At around 6:05PM today, May 17th 2008, Edward Marcus rang my door bell. I unfortunately wasn’t prepared and was unable to record the conversation.

He told me he was here because “the Census Bureau had sent me a booklet that was never returned” and now he just needed to come in and ask me some questions. I stood in the doorway holding open the secondary screen door with my right hand and placed my left hand up on the door frame so he wouldn’t have any opening for which he could walk in. The conversation was very repetitive. He kept telling me that I needed to provide the info and I refused.

He told me “you can have your libertarian beliefs or whatever but you’re obligated by law to answer these questions.” I told him I was well aware of the law and that I had no plans of providing him any of the desired information. Eventually he asked me just to give him my name so he could “close out the account.” After several attempts to get him to explain exactly what it meant by “closing it out” he told me that when asking questions the person can decline to answer particular questions. That the main office wanted to know why I wasn’t answering their questions. I pieced together what he wanted to do eventually which was to get my name so he could just fill out blanks in all questions. After realizing he was trying to deceive me… trying to trick me into answering the questions I became all the more stubborn.

He again told me I was obligated not only as a citizen (which I’m not since the courts have ruled the State has no obligation to protect me, therefore I’m by definition a subject) but as a person living within the United States to provide the requested information. That it was the law. That it’s necessary. That it’s only every 10 years. That it’d only take a few minutes. That it was constitutional. That it was anonymous. It wasn’t some Big Brother thing. It was used by my congressmen to help allocate money for the roads and schools.

He became agitated and started telling me there were consequences for not participating. Said that they could send more bureaucrats to my home at night to try to get me to answer. That they could request me to show up to the New York office to explain why I am refusing to participate. That they could fine me. It seemed Ed wasn’t very familiar with the legal consequences. He said they could fine me thousands of dollars and perhaps worse. I told him I was well versed in the law and that Title 13, Section 221 says that I could be fined upwards of $100 for refusing to participate and $500 for lying. He then admitted he wasn’t aware of the exact punishments and just knew that he could be fined $250,000 for misusing the census data which he collects. That’s actually not true. It’s “not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.” I knew that but I wasn’t interested in arguing with him about that too. I did notice however he was carrying the same hand delivered envelope which I received last weekend so I opened it and showed him where in the letter it said I was obligated and made sure he noticed that I had gotten the title and section correct.

After about 10 minutes Ed seemed to have had enough. I had made it abundantly clear that I was not going to provide him with the data he desired. I wasn’t going to give him my name and was fully aware of the consequences for doing so. He turned to leave and I thanked him making sure I knew my obligations and the consequences and wished him a good night. He didn’t seem to acknowledge my statements and just got into his SUV, put away his laptop, and drove off.

He didn’t leave me with the letter he had for me, didn’t say whether or not he would be coming back, if someone else would be visiting or if I’d be receiving a notice to appear in front of some bureaucrat at the regional office. I’m having fun with this whole situation… I hope they continue harassing me.

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