Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Most of you will be quite familiar with Peter Schiff. Fewer of you will know much about his father, Irwin Schiff, who was posthumously referred to as the “grandfather of the contemporary tax protest movement” in Forbes.
Irwin was treated very poorly by his own country, particularly toward the end of his life when, despite being legally blind and dying of cancer, he was not permitted to die in peace amongst family members.
His son Peter wrote the following as a tribute:
My father Irwin A. Schiff was born Feb. 23rd 1928, the 8th child and only son of Jewish immigrants, who had crossed the Atlantic twenty years earlier in search of freedom. As a result of their hope and courage my father was fortunate to have been born into the freest nation in the history of the world. But when he passed away on Oct. 16th, 2015 at the age of 87, a political prisoner of that same nation, legally blind and shackled to a hospital bed in a guarded room in intensive care, the free nation he was born into had itself died years earlier.
My father had a life-long love affair with our nation’s founding principals and proudly served his country during the Korean War, for a while even having the less then honorable distinction of being the lowest ranking American soldier in Europe. While in college he became exposed to the principles of Austrian economics through the writings of Henry Hazlitt and Frederick Hayek. He first became active in politics during Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential bid. His activism intensified during the Vietnam Era when he led local grass root efforts to resist Yale University’s plans to conduct aid shipments to North Vietnam at a time when that nation was actively fighting U.S. forces in the south. Later in life he staged an unsuccessful write in campaign for governor of Connecticut, then eventually lost the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination to Harry Brown in 1996.
In 1976 his beliefs in free market economics, limited government, and strict interpretation of the Constitution led him to write his first book The Biggest Con: How the Government is Fleecing You, a blistering indictment of the post New Deal expansion of government in the United States. The book achieved accolades in the mainstream conservative world, receiving a stellar review in the Wall Street Journal, among other mainstream publications.
But my father was most known for his staunch opposition to the Federal Income Tax, for which the Federal Government labeled him a “tax protester.” But he had no objection to lawful, reasonable taxation. He was not an anarchist and believed that the state had an important, but limited role to play in market based economy. He opposed the Federal Government’s illegal and unconstitutional enforcement and collection of the income tax. His first book on this topic (he authored six books in total) How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes, published in 1982 became a New York Times best seller. His last, The Federal Mafia; How the Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully collects Income Taxes, the first of three editions published in 1992, became the only non-fiction, and second and last book to be banned in America. The only other book being Fanny Hill; Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, banned for obscenity in 1821 and 1963.
His crusade to force the government to obey the law earned him three prison sentences, the final one being a fourteen-year sentence that he began serving ten years ago, at the age of 77. That sentence turned into a life sentence, as my father failed to survive until his planned 2017 release date. However in actuality the life sentence amounted to a death sentence. My father died from skin cancer that went undiagnosed and untreated while he was in federal custody. The skin cancer then led to a virulent outbreak of lung cancer that took his life just more than two months after his initial diagnosis.
The unnecessarily cruel twist in his final years occurred seven years ago when he reached his 80th birthday. At that point the government moved him from an extremely low security federal prison camp in New York State where he was within easy driving distance from family and friends, to a federal correctional institute, first in Indiana and then in Texas. This was done specially to give him access to better medical care. The trade off was that my father was forced to live isolated from those who loved him. Given that visiting him required long flights, car rentals, and hotel stays, his visits were few and far between. Yet while at these supposed superior medical facilities, my father received virtually no medical care at all, not even for the cataracts that left him legally blind, until the skin cancer on his head had spread to just about every organ in his body.
At the time of his diagnosis in early August of this year, he was given four to six mouths to live. We tried to get him out of prison on compassionate release so that he could live out the final months of his life with his family, spending some precious moments with the grandchildren he had barely known. But he did not live long enough for the bureaucratic process to be completed. Two months after the process began, despite the combined help of a sitting Democratic U.S. congresswoman and a Republican U.S. senator, his petition was still sitting on someone’s desk waiting for yet another signature, even though everyone at the prison actually wanted him released. Even as my father lay dying in intensive care, a phone call came in from a lawyer and the Bureau of Prisons in Washington asking the prison medical representatives for more proof of the serious nature of my father’s condition.
As the cancer consumed him his voice changed, and the prison phone system no longer recognized it, so he could not even talk with family members on the phone during his finale month of life. When his condition deteriorated to the point where he needed to be hospitalized, government employees blindly following orders kept him shackled to his bed. This despite the fact that escape was impossible for an 87 year old terminally ill, legally blind patient who could barley breathe, let alone walk.
Whether or not you agree with my father’s views on the Federal Income Tax, or the manner by which it is collected, it’s hard to condone the way he was treated by our government. He held his convictions so sincerely and so passionately that he continued to espouse them until his dying breath. Like William Wallace in the final scene of Braveheart, an oppressive government may have succeeded in killing him, but they did not break his spirit. And that spirit will live on in his books, his videos, and in his children and grandchildren. Hopefully his legacy will one day help restore the lost freedoms he died trying to protect, finally allowing him to rest in peace.
