While researching LLC Statutes in Ohio I came across the following section:
1705.02 Purposes of company – assistance in national defense.
A limited liability company may be formed for any purpose or purposes for which individuals lawfully may associate themselves, including for any profit or nonprofit purpose, except that, if the Revised Code contains special provisions for the formation of any designated type of corporation other than a professional association, a limited liability company shall not be formed for the purpose or purposes for which that type of corporation may be formed. At the request or direction of the government of the United States or any agency of that government, a limited liability company may transact any lawful business in aid of the national defense or in the prosecution of any war in which the United States is engaged.
“Your papers, please.” As a kid, I heard radio shows where someone with a German accent would ask this. Now it’s coming to America. Only worse. There won’t be papers. There will be a plastic card backed up by a data base with your vital information in it.
The Bush Administration rammed this through in 2005. It was never implemented. States fought against it. Now Obama is trying to get it through again.
The Rutherford Institute is battling this.
The Real ID Act would essentially establish a national ID by requiring states to comply with costly and restrictive federal licensing standards aimed at creating a national database of drivers’ licenses. Alternately derided as a national ID card, a violation of the Tenth Amendment, an unfunded mandate, and a threat to civil liberties, the Real ID program has largely stalled, primarily due to mounting opposition from the states, many of which have adopted laws or resolutions opposing it. . . .
The coalition’s letter to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime is available here.
“Civil and privacy rights advocates, as well as liberal-, conservative-, and libertarian-leaning organizations, have long raised concerns that a national ID card would enable the government to track citizens and, thus, jeopardize the privacy rights of Americans,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “When all is said and done, the adoption of a national ID card serves one purpose only: to provide the government with the ultimate control over the American people.”
The Act was signed into law in 2005. It gave the states three years to comply. The data will include individual birth certificates and other personal information.
The cost? A staggering $230 million a year. States are resisting.
States must do the scanning of information. They will have to hire more staff.
Can you imagine the lines for this?
For instance, the law requires that all 245 million license and state ID holders in the United States visit their local DMVs to acquire a special identification card. Citizens who do not have this special identification by a given date will not be able to perform important yet routine tasks such as travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, enter federal government buildings or take advantage of most government services. The law requires that each person provide a photo ID, birth certificate, proof of their Social Security number and proof of residence in order to receive the identification. This information will then be stored in massive databases maintained by the states and shared among them. Once the DMV receives all the necessary information, it will issue the applicant a new identification card.
The states have been successful in delaying this. But it is clear that both political parties at the national level favor this law.
Resistance at the state level has bought us time. But it is clear what is coming. We are moving toward a police state. Our best hope is the bankruptcy of the federal government.
The following plan is not for everyone. It is only for those those who have a burning desire to life to the fullest. It is for those of you who wish to live your life free from the parasites who seek to live at your expense. It is for those of you who no longer wish to be a slave to others.
Step 2. Set up your own internet business as a Platinum Affiliate with our company. This will enable you to earn an online income from anywhere in the world. All you do is give away our FREE Asset Protection Crash Course using your Affiliate Link and you can get paid for referred sales. Your Platinum Membership comes with your own internet business, an Invisible New Mexico LLC, and all of the other benefits listed at this link:
With your new business you can now legally reduce your taxable income by taking advantage of all of the tax benefits and deductions available to business owners. (click on this link for an example).
Step 3. As your income and assets grow, set up international entities like IBC’s, Trusts, and Foundations to take advantage of asset diversification, jurisdictional diversification, and international tax planning. Most people can stop at this point and be totally happy.
Step 4. For those who want a little more, and don’t mind the extra effort, they can choose to become “Perpetual Travelers”. David MacGregor explains it well:
The essence of this strategy is that you need to divide up your “life” into different jurisdictional bases. For example, you would want to become a resident of a place which requires little or no tax. Ideally, you want to become a resident of a tax haven. This lays the foundation of your lifestyle – for as a legal resident of such a place, you are not liable for any domestic tax on your income.
