What Went Wrong? Identifying Root Causes
Negotiating With The Warden—From Master To Serf
Part 4 of 5
 

Most Americans have at least one bank account. Opening the account and making a deposit creates a contract between the bank and the depositor.[24] Under this contract, individuals assume the status of private merchants and become dealers in the national commerce. In effect, they agree to abide by all the bank’s rules, never asking to see them.

In courts of law, under the protection of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, one cannot be compelled in any criminal case to testify against himself. In modern civil courts under the rules of equity, derived from the rules of the old Courts of the Staple, he can. As a private merchant, he purportedly waives his Fifth Amendment protection simply by, among other things, opening a bank account. Under the custom of merchants, books of commercial activity, such as bank records and private ledgers, become prima facie evidence. Upon the demand of legal authority they must be produced for examination.

The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, officially titled the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act,[25] does not protect personal financial records as its short title seems to imply. Instead, it compels banks to keep extensive records and makes them readily available to government agencies. Any records voluntarily created—after all, you asked to open that bank account—are not “compelled.” Neither are they, strictly speaking, “testimony.” Therefore, as the Supreme Court declares in U.S. v. Doe, records that you make voluntarily cannot be protected under the Fifth Amendment, especially when they are held by someone else.[26]

Remember that natural rights are unalienable. This means not separable from the individual. You may be entitled, under certain circumstances,[27] to claim Fifth Amendment protection but someone else cannot make that claim for you. Under the Doe ruling, if you admit to having voluntarily made personal records—as Senator Robert Packwood did with his diaries—you may be compelled to produce them. From the government’s point of view your personal bank records actually belong to the bank, an institution created with government permission. The government will see them whenever it pleases.
 

One of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, of individual natural rights is the right to give up a right. When this occurs through lawful contract the states are powerless to interfere. One would expect the states at least to warn its citizens of the possible consequences. Wrong! Without exception, every state follows exactly the opposite policy. The lawyer-politicians of all state legislatures take advantage of the public with adhesion contracts disguised by legal fiction as licenses.

A license grants neither contractual nor vested rights, but only permission by a competent authority to do something that would otherwise be illegal. It “is not a contract between the state and the licensee, but is a mere personal permit. Neither is it property or a property right.”[28] Because it is not a grant, the issuer may revoke it at any time.

An adhesion contract is a “[s]tandardized contract form offered to consumers of goods and services on essentially ‘take or leave it’ basis without affording [the] consumer realistic opportunity to bargain and under such conditions that [the] consumer cannot obtain [the] desired product or services except by acquiescing …”[29] In short, these are one-sided deals. A powerful, often monopolistic side enjoys the advantage of time and resources, including expert advice. The weaker side usually suffers under a volley of fine print, convoluted clauses and unknown technical terms.

Sovereign individuals hold a position inferior to the state’s executive, legislative and judicial powers. The state, acting as a corporate entity through statutory legislation and administrative regulation, offers many “goods and services” to its feudal customers. Accept the benefit and the iron jaws of the trap slam shut. It is unlawful as well as inequitable to take a benefit and then not pay. Almost all Americans now live by the grace of the government’s company store. A simple pattern identifies this quasi-contractual legal scam.

First, the legislature, acting under its police powers to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public, passes a new law. The new statute identifies and makes illegal some common activity, such as driving. Technically, driving might be defined as the use of a motor vehicle upon the public’s right of way in commerce for profit. Due to its commercial nature and the damage this conduct will certainly generate, the activity is definitely subject to regulation.

Next, the lawyer-politicians generously allow the illegal conduct under authority of a state-issued license. Think about the process used to obtain a driver’s license. You go into a state office and ask an officer for an application. If you satisfy all the requirements—pass the eye exam, the standardized written test, drive a short distance obeying the rules and without damaging any property, pay the fee and sign the pledge—you become a member of the club. Your new driver’s license has all the ear markings of a civil quasi-contract.

Lawyers are fond of saying, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and goes ‘quack,’ it’s a duck.” State-issued licenses look like adhesion contracts, operate like adhesion contracts and are administered in the civil courts under the legal fiction that they are contracts. Legal fiction is an “[a]ssumption of fact made by [a] court as [the] basis for deciding a legal question.”[30]
 

A speeding ticket charges that you failed to fulfill your part of the driver’s license agreement. You knew the rules but did not obey. Due process now requires you to seek forgiveness from the (judge) chancellor in a court of equity, either by satisfactorily explaining the circumstances or by paying a fine. The state turned its administrative requirements into criminal statutes giving police the power to make arrests for violations. You can now be charged through civil action for thousands of things that were never crimes at law because there was no specific damage involved.

There is a fundamental difference between traveling and driving. Loading the family into an automobile and going to see grandmother is traveling, a natural right requiring no state license. Operating a truck, bus or taxicab on the public’s right of way in commerce for profit is a privilege authorized by the state with a driver’s license. Both activities demand competence but only one needs state regulation. Lawyer-politicians have so confused the issue in everyone’s mind that anyone caught operating an automobile on a public street or highway without a state-issued driver’s license is automatically presumed guilty of a crime. The real crime is that the lawyer-politicians get away with such chicanery. Their intricate legal finesse, using every conceivable type of permit and license—driving, marriage, occupational, professional, commercial, all the way down to dog tags and parade permits—puts them in command of every single aspect of American life. Of course, it is all accomplished equitably, for the best of reasons, and for a fee.

Victimless crime is America’s number one growth industry. It was created when three associated political events combined to propel modern American society into democratic-socialism:

1. The federal rules of court procedure changed merging courts of law with those of equity;

2. A change in the nation’s monetary system and the general use of bank accounts by the public converted trade into commerce; and,

3. The government began extensive use of adhesion contracts in the form of licenses, supported by police powers, to protect the health, safety and welfare of society.

Lawyers made little money practicing the old-fashioned common law with its simple rules and forms. Many people presented their own cases before the courts. Judges rendered justice. They administered and taught the law, explaining their decisions in great detail. With the rise of democratic-socialism this system fell into disuse, superseded by a civil law of ever increasing complexity and accompanied by hoards of practitioners.

Acting as representatives of the people, the lawyer-politicians first substituted equity for justice and then collective liability for individual responsibility. They peddled a vision of a better world, free from almost all risk and with generous payments for virtually any conceivable damage. The American people, as their part of the deal, exchanged freedom for security and sovereignty for servitude. In retrospect, it seems a high price to pay, even had the promised utopia been created. Did the advertisement neglect to mention that traditional families would disintegrate, that Boys’ and Girls’ Scouting Clubs were replaceable with street gangs and Father Knows Best with Beavis and Butthead?
 

24 Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition — “Bank deposit” 
25 Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition — “Bank Secrecy Act” 
26 “The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination protects the person asserting the privilege only from compelled self-incrimination.” It “should not be read as creating a ‘zone of privacy’ which protects an individual and his personal records from compelled production.” U.S. v. Doe, 465 U.S. 605, 79 L Ed 2d 552 (1984)  
27 “Although the contents of a document may not be privileged, the act of producing the document is privileged where if involves testimonial self-incrimination.” U.S. v. Doe, 465 U.S. 605, 79 L Ed 2d 552 (1984)  
28 Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition — “License” 
29 Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition — “Adhesion contract” 
30 Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition — “Legal fiction”