't imagine any fate worse on a speeding ticket than, uh you know being involuntarily, uh committed.

0:35:37 Thomas: Why don't you just pay the 200 bucks or whatever and

0:35:38 Andrew: Um yeah right. Um of trying to get something for nothing really sort of outweighs everything there. But to kind of wrap this all up, thread that I think is common throughout opening arguments, what we want to tell people, the story we want to explain is that the law isn't as complicated as you think it is. It is not as arcane as you thing it is, it isn't – yeah. And when you try and engage in magic trickery, uh, the court will come down very, very hard on you. So when you read these cases,

0:36:00 Thomas: There's no magic tricks also there will be camera footage of it, and it may go viral, so, just, yeah.

0:36:16 Andrew: Yeah. You read these cases and you know, we've talked about how, uh I mean, I'm funny for a lawyer and we know I'm not funny. So, uh so I mean we have, we have talked that there are these cases use use phrases like, um, patently absurd, ridiculous, inane, bizarre, incomprehensible, and like judges typically don't talk that way. Uh, and so the, the, the fact that they're talking this way means that, you know, it's not, oh, well we're pondering and this is close or, well, you said, you know, you said open says, but you didn't say the a me part. So we don't, I think it is, it is just, uh, you, you will face jail time, it will not go well. There is no magic way of invoking sovereign citizenship and getting out of the jurisdiction of the United States. All this is going to do, if we have any sovereign citizen listeners, is prove that you and I are now in on the conspiracy.

0:36:22 Thomas: You're funny Yeah.

0:37:10 Andrew: But, you know, it's all we can do. All we can doing.

0:37:10 Thomas: That's true. Darn. It This Is Exactly what we, of course we would say this, of course we would do a podcast explaining how ridiculous that is, that's just what the Illuminati would do.

0:37:22 Andrew: That's how you get the sheeple in line. But

0:37:24 Thomas: Yeah. Alright, well that's what we do here, we get the sheeple in line. Let's

0:37:29 Andrew: We may revisit some of the fun stuff and I'm going to provide some fun links. But

0:37:31 Thomas: Okay. All right. Well, that does it for our main segment for today. Really funny stuff that that's look, I think you are, I wouldn't say you're not funny. I thought like, let's, let'S say moderately funny. And then in lawyer terms, hilarious. I would, I would go so far as to say you're hilarious as a lawyer, just so, you know, just for the record, I want to get the magic words in there for the magic word record.

0:37:55 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I guess this'll be the time where we talk about a few things. Ooh, I can talk about, we just did Jake Farr-Wharton's show. That is, now I've been around a while and Jake and I go way back, used to be imaginary friends, but now it's ingenious friend show. And I believe that was 260 and 261.

0:37:53 Andrew: I so noted it three. Yeah, 360 and 361.

0:38:20 Thomas: Oh, 360 and 361. Sorry. Yeah. So be sure to check us out on that. I want to thank Jake so much for having us on the show. I love Jake. And I'm so sad that we both are so busy. We haven't had time to hang out much on the old Skypes, but it was fun to talk to him again. And again, thanks for having us on the show.

0:38:38 Andrew: Yeah. And I would point out that Thomas was the winner of the Hollywood Squares type segment. So, yep.

0:38:44 Thomas: Oh, well, look, but the listeners will have seen it in the news by now. They will have heard the, the, yeah.

0:38:51 Andrew: Uh, in, in addition to, um, our appearance on Jake Farworth and show, which, which was great. Uh, and Thomas and I were both on that. You should definitely go give it a listen. Um, Thomas and I are both really excited, uh, to support the vulgarity for charity to, uh which is being undertaken by our friends at the scathing atheist and cognitive dissonance. If you were not a part of Vulgarity for Charity last year, essentially it is exactly what it sounds like. You pledge a certain amount of money to a charitable cause, which I'm about to describe in a minute. And if you hit a certain level, you can request that the hosts of The Scathing Atheist, the hosts at Cognitive Dissonance, or any number of celebrity guest roasters, which just so happen to include Thomas Smith and Andrew Torrez, will then insult a person of your choosing.

0:39:47 Andrew: So this is a fantastic way to get people to say horrible things on the air about you or someone you love. Um, and this year they are supporting the modest needs charity. Um. Modest Needs is an organization that essentially they work on the fringes of poverty with people who are unemployed, underemployed, who are going through, you know, an economically tough time. And essentially what you do is, you know, you post your economic hardship to modest needs and then they kind of crowdfund for paying those bills and they pay the creditors directly. And so we've all seen this.

0:40:32 Andrew: And there was a time in my life, actually the year before I went to law school when I was finishing up my last year in college. My wife was a year ahead of me and she didn't have any health insurance. She was working part-time as a receptionist and I was a student and she broke her collarbone. And so we had this huge kind of crippling medical bill that was sitting there and no real way to pay it. And we managed to kind of limp through. We talked to the hospital and split it up into payments over several years and got it. But, I mean, I think everybody has a story like that of a time in their life when, you know, you or someone you know has been in a rough patch and has needed some help paying basic bills.