The next step is to arrange your financial affairs in yet another tax haven, while protecting your assets in a different one again. Finally, you would set up your legal business structure in a different jurisdiction from any of the others. And once you have achieved all of that – you are free to actually live anywhere on earth – as a visitor.
Most reasonable countries will allow you to stay up to 6 months as a tourist – and as a tourist you are not liable for any taxes (apart from various sales taxes etc.) When your time is up, you simply move on to your next favourite destination – and repeat the process. You don’t have to move to a different country all the time, but can choose say three places which you will spend your time in each year (or even two places). The only proviso is that you mustn’t stay longer than the prescribed time that qualifies you as a tourist. Stay longer – and you will be deemed a “resident for tax purposes”, and be liable for tax.
Naturally, this option is not for everybody, as many people would feel uncomfortable uprooting themselves and living as cybergypsies. But it does offer a legal way to live a tax-free lifestyle – and to permanently remove bureaucrats from your life. And perhaps the most appealing aspect of this strategy is its simplicity.
The “PT” option was devised by the famous investment adviser and newsletter writer, Harry Schultz and popularized by WG Hill – in his now-famous book “PT – The Perpetual Traveler”. Note for US citizens: to benefit from this option, you would need to give up your US citizenship and its obligation of filing tax returns, no matter where you are on earth. Unlike most countries, who only tax residents, the USA taxes on the basis of both residency AND citizenship.
The Agorist Approach
The following strategy is not recommended because many of the tactics ignore local laws. Nevertheless, it is worthy of study for the privacy & protection strategies that are utilized.
Step 1. Move assets out of your name using entities like limited liability companies, corporations, and trusts.
Step 2. Quit working for others and go into business for yourself. Many people can simply quit their current job and then contract back with their old company as an Independent Contractor. You can do this in your own name or through a separate, legal entity such as a limited liability company, a corporation, or a trust.
Step 3. Stay out of databases, become “low-profile”, and avoid traditional banking as much as possible.
Step 4. Deal in cash, money orders, recycled checks, precious metals, and barter for local transactions. Use digital currencies like bitcoin for distance transactions.
Here are some written works that explain the philosophy and tactics of Agorism:
Yes, that is a strange statement to make but it is absolutely true. I sincerely do hope that I go out of business. Why do I say this? First, you have to understand the kind of business I’m in. I help people to peacefully protect their property and privacy from other people who seek to take it from them by force or fraud. I am in the self-defense business.
We live in a world where some people do not recognize that it is in their own best interests to respect the property rights of others. This ignorance results in their own, long-term loss. In seeking short-term gain they sacrifice the long-term benefit of human creativity and production which is prevented by the diverted energies that people must direct towards self-defense. This loss of creative production slows or even reverses the standard of living for everyone. One need only look at all of the destruction of life and property caused by endless wars promoted by counterfeit authorities.
In an effort to speed the demise of the need for self-defense services I have forged a relationship with The Freedom School to provide free educational services to my clients. Many philosophers have correctly observed that it is ideas that dictate the actions of men. This means that the most important thing in the world is ideas.
Yes, I long for the day that there is no longer a need for my services and I can devote my creative energies towards other endeavors but I am afraid it will not come anytime soon. Until then, I will do my best to help you protect your assets and your privacy. I invite you to help me promote these services as a Platinum Affiliate.
Respectfully,
Steven Michaels
FREE Asset Protection Crash Course
The following is a good story about the value of barter. I recommend downloading our Barter Tycoon Report from the Members Area so you can learn how to do it successfully. My favorite quote from this article is this:
“You are not poor when you have no money,” she said, “you are poor when you have nothing to offer – except for the elderly and the sick, to whom we should all be offering.”
You see, money is simply a way to trade what you have for what you want. When you have time, energy, talents and the fruits of your labor and creativity you then have something of value that you can trade with. Money is just a lubricant. Creative barter can be just as good.
