Sometimes I get to doubting this whole Y2K stuff even though I have preps for a very serious crisis. I guess I try to tell myself why there is nothing to be concerned about; that things will be fine and I have done this for nothing.

Then, I try to think of all the reasons I should have done what I did. What evidence is there that we may see some very serious problems out of all of this ? that is where I start getting some real answers.

First consideration of course is the subtle warnings about Y2K. Let's see here. Red Cross, Kosky (recently), and numerous other sources such as Paula Gordon who has spoken often on C-SPAN. I think also about the warnings about the severe sunspot activity that is projected to peak at the same time we are dealing with Y2K. I combine all of these and think of the MANY reasons I should do something, if not for me, for my kids.

I had just a taste of what can happen back in 1996 (?), I think it was. I managed a very large operation (production) during this time in question. Our inter-facility communications relied almost totally on cell phone and pagers, with of course the land-line as backup. The point is though, our processes were designed completely around the wireless communications method (against my advice mind you).

One day things took a very, very bad turn. NOTHING worked as far as communications. No one could summon technical support for downed machinery. No one could summon supervisory personnel. The entire sytem of communications had been downed without warning. Mind you this is serious because our processes and structure are set up on this system.

A quick call to MIS and support were to no avail. No one could figure out why our system was downed. It was first thought the relay tower was down but investigation hours later revealed 100% functionable. Still, no signals.

To make a long story short, it wasn't until 48 hours later that it was discovered that the satellite, Galaxy 4, had fried. Galaxy 4 handled our entire system of communications and wireless production efficiency information. The third day, the system had been switched to another satellite vehicle and traffic was back up.

Cost of this little mishap ? 2.3 million dollars for the corporation. Complete chaos for three days in our facilites trying to change our entire lifestyles back to the ancient (but reliable) system we had before. Lot's of ulcer's, overtime and even employee turnover as a result of this.

Can I think of a good reason to be ready ? Yep, I think I can. Better safe than excercising the lungs saying "I sure wish I had...". Good luck all.

-- Rob (maxovrdrv51@hotmail.com), December 15, 1999

Answers

Rob,

I can understand why your pagers might fail - but are you certain with regards to the cell phones. Do not believe many of the Wireless Carriers (if any) route their calls through a satellite link. Shown below is a link to story detailing Galaxy 4's impact:

http://www.npr.org/news/tech/1998/May/980520.satellite.html

Regards,

-- paul dirac (pdirac@hotmail.com), December 15, 1999.

Paul,

I am certain. Somehow our carrier used the satellite for all of this. It was all tied to the Galaxy 4 and all failed. It was a nightmare. I am uneducated as to how the cell phone was affected by the satellite but indeed it was. Kinda funny though. They have trashed the wireless system and have gone back to a modified version of the old system (hardwired).

-- Rob (maxovrdrv51@hotmail.com), December 15, 1999.

New York Times News Article

The Anti-Tax Man Cometh, to New Applause

Copyright 1995 The New York Times Wednesday July, 5th 1995

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

LAS VEGAS, NV -- Individual income taxes, Irwin A. Schiff tells everyone who will listen, are voluntary, but almost everyone pays because politicians have enacted complicated laws to trick people into thinking they must pay. The view might sound absurd, and Mr. Schiff used to be cursed at when he voiced it. But some Americans are taking it seriously.

The works of Mr. Schiff are now widely cited in the literature of tax protesters and right-wing organizations challenging the legitimacy of the Federal Government. Over the years, he has been a frequent guest on talk shows around the country, having discussed the issue with Larry King, Tom Snyder and, in the New York area, Bob Grant.

He says he has sold 30,000 copies of his latest self-published book, "The Federal Mafia," and more than 67,000 copies of this 1982 book, "How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income taxes." And, in recent weeks, an Internet site devoted to taxes has been dominated by arguments over Mr. Schiff idea, now advanced by a variety of his followers, that no law makes individuals or corporations liable to pay income taxes.

Mr. Schiff preaches that "a compulsory income tax would violate" the Constitution despite the 16th Amendment, and so the Internal Revenue Code "was written to make paying income taxes appear mandatory."

