"The essence of the state is theft" T-Shirt

White lettering silk-screened on black, or black lettering silk-screened on white 100% cotton stock. Available in sizes ranging from medium to XXL


Medium
$19.95



Large
$19.95



X-Large
$19.95


XX-Large
$19.95


Solution Graphics
Text of T-Shirt

The Essence Of The State Is Theft

A.k.a.: Taxes - Wars - Traffic Tickets - Seizures - Fiat Money

Should we let a glorified crime gang rule our lives?

Background Research on State (a.k.a. Government) Criminality - Chapters
1. Every State Has A Criminal Origin 6. Seizures Are Theft
2. States Operate On Criminal Principles 7. Fiat Money Is Theft
3. War Is Theft 8. Other State Crimes
4. Taxes Are Theft 9. Witness Testimony
5. Traffic Tickets Are Theft 10. Where This Leads Us?
Chapter 1. - Every State Has A Criminal Origin - Quotes with sources

In 2000BC the economic life of the Achean aristocracy and the king was based on the loot and land acquired by robbery. The peasantry did farming and agriculture, mostly on lands rented from the aristocrats - robbers. (Dioszegi György - A bolcselet eredete, pg.16)

What are the states but big robber bands, and what are the robber bands but small states? (St Augustine, 354-430 AD, retranslated) in (Paul Lunde - Organized Crime, pg 17)

Rulers derive their origin from men who raise themselves above their fellows by plunder, treachery, murder. (Peter Haidu - The Subject Medieval/Modern, pg 346)

The system of royalty has begun in the same fashion in all countries and among all peoples. A band of robbers, gathered together under a leader, throw themselves on a country and make slaves of its people ... Their power being thus established, the chief of the band changed the name from Robber to Monarch; hence the origin of monarchy and kings. What at first was plunder, assumed the foster name of revenue. (The Thomas Paine Reader, pgs 350, 233)

The beginnings of the state can be traced back to the early history of the human race when the strongest savage seized the largest club and with this weapon enforced his rule upon the other members of the tribe. By means of strength he became the chief and exercised this power, not to protect the weak but to take the good things for himself. One man by his unaided strength could not long keep the tribe in subjection to his will, so he chose lieutenants and aids, and these too were given a goodly portion of the fruits of power for the help they lent their chief. No plans for the general good ever formed a portion of this scheme of government. The ancient knight who with his battle-ax and coat of mail, enforced his rule upon the weak, was only the forerunner of the tax-gatherer and tax-devourer of today. (Clarence Darrow - Resist Not Evil)

The State is in essence the result of the successes achieved by a band of brigands who superimpose themselves on small, distinct societies. (Bertrand de Jouvenel - On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth)

The whole feudal system was born out of the barbarian nobles safeguarding attempt: to maintain under a cloak of Christian chivalry the barbarian methods of privilege, abuse, plunder, continual conquest, and if necessary, killing and deceit. (Paul Winkler - The Thousand Year Conspiracy, pg 312)

The State is the organized authority, domination, and power of the possessing classes over the masses, the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest. This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries - statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors - if judged from the standpoint of simply morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labor or to the gallows. (Mikhail Bakunin - Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism)

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner. Oppenheimer defines the State as an institution forced on a defeated group by a conquering group to systematize the domination. This domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation. (Albert Jay Nock - Our Enemy, the State, pg 20)

In England (and the same will be found in other countries) the great landed estates were plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the Conquest. The possibility did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly. How then were they acquired? Blush, aristocracy, to hear your origin, for your progenitors were thieves. When they had committed the robbery, they endeavoured to lose the disgrace of it, by sinking their real names under fictitious ones, which they called titles. It is ever the practice of felons to act in this manner. They never pass by their real names.
Ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who robbed another of his property, will next endeavour to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator, he believes himself secure. That part of the government of England that is called the House of Lords, was originally composed of persons who originally committed the robberies of which I have been speaking. It was an association for the protection of the property they had stolen. (The Thomas Paine Reader, pgs 425-426)