Here is the article:
Greece on the breadline: cashless currency takes off
A determination to ‘move beyond anger to creativity’ is driving a strong barter economy in some places
In recent weeks, Theodoros Mavridis has bought fresh eggs, tsipourou (the local brandy: beware), fruit, olives, olive oil, jam, and soap. He has also had some legal advice, and enjoyed the services of an accountant to help fill in his tax return.
None of it has cost him a euro, because he had previously done a spot of electrical work – repairing a TV, sorting out a dodgy light – for some of the 800-odd members of a fast-growing exchange network in the port town of Volos, midway between Athens and Thessaloniki.
In return for his expert labour, Mavridis received a number of Local Alternative Units (known as tems in Greek) in his online network account. In return for the eggs, olive oil, tax advice and the rest, he transferred tems into other people’s accounts.
“It’s an easier, more direct way of exchanging goods and services,” said Bernhardt Koppold, a German-born homeopathist and acupuncturist in Volos who is an active member of the network. “It’s also a way of showing practical solidarity – of building relationships.”
He had just treated Maria McCarthy, an English teacher who has lived and worked in the town for 20 years. The consultation was her first tem transaction, and she used one of the vouchers available for people who haven’t yet, or can’t, set up an online account.
“I already exchange directly with a couple of families, mainly English teaching for babysitting, and this is a great way to extend that,” said McCarthy. “This is still young, but it’s growing very quickly. Plainly, the more you use it the more useful to you it gets.” Continue reading…
It seems hard these days to find a file-sharing service that isn’t in some way affected by the recent events happening around the world to sites like MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay. There’s always Tribler, the file-sharing service that claims to make torrents obsolete. There may be a service on the net, however, that would make them all look paltry in comparison.
TorrentFreak is reporting that a file-sharing application called RetroShare has been booming in the aftermath of the MegaUpload take down. We reported that the MegaUpload take down did not affect piracy in any way. While the study at that point said those affected move to other file locker services, the new research suggests that more people moved to services like Tribler and RetroShare.
RetroShare is a file-sharing application that prides itself on being completely anonymous. For users to even start sharing files, they have to exchange PGP certificates with only those they trust. The transfer is encrypted using OpenSSL, while files from strangers must go through a trusted source. It sounds like the ultimate file-sharing heaven and it apparently is.
DrBob, the founder of RetroShare, told TorrentFreak that the software has been around since 2006, but it was only recently that he began to see large jumps in usage. He says that downloads tripled on the network in January during the SOPA protest, and that it double again in February when other file sharing services cut back on their services in the wake of the MegaUpload takedown.
DrBob laid out what RetroShare is all about:
“RetroShare is about creating a private space on the Internet. A social collaboration network where you can share anything you want. A space that is free from the prying eyes of governments, corporations and advertisers. This is vitally important as our freedom on the Internet is under increasing threat.RetroShare is free from censorship: like Facebook banning ‘obscene’ breast-feeding photographs. A network that allows you to use any pseudonym, without insisting on knowing your real name. A network where you will not face the threat of jail, or being banned from entry into a country for an innocent tweet.”
Examples like these show that file-sharing is going nowhere and is never going to die. Instead of attacking services or users, content holders need to attack the core problem – their business model. Give users a reason to buy your product and they will. If not, services like RetroShare are going to keep on expanding and growing.
One of the most top-secret Pentagon departments — the same that spawned America’s drones, military robots, electromagnetic guns and other sci-fi weaponry — is about to lose its top officer to Google.
Regina Dugan oversaw the development of some of the US military’s most marvelous high tech accomplishments as director of Darpa, but the head of the DoD’s research lab is parting ways with the Pentagon to take on a role with Google. Not even three years after she took on the role as the first female director of the America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, Regina Dugan is now walking away to join the ranks of America’s other innovative powerhouse. Dugan will be relinquishing her top roll at the Defense Department’s Darpa program and trading in the Potomac River for Silicon Valley, and says it is a natural decision to move somewhere where the possibilities seem endless. Apparently within the cogs of the war machine, there is only so much left to explore.