I’d like to end this post on a lighter note, by sharing one of my favorite clips of Irwin, a man unappreciated by his country and left to die and elderly man, shackled to a cold hospital bed.
RIP Irwin Schiff.
Not surprised – our gov’t is a vindictive SOB. Whether it is Aaron Swartz, Ed Snowden, Irwin Schiff, etc., all good people. You go against the gov’t and they want you imprisoned or dead.
More good for evil and evil for good; the IRS officials should be in jail.
Wish I could say I’m surprised, or shocked, but I’m not.
How is it that…………..aw fuck what I was going to write and waste time preaching to the choir.
We all know that the government protects the real criminals and must make examples of those that oppose, or question their power over us.
Very sad.
My condolences to the family of Mr. Irwin Schiff . I bought one of his books before his incarceration and learned a lot . If it was mandatory reading , there would be hope for this country , but alas we are doomed . They lock up all opposition to protect the power structure of the privately owned central banking system . Hoka Hai
FREEDOM!!!
‘Murica!
I met Irwin Schiff at one of the conferences hosted by Robert Schulz’s givemeliberty.org group in 2001. He autographed a copy of his “Federal Mafia” book that I had brought with me–which was later banned in the US. I also called into his radio program a few times. His message was always true–that wages are not income. But tax court will never accept that argument even though Supreme Court cases favor Schiff’s argument.
R.I.P., Irwin, and condolences to the family.
Does anyone notice that people who claim that our tax system is illegitimate and/or unconstitutional are persercuted to a more severe degree than anyone else, including violent terrorists, mafia, serial killers and the like?
Kinda makes you go “hmmm?”
This breaks my heart …Irwin Schiff was a decent and honorable man and for him to be treated like this is indicative of an evil and vindictive force operating under the guise of representative government.
Irwin Schiff RIP.
Some of the old liberty movement may remember this book..
http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/defects.aspx
The Law That Never Was.
The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was never ratified by the required number of States.
This is the Amendment that allegedly entitled the Federal Agent (government) in the federal territory of Washington, D.C. and their private collection company, the IRS, to collect “income tax” as falsely declared to be ratified in February 1913.
After an exhaustive year long search of legislative records in forty-eight sovereign states (Alaska and Hawaii weren’t admitted into the Union until after 1913). The only record of the 16th Amendment having been confirmed was a proclamation made by Secretary of State Philander Knox on February 25, 1913, wherein he simply declared it to be “in effect,” but never stated it was lawfully ratified.
Even if the 16th Amendment were properly ratified, according to Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, it has always been unconstitutional for the U.S. Federal Government to directly tax We the People in our property, wages, salaries and earnings. The judges of the U.S. Supreme Court rejected any claims that the 16th Amendment changed the constitutional limits on direct taxes in Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916), when they ruled that it “created no new power of taxation” and that it “did not change the constitutional limitations which forbid any direct taxation of individuals.”
After investigating the history of the 16th Amendment, the following defects were found in the ratification of the Income Tax Amendment by the forty-eight states then existing, three-fourths of which (thirty-six) were needed to ratify it:
Not ratified by state legislature and so reported
Not ratified by state legislature, but reported as ratified
Missing or incomplete evidence of ratification, but reported as ratified
Failure of Governor or other official to sign, although required by State Constitution
Other violation of State Constitution in ratification process
Other procedural irregularity making ratification doubtful
Approval, but with change in wording, accepted as ratification of original version
Approval, but with change in spelling, accepted as ratification of original version
Approval, but with change in capitalization, accepted as ratification of original version
Approval, but with change in punctuation, accepted as ratification of original version
@flash, William Benson, author of “The Law That Never Was” was a staple at givemeliberty.org’s conferences, along with Devvy Kidd, Joe Bannister (former IRS agent), and Edwin Vieira–all excellent speakers.
Americans were hoodwinked twice in 1913–the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act.
“Americans were hoodwinked twice in 1913–the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act.”
This is not coincidental. Each one is needed for the other to function.
Rise Up , Yes, I remember it well.Also remember Robert Shulz to bring grievances before certain Congressman on 9/11 which of course was cancelled and never rescheduled …priorities where suddenly switched from rule of law to gotta’ win the war on turror.
That congressman was Maryland’s Roscoe Bartlett, who Schulz convinced to take the givemeliberty.org’s petition seriously, but then backed out of appearing before the group.
The primary source of income to the feds is the income tax. That’s the source of paychecks for prosecutors and judges. Anybody think they won’t attack like starving dogs to protect their own source of food, clothing and shelter?
What judge would agree with any Schiff-type legal argument when it would mean the end of his income?
Poor Irwin, it is absurd what they did to him. His biggest mistake was creating a spectacle of himself on Tee Vee.
His mistake is there is a law. It is called 26USC. The root problem is what is “income” and what makes it taxable or not. Income most simply is an “incoming transfer” of “money”.
There are 3 primary income taxes. Corporate, 16th amendment, and General.
