by SixofNine 146 Replies latest jw friends
So, Burn, you think this guy is a hero, a patriot?
To me Vernon Hunter was the hero - he went to work though he could have retired at 65. He was devoted to his wife and family - 6 grown children. He showed up every day even though I'm sure he had his aches and pains, regrets, disappointments and gripes.
Stack burned his wife and 12-year old step-daughter out of their home before he checked out of their lives.
I think it takes far more courage to show up every day in spite of life's unfairness.
I've been wondering if his wife was going to get the house anyway or if the IRS was going to get it.
Hmmmm tea partiers dumping tea into Boston Harbor vs guy flying his plane in to a 67 year old man.................not seein' it. Sending tax money off to support Ye Olde England, and paying taxes that insure your way of life is a huge difference as well. John Brown, nut that he may well have been, at least had human lives at the heart of his argument.
Yet another article on Joe
Posted by Carlin DeGuerin Miller (CBS/AP Photo) (CBS) 
Photo: Firefighters battle the blaze at Stack's house. (AP ) AUSTIN, Texas (CBS/AP) Joseph Andrew Stack's seething hatred for the IRS appeared to have roots at least two decades long, judging from the web post he left behind before crashing his plane into in an Austin, Texas office building Thursday where some 200 employees of the tax agency worked.
The anti "tax man" fuse may have been lit in Stack in 1986, when the software engineer confronted a change in tax law, that required companies using high-tech contractors to withhold part of their salaries for income tax purposes.
In the online letter discovered after the crash, Stack wrote, "They could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave."
Calvin Johnson, a law professor at the University of Texas who specializes in federal tax laws told the Austin American Statesman it appeared Stack was looking for a way out of the withholding system.
"If Stack had intended to pay tax on the quarterly payment system, he would have had no advantage from getting out of withholding. Indeed, the paperwork burdens go up," Johnson told the paper. "I suspect he therefore had no intent to pay any tax, even when an independent contractor."
Stack also said he got involved with a group that was especially interested in how religious organizations like the Catholic Church got "incredibly wealthy" by taking advantage of "exemptions," according to his online rant.
He goes on to describe an "exercise" the group conducted, aimed at reevaluating laws that, as Stack wrote, "allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living."
But they were apparently unsuccessful, and Stack wrote that it ended up costing him "$40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0," and that it "made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie."
Stack's clashes with the government didn’t stop there. His first wife filed for bankruptcy in 1999, listing a debt to the IRS of nearly $126,000.
According to California state records, Stack also had a troubled business history, twice starting software companies in California that ultimately were suspended by the state's tax board, one in 2000, the other in 2004.
Stack's father-in-law, Jack Cook, told the New York Times that he knew Stack had a "hang-up" with the IRS, and his marriage had been strained. His wife had taken her daughter to a hotel to get away from Stack on Wednesday night, the newspaper said.
That might have been the last straw for Stack. On Thursday he blew up his house, and aimed his plane at what he seemed to believe was the root of all his problems: the IRS. http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/19/crimesider/entry6223276.shtml
Maybe he saw this ad and got scared of Obamacare passing - including the part of healthcare reform that makes the IRS the collector for health insurance payments. sammieswife.
The IRS is soliciting quotes for its purchase of 60 shotguns: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to purchase sixty Remington Model 870 Police RAMAC #24587 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division. The Remington parkerized shotguns, with fourteen inch barrel, modified choke, Wilson Combat Ghost Ring rear sight and XS4 Contour Bead front sight, Knoxx Reduced Recoil Adjustable Stock, and Speedfeed ribbed black forend, are designated as the only shotguns authorized for IRS duty based on compatibility with IRS existing shotgun inventory, certified armorer and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
More about the victim:
Share this on Twitter - Son Speaks Out {UpDated w/Video} 
Added: There have been a couple of mentions in the replies about naming a building in Honor to Vernon, my thoughts are with those thinking and voicing that! Wherever they reopen the IRS building in Austin that's what should happen, and instead of in a leased space the Government should build that building!! So any possible Government folks or media types who just happen to click on this diary, How About It!!