"The Government succeeded in doing this," he contends, "by tricking the public into believing that those enforcement provisions of the code that apply to other, non-voluntary taxes -- like alcohol and tobacco taxes -- also apply to income taxes when in fact they do not."

At age 67, tanned and exuding confidence that he has uncovered the greatest hoax of all time, Mr. Schiff says he is finding a sharp change in public reaction to his theories.

"Ten or 15 years ago I was called a Communist," Mr. Schiff said in an, interview last month. "People who called in would say if you don't like America, I leave it. Tomorrow I will be on nationwide radio for three hours telling people the same things and I won't get one negative call." And he didn't. Nor did anyone attack his views on several other programs in the days that followed.

Mr. Schiff grass-roots challenge to the legitimacy of the Internal Revenue Service is so far mostly words. He has won no big legal battles in his crusade and has spent more than three years in prison after losing a couple. The IRS brushes off Mr. Schiff and his followers as sadly misguided pests.

Yet even people who ridicule his interpretations of tax law say Mr. Schiff is tapping into a deepening well of popular resentment. His books are widely cited by a melange of groups, many calling themselves patriots of various stripes. "A belief that the income tax is invalid or illegal is a fundamental belief among Christian Patriot groups," said Jonathan Mozzochi of the Coalition for Human Dignity in Portland, Ore., which tracts such organizations.

But Mr. Schiff's anti-tax message is also making its way into the mainstream. "His argument appeals to people whose economic situation has peaked and are desperately looking around for some way to improve their situation," said Richard D. Adams, an assistant professor of auditing at the University of Baltimore who frequently jousts on the Internet with advocates of the idea that, income taxes are voluntary.

Indeed, the tax revolt may be more widespread than the IRS lets on. While, it reported that only 160 open criminal investigations of tax protesters as of last fall, an agency official testified in the trial of an anti-tax activist last year that 'hundreds of thousands of people" directly challenge the legal authority of the IRS. by tiling protest returns or asserting a constitutional right not to file. The reasons for the change of heart are complicated. Beyond economic factors, one might be the collapse of Communism, a force that had rallied Americans behind the Federal Government against a foreign enemy. Another is a belief that the Government is mostly wasteful and inefficient.

"There has been a dramatic loss of public support for the income tax," said Michael J. Gractz a professor at Yale Law School and former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary for tax policy in the Bush Administration. "The anti-tax movement extends far deeper than Mr. Schiff and his believers."

In fact, there are many proposals in Washington to scrap income taxes in favor of a flat tax, a national sales tax, a value-added tax or some other plan, all promoted with a promise that most people will pay less.

Mr. Schiff's journey to the libertarian fringe of the tax-protest movement was a long one. In his youth in New Haven, he says, he absorbed the leftist politics of his father, a carpenter and self-described Socialist.

"I was very pro-Roosevelt," he said. Then, in his mid-20's, he went through a crushing disillusionment. Running the state election campaign of a friend, he was shocked by what he regarded as e the moral crassness of politicians. "I never heard them say, 'We will do this to the help people'," he recalled. "They said, 'We will get this guy this job and that guy a contract," and I realized government is just a business people get into to benefit themselves. From that point on, I listened closely to politicians and I realized that they lied." Despite that experience, he led a fairly conventional middle-class existence in '~ Connecticut through the 1960's and early 70's, raising a family and running a company he formed to administer health plans for doctors.

He wrote his first book, "The Biggest Con," in 1976 to expose what he viewed as the Federal Government's deceitful ways, including how departing from the e gold standard would spur inflation and higher taxes. As time went by, he became more interested in tax issues, inspired by a businesswoman who refused to withhold income taxes from her workers paychecks. "I wondered at how she had d the courage to do what she did," he said.

Ultimately, he took a similar step. In 1974, he quit paying Federal income taxes, prompting a long legal battle that resulted in his imprisonment twice in the 1980's for a total of four years. By the time he got out in 1993, he had sold his business and gotten a divorce.

This year, Mr. Schiff moved to Las Vegas and rented a $730-a-month, two- bedroom apartment that is decorated with plaques and trophies that he has won to as an amateur magician. But he spends most of his time on the road, selling books and videotapes and preaching his anti-tax gospel at seminars and on talk shows.

