Today in Libertarian Tax Crackpotery

Hmm, maybe the Mets’s bad luck with injuries this year is karmic payback from one of the stars of the 1969 world champions using these kinds of arguments to justify not filing tax returns for several years:

Koosman, 66, of Osceola, told IRS agents in 2006 that he had researched
federal tax laws and concluded they applied only to federal employees, corporate
workers and District of Columbia residents. During a May hearing, he told Crabb
he was naive and fell in with the anti-tax movement.

I’m sure this research was extensive and highly disinterested. [Via]

…Commenters have refuted my theory, noting the world-class crazy excuse making of two members of the &*%$^ ’93 Phillies that were able to hang on against the Expos — I’m not sure Dykstra, who won his only ring with the Mets, counts, but how about Darren Daulton, ladies and gentlemen:

In 2004, Daulton did a two-month stretch in Pinellas County Jail. He’d been found in contempt of court, stemming from a failure to comply with a court order issued in his and Nicole’s divorce battle. He was sprung after agreeing to serve out the remainder of his six-month sentence in a drug-and-alcohol rehab program.

“I’ve been thrown in jail five or six times,” Daulton says from his home in Tampa. “Nicole thinks I’m crazy. She blames everything on drugs and drinking. But I don’t take drugs and I’m not a drunk. Nicole just doesn’t understand metaphysics.”

[…]

Daulton isn’t. When he says he’s attuned to Higher Powers, he’s not channeling Bud Selig. “There is no good or bad,” he says, explicating the Dutch Theory of Being. “We’re all the same, but we’re all different. The higher we ascend, the more the same we are.”

[…]

Home alone in Tampa, Daulton spends much of his spare time typing up his mystical musings. The notes read like they were dictated by the True Believers who hitched a ride with Comet Hale-Bopp. “Reality is created and guarded by numeric patterns that overlap and awaken human consciousness, like a giant matrix or hologram,” writes the .245 lifetime hitter. “They are created by sacred geometry — numbers, the language of the universe, codes of awakening — such as 11:11, which represent twin strands of DNA about to return to balance. Eleven equals BALANCE.”

During the Dutch Enlightenment, No. 11 has been as significant as it was in Spinal Tap. “I’ll wake up at night and look at the clock and it’s 11:11,” he says. “I’ll turn on the TV and see a baseball game tied at 11 in the 11th inning. I’ll look out the window and see a car passing with 1111 on the license plate. The car will turn into a driveway with 1111 on the mailbox.”

Deep, man.