“Organized plunder” has been the very lifeblood of most states throughout history. In most times and places taxation, like slavery, was simply taken for granted as an inescapable fact of life; now and then there have been tax revolts, just as there have been slave revolts; and at times, especially since the Christian era, taxation has been recognized as presenting serious moral problems. (Joseph Sobran - Taxation Through The Ages)

The aristocrats in many civilizations are the fossils of the early conquering hordes. Their position at society's apex is the residue of robbery. In England, the titled classes, the folks who hold their noses in the air, are the descendants of Saxon, Viking and Norman soldiers whol pillaged, slaughtered and raped in successive waves from roughly AD 470 to 1066. In Japan, the aristocracy, which has sat securely in place for nearly 1800 years is the remnant of a population of nomadic Mongoloid horsemen who came across the sea from Korea in the first century AD brutalizing the local population into submission with long iron swords. (Howard Bloom - The Lucifer Principle, pg 213)

Wherever economic exploitation has been for any reason either impracticable or unprofitable, the State has never come into existence; government has existed, but the State, never. (Albert Jay Nock - Our Enemy, the State)

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion? (The Thomas Paine Reader, pg 233)

2.) States Operate On Criminal Principles - Quotes with sources

If protection rackets represent organized crime, then war making and state making - quintessential protection rackets - qualify as our largest examples or organized crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers and thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. A thoughtful exploration of a few hundred years of European experience shows us that coercive exploitation played a large part in the creation of the European states. There is an analogy between war making, state making, and what, when less successful and smaller in scale, we call organized crime. War makes states. Banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing and war making all belong on the same continuum. Consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments' provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering. To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. (Charles Tilly - War Making and State Making as Organized Crime)

Government is a Mafia-like protection racket. The so-called "state" has its origin in a gang of looters.... When the politicians and bureaucrats want your money they don't immediately point their guns at you. They send you words by paper or phone. In general, they only come after you with guns if you repeatedly don't give them money. (Frederick Mann - The Nature of Government)

Roughing people up through violence and threats of violence. That’s what every line of every regulation comes down to. That’s the meaning of every tax. That's the whole upshot of every tariff, expenditure, prohibition, and bomb. It all amounts to increased use of violence in society. Strip away the banners, songs, uniforms, and speeches: that’s all that the state really is. (Lew Rockwell - Conservative Euphemisms for State Aggression)

A government lives on two things: war and taxes. What is war? Robbery with murder abroad. The Criminal Code prescribes sentences from 20 years to death for committing the same crime at home, for that is the government’s other monopoly, called “taxes”. With taxes you won’t face an armed squad at first, but if you resist paying persistently enough, they might visit you just the same way they visited Iraq or murdered tax resister Gordon Kahl. Once you understand that most wars are waged to collect more taxes, you realize that taxes and wars are just two euphemisms for the same robbery committed on two sides of the border. (George Cordell - A noxious religion)

All possessions of governments are attained through violent means. From national lands, to national treasuries, to indentured servants, every possession of every nation is acquired through the means of taxes or war. When tribute is demanded and paid, it is a tax. When tribute is refused and taken by force, it is war. (Jeremy Locke – Worthless Paper Promises)

The last resort of the monsters who masquerade as "government" is terror and violence. They have to threaten, terrorize, punish and kill to retain their coercive power. That's why it's approrpiate to call them "territorial gangsters" or "territorial criminals". (Frederick Mann - The Nature of Government)

The Mafia started out as a genuine government fighting the invaders of Sicily in the 19th century. Observe a governments’ true priority by its choice after victory: the need for its violence gone, instead of becoming a public institution, it stepped up the racket and the robberies. The Sicilian Mafia is not a government gone bad. It is a government sticking to its core competence - extortion - after its disguise of pretend benevolence vanished. Remember from this what a government’s primary business is, once you peek behind its ornate veneer: crime. War being simply the highest form of organized crime, it’s no surprise why a Mafia government pursues this old lucrative trade of theirs in spite of every civilized citizen’s opposition. (George Cordell - Government: the Mafia factor)

I call the United States a “corporation” and a “protection racket.” It is both, just as the Mafia is. There is no difference, except in the fact that some people, wishing to lend more legitimacy to one of them, call it by the eupemism “government.” (Jackney Sneeb - There's No Government Like NO Government, pg xiii)

