On July 1, 2001, Bob Schulz, Chairman of the We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, will begin a fast which will continue until he dies or until IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti delivers to him a list of the government's experts who will meet on September 18, 2001, in a public forum, at the National Press Club in Washington DC, with tax law researchers from the tax honesty movement, to argue against the conclusions of those researchers.

This comes as a result of the government's continued evasion of opportunities the Foundation and others have provided to the government over the past two years to discuss the allegations of fraud and illegal operations of the income tax system. The allegations include the following: 1) in 1913, the 16th Amendment (the "income tax" Amendment) was fraudulently and illegally declared to be ratified by a lame-duck Secretary of State just days before leaving office; 2) there is NO LAW requiring most Americans to file a tax return, pay the federal income tax nor have the tax withheld from their earnings; 3) people who file a Form 1040 "voluntarily" waive their 5th Amendment right not to bear witness against themselves; 4) the IRS routinely violates citizens' 4th Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure, without a warrant issued by a court upon probable cause and supported by oath and affirmation; and 5) the IRS, as standard operating procedure, routinely violates citizens' due process rights in its administrative procedures and operates far outside the law.

On February 10, 1999, Joseph Banister, a Special Agent of the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS submitted his 95-page research report to his superiors in the San Jose office of the IRS. The report contained these allegations and supporting evidence and respectfully requested some answers. Mr. Banister was concerned that he was enforcing the Internal Revenue Code as though payment was compulsory, when his research showed it to be voluntary. Instead of answers, Mr. Banister was asked to resign!

This Foundation respectfully, and properly, invited the leaders of the Executive and Legislative branches to have their most knowledgeable experts on the subject participate in academic symposiums and conferences the Foundation sponsored at the National Press Club in July and November of 1999 and in April and June of 2000. We received no response, not even an acknowledgement of the receipt of the invitations!

On April 13, 2000, while a delegation of people representing all 50 states waited outside, Mr. Banister and Mr. Schulz, and a videographer, met in the White House with Jason Furman, the Executive Director of the National Economic Council. He accepted, for President Clinton, a Remonstrance on the subject, he promised to have the staff of the NEC and White House lawyers and historians review the evidence, and he expressed his agreement to have the government's experts participate with Mr. Banister and other tax law researchers in the June 29, 2000 conference the Foundation was arranging for that purpose. Mr. Banister and Mr. Schulz then proceeded to a meeting in the capitol with Dr. William Koetzle, representing Speaker Hastert's policy office, and then to a meeting with Keith Hennessey, Senator Lott's policy director. They accepted the Remonstrance for Mr. Hastert and Mr. Lott, promised to have the experts at the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee review the evidence, and expressed their agreement to have those experts participate in the upcoming June 29th conference. However, on June 2nd, Mr. Furman told Mr. Schulz, "The legality of the income tax is not a high priority item at the White House and we will not be participating in any conference on the subject." A similar response was received from Dr. Koetzle and Mr. Hennessey.

At a cost of $252,000, the Foundation then published full-page educational messages in USA TODAY on July 7, 2000, February 16, 2001, March 2, 2001 and March 23, 2001, featuring the photographs and names of three of the principal tax law researchers and their allegations, three former IRS agents who have come to believe the researchers are correct, and five employers who have stopped withholding the income tax from the paychecks of their employees because they also have come to believe the researchers' allegations are correct.

On April 5, 2001, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing featuring large blow-ups of the Foundation's USA TODAY messages, mounted on easels. THE FOUNDATION WAS NOT ALLOWED TO TESTIFY AT THE HEARING. Two days prior to the hearing, Senator Grassley was quoted in the Saint Petersburg Times saying," We will not allow the We The People Foundation to testify at the hearing because their message will detract from the message we are trying to convey." The message the Committee conveyed was that those people who question the validity of the income tax laws are "tax cheats, schemers, scammers and cons. They must be kept off the Internet, and will be dealt with harshly!"

On April 9, 2001, hundreds of citizens from across the country gathered outside the main entrance of the IRS headquarters building. Three weeks earlier, on March 19th, a letter was delivered to IRS Commissioner Rossotti, letting him know that the citizens would be there and respectfully requesting that he address the group at 11:30 a.m., to let them know when his experts would be available to meet with the tax law researchers in a public forum to discuss the allegations. On April 9th, he refused to address the citizens, choosing instead to schedule an interview with a reporter from The New York Times at 11:30 that day. The Times' article ran on April 16th. In its first paragraph it said, "As a few protestors gathered in front of the Internal Revenue Service building on a warm April day, Charles O. Rossotti was cool and relaxed in his third-floor office, reflecting on his three and a half years running the agency."

