Dispatches from the Creation Wars

The local paper reports that the prosecution put on an administrator from Pensacola Christian College to talk about her past dealings with Hovind regarding his refusal to pay taxes.

Horton first heard of Hovind’s beliefs about taxes in the mid 1990s.

A woman gave Horton a videotape. The woman received it when she worked for Hovind.

The video featured another evangelist advocating tax evasion, Horton said. The woman told Horton of Hovind’s philosophy on paying his employees.

“She said, ‘You were giving a gift with your work, and they were giving a gift back to you,’ ” Horton said.

Horton said her first concern was that the woman was breaking the law. Horton also testified she was concerned about Pensacola Christian College students who worked at Hovind’s ministry.

“The day could come when you’re going to be in trouble,” she told the woman. “Because Mr. Hovind is going to be in trouble.”

Horton believed it was the college’s duty to report the misleading doctrine. Administration called the Internal Revenue Service and gave the tape to officials, she said.

See, here’s the problem with Hovind’s claim of ignorance: he has a documented track record of claiming that the income tax is illegal and that he didn’t have to pay them for a variety of absurd reasons. His position has long been that income tax requirements were illegal and therefore he didn’t have to pay them, but you can’t take that position at the same you claim not to know what the law said. And you can’t put those things on videotape and then claim not to be a tax protestor. This defense is going to fail, as it should.

This battle between Hovind and Pensacola Christian College is amusing to me. PCC is a real nest of loonies. They make Bob Jones University look like Oxford by comparison. It’s unaccredited, so the degrees it grants are absolutely worthless outside of other religious organizations. They’re so crazed about sex that they have separate elevators and stairwells for male and female students lest they get too close. It’s even against the rules to shake hands with someone of the opposite sex.

Comments

#1 sparc
October 21, 2006

They’re so crazed about sex that they have separate elevators and stairwells for male and female students lest they get too close. It’s even against the rules to shake hands with someone of the opposite sex.

Is Pensacola located in Saudi-Arabia?
#2 steve s
October 21, 2006

Those PCC rules made me laugh. I bet there’s a lot of screwing going on down there. It reminds me of a friend who went to Mt. Holyoke college. It’s a private all-girls school. Katarina said that typically, parents send their daughters there to keep them away from college sex. So how do the students spend their time? Rampant lesbianism.
#3 Blaine
October 21, 2006

Dont forget the stupendously retarded rules against making “eye-babies” at PCC.

Just in case anyone has underestimated the lunacy there.

PCC thinking Hovind is nuts? I think my head is going to implode.

But really, I think all testimony from PCC is just a lot of spin to distance themselves from the impending immolation of Dr. Dino’s little universe….

Will any of this showdown about taxes spill over to the tax exempt status of religious organizations in general?
#4 Djinna
October 21, 2006

I doubt it’ll have any real impact on tax exempt status in general, as far as the IRS is concerned, this guy is a total amateur. Aside from the fact that his arguments have failed a gazillion times before, there’s all this evidence that he doesn’t even believe it.
#5 brendan
October 22, 2006

ur taxes goto pay off personal wars.
if i was an american i would refuse to pay them too.
how much did this iraqi war costing you guys?

all for blood on the street, dead kids, and cheneys personal agenda.

u guys dont even have health care? where does all ur tax money go?

war obviously.

however if i had the irs in my neighbourhood, i would be inclined to pay taxes too, out of fear, not out of reason.

if most of your taxes go towards a military machine, which disrupts global peace, more then it has healed. then to kill the military machine, kill taxes.
#6 Rev. BigDumbChimp
October 23, 2006

And lets all give a big Yay! for the ignorant comment of the week. Yes some of our taxes go to the military as they should. The war is another issue altogether. The way to rid ourselves of the war and how it was caused is to vote these idiots out of office, not to start a massive anti-tax tinfoil hatter uprising.
#7 chaos_engineer
October 23, 2006

ur taxes goto pay off personal wars.
if i was an american i would refuse to pay them too.