We ‘re supposed to think that the system that can extort half our earnings from us is benevolent? The majority of people always fall for the idea that if the state is hurting someone else even worse than it’s hurting them, it’s on their side, and is therefore their friend, protector and benefactor. As long as the government is prepared to bomb foreigners to death, Americans imagine that their proximate enemy is defending them. (Joseph Sobran – Your Friend, The State)

Something that is already filtering into psychiatry: the identity of the ruler with the criminal, the fact that power and authority with their most important activity, killing, whether by bomb, gallows or assassination, are themselves the enemies of society. (Alex Comfort - Writings Against Power and Death, pg 118)

Consider carefully every article you read about politicians, governments, and those who support them. When you do, you will find nothing more than theft disguised as logic, charity, and goodness. (Wes Alexander - Amtrak)

Some essential functions of states, such as military forces and taxation, can be considered criminal (Brian Martin - Eliminating state crime by abolishing the state)

Any government is a monopoly of organized force, inherently unjustifiable (Joseph Sobran – Why Do We Need Government?)

The state lies in all languages; whatever it says, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen. (Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pg 34)

Modern states kill and plunder on a scale that no (street) robber band could hope to emulate. Any attempt to quantify their crimes is inevitably subject to enormous margins of error, but by adding up midrange estimates R. J. Rummel calculated that from 1900 to 1987 over 169 million people were murdered by governments. Rummel's figure excludes deaths in wars (about 35 million, an unknown proportion of which resulted from war crimes), judicial executions (other than those resulting from 'show trials') and killings of armed opponents or criminals. Government officials also make a major contribution to property crime. The late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha is accused of stealing $4 billion (2.75 billion pounds) from his country. This is considerably more than the annual amount stolen and damaged in all residential and commercial burglaries in England and Wales (2.3 billion pounds.) (Penny Green, Tony Ward - State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption, pg 1)

Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows...The State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment. (Emma Goldman: Anarchism: What it Really Stands For)

Carjacking or impoundment? We now have two vocabularies for wrongs, depending on whether private persons or government agents commit them. This is the difference between mass murder and national defense. Between extortion and taxation. Between counterfeiting and inflation. And so on. Other examples will occur to the astute reader. Do you smell a fault? No wonder Frédéric Bastiat described government as “organized plunder.” (Joseph Sobran – Why Do We Need Government?)

Criminal enterprises that are somewhat mature consist of continuing criminal and legitimate activities blended together including the structures developed and utilized to perpetuate illicit gains. (Robert J. Kelly - The Upperworld and the Underworld: Case Studies of Racketeering, pg 199)

Levies used to be exacted by sheer brigandage and the overt threat of physical force; now, the means are more subtle. Laymen call them: Debt, Taxes, and Paper Money…. Theft is, of course, always most effectively perpetrated when disguised as law and underwritten by the threat of political violence - i.e., when it is committed by the State. (Sean Corrigan - The Great GDP Hoax)

Organized crime may not be something that exists outside law or government - William Chambliss later wrote in drawing the fateful inference - but may be instead a creation of them: a hidden but nonetheless integral part of the governmental and economic structures of the society. Kefauver and his colleagues had found not something separate from the country but its dark essence, the system itself. "Without political and economic corruption," one journalist summed up what the senators saw but had not put so plainly or unreservedly, "there could be no organized crime Syndicate." The mapping of the collusion would include the political and financial crucibles of almost every American president for the rest of the century. (Roger Morris - The Money and the Power, pgs 116-117)

No longer entertain the delusion that your so-called government is anything but institutionalized organized crime ensconced in an empire now teetering on the precipice of collapse. If you can digest that reality and still vote in federal elections, God help you, because you still haven’t gotten that what you are voting for are hired liars, mobsters, and murderers. (Carolyn Baker - Godfather Government)

The lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Live Not By Lies)

As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. Looking at any state, at any point in history, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional criminal class. (Albert Jay Nock - Our Enemy, the State, pg 22)

The government is an agency of coercion. So is the mafia. So to be more precise, the government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of his offices. Every government action is backed by the same kind of force that is so useful for robbing money from grocery stores. (Harry Browne - Why Government Doesn't Work, pg 12)

