Month: March 2007

Way back in time, when I first started caring about politics, policitians, and all the things the government does to screw us, I decided I should watch some documentaries from this Michael Moore guy. Some of the liberal folks I worked with said they were good. The conservatives I spoke to had nothing valid to say about them, because they hadn’t watched them (criticism after watching them would carry weight with me, but such commentary based on “I heard XYZ said…” did not). After Moore said he wanted people to download his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 if they wanted to see it, I decided that is where I’d start.

About 5 or 10 minutes into the movie, I was already fed up with the movie, as I heard a number of things I just didn’t believe, so I put the movie away. I tried several times to come back, but I found the movie more and more annoying each attempt to watch, even just selecting random areas of the movie to watch. Now I understood why the conservatives didn’t bother watching the movie. I can’t recall now the problems I had with the movie, but I could probably try again to watch this fictitious historical account of the days following the 9/11 attacks if someone disagreed with my belief that a lot of the movie is just made – sensationalism done at history.

I’ve tried watching a couple other Moore “documentaries” since then, but just can’t stomach them now. So given my personal background with Moore’s displays of his reality, I found this mention of others’ attempts to make a documentary on Moore turning into a tale of displeasure.

Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine unveiled their newest documentary entitled Manufacturing Dissent about legendary filmmaker Michael Moore at Austin’s South by Southwest Film Festival on March 10 2007.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the filmmakers are huge fans of Michael Moore who initially set out to make a biography of their hero. However as they learned more facts about Moore they began to question his ethics and his tactics and began to make a more hard-hitting film while chronicling the filmmaker on his 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 and Slacker Uprising tours.

. . .

His career was launched by the documentary Roger and Me, released in 1989 and detailing his unsuccessful efforts to talk with Roger Smith, then chairman of General Motors. The only problem was, as Manufacturing Dissent points out, Moore did successfully meet with Smith. He decided to leave out the footage for the final cut in an editorial decision.

Now it remains to be seen when we can see this and get a better look at how Moore works, from former fans.

[tags]Documentary on Michael Moore, Manufacturing Dissent – former fans of Michael Moore look at how he works[/tags]

Straight from the evil-overlord’s mouth, here are the “dirty dozen” tax frauds that you should strive to avoid. The IRS will be watching for these especially carefully. Here’s a sample:

3. Phishing is a technique used by identity thieves to acquire personal financial data in order to gain access to the financial accounts of unsuspecting consumers, run up charges on their credit cards or apply for loans in their names. These Internet-based criminals pose as representatives of a financial institution — or sometimes the IRS itself — and send out fictitious e-mail correspondence in an attempt to trick consumers into disclosing private information. A typical e-mail notifies a taxpayer of an outstanding refund and urges the taxpayer to click on a hyperlink and visit an official-looking Web site. The Web site then solicits a social security and credit card number. It is important to note the IRS does not use e-mail to initiate contact with taxpayers about issues related to their accounts. If a taxpayer has any doubt whether a contact from the IRS is authentic, the taxpayer should call 1-800-829-1040 to confirm it.

12. Frivolous Arguments: Promoters have been known to make the following outlandish claims: the Sixteenth Amendment concerning congressional power to lay and collect income taxes was never ratified; wages are not income; filing a return and paying taxes are merely voluntary; and being required to file Form 1040 violates the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Don’t believe these or other similar claims. These arguments are false and have been thrown out of court. While taxpayers have the right to contest their tax liabilities in court, no one has the right to disobey the law.

If you don’t do your taxes yourself and want to try to avoid unethical tax preparers that might suck you into these or other tax abuses which will lead to trouble, I’ve been a fan of Consumerist for finding reliable consumer help on practically anything. Searching the site for “Tax preparation” yielded a few potentially helpful threads.

[tags]IRS Dirty-Dozen tax schemes, Avoid these illegal or unethical tax frauds[/tags]