Second thought on a building. The WWII, Korean and especially the brother 'Nam Vets have been asking for a VA Hospital, not clinic, in the Rio Grande Valley for decades, that call has been refreshed by the OEF and OIF Veterans recently, not to slight the IRS workers but I think this would be a Perfect Honor for our Fallen Brother!
This is going to be short, but I need to say a few things about recent tragic event as we find out about a lost brother!
Son of missing IRS employee speaks out after plane crash
When Ken Hunter first heard about a plane crashing into his father's office building in Austin, he said he hoped his dad, Vernon Hunter, wasn't there.
Snip
"I saw the building and that was my dad's office building. So I called maybe eight times or more," Ken said.
But his dad never picked up the phone. A few hours later, he learned his dad was missing.
Snip
"There was just too much going on about what the guy did and what he believed in, and enough's enough," he said. "They don't need to talk about him. Talk about my dad. You know, some people are trying to make this guy out to be a hero, a patriot. My dad served two terms in Vietnam. This guy never served at all. My dad wasn't responsible for his tax problems."
Snip
Foster said Vernon Hunter was a proud Vietnam Vet and a great neighbor.
"He was just a real tender man," he said. "It was always good to talk to him. He was just a nice guy."
Now, as cars gather in front of the Hunter residence, a neighborhood braces itself and offers support.
Vernon Hunter leaves behind a wife, a son and daughter and six grandchildren. >>>>>
UpDate Thanks toRipeness Is All who placed a link to a video able to embed.
I have been in a rage since this happened!
I've seen so many people commenting on this scum pilot these last couple of days, Domestic Criminal Terrorist, on how he shouldn't have done what he did But he had a righteous, populist rage against the Government for his tax troubles They were causing him!
This Terrorist flew a quarter million dollar plane, he owned, into a building intent of killing as many people as possible! It was a well planned attack, right down to a many page written suicide note of his rants against The Man!
It's been reported he had his business license stripped in California twice for evading taxes, one of those times, I heard, had something to do with a partner and religious ideology as tax exempt. My guess is if he ever had any employee's he was screwing them like he kept trying to screw the government, Us!!
He gets absolutely no sympathy from this Veteran and now we find out the one that died was a brother 'Nam Vet who did not one but two tours In-Country!
Those trying to justify what that 'domestic criminal terrorist' did and especially those who have been glorifying him are just as guilty as he is, only difference is they didn't pull the trigger of a destructive terror event!!!!!
Joseph Stack is becoming a lefty folk hero:
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project hits the perfect storm of journalistic clichés by detecting a “perfect storm” of anti-government militias and “so-called Patriot groups.” Daily Kos claims (without evidence) links and ties to the tea party movement.
But a strange counterforce has been developing, visible in the comment boards on lefty websites and Facebook. The left’s creepy efforts to turn Stack into a club with which to hit advocates of lower taxes and smaller government keep getting met with responses, from other lefties, along these lines: “I read his manifesto, and you know, a lot of his points make sense.”
Obviously you get your news from FOX. Here is the real story from D-Kos where people can start threads (just like here at JWD) - personal opinions not endorsed by the site:
Here's an amusing example of how Fox feeds it's "conservatives vs. the world" narrative: FNC anchor Megyn Kelly citing a single Daily Kos diary to make the claim that "liberal bloggers blame tea party groups for Texas attack."
Never mind that the diary cited by Kelly only received four recommends and was rejected by most people who saw it; never mind that its headline was removed by a site moderator; never mind that on the front page, we cautioned against making a link to tea party groups.
Never mind that on Fox yesterday, Republican Senator Scott Brown suggested that Washington might be to blame for the frustration that led to the plane attack (Brown's comments are in the video above); never mind that conservatives at CPAC are making jokes about anti-tax activists flying planes into IRS buildings.
Never mind all those things, because Fox has a narrative to sell, and in that narrative conservatives are under siege. From Daily Kos. And even though they are twisting reality to fit their storyline, it's kind of cool that they've decided to cast us as the villains. It's a sign we're doing something right.
Update (12:42PM): Here's a link to Vyan's recommended diary on the plane attack, "Suicide Plane Attack on Austin IRS Building- Terrorism?." Contrary to Fox's claim, that diary does not blame tea party groups for the plane attack in any way whatsoever.
Vernon Hunter, a 67-year-old IRS worker, was killed in the crash.