Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. I need to start off this episode by correcting a mistake that I made from my last episode about unchecked power. In that episode, I talked about Trump as a civilian, and that he may not be able to be charged since he's left office with insurrection or anything else that they might come up with. But that is indeed incorrect if he is found guilty of anything, including insurrection, even as a civilian right now, he could indeed be prosecuted for that. So I wanted to make that clear and that I may have misspoke and made a mistake in my last episode, and I felt this was the best way to do it as opposed to going back and editing an episode. Not a big fan of that. So hey, if I make a mistake, I try to make sure that I admit it, which is why it's important that you email me, not just because maybe I've made a mistake, but if there is something else you would like to discuss or a comment you'd like to make, or totally ream me a new one, hey, that's your call. In any case, the email is freedom's creed with rexread at gmail.com. Now then, to get started with this episode, I must say that I am deeply troubled by what I'm sharing today with each of you. Now, some of you may already know this and that's great, but some of you may not. In any case, I am talking about government overreach today, and to me, government overreach has nothing to do with political party. I talked in my last episode about how much I don't care about what your political party is. I couldn't care less. What I care about is encroachment by our government into our private lives. They have no business doing it, yet year after year it seems to get worse and worse, irrespective of who's in the White House. I'll be quoting from some different sources and to start off with, I want to take you back to 2021. You may remember this that the current administration admitted that they were going to track bank accounts with over $600 worth of annual transactions. Do you remember that? I certainly do. And I thought at the time, wow, that's pathetic. My initial response was what business does this administration or any other administration have to monitor our transactions in our bank accounts? And I'm not really sure the genesis of this kind of behavior. However, I would say that certainly after 9-11 and the attacks on our country, the Patriot Act was something that became law, and as far as I know, it's still enforced today, and it's probably where a lot of politicians get their reasoning or the excuse that they need to enforce or to encroach upon our personal lives. In my humble estimation, it is certain that these types of encroachments and flat out overreach started a very long time ago. Suffice it to say, in one of the articles that I looked at from 2021, mind you, it starts off by saying, quote, the Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal to direct the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than six hundred dollars in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government. End of quote. Oh, you don't know anybody like that? Well, I don't either. How unbelievable. Another question I would ask is why is it that just Republican lawmakers and some banking industry representatives are the only ones critical of something like this? Shouldn't everybody be outraged by this? The same article goes on to say, quote, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than ten thousand dollars in annual transactions, end of quote. Again, broken record. Why is the federal government concerned about transactions in our personal bank accounts? I don't get it. And here's the main reason that I don't get it. Quote, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, but upon probable cause, end of quote. And if you recognized, that's the fourth amendment to the Constitution. End of discussion. Well, it's not the end of my discussion for now, but it's the end of the discussion about whether or not it's okay for the government to crack down on private citizens based upon what they're doing in their bank accounts. To be sure it's a very fine line between something that is probable cause where the government has probable cause that something detrimental may take place based upon a certain transaction in your bank account. But let's be real. That is the exception, not the rule. It was said, ironically, after 9-11, that the terrorists have to be right one time. We, as a government, have to be right 100% of the time to thwart a terrorist attack. Did the government have the right back in 2021 to say that they were going to monitor citizens who had annual bank transactions of six hundred dollars? Was there probable cause for that kind of behavior? And even if they raised the so-called threshold to $10,000, would that be probable cause? I don't think so. You may be thinking right now that I kind of sound upset. Well, guess what? I am, and so should you. There's another document that I want to quote from, and this is the Declaration of Independence. It talks about our unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also says, quote, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. Now just so you know that I'm not some sort of insurrectionist or conspiracy theorist, the declaration goes on to say this quote But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Please note here that I am not interested in overthrowing the Declaration, the Constitution, or any of these founding documents. That is not my desire. My desire is to quote, provide new guards for their security, end quote. Meaning new guards who have respect and deference to the Constitution, not their own whims or their power trips. I don't care about that. Well I care about it. What I care about it is I don't want it to be promulgated in our government. We have the foundation of a pretty strong government as far as I'm concerned. The problem is these guards that keep getting elected into office and usurping the Constitution. So yes, that says some terrible things about those supposed guards, but it also says some pretty raunchy things about the people who keep putting them there. Again, I couldn't care less about political party. What I care about is showing support and defending the Constitution. That is the basis for all of our freedoms and the liberty that we enjoy. And we'd best make sure that it is supported and defended, or we'll lose those liberties and those freedoms. Period. Again, from the article, and it only really gets worse from here, says, quote, the changes would exempt millions of Americans from the reporting requirement and help the IRS target wealthier Americans, especially those who earn money from investments, real estate, and other transactions that are more difficult for the IRS to track. She said this, quote, under the current system, American workers pay virtually all their tax bills, while many top earners avoid paying billions in the taxes they owe by exploiting the system. At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS. Opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny, while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities. Then she goes on to say, and listen carefully at this part. Today's new proposal reflects the administration's strong belief that we should zero in on those at the top of the income scale who don't pay the taxes they owe, while protecting American workers by setting the bank account threshold at $10,000 and providing an exemption for wage earners like teachers and firefighters. She's a person who's appointed by the president. But it's very troubling, ladies and gentlemen, this desire that some people in government have to create division, to pit those who are wealthy while quote unquote protecting American workers. As if to say that somehow people who are wealthy haven't worked to get where they are? That's ludicrous. And guess what, ladies and gentlemen? Here is the dirty little secret, shall we say? A lot of people talk about the tax code, but nobody does anything to change it. If the current tax