Yes, that’s a valid position…Most famously put into action by Henry David Thoreau during the Mexican-American War.

Sometimes I’m tempted to do the same thing. But, you know, I’ve got responsibilities. And to be brutally honest, I’m too attached to some of the simple pleasures in my life, and I don’t want to have to go to jail and give them up. Some days I have trouble facing myself in the mirror. I keep telling myself that it’s better to pay my taxes and try to change the system through voting, but after 2004 I’m not sure I believe that anymore.

Any chance that you’d consider moving to America? We could probably use more Americans like you.

Obviously this has nothing to do with Kent Hovind. He’s not protesting any wars. Actually I’m not sure what he’s doing. It sounds like he believes that if he never writes his name in uppercase letters and if he phrases employment contracts in a certain way, then he’ll be exempt from paying taxes.

I can only describe it as a “magical thinking” delusion. (Thinking that you can change the universe just by chanting a few incantations.) The weird thing is that these aren’t new arguments; the courts have already ruled against them and established solid precedents.
#8 brendan
October 24, 2006

hovinds at war with a goverment,
his only shells are green and have pictures of heros on them,
he is winning by not firing a single shot.
#9 Andrew McClure
October 25, 2006

So Hovind is… Super Mario?
#10 brendan
October 25, 2006

wtf? wheres hovind?
#11 Chocomel
October 25, 2006

Personally I think PCC breeds brainwashed, Hitler youth types (that is… if they accept the rules), but Mrs. Horton got my applause for testifying against blowvind oops I mean hovind. Even if it was just to distance themselves from a sinking ship.
#12 Brian
November 2, 2006

“This defense is going to fail, as it should.” Quote from Ed Brayton’s article Hovlind Trial. This is where you needed to stop Mr. Brayton. The following paragraph was shameless, totally unbased, and extremely biased; it completely destroys your credibility as a writer. You need to leave personal views out of your article. I mean, I could look at your picture and say you need to go on a diet. But its not needed. See what I mean.
#13 Ed Brayton
November 2, 2006

Brian wrote:

“This defense is going to fail, as it should.” Quote from Ed Brayton’s article Hovlind Trial. This is where you needed to stop Mr. Brayton. The following paragraph was shameless, totally unbased, and extremely biased; it completely destroys your credibility as a writer. You need to leave personal views out of your article.

Um…why? This is my personal blog. I’m not writing for a journal or a magazine, I am writing for me. And I believe, and would happily defend, my view that PCC is a nest of loonies who believe absolutely bizarre things, and that Hovind is a fraud and a con man. Don’t like getting someone’s personal opinion mixed in with the reporting? Then blogs are the wrong thing for you to be reading.
#14 KeithB
November 2, 2006

Actually, our taxes are *not* paying for this war. We are writing IOU’s.

My *grandchildren* – and I don’t have any yet! – are going to pay for this war, as Ed pointed out here:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/looming_fiscal_disaster_1.php
#15 Cato
January 20, 2007

Hey, since you obviously believe that income tax is legal, why don’t you just quote the law that makes it legal? Come on, what does the law actually say?
#16 Skemono
January 20, 2007

Well for starters, there’s the 16th amendment:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
#17 JB
February 22, 2007

Re: Hovind-PCC a bunch of loonies.

Ed, I went to PCC and the ultra strict standards of the Hortons, and the faculty and staff are not the beliefs of a majority of the undergrad and grad students. Most of the people I got to know there in my 4 years, chose to attend that school to get a good Christian eduction for a cheap price; not to mention its in Florida. And the people I graduated with, save for a handful, didnt leave there “PCC Robots.” As far as taxes, I dont know of a physical written law that says you have to pay them, but until people [Hovind] dont get thrown in the clink for not paying, I guess I will continue forking over my portion to Uncle Sam.
JB