3.) War is Theft - Quotes with sources

Wasn't the conquest of one nation by another international robbery? If a country, through its leaders, embarked on a program to take from the peoples of neighboring countries their land, their property, or their personal freedoms, why shouldn't the ordinary rules as to robbery apply? (Josiah E. DuBois - The Devil's Chemists, pg 107)

People who disliked work became soldiers, and lived their lives killing their neighbours across arbitrary frontiers, and looting thir property. They were members of a robber gang, led by a master robber, who, if he plundered successfully, became a historical character. The people over whom these criminals ruled, supported them in the hope that their masters would have some scraps left over for them to enjoy, but these plunderers never increased the prosperity of the great majority. (Arthur Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance, Vol 1, pg 36-37)

During the 18th century there grew the conviction that to the extent that rulers still went to war for their personal profit, they were little better than criminals. (Martin van Creveld - The Rise and Decline of the State, pg. 161)

The history of power is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder. This history is taught in schools and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as its heroes (Karl Popper - The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 2, Chp. 25)

The reason empires exist is to use their unrestrained power to seize territory and wealth from others. (Steve Brouwer - Robbing Us Blind, pg 259)

People who relieve others of their money with guns are called robbers. It does not alter the immorality of the act when the income transfer is carried out by government. (Cal Thomas - A Taxing Time)

All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them. (Howard Zinn - Emma Goldman, pg 93)

Organised theft on a large scale by one side and organised resistance on the other, constitute war. (Arthur Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 1, pg 186)

The state rulers, if they can, will block any frank depiction of the criminal nature of war... We should distance ourselves, as soon as possible, from vicious rulers and their criminal gangs and withdraw our support as much as possible. (Polyarchy - Waiting for the Bomb?)

The draft is nothing more than the government stealing services from its citizens because it does not want to pay a market rate for them. (Michael Badnarik - The Free Market vs. the Draft)

On September 20 1996, a half-century after WW2, the Associated Press at long last noticed: "Tons of gold looted by Nazis during WW2 - some of it possibly taken from the fillings in Holocaust victims' teeth - are stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England in London. Recently declassified federal documents show that six tons of gold looted by the Nazis are stored in the two banks." (Alex Constantine - Virtual Government, pg 13)

To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime. (Nurnberg Tribunal of War Crimes). So according to this foundation judgement of all international criminal law, the American leaders - Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld and Powell, General Franks, Ms. Rice, etc., and their associates Messrs. Blair, Hoon, Straw, et al. - are guilty of having committed the supreme international crime in Iraq. In the words of the American Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal, the much-venerated American Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson: "Any resort to war - any kind of war - is a resort to means that are inherently criminal... inherently criminal acts cannot be defended by showing that those who committed them were engaged in a war, when war itself is illegal." In other words, President Bush and his colleagues are legally guilty of the murder of many thousands of people, not to mention the grievous assault of many tens of thousands more and so on down the list of the most serious crimes in the criminal codes of every country in the world. It's the kind of thing that, when done on a fraction of the scale in the Bush family's Texas, gets you a one-way ticket to the lethal injection chamber. (Michael Mandel - How America Gets Away With Murder, pg 6)

Postwar interviews have repeatedly demonstrated that veterans feel offended when it is suggested that they were part of a vast criminal undertaking. (Omeg Bartov - Mirrors of Destruction, pg 27)

A soldier's chief duty - the one most appreciated by the authorities - is that of executioner. Not a professional executioner who kills only condemned criminals, but one ready to butcher any innocent man at the word of command. (Tolstoy – The Kingdom of God is Within You, Chp 8)

A U.S, Navy document secretly pointed out the real issue: "Realistically, all wars have been for economic reasons. To make them politically palatable, ideological issues have always been involved. Any possible future war will undoubtedly conform to historical precedent. (Gerard Colby - Du Pont Dynasty, pg 408)