Confirming the move to a “senior executive position” with Google, Darpa spokesman Eric Mazzacone tells Wired that Dugan couldn’t refuse an offer with such an “innovative company” as the search engine giant. Until the latest news broke, however, Darpa had been touted as a creative — yet controversial — research lab for space-age technology only once imaginable. Darpa has developed technologies used across the globe that can take away lives and, as seen with cutting-edge robotic limbs, practically create them.
With the Defense Department scaling back on many operations and Google seemingly only growing, Dugan’s departure only makes sense given the timing. Both US President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have thrown their weight behind a shift in the Pentagon’s budget in an effort to save billions over the next few years. Google, on the other hand, has only increased its outreach, operating countless new endeavors and taking on new mediums.
That’s not to say, of course, that Dugan avoided trouble while with Darpa. She has been the subject of an investigation after awarding pricey contracts to a defense research company she partially owns, a deal which prompted the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General to open a probe. Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, says that the change in command and ongoing investigation into Dugan’s RedX Defense company are unrelated, but aside that there is little known about her career change. On their part, a Google rep tells PC Mag, “Regina is a technical pioneer who brought the future of technology to the military during her time at DARPA,” adding, “She will be a real asset to Google, and we are thrilled she is joining the team.” continue reading…
Watch the the following three videos to see how some police officers ply their trade. There was a time when the norm was the existence of “peace officers” who helped keep the peace. Now, the norm is “law enforcers” who seek to build their resumes with busts and generate revenue for their departments by enforcing any one of the numerous, victimless laws that are on the books.
How do you protect yourself?
Arm yourself and your friends with cameras and record every encounter. Know in advance how you are going to conduct yourself. After watching the videos below make sure to read the “Nine Things That Happen When You Film Police Encounters”:
Nine Things That Happen When You Film Police Encounters
by Austin White Anyone who has ever filmed a police encounter and put it on YouTube has received some, or a lot, of negative comments for their actions. This is mostly due to a lack of understanding among the general public as to why someone would want to film police as they are detaining or arresting someone.
To explain, here are nine things that are achieved by filming police:
1. You’re exercising your right to film police. You do have the right to film cops. This right is codified in the Constitution under the First Amendment. In the past year, New England’s highest Federal court ruled that filming cops is protected by the First Amendment. You don’t need any special reason for doing so. You don’t need permission from any bureaucrat. You don’t have to work for a big media outlet. Get a camera and a YouTube channel and you are officially media. Congratulations and film away. If you don’t exercise your rights, they atrophy. Exercise them.
2. In the case where you are recording someone else’s police encounter, like a neighbor or friend, you are significantly reducing their chances of being the victim of police misconduct. Police will be less likely to perform unwarranted searches, plant drugs, beat the person, rape the person, murder the person, or arrest them on trumped up charges if they know there are cameras around recording their every move. You’re reducing the extent to which the predatory armed enforcers are likely to harass their prey. Police-accountability activist Antonio Buehler was possibly facing years in prison for allegedly assaulting an officer until he later obtained video evidence from bystanders that refuted the claims of the cop.
3. In the case where you are recording your own police encounter, you could be saving yourself from a potentially life-destroying event. You could be preventing yourself from going to prison. Anyone who thinks they are not at risk of being arrested is quite oblivious to the number of “laws” on the books, as well as the vagueness of those laws and the ability of the state to interpret those laws however they want in order to put you in a cage. Every American is now at a palpable risk of being arrested and jailed at some point — unless you’re a cop.
My friend Tj was pulled over by police a year and half ago over a malfunctioning tag light. Immediately the gang of cops went into overkill mode and began ordering him out of the vehicle, were pulling on his door handle, and suspiciously claiming he dropped something out of the car window. Eventually the police began threatening to pull TJ out of the vehicle and claiming that he might be a danger to the officers (cop language for “get out or we can kill you”) — all over a tag light. You can see the video for yourself to see how Tj recording the encounter with his cell phone quickly deterred the cops from perpetrating further harassment.