laws are changed to limit loopholes, then oh wait a minute, what? You mean the Janet Yellens and every other person who's in government wouldn't be able to take advantage of these loopholes that we all know they use on a regular basis when it comes to taxes? I gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I see why they're not doing anything to change the tax holes. Oh wait, I mean tax code. I don't mean tax holes. I may have been thinking about something else, but no, no, I'm talking about the tax code. It's just a true and innocent Freudian slip, shall we say? Wink wink, nudge nudge. In all seriousness, ladies and gentlemen, it baffles my mind why these politicians and other bureaucrats are so interested in the income or the funds that people have in their personal accounts. I get it, I get it. I know there's a fine line, like I said previously, between trying to determine if someone's on the up and up and if they're not. The problem is that so many people at the top are using these loopholes and these other favorable things to pad their own bank account whilst they're trying to enforce that everybody else lives by a different rule. It's okay for thee, but not for me, so to speak. And let's not forget the real reason why these people don't want to change the tax laws, they are benefiting by these loopholes in the tax code. It's as plain as the noses on our faces. Now, just a couple more quotes from this article. This one says, quote, the administration has estimated improved tax enforcement could net up to 600 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade. End of quote. Once again, tax enforcement will do nothing unless the loopholes are significantly changed. They need to stop complaining unless they're willing to do something about the problem. The bottom line here is that I'm a capitalist at heart, and I think most of you are too. Personally, I think the government should start learning how to live on less money so that we can keep more of our hard-earned money. How about that? Listen to the last paragraph of this article. It says, quote, Banking industry representatives remain skeptical of any additional reporting requirement, saying it will create a burden, especially for smaller community banks. So they're more concerned about the burden that's placed on these smaller community banks, not on the citizen. No, no, that's not important. What's important is that the burden cannot be significant for these smaller community banks. Unbelievable. Now let me switch gears here for a moment and talk about something that is equally as troubling as what I've just been talking about, and that is that the federal government asked banks to search Americans' financial transactions with terms that were used in those transactions, such as Trump, MAGA, Dick's sporting goods, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, and more, apparently. Just saying these words seems like I am making this up, but go search it yourself, you'll find out what I'm talking about if you haven't heard about it already. It's been reported that the impetus for these searches into these transactions had their beginnings with the January 6th, 2021 so-called riots at the Capitol. Now we know that's not the case, however, this is what those in the media want us to believe that somehow the federal government hadn't ever asked banks to track financial transactions of people prior to January 6, 2021. In an article I read about this, it says, quote, the Treasury Department's Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, that's a mouthful, or fin CEN, distributed materials to financial institutions that outlined typologies of various persons of interest and provided the banks with suggested search terms and merchant category codes for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement. In other words, in plain English, the government wanted to know what certain citizens were doing in their bank accounts, where they were going, where they were staying, what they were purchasing. What in the world is going on here? Now how does that square with the right to be secure in our persons, our houses, papers and effects, etc, etc? Please allow me to answer. It doesn't square. Not even a little bit. Here's the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen. Where is the evidence in mass that there was a significant amount of people who were supposedly purchasing things with merchant category codes like MAGA or Trump? Where's the evidence for it? Meaning where is the evidence that points to alleged lawlessness outside of january sixth, mind you, where is the evidence for this mass lawlessness? There is none, and I'm repeating myself over and over, but there is none. There's no evidence that shows that any of these people who were supposedly monitored because their merchant category codes were flagged with MAGA or Trump. To go back to the Fourth Amendment, where is the probable cause for any of it? Our personal rights, our effects, our papers, our homes are supposed to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures. Nowhere in our founding documents does it state that it's okay for one political party or ideology to go after another ideology just because they don't like what they're saying. That's not legitimate. It's not a good reason to have a campaign strategy that says, yeah, let's go after these people who are staying places who are buying things that disagree with our political philosophy. Nowhere. In another article, it states, quote, FinCEN warned financial institutions of extremism indicators that include transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets for travel to areas with no apparent purpose, or the purchase of books including religious texts, and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views. And to continue with a final quote from this article, it says quote, this kind of pervasive financial surveillance carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement into Americans' private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FENCEN's respect for fundamental civil liberties. End of quote. Ladies and gentlemen, every one of us should be very troubled by these findings. And it's my understanding that there is going to be someone from the banking industry, I believe, who will testify or at least be scheduled to testify by the end of this month. So it could be that their actual testimony date or deposition will be sometime later in the year, hopefully not that far down the road, but you know how Washington is. The bottom line here in all of this is that we should all be troubled. We should be very much alarmed at the way that the federal government goes after citizens. It's not in keeping with the tenets of the Declaration of Independence, and it's certainly a violation, it seems, of Fourth Amendment rights of the citizens who are involved or who are the ones who are being targeted by the federal government. None of us should be comfortable with this at all. We just shouldn't. It's a violation of our constitutional rights, which, by the way, still exists in this country, and we all need to be doing something about it to make sure that those rights continue to exist for ourselves, for our children, and our grandchildren. Or else, if we don't, we're going to wake up to a country that we don't even recognize. And I don't know about you, but I don't ever want to see something like that happen. What I want to see is the Constitution defended as the bedrock of our country, as the bedrock of all the laws that we make in this country, the most important of which need to honor the citizen and respect the citizen, the individual's rights to liberty and freedom. That is what the Constitution and the Declaration are all about. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I hope I have given you some things to think about in this episode. I will close this episode with a great quote from Thomas Jefferson, who said this quote, a government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have. End of quote.