May 19, 2008 Letter to the Marin Independent Journal Newspaper

Stimulus Payment Returned

Editor:

I was hoping my stimulus payment would arrive in the form of a check, so I could have a ceremonial burning of it, similar to the one when I burned my Social Security card on July 4, 1968, vowing never to take any Social Security (and later Medicare) payments. But instead it was deposited directly into my checking account, thereby contaminating it until I wrote a return check to The Political State of The United States of America and sent it to Washington, D.C., along with a copy of this letter.

As a principled libertarian I feel compelled to state publicly why I took this action. I consider such payments fraudulent and therefore immoral, by my standards, because they come from either creating money out of thin air, thereby inflating and devaluing what money already exists, or from taxes exacted from other people. It does not represent what has been taken from me in taxes, by force (and therefore immoral), since such taxes have already been disbursed to others, and can only come from what was wrongly taken from others, or created out of thin air.

I realize that this is an extreme position to take and will meet with disfavor by most who learn of it, but I have control of only one person, myself, and can sleep peacefully on my pinnacle of principle, knowing I have not taken stolen goods.

My pinnacle has thrust through the broad cover of political deception under which most people reside because they were never taught critical thinking, or to question the coercive system that enslaves them. From up here I can see the grand concept of freedom and can only hope that everyone could know it as I do.

By,

Lloyd Licher

100 Sunnyside Ave., Corte Madera, CA 94925
924-0891 (home), or 446-2132 (office)