Rather than truly seeking to help the Japanese, Chinese, and other looted nations recover in the aftermath of WWII, the most senior leaders of the US government conspired with Nazi bankers and the Japanese imperial family to create a Black Eagle Trust controlled by a very select hand-picked cabal in Washington. The Black Eagle Trust quickly became a global slush fund used to bribe national leaders and manipulate elections around the world. This fund remains in existence today; major banks are "addicted" to the funds and would face collapse if public investigations resulted in a forced return of this gold and related certificates to the rightful owners. The architects of the Black Eagle Trust were three advisors to President's Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson: John McCloy (later head of the World Bank), Robert Lovett (later Secretary of Defense), and Robert Anderson (later Secretary of the Treasury). Bringing the story up to date, the authors show how prior attempts to investigate the Black Eagle Trust have led to the ruin of individuals such as Norbert Schlei, at one time deputy attorney general to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. (Sterling Seagrave - Gold Warriors)

4.) Taxes are Theft - Quotes with sources

To read about the lack of authority of law (and any agency collecting revenue based on it) visit this chapter

Government, beyond the strictest limits of justice, became organized plunder.” In other words, government itself tends to become the very evil it is supposed to prevent: crime. It confuses people because it enacts criminal acts under the forms of law. ... This means, for openers, that taxation is a gigantic system of fraud, robbery, and extortion. (Joseph Sobran - Taxation Through The Ages)

If the state wants your money, it doesn’t ask you for it politely. It doesn’t try to earn it. The state extorts money from you with threats of prison. Since no one wants to picture himself as a victim of violence, governments lie. States always prevaricate and coin new words to conceal their use of force. Taxes, laws, conscription, tariffs, regulations: A thousand words have been invented to distract your attention from the guns and prisons that uphold the government. If the state were honest and open about its use of violence, the victims might revolt... taxes are simply the extortionist’s requests for money. (Allen Thornton - Laws of the Jungle)

Taxation is extortion. It is the dubious institution that's based on the monarchical tradition when governments (the monarchs) owned the realm and taxes were the tribute they collected for permitting ordinary folks to live and work in this realm. (Tibor Machan, 2005)

The theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily…But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life." And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. (Lysander Spooner – No Treason, Chp. XI)

Can you imagine a group of thugs without the guise of legitimacy (a.k.a. ‘legality’) just saying to 300 million people (with almost as many guns) ‘Give us $1.7 trillion a year, or else’? That would last about five minutes. The income tax is really theft, an aggravated form of theft called extortion. The way the United States collects its loot is identical to the way a gang uses extortion: “cough up your dough and we make sure bad things don’t happen to you.” That is robbery, only the “government”-cultists try and make it sound legitimate by using the euphemism “income tax.” There is no such thing as legitimate theft. (Jackney Sneeb - There's No Government Like NO Government, pgs 138, 184)

Taxation is theft, purely and simply, even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. (Murray Rothbard - Ethics of Liberty)

The federal mafia illegally imposes and unlawfully collects income taxes. Any war on organized crime must start with the federal government. (Irwin Schiff - The Federal Mafia, cover, pg 81)

I began reading a stack of government reports how the Internal Revenue Service plans to go on collecting taxes from us after 200 nuclear bombs have dropped on the United States and killed 100 million Americans, destroyed incalculable amount of property, and incinerated a substantial part of the records that document the wealth of the nation. Here, memorialized in the turgid prose of long-forgotten bureaucrats was stated the absolute first rule of all governments: Nothing, not even the incredible destruction of nuclear war, is more important to any government than the collection of taxes. In one section, the official indicated that his primary concern about a possible nuclear attack was the disorder that such a strike would bring to government, rather than the unimaginable horror it would wreak on society. (David Burnham - A Law Unto Itself, pgs 4-5)

To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. (US Supreme Court, Loan Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655)

The similarity between tax collector and robbers is ... found in the basic meaning behind the word 'taxation,' which means forced exaction. (Charles Adams - For Good and Evil, pg 1)

Those who believe in “government” typically defend taxation as the “price we pay for civilization” or some such crap. In reality it’s a theft – extortion, really. Changing it from “extortion” to “tax” is nothing more than an attempt to create an obligation. You can’t create an agreement by manipulating words. “Price” implies voluntary agreement, “theft” demands that we recognize that there is a perpetrator (the state) and a victim (you). Which one is “taxes”? . (Jackney Sneeb - There's No Government Like NO Government, pgs 13-14)

