Profiling Joe Stack
[Guest post by DRJ]
The Austin American-Statesman profiles suicide pilot Joe Stack:
His father died of a heart attack when he was young, and his mother committed suicide.
Three of Joe’s four siblings were parceled out to relatives. The two oldest boys were raised at Pennsylvania’s famous Milton Hershey school. Joe Stack was a graduate of the Milton Hershey class of 1974.
After he graduated, Stack lived in Colorado, California, and finally Austin where he played in a band. His ex-wife and bandmates described him as a “good man.”
Stack was a loner. Many of his friends and family said they had lost contact with him, some for more than 15 years.
Saving money, especially taxes, became an obsession: “Ducking taxes became another fixation for Stack, and he threw himself into a protracted struggle against the government over money he owed.
According to The Associated Press, in the 1980s, Joe Stack and his former wife, Ginger, formed a branch of the Universal Life Church Inc., which the IRS declared an illegal tax shelter. The Stacks then sued the U.S. government to defend the tax-exempt status of the “home church.”
He became further outraged by a 1986 tax code change that barred contract software engineers from certain deductions. “They could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave,” Stack wrote in his manifesto.”
Stack’s ultimate obsession became his suicide plot.
— DRJ
FTFY!
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 3/7/2010 @ 1:01 amA sad story all around. It’s ashame he never got the help he obviously needed.
JEA (63b53e) — 3/7/2010 @ 6:08 amParanoid psychotics are a challenge to psychiatrists that is rarely dealt with adequately. They can be so well organized that they function fairly well and the psychosis may not even be apparent to many who know them casually. I think I have previously mentioned such a case here. My students interviewed this fellow who was so convincing that his family had to put a letter in his chart explaining that the story he told was a delusion.
Mike K (2cf494) — 3/7/2010 @ 7:35 amA sad, sick man who needed Jesus. There but for the grace of God go I.
PatriotRider (1729de) — 3/7/2010 @ 8:01 amSad.
“The wind does not break a tree that bends.”
Patricia (e1047e) — 3/7/2010 @ 9:22 amThis story, and Stack himself, reminds me of what makes a good wrestling “heel”. The heel must have a point, and believe he is right. And then he must take his point too far.
Side note, I have a neighbor who has claimed the “Universal Life Church” exemption and lived in the same house for 24 years without paying taxes. Now, he wants to sell the house and is surprised to learn he will owe a $h1tload of taxes. Uncle Sugar is going to get his cut…
TimesDisliker (ce7887) — 3/7/2010 @ 9:38 amRender unto Caesar… no more, no less.
It is OK to shave the loaf as thin as the law allows but the other old adage (if it seems too good to be true, it is…) applies to this Universal Life Church nonsense.
Any reputable tax professional will tell you to run away from that doomed scheme, but if someone shops around until some clown CPA agrees with them, then they deserve to get what the searched for and found.
It is sad to see people throw away their tomorrow for a few more dollars in their pockets today by skirting a little on taxes.
When I was young and ignorant, I got some bad advice from a CPA regarding classification of some workers as Independent Contractors.
The feds audited me and laughed as they gave me a bill that seemed like twice my annual income and liened almost everything I owned. There is no more of a desperate, hopeless feeling than finding out the feds swept your bank account right before payroll was to be made.
I convinced the feds not to take away my excavator and I literally dug my way out of debt…. well until the State of CA piggybacked in and demanded their pound of flesh. Then I dug out of that one too.
Deep, dark days and I cried tears of anger and fear; all night sometimes.
But it was my mistake, and I owed the money.
I had no money for representation and my dumb CPA retired and moved to New Mexico.
The first agent assigned to me was a jerk. The guy would tell me that it was his job to run people like me out of business, because I was obviously incapable…. so I took it all the way to the regional director and she gave me a new agent.
There were times when only the idea of a cold cell stuffed with 7 of my new best friends had kept me from throwing a punch aimed about 2 feet behind his fat face…. but I did indeed owe the money so when I got into the grinding federal machine, I get what I get.
Stay out of the machine and hire representation before they take all your money and while you can still pay.
My last audit my representation got it from tens of thousands down to zero and she was worth every penny of what I paid her… plus it is against the rules for an IRS agent to contact you once you rep up, so you can avoid all their fishing expedition nonsense.
Then there is no need to dive bomb a federal building with the Piper Cub…. which has made me wonder how he afforded the plane… oh, wait… maybe the feds were about to repo it?
SteveG (909b57) — 3/7/2010 @ 11:14 amI think he stole it, Steve. I have seen several versions.
I once was audited after I had had a natural disaster that almost claimed my house. It was in 1979-80 when we had a very wet winter in in So Cal. I woke up one morning to find that my backyard was gone. I was living on the top of a 200 foot cliff and the 25 feet closest to the edge fell down the cliff. The only thing the held the seven feet that was between my house and the cliff was a little tree whose roots must have been enough.
Anyway, it cost $100,000 to fix. I got a disaster loan for $60,000 but that was the max. We fixed it right with 30 inch caissons that went down 33 feet into the cliff in front of the house.
About two years later, I got an audit notice. We (my accountant and I) furnished all the records they asked for. Then I got a notice that I owed $100,000 in back taxes. We fought it to just short of tax court. I finally got a letter that said my additional taxes owed was $0.00. I was going to frame the two letters side by side but never got around it it.
They are not your friends.
A guy I knew was a trust fund baby. He had a couple of degrees but the only work he had ever done was a bar he owned with his ex-wife until she took off. He was about 50 when he got a call from his accountant who said that he had not worked enough quarters to qualify for Social Security and Medicare. He had better get a job.
Well, he had a BS in Finance from Stanford so he applied to the IRS and ended up as a supervisor in the audit division in Laguna Niguel. He worked there until he had enough SS contributions and quit to go back to his casual lifestyle.
True story.
Mike K (2cf494) — 3/7/2010 @ 1:25 pmJoe Stack was a treasonous, tax-dodging murderer. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no one else to blame. Period.
Vernon Hunter = A man who served his country, both in the military and civil service.
Joe Stack = Worthless piece of filth.
packsoldier (9b1b0d) — 3/7/2010 @ 3:02 pm[…] Attempted Murder Of IRS Agents; Update – MSM Blames Tea Party Patterico’s Pontifications: Profiling Joe Stack and Austin Family Sues Joe Stack’s Wife and Casualties and the Austin Plane Attack and Joe Stack […]
Sad: Samantha Bell: My Dad Joe Stack Is a Hero for His Anti-Government Plane Crash (video) – Update: Vernon Hunter, Vietnam Vet, Identified as Fatal Victim in IRS Building « Frugal Café Blog Zone (a66042) — 3/9/2010 @ 1:35 pm