The first one is easy. Corporations have to pay the tax in their income from doing business as a privileged incorporated entity.
The 16th amendment is rather misunderstood. It taxes income that is derived (separated) from the source (property). Examples of this type of income are rents and dividends. NOT wages.
The 3rd and most clocked and concealed income tax is the tax on general income or money itself. This tax is actually the first income tax that was created during the civil war to force people away from the wildcat banks and to force use of the greenbacks (United States notes). Banks could still issue their own notes but they would be taxed at a rate that would make it impossible for the bank to make a profit. This was challenged in 1869 in a case called Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 75 U.S. 533.
The supreme court said this:
“It cannot be doubted that under the Constitution the power to provide a circulation of coin is given to Congress. And it is settled by the uniform practice of the government and by repeated decisions, that Congress may constitutionally authorize the emission of bills of credit. … Having thus, in the exercise of undisputed constitutional powers, undertaken to provide a currency for the whole country, it cannot be questioned that Congress may, constitutionally, secure the benefit of it to the people by appropriate legislation. To this end, Congress has denied the quality of legal tender to foreign coins, and has provided by law against the imposition of counterfeit and base coin on the community. To the same end, Congress may restrain, by suitable enactments, the circulation as money of any notes not issued under its own authority. Without this power, indeed, its attempts to secure a sound and uniform currency for the country must be futile.”
What the SCOTUS is saying is that Congress is given the exclusive power to create money. Any entity (banks) that creates anything that circulates AS money (bank notes/credit) is trespassing on congresses plenary monetary powers and is subject to regulation (taxation) by congress.
Fast forward to 1881 and the Veazie decision is expanded to include wages paid out in money substitutes created by entities other than the Treasury. This case Springer v. United States, 102 U.S. 586 is still used to this day by the IRS to force compliance.
These principles were laid down when people were knowledgeable in monetary history. Fast forward again to 1913 and the Federal reserve act. Now we have a central bank that is sanctioned by the government to emit notes and bank credit. They were exempted from the previous tax on bank note issue under the national banking act from the civil war. Instead the tax on those Federal reserve credits was directed at the people themselves. All the groundwork had been laid. Now they just had to get rid of all the different flavors of Treasury money and get people to use their poisoned money.
Inflation was ramped up taking out gold in 1933 and many of the old national banks. Banks were consolidated and new types of accounts were created to promote federal reserve creation of demand deposits with the purchasing of your paycheck for credits. Carrots were added to goad people into the scheme (social security/welfare). Silver was abandoned in 1965, United states notes were suspended in 1971. So that now the only form of Treasury money still in circulation is the token coinage handed out as change for the federal reserve notes circulating as money.
This is why were are just plain fucked. Congress is not using its single most important power. To create money for the benefit of the people, and we are all suffering because of that.
Damn sad .Makes me wonder why any of his Jewish friends in high places didn’t step in to help.
I wonder why I never heard of this man.I have bought several of his Sons books but didn’t know any thing about his father until now.
Don’t mess with the government especially over taxes. I have to deal with the IRS occasionally and they can take everything you owned and do most of the taking by computer. They took taken my bank accounts a few years back.Woke up one day and found out I had no money in my bank.They were not frozen they were taken and I never got any money back.
irwin schiff dies shackled to a bed in prison, and john corzine walks around a free man. what a farce. Sorry to hear about your old man, peter.
And, from around the world at exactly the same time frame (2001):
In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing all 243 pax and 16 crew. A FURTHER 11 innocent people on the ground lost their lives in this Islamic terror atrocity. In August 2009, al-Megrahi was released by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, remaining the only person to be convicted for the attack.
Fuck to death the authorities that had Irwin Schiff fucking chained to his death-bed, without family, as an 87 year-old.
I am beyond fucking disgusted – I am enraged. Take note NSA – I’m not even within your jurisdiction, so fuck you too.
Next time you fill out you taxes, remember what The US gov did to Irwin Schiff.
Chained to a bed as he lay there dying.
What you do next, You can figure that out for yourself. Just say the words “This is Irwin Schiff.
Rise Up….looks like you and I were at the same conference in 2001. I spoke with Irwin,Button Gibson…(Mel’s Dad).Aarron Russo and others.It was an eye opening experience.
I rember Bay Buchannon saying Revolution was coming to America…..she only hoped it was a bloodless one.
Bob Shultz has been a tireless Patriot in the right for freedom.
Venice Kuglan was there too….one of the few folks to beat the IRS…in court on taxes. I believe she finally gave in when the IRS still continued to garnish her pay check even though they lost the case to her.
Hutton Gibson….damn autocorrect to hell.
Next step after banning books? Burning the books.
Taking a page right out of the NAZI playbook!
George Orwell’s highly predictive “1984” becoming truth.
Welcome to “The United Fascist States of American Slave Owner’s Corporation”.
Irwin A. Schiff seen them for what they truly were and are.
Sad news! RIP Mr. Schiff.
New avatar?