Use of government as a means to plunder and rob from its citizens through taxation... is a form of organized crime. Our government has become an organized crime ring. (Irwin Schiff - The Great IRS Hoax)

Government taxation is the single most effective extortion racket that ever existed. (Jeremy Locke - The End of All Evil, pg 68)

Without doubt, the classic relation of a subject to the government is the payment of tribute in exchange for protection. All too often, however, the protection received by the taxpayer is exclusively against the violence of the tax taker. A question naturally arises, therefore, as to what distintuishes the government from, say, the Mafia. (Robert Higgs - Against Leviathan, pg 137-138)

Social Security is simply a tax. Like all taxes, the money collected is spent immediately to fund the federal government. … Allowing people to opt out of Social Security would force the federal government to admit it has been stealing money from Social Security for decades. (Ron Paul - Want to Reform Social Security? Stop Spending.)

Another lie was that there was a Social Security account with your money in it to which you had rights. There's no such account, plus, according to two U.S. Supreme Court cases -- Helvering v. Davis (1937) and Fleming v. Nestor (1960) -- you have no legal right, in the sense of a contract, to Social Security payments. (Walter Williams – More Social Security Deceit)

Nothing disrupts a politician like the presumption that your money isn’t his, which is why honorables go apoplectic at the mention of tax cuts. … The debate hinges on a simple question: Who owns your work, you or the president? (Tony Snow - Keeping What We Earn)

Statism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others – on the grand scale. There is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other social program. – (Leonard Read - Combatting Statism)

Government stock ownership of pharmaceutical companies, in composite totals equates to 60% - 75% ownership. (This is) why government dumps massive taxpayer money down the throat of the pharmaceutical / health care industries; it is expanding its own investment profits at taxpayer expense without one dollar ($1) ever going back to taxpayers. (Walter Burien – Letter to Michael Moore)

The funding of government over the last 100 years is based on deception and outright fraud. The public’s focus is directed to taxation when of total government income, only a third is tax income, two thirds are investment income, interest income, cash receipts, mostly kept out of the budget report. For the last 100 years, government based its wealth on non-disclosure of its real gross income. To do this, they kept two sets of books: the public budget report, always in the red (to justify taking more taxes) and the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports which shows the whole picture. In reality, the composite government has over 53 percent ownership of all issued stocks from all exchanges. Xerox is approximately 72% owned by composite government funds; AT&T is up around 42%, and so on... the state truly owns everything, dwarfing the control Russia had. If the public was aware that this type of wealth was being built and obfuscated as tax dollars are being drained out of their pockets citing a “shortfall of budgetary revenue”, there would have been an uprising 30 years ago. (Walter Burien – Gold vs. Fiat & The Biggest Game In Town), heavily excerpted

Your city, county, state, and federal governments have lied to you for decades. Our governments are not broke, they are rich beyond measure with our money, and they are hiding it from the American taxpayer, investing, and spending it, while pleading they are broke and need more taxes, bonds and levies to survive. There is enough aggregate wealth owned by our government agencies to abolish all property and income taxes today. (WJB - Comprehensive Annual Financial Report)

5.) Traffic Tickets are Theft - Quotes with sources

To read about the lack of authority of law (and any agency collecting revenue based on it) visit this chapter

Municipal and state governments assign quotas of traffic tickets as a means of extorting revenue from the public. Defrauding the public, inflicting monetary damages and bureaucratic hassles for innocent, law-abiding people doesn't doesn't merit punishment, under the moral calculation of the parasites who style themselves public servants. In 2002, Washington Mayor Anthony Williams nearly committed an act of candor by saying: The traffic cameras are about safety and revenue. Actually, they undermine safety in pursuit of revenue. (The John Birch Society – Highway Robbery)

When reduced to its most basic elements, the traffic ticket racket amounts to little more than a system of legalized extortion. The proof is that before the people pay the ticket, they are criminals, and by merely writing a check they are able to buy their freedom. In case you didn't notice, real criminals are generally held in jail no matter how much money they have. (Traffic Tickets, The Vehicle Code and You)

