<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18939">
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2>This has been going on in Boundary County since the late
1970s.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>____________________________</FONT></DIV><FONT size=2>
<DIV><BR>
<DIV style="WIDTH: 640px" class=container>
<DIV id=content>
<DIV id=story>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 28px; OVERFLOW: hidden"><A class=nolht
href="http://www.spokesman.com/"><IMG style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN-RIGHT: 20px"
src="http://media.spokesman.com/img/bits/logo-sr.png"></A>
<H5 style="FLOAT: right" class=details>August 12, 2010</H5></DIV>
<DIV class=clear></DIV>
<H1> </H1>
<H1>Sovereign citizens spin history, reject government</H1>
<H5 class=subhead>Southern Poverty Law says 300,000 belong to movement</H5>
<DIV class="details nested grid-8"><SPAN>Andrew Welsh-Huggins<BR>Associated
Press </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=clear> </DIV>
<DIV class="tag-details details-top"></DIV>
<DIV id=story-body>
<P>COLUMBUS, Ohio – They call themselves sovereign citizens, U.S. residents who
declare themselves above state and federal laws. Many don’t register children’s
births, carry driver’s licenses or recognize the court system.</P>
<P>Some peddle schemes that use fictional legal loopholes to eliminate debt and
avoid foreclosures.</P>
<P>A few such believers are violent: Two police officers in Arkansas died in a
shootout in May after stopping an Ohio sovereign citizen and his son.</P>
<P>As many as 300,000 people identify as sovereign citizens, the Southern
Poverty Law Center found in a study to be published today that was obtained by
the Associated Press. Hate group monitors say their numbers have increased
thanks to the recession, the foreclosure crisis, the growth of the Internet and
the election of Barack Obama in 2008.</P>
<P>Adherents expect the current American system of government to end one way
or another.</P>
<P>“I’m the Patrick Henry of the 21st century. I’m here to regain our freedom,”
James McBride said in a jailhouse interview. “I’m going to, or
die trying.”</P>
<P>At the heart of their belief system: The government creates a secret identity
for each citizen at birth, a “straw man,” that controls an account at the U.S.
Treasury used as collateral for foreign debt. File enough documents at the right
offices and the money in those accounts can be used to pay off debt or make
purchases worth thousands of dollars.</P>
<P>The movement is based on a form of “legal fundamentalism,” said Michael
Barkun, a retired Syracuse University political science professor who researches
anti-government and hate groups.</P>
<P>“These people really seem to feel that filing certain kinds of legal papers
that are connected to their theories will somehow also magically have the power
to alter relationships and grant things that otherwise would be unobtainable,”
he said.</P>
<P>Experts say sovereign citizens are the latest manifestation of
anti-government activists going back to the Posse Comitatus movement of the
1970s, which recognized only local governments and no law enforcement official
with more jurisdiction than a sheriff. In the 1980s, government protesters
exploited the farm crisis by selling fraudulent debt relief programs.</P>
<P>“In good times they focus on tax cheating, in bad times they focus on getting
out of debt,” said JJ MacNab, an expert on tax and financial schemes and author
of the SPLC report.</P>
<P>Martin Smith, of Carthage, Mo., lost $8,000 to a father-and-son company in
Columbus called Liberty Resources that pitched a method to eliminate credit card
debt based on a theory that national banks aren’t authorized to
issue credit.</P>
<P>“We just became convinced that each of the parts of the puzzle that Liberty
Resources … was telling us existed would work,” said Smith, 48, a
civil engineer.</P>
<P>Dan Wickline and his son, Chad, pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiracy to
commit money laundering and are serving federal prison sentences.</P>
<P>In April, a group called the Guardians of the Free Republics sent letters to
governors demanding they leave office or be removed. The group’s website calls
for the restoration of lawful government and an end to tax forms, vehicle
registrations and marriage licenses. An e-mail to the group was
not returned.</P>
<P>Jim Jarvis is Ohio coordinator for the Restore America Plan, which shares
similar beliefs with the Guardians group. He maintains the country has lacked a
legitimate government since Congress failed to adjourn properly
in 1861.</P>
<P>The people who are crazy, he says, are those who won’t do the research to
find out what’s really going on in the country.</P>
<P>The sovereign citizen movement has grown to about 100,000 hard-core
believers, the SPLC report estimates, and 200,000 people trying out the theories
by “resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges.”</P>
<P>The report cites IRS figures that estimated as many as 250,000 tax protesters
in the mid-1990s, though not all of those were part of the sovereign citizen
movement. The 300,000 figure is the first calculation of the movement’s numbers
separate from tax protesters.</P>
<P>McBride, the jailed sovereign citizen, came across anti-government beliefs
while in federal prison in Michigan on a 1992 cocaine
importing conviction.</P>
<P>Over the years he developed his own tenets, including a revised history of
the United States that says the country was secretly organized as a general post
office in 1789.</P>
<P>He dismisses any accusation that the programs he pitched were fraud, arguing
he’s not subject to the laws of the U.S., which he calls a corporation along the
lines of a car company.</P>
<P>“General Motors’ laws don’t affect me because I’m not an employee of them,”
McBride said. “Same with the state of Ohio and the United States.”</P>
<P>Today, McBride is headed back to federal prison after prosecutors said he
cashed bogus checks and refused to cooperate with his parole officers following
a 2004 bankruptcy fraud conviction.</P>
<P>“I’m never going to have my grandchildren say, ‘Grandpa, why didn’t you do
something to protect my rights?’ ”
McBride said.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>Wayne A. Fox<BR>1009 Karen
Lane<BR>PO Box 9421<BR>Moscow, ID 83843</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A href="mailto:waf@moscow.com">waf@moscow.com</A><BR>208
882-7975<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>