4. You inspire others to stand up to cops and demand accountability. Standing up to cops is scary. They can quite literally kill you and get away with it, as well as everything below killing. When you film cops and deter them from engaging in misconduct you become a beacon of peaceful resistance to the police-state for other people to emulate.
5. You remind the cops (allow me to put on my minarchist hat) that they are our servants and we are their masters. We pay the police with our tax dollars to provide security and protect our rights. We are the employers and the police are the employees. We have every right to monitor our employees to make sure they’re doing their job right. This is especially essential now that police have become routine rights violators and are far more likely to violate people’s rights than private criminals are.
The state watches us, reads our emails, listens in our phone conversations, and is putting more and more cameras around to surveil us in public places — is it really that unreasonable for us to watch the watchers a little bit, especially when they are actively looking for ways to put anyone they can into cages?
6. You are exercising the only real check we have on the police-state besides civil disobedience (which is becoming more appealing everyday) and armed rebellion.
Police investigate themselves and are the arbiters of disputes involving themselves. How does the average person stand a chance against that? Bad cops are very rarely found guilty for their crimes and when they are found guilty the punishment they often receive is a modicum of what the average American would receive.
In the fall of 2010, Orlando Copwatch did a lengthy investigation of an incident where OPD officer Travis Lamont body-slammed an 84-year-old man onto pavement and broke his neck — simply because the old man committed the heinous crime of touching Lamont’s shoulder. Despite the fact that numerous witnesses called the police station in outrage and spoke to the media about the horrific behavior of Lamont, Orlando Police Chief Val Demings and six other senior officials cleared Lamont of any wrong doing and he lurks the streets of Orlando to this day.
The only effective method we have for dealing with bad cops is filming them in the act and putting it on YouTube so they can receive the shame and ostracism they deserve. If someone had been able to capture footage of Officer Lamont’s actions that night and put in on YouTube for it to go viral Lamont may have ended up in prison where he truly belongs.
7. You are preparing cops to get used to being filmed. Every year the price of cameras goes down, the quality goes up, the size of cameras goes down, the ability to conceal cameras increases, we now have the ability to upload live footage to websites like Qik.com, and there is a growing movement of people happily willing to use these tools to keep police accountable. There is nothing the cops can do about it. The bureaucrats can write whatever laws they want to stop us, but the market will help us get around them. When you get out there and start filming cops you’re giving police a friendly reminder that soon every cop’s every move will be monitored by the tax payers and that they better start acting more civilized. You’re stimulating a feeling among police that they are being watched.
8. You’re standing up for your rights and your fellow citizen’s rights and will feel damn good about it. You’ll be able to look back and know that you didn’t submit to the police-state like some slave. The preservation of your dignity and spirit is worth the risks of filming cops.
9. You are reducing the amount of tyranny that your kids will live under.
Yes, filming police is dangerous, but day-to-day life in the totalitarian Amerika that will develop as a result of our apathy will be far more dangerous. Now is the time to film cops; not later. The police-state will only get more severe if we don’t act now, which means it will only get harder to keep police accountable if we back down.(source)
“Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.”
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
The spring air in the small, sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah’s Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It’s the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as “the principle,” marriage to multiple wives.
Today Bluffdale is home to one of the nation’s largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren, with upwards of 9,000 members. The brethren’s complex includes a chapel, a school, a sports field, and an archive. Membership has doubled since 1978—and the number of plural marriages has tripled—so the sect has recently been looking for ways to purchase more land and expand throughout the town.
But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who say little and keep to themselves. Like the pious polygamists, they are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.
Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.
The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
Anyone who has ever filmed a police encounter and put it on YouTube has received some, or a lot, of negative comments for their actions. This is mostly due to a lack of understanding among the general public as to why someone would want to film police as they are detaining or arresting someone.