Our (study) results suggest that tickets are used as a revenue generation tool rather than solely a means to increase public safety. Positive changes in local revenue have no statistical effect on the changes in the tickets issued, but we find evidence that law enforcement officials issue significantly more tickets in the year following a decline in local government revenue. A one percentage point decrease in last year’s local government revenue results in a 0.319 to 0.360 percentage point increase in the number of traffic tickets in the following year. (Garret, Wagner - Red Ink in the Rearview Mirror)

Brian Wolk was fired because he spilled the beans on a corrupt system whereby illegally collected traffic tickets are a form of taxation without representation. If municipalities want increased public revenues they can't steal; they have to get approval from the voters. The municipal traffic ticket industry is a fraud. It steals money from law-abiding citizens; it makes people lose faith in our legal system; and it diverts many police officers to become tax collectors with guns. (William E. Grim - Unconstitutional At Any Speed)

Does California's fiscal policy force law-enforcement officers to function as highwaymen on the highways of the State? James Sweeney's revealing article "Ticket Quota Costs County $125,000," Santa Rosa Press Democrat, May 22, 1995, indicates that this is so. Since 1992 the State of California has been requiring the counties to meet a quota for traffic tickets. The State expects the 58 counties to bring in $80.1 million a year in fines. This State policy of turning the police out on the highways to raise revenues is a gross violation of the social contract. It is a form of involuntary taxation and State-subsidized plunder. (Mark Evans – Highway Robbery)

According to a 1996 Ontario study, of the 384,453 vehicle collisions involving property damage, personal injury and fatality, only 6.7% were deemed to be speed related. Yet, 60% of all the Highway Traffic Act convictions were for speeding! Now you know that those safety bureaucrats are just a bunch of liars, but they are really honest when they told you that "speed limits exist for a reason". They didn't provide you with a clear answer, but it is pretty obvious: it is a healthy source of revenue. When so much money is at stake here, it becomes clear why the government, police and the insurance industry all collaborate their efforts to rationalize and legalize this blatant extortion. This speeding ticket system is not only the most legalized crime in the country, it is also a multi-million-dollar business. (F.Y.S.T. - Speed kills? Or does it?)

ACS, who runs 80 percent of the red-light camera systems infecting various North American communities, has been known to lubricate its deals with bribery: An investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has turned up evidence that ACS offered such blandishments as secret commissions and trips to free NHL games to police officials in charge of Edmonton, Alberta's radar camera program. The Philadelphia Daily News dug into a malodorous deal that brought ACS to Philadelphia in exchange for a payoff to Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel. (The John Birch Society – Highway Robbery)

Speed enforcement in this country is a mockery. My experience has shown that if a person on an interstate is traveling in excess of thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, is following too close to the rear of anyone who dares impede his forward motion and almost forces other cars out of the way, there is at least a 75% chance that he is police officer. It is also very likely that he is off duty or if working, is not going to an emergency. There is better than a 99% chance that, when stopped, will not get a ticket. All cops don't speed while off duty but those who do, manage to do it with impunity. Speeding tickets are big business. They permit and justify the employment of an army of civil servants, including police, their supervisors, court clerks, accountants, judges, secretaries, stenographers, bailiffs, computer operators, programmers, district attorneys, and more. (James M. Eagan - A Speeders Guide to Avoiding Tickets)

Pennsylvania State Police documents show that not only is there a system of monetary reward and punishment for state troopers based upon numeric ticket goals, there is a clear effort to prevent anyone from ever speaking about it. The first rule of a ticket quota is: there is no ticket quota. (Ticket Quota Cover-up Continues)

Did it ever occur to you that if traffic tickets were truly being written for your safety on the road, why does the highway patrol have quotas on how many to write per month? The answer is, it is not about safety. It is about making money for the cities, and counties that write them! It is your money they are stealing to do it. (Speed Ticket Beaters)

Continued on page 2/2

All quotes provided for purposes of verification, research, and criticism under the fair use doctrine. We provide authorship information as well as links to the source materials on the web. Page numbers given may differ between editions. Quotes may be shortened if this doesn't alter their meaning.

Do you kow a verifiable quote that is even stronger and more relevant to the subject than the ones we listed? Have a great new T-Shirt design suggestion?

Related Internet links we recommend

The Popsicle Index

US Treasury Missing Trillions of Dollars

<< Previous Design Next Design >>