On April 11, 2001 USA TODAY informed the Foundation of its decision to stop publishing the Foundation's full-page educational messages about these issues, and the government's failure to address them, because "the ads could be misleading." The Foundation offered to meet with USA TODAY's legal department to discuss the veracity of the Foundation's messages. They refused!

On May 2, 2001, the home and business of one of the employers who has stopped withholding was raided by scores of government agents, at gunpoint. As of this day, those agents have not provided a list of the charges. Nor have they specified the probable cause for the search warrant. They have, however, asked the judge who signed the warrant for 45 days to analyze the computer hard drives, papers and effects that were seized during the raid before they specify the charges and probable cause. The judge granted the request!

The tax law research provides a substantial amount of very credible evidence that since 1913 the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches have been cooperating to deprive the People of a large percentage of the fruits of their labor by enforcing laws and regulations that are prohibited by the Constitution and which do not exist under the Internal Revenue Code. The evidence shows that the Code and regulations have intentionally been written in such a deceptive way as to obscure and obfuscate so as to give citizens the false impression that they are required to pay.

As a result of the Foundation's four messages in USA TODAY, and its other educational efforts, a growing number of people are becoming familiar with the facts of this research and now realize that Congress is prohibited by the Constitution from requiring individual citizens of the fifty states to file and pay the income tax or a social security tax as they currently operate. More and more citizens now believe that it is precisely because of the absence of proper constitutional authority that Congress has not passed any law requiring most Americans to file and pay an income tax.

So far, the IRS has responded with armed raids and with increased threats and saber rattling, but with no attempts to discuss in a rational way the allegations about the laws and regulations.

Journalists from the dominant media, including David Cay Johnston of The New York Times, have responded as apologists for the IRS by portraying individuals and employers who question the legality of the federal income tax laws as "tax cheats," even though those individuals often have a history of intelligent, rational and professional attempts to get their federal representatives and IRS officials to answer legitimate questions about the legal authority of the IRS to force the collection of the federal income tax.

Obviously, the current situation must not continue.

The question is: What can a free People do when faced with a government that has apparently stepped outside the boundary drawn around its taxing power by the Constitution and by its own laws, and refuses to justify its behavior, evades all requests by citizens to answer legitimate questions, and uses a heavy handed, steel-fisted approach to enforcing the income tax -- as though its payment by most Americans was compulsory when, in fact, most citizens apparently are not liable -- and when the dominant media will not allow the people to purchase space to tell their story?

Answer: We the People must educate one another about the discrepancies between the way the Constitution and the tax law are written and the operations of the IRS. Knowledge is power. Only a well-informed citizenry will bring the federal tax policies and programs back under the control of the People and their Constitution.

Education can take many forms.

Bob Schulz prays that his stand in defense of the Constitution and the rule of law, and his death, should it come to that, will help to educate citizens about the apparent discrepancy between the government's behavior in enforcing the federal tax laws and the legality of those laws, the government's recalcitrance and refusal to reconcile the discrepancy, and the importance of keeping the government within the boundaries the people have drawn around its power. His act should not be seen as one of frustration or despair, but as a measure of his devotion to our sacred constitutional principles for which so many others have laid down their lives.

On June 11, 2001, a letter will be delivered to President Bush, to the leaders of the Congress and to Commissioner Rossotti to inform them of Mr. Schulz's decision to do this. A copy of the letter can be viewed on the Foundation's web site at http://www.GiveMeLiberty.org/. Also on the web site are the Foundation's educational messages as published in USA TODAY and other educational materials on the subject.

Bob's motto is ACTA NON VERBA. His deed is part of an overall action plan put together by the Foundation under the heading of PROJECT TOTO, the goal of which is to develop a critical mass of citizens demanding answers to the questions of the tax law researchers, regarding the fraudulent and illegal operations of the federal income tax system.

For a discussion of PROJECT TOTO and what you can do to help, please visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.GiveMeLiberty.org/.