0:41:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:24 Andrew: And that's what Modest Needs does.

0:41:25 Thomas: I really liked the charity they picked. I realized it sounds like a good cause. It sounds like they, you know, it's vetted. It's not, they don't just obviously pay anybody who posts anything. You know, so it's a charity where you really can feel like you're doing some good and helping people that's going to make a difference. So I'm really excited to be involved in it as well.

0:41:35 Andrew: You're right. Yeah. And willing to work with us. They're willing to work with Scathing. They're willin' to work with Cogdiss. So you have to give them credit for that.

0:41:48 Thomas: Yeah, and these podcasts have been really good at drumming up support for charities like this. Like it's incredible how much of a difference scathing and Cogniz have been able to make with these things. It's really something to behold, just you the amount of kindness that people show and support. It, it's really amazing. I, I hope that this year is even more successful than last year.

0:42:11 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. And, and we know we're, we're a small show, but, but we want to do our part and, uh, and we are encouraging you to, uh. To do your part as well. So, I will have a link, in the show notes, to the original post that's on Scathing Atheist. By the time this show drops on Wednesday, if you listen to Thursday's Scathing Atheist, that will also continue the discussion. You will have probably heard it plugged on other shows by now, that's how you can get involved. Just click on the link in the show notes.

0:42:20 Thomas: So And I want, that gives me a chance to say,, yes, definitely do that. But also check out the show notes, because Andrew does really good show notes. There's like additional resources there, there's links to other things that, you know, we might have talked about. It's not, I just want to point out that if anyone, uh, hasn't partaken in the show notes, it's a really good resource if you want to find out more about it, and Andrew does a great job. I just wanted to say that where everybody could hear.

0:43:09 Andrew: Thanks. I appreciate that. And by now you will have probably seen that I dropped another Patreon bonus episode, bonus episode number two, which is a deep dive into a question a lot of people have been asking me lately that is apparently making the rounds in the Christian community, which is, uh, didn't the Supreme Court just rule that atheism is a religion. So if you're one of our patreons, uh, you can go click on OA Bonus 2 and you can discover the answer to that question, which I'm not going to tell you if you, you're not one of our patrons.

0:43:45 Thomas: And speaking of, I've got a gigantic list of new patrons to thank. How about it, I want to thank, thank Pro Panic, Hobo Batman, The Abordinator, Garrett, Ron Millikan, Mike G, thank you, justin clark, Andrew G, Quinn Mason, Lori Dunn, thank you, Marcus Rademacher, thank you, The Recovering Gringo, Sarah, Heather, Bonnie Maize, James, kaine fenton, Travis Glynn, Cameron, wow, this is overwhelming, I cannot believe we've gotten so many kind people to pay to pledge to the show, it's, it's incredible.

Thank you, Alec Kosmensky, John Atkins, Mary Ballard-Johansson, Jacob Davis, Michael Green, Nora Garcia, Squall, Erin Hodges, Kenneth Graves, David, Heather Smith, Jack Micockov, Randall Nelson-Peterman, Alex Lombardi, Nicholas, we're getting there, we are almost there, Nicholas Carvalho, Albertsonian, Emily Burke, Nicole, We-three, Elliott H Lamm, and Trevor F. Wow, thank you guys of, of this, and because of the, the enormous support you've shown, we're already just about at our one hour episode goal. Now, we already started pretty much doing that because we love you guys, and, and why not, but, uh, but we're almost at that goal, we're a couple bucks away, help us hit that goal and we will never issue another episode under an hour, so

0:44:45 Andrew: Yeah. Thank you so much.

0:45:06 Thomas: Uh yeah good Good.

0:45:05 Andrew: Yeah. And I want to thank our Hall of Fame patrons. They are the Inciting Incident Podcast, Jeff S., Kylie Reiser, Michael, Hunter Ash, Pro Panic, Patrick Fussell, Amanda Lipnack, Desecrator, Roger Metcalf, Jim Grove, Steve Sigmund, Dale, Dave Nichols of the Positively Doubtful Podcast, Eli Bosnick, of course, and Dan Irizarry. Thank you so much for being our top patrons.

0:45:31 Thomas: Awesome. patreon.com/law if you'd like to contribute. Well, that's all I've got. Anything else from you?

0:45:37 Andrew: Nope.

0:45:37 Thomas: All right. Thank you so much for listening to Opening Arguments. And of course, stop breaking the law, asshole.

0:45:44 Andrew: All right.

0:45:52 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments with Andrew and Thomas. If you love the show and want to support future episodes, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/law. If you can't support us financially, it'd be a big help if you could leave us a five star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever podcast delivery vehicle you use. And be sure to tell all your friends about us. For questions, suggestions, and complaints, email us at openarguments@gmail.com. The show notes and links are on our website at www.openargs.com. Be sure to like our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. Until next time. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC. All rights reserved.