He has his own weekly broadcast here. He carries a cellular phone but says he has no bank account, using cash or credit cards to pay his bills, because he figures the l.R.S. would seize the money as payment toward the $1.2 million in back taxes that it contends he still owes. Already, the agency has confiscated $220,000 in royalties from his 1982 book, a, "How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes."

Mr. Schiff is as close to an intellectual light as anybody in the movement against the income tax. His confidence and seeming mastery of the most arcane details of tax law make him a hit with some people. "People respond to Irwin because he is a genuine guy and he has court cases and laws he cites to back up everything he says," Jamian White, co-host of the nationally syndicated "Birdwell and White" program on Talk America Radio Network, on which Mr. Schiff was a guest last month. Timothy L. Deaton, who with his wife runs a tiny computer repair and is programming business in Shelbyville, Ind., listened to lectures by Mr. Schiff last October, then paid $385 for his collection of books and tapes and started reading A tax court cases in the local law library.

"After my studying I'm convinced that Irwin is right that there is no law that says you have to pay income taxes," he said. Last year, the Deatons paid the l.R.S. $25,900 toward income taxes for the year, but then filed a return reporting no income for 1994, adopting Mr. Schiff is argument that wages are not income under the law. The I.R.S. then refunded the $25,900.

A spokesman for the l.R.S. declined comment on the Deatons' tax return, but said the agency's policy was to withhold refunds from taxpayers who file returns at claiming zero incomes. The spokesman, Steve Pyrek, said the l.R. S. typically did not begin auditing returns until 18 months after they were filed and that recovery of refunds issued in error might take several years.

William Cohan, a lawyer in Encinitas, Calif., who defends tax protesters, calls at the notion that individuals are not liable to pay income taxes "loony." But Mr. Cohan said the l.R.S. made it possible for people like Mr. Schiff to flourish because it uses the term "voluntary compliance" on its Form 1040 instruction booklets for taxpayers.

I.R.S. officials say Mr. Schiff reaches his conclusions by selective reading of is the law. And Margaret Milner Richardson, the l.R.S. commissioner, said that in l.R.S. usage, the term "voluntary compliance" referred to filling out tax forms, not to paying taxes.

In an interview, Mr. Schiff compared himself to two dissidents in the former Soviet Union. "Sharansky went to jail! Solzhenitsyn went to jail!" he said. "Repressive regimes always send people who speak the truth to prison."

Note: Schiff is quoted as saying that "no law makes individuals or corporations LIABLE TO PAY income taxes "

The article then quotes two law professors, one tax lawyer and the Internal Revenue Commissioner herself - and isn't it strange that not one of them sought to refute Schiff by simply identifying the law that makes anyone "liable to pay income taxes"? Wouldn't that have disposed of Schiff's claim, rather than simply labeling it "loony"? (Various Code sections can be cited establishing such "liabilities" with respect to numerous other Federal taxes ) And if an income SS tax return is "voluntary" (meaning, without legal obligation) as the Commissioner admits, than how could its payment be mandatory What would be the basis for the "payment" Can you pay the tax without filing a return? The Commissioner seems to think so Now, who's "loony"?

To order The Federal Mafia by credit card call 1-800-TAX-NOMORE, or send $25 to Freedom Books, P.O. Box 5326 Evansville, IN 47716. For interviews call 702-877-2833, fax 702-877-0521. Your book will be sent by priority mail.

PRESS THE "BACK" BUTTON ON YOUR BROWSER TO GO BACK

-- susie Q (susie@Q.com), December 15, 1999.

Susie Q.....

I hope you will understand, I find this post very unpolite having nothing to do with Rob's orginal point of view. When you want to inject an entirely differant subject, go to 'New Questions' at the top of TB2000 and you may get a response from those like-minded.

-- Tommy Rogers (Been there@Just a Thought.com), December 15, 1999.

Susie...OFF-TOPIC! Not to over look the fact that Mr Schiff did some time in jail for tax offenses a few years back. SPAM is rude. Knock it off. Thanks.

-- Irving (irvingf@myremarq.com), December 15, 1999.