Notice, the Right of Inquiry and 18 USC 1001

IRS Notice (courtesy Google Images)

My research indicates that that the current legal system is characterized by notice, notice, and, uh, notice.  When the IRS comes a-callin’, their first act is to send you a notice.  So far as I can tell, virtually all civil causes of action (especially if initiated by the “government”) start with a notice.

Procedural due process includes: 1) Notice; and 2) Opportunity to be Heard.  While true crimes (like murder or robbery) cannot be said to start with notice, I suspect that most penal offenses (which are of a civil nature with attached criminal penalties) probably start with notice.

As I’ve explained in other articles dealing with notice (see, http://adask.wordpress.com/category/notice/; especially, http://adask.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/notes-on-notice-and-procedural-due-process/#more-88 and http://adask.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/notes-on-notice-procedural-due-process-2/#more-129) it appears that a notice need not present or allege all facts or law relevant to a particular claim.  The notice must merely provide sufficient facts or law to put the recipient “on inquiry”.  I.e., the notice must merely be sufficient to cause the recipient to ask questions.

 

Do You Think Social Security Is a Good Deal?

Seal of the United States Social Security Administration. It appears on Social Security cards. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A friend of mine has written articles and extensive treatises on the law for most of 20 years under the pseudonym of “Valiant Liberty”.   This man is largely unknown to most people in legal reform, but he’s almost certainly one of top five or ten “gurus” in the country.  

He might object to being described as a “guru” because “guru’s” usually have a public persona but my friend prefers to avoid most public interaction.  

Nevertheless, he knows his stuff.

“Valiant Liberty” recently wrote an extensive article on Social Security.  He sent a copy of that article to me and and gave me permission to republish on this blog.  I rarely republish other people’s articles on my blog, but as I said, “he knows his stuff”.  

If you’re interested in Social Security, this article is worth your consideration.

 

 

Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse Part II: Creating Evidence

Notice (Photo credit: Squirmelia)

A couple of days ago, I posted Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse–EXCEPT When . . . . That article explored a Texas court case concerning the maxim “ignorance of the law is no excuse in the eyes of the law”.  Under that principle, a defendant can’t claim that he’s not subject to a law simply because he didn’t know about that law.  However, while his ignorance won’t protect him at law, if anyone with superior knowledge tries to take advantage of his ignorance, that person may be liable for deceit, misrepresentation and fraud in equity.

In essence, your ignorance is bad, but someone else’s attempt to exploit your ignorance is worse.

Therefore, if you can establish that: 1) out of ignorance, you relied on someone else’s “fairness and honesty” to decide your course of action; and 2) that person had betrayed your trust by advising you to act in a way that was contrary to your own rights and interests; then 3) that person’s lawsuit or prosecution against you might be stopped for fraud.

 

Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse–EXCEPT When . . .

Dunce (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Virtually everyone who’s studied the legal system has heard the maxim that “ignorance of the law is no excuse”.  In other words, you can’t claim to be exempt from liability under a law just because you didn’t know there was such a law.

For example, just because you didn’t know that the speed limit was 45 MPH at a particular stretch in the road will not excuse you from being ticketed for driving 60.  Similarly, you can’t claim to be exempt from being charged with someone’s murder by arguing that you had no idea that murder was a crime.

In fact, presuming that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” makes perfect sense—at least in a legal system that has only a relatively few laws.

For example, under the Ten Commandments, if you’re caught fornicating with your boss’s wife, you can’t argue that—“Gee, I’d never heard that ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery’—I had no idea that sleeping with my boss’s wife was wrong.”  No one will accept the argument that you were ignorant of one of the only ten laws you’re subject to.

Similarly, there are reportedly 613 “commandments” in the Torah.  It’s harder to know 613 laws, but it’s doable.  Therefore, every Jew is presumed to know those 613 laws and can’t duck liability for breaking any of them on a claim of “ignorance”.

Today, however, we live in a society that is probably generating 613 new laws, rule and regulations (local, state and federal) almost every day (surely, every month).  Our Congress passes laws every day that they don’t bother to read.  Thus, even Congress is truly ignorant of the very laws that it enacts.

 

The All-Upper-Case Name and the New World Order?

Image via Wikipedia

When I was a child, in order to read, I first learned my “abc’s”: 26 peculiar symbols that, in combination, could spell out words like “dog” or “cat”.

Then, as if 26 letters were not enough, I had to learn that each of the first “small” letters I used also had a corresponding “large” letter–its “capital” or “upper-case” form.  Now I had a total of 52 different symbols to learn to recognize, sound out, and write.

If there were no difference between word written with lower-case letters (a, b, c) and words written with both lower-case and upper-case (A, B, C) letters, why bother having upper-case letters?  Why have both “a” and “A,” “b” and “B,” and “c” and “C,” if the each the two letters in each pair didn’t mean something significantly different?

In the case of mixed upper- and lower-case letters–like “Cat”–we learned that when the first letter of a word was capitalized (upper case) as with capital “C,” the word was a proper noun/ proper name.  In this example, “Cat” might be the nickname for a woman named “Catherine” or it might be the name of a town (“Cat, Idaho”).  The capitalized word  was a “proper noun” that signified a particular man, woman or place.

The word “cat,” on the other hand, was a common noun used to signify a class of entities such as felines.

Clearly, capital letters are important in communication.  They help to eliminate ambiguity.  Without capital letters, when I write “fluffy” am I using the word as an adjective to describe the quality of an animals fur?  Or am I using the word “fluffy” to signify a particular cat?  The mix of lower- and upper-case letters expands and clarifies our language, making it more versatile and efficient for communicating a broad spectrum of knowledge and information.

However, if I write the word “fluffy” in an all-upper-case format (“FLUFFY”) the meaning becomes confused, ambiguous.  Am I using “FLUFFY” as an adjective to signify that the fur is “fluffy”?  Or am I using “FLUFFY” to signify the proper name (“Fluffy”) of a particular cat?

Here are two sentences to illustrate the enormous  value of capitalization:  1) “The cat I saw was fluffy.”  2) “The cat I saw was Fluffy.”  In the first sentence, the speaker saw one of a multitude of cats whose fur appeared to be “fluffy”.  In the second sentence, the speaker saw a particular cat whose name was “Fluffy”.  The two sentences are virtually identical except for the presence of a single, capital letter.  That single capital letter completely changes the meaning of the sentence.

 

Foreclosure Fraud on 60 Minutes

Image by Wayan Vota via Flickr

This is almost comical.  60 Minutes produce an episode on foreclosure fraud last Sunday.  60 Minutes explains that something “bizarre” has happened in that the banks and lending institutions foreclosing on homes have somehow “lost” the foreclosure documents required to legally foreclose on homes.

There’s nothing “bizarre” about the “lost” mortgage documents.  The banks want the people to believe that the original documents have somehow (“bizarrely”) been accidentally “lost” because such accidents do not incur criminal liability.  But the truth is that in virtually all instance, the banks didn’t “lose“ the mortgage documents–they sold them to third parties for full face value.  Why did they sell the mortgages?  So as to be paid twice on each home loan.