You Can’t Fight City Hall

His name was Les Morgan. He was a prominent tax attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. Les specialized in cases where people had gotten into hot water with the IRS, the FBI, or worse still, the gang in Tallahassee representing the great state of Florida. If any of those organizations got a bee in their bonnet to look your way, you needed Les’ help. Pronto. The alphabet soup guys have unlimited time and unlimited resources. Les’ clients didn’t. Les became famous for figuring out the most efficient way to fight the revenuers in tax court and get his clients off with a minimum of money hemorrhaging or worse – incarceration. Les was married to the law. He never became serious with a woman. He often quipped it wouldn’t be fair to the girl.

Les had two brothers, Beau Morgan and Bret Morgan. His siblings were active outdoorsmen, unlike Les, who spent most of his time indoors and sedentary. Bret Morgan ran a real estate business on the Yucatan Peninsula near Belize. He spent much of his time hiking through the jungle, looking for places to build resorts and villas. He became wealthy, taking advantage of Belize’ impeccable climate.

Les’ brother Beau Morgan ran a sunset cruise sloop named “Loretta M” out of Fort Myers with his wife, whose name was, you guessed it, Loretta. The sloop was beautiful, the Gulf of Mexico was beautiful, and most nights, the sunsets were beautiful. The “Loretta M” was usually booked for sunset cruises weeks in advance. Les always planned to retire one day and join Beau and Loretta in the sunset cruise business.

All that went out the window when Les met Sharon Sullivan. She came to Les for help. She was being prosecuted by both the IRS and the State of Florida. Why? She refused to file a federal income tax return or pay Florida's property taxes. Her argument against the federal income tax was so simple it was elegant. Prior to prohibition, there was no federal income tax in this country, at least not during peacetime. The country depended upon taxing alcohol and excise taxes on imports to keep it running, and everyone was happy. When the eighteenth amendment was enacted, the alcohol tax ended. People were drinking more than ever, but it was all illegal and, thus, tax-free. The only people who benefitted from the Volstead Act were members of organized crime. They had the common sense to give the people what they wanted.

The federal income tax was created to replace the revenue lost by prohibition. When prohibition was repealed in 1933, why wasn’t the federal income tax also repealed? Sharon eloquently argued that the country simply got used to having an unlimited supply of money to spend on things the government had no business sticking its nose in.

As for Florida’s property taxes, the straw that broke Sharon’s back was the new multi-billion-dollar stadium proposed for the Jacksonville Jaguars. “Why are we spending billions on a new stadium for the worst team in the NFL?” Sharon argued. “Besides being awful, they play over twenty percent of their games in Europe. It makes no sense to pour a huge amount of the public's money down the drain for a bunch of losers whose owner will relocate them across the pond the first chance he gets.”

Of course, the Jags' owner denied he had any intention of moving the team, but he was spending a lot of time schmoozing folks in London, and it was well-known that one of his favorite places to watch a football game was Wembley Stadium.

So, despite Les’ pleadings for a reasonable compromise, Sharon refused to pay a dime or even file a return. Thanks to the internet and social media, she had built up quite a following of people who felt the same way but didn't have the guts to go all in the way she had. Sharon was a media phenomenon. She became the highest-paid and most sought-after speaker at colleges and political rallies around the country.

Les had arranged to keep Sharon out on bail until the trial started in tax court in a few weeks. The bail was outrageously high, given that Sharon had a bad habit of pissing off and disrespecting judges, but she had plenty of contributions from her followers to pay for it.

There are three other things you should be aware of at this point. First, Sharon was beautiful. Les often suspected that her beauty attracted her fans to read about her in the first place, and once they started, they became hooked. Second, the government was afraid of Sharon. They couldn’t control her, and if they can’t control someone who goes against their grain, the alternative is to have them taken out. Les feared for Sharon’s life. Finally, Les had fallen in love with Sharon. He didn’t agree with her position on several things, but he loved and respected her deeply. She felt the same way about him. There was electricity between them. Everyone in proximity could feel it.

So, when Sharon came up with the brainstorm to go off the grid, Les was willing to listen. Money was no object. They had plenty of that. They thought about the successful years the Unabomber had spent hiding out in Montana. They both thought that if Kaczynski had kept his mouth shut, he may never have been caught. But he couldn't. Sharon couldn't either. In that respect, they were cut from the same cloth.

They decided Montana was too cold. Canada was worse. Mexico was okay from a climate standpoint, but the corruption there was so bad once the US government put out a reward for their capture, they would be dog food.

They almost decided Costa Rica was the way to go, but too many US folks had recently retired there. It was too dangerous. Sooner or later, they’d be recognized. However, Central America had many nooks and crannies. After many nights of research, and, considering Les' family connections, they decided Belize was the way to go.

So, one morning, Les and Sharon donned disguises and headed for Fort Myers, and the sloop, "Loretta M." Beau and Loretta were waiting for them. They set sail and headed across the Gulf of Mexico toward the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize City, where Bret Morgan, Les' other brother, was waiting for them. Bret had used his influence as a successful real-estate developer to procure a cabin in the jungle for Les and Sharon.

At first, their life in the jungle was idyllic. They were in love. A natural pond was alongside the cabin, and they would swim naked every morning. Fruit grew wild and plentiful, mangos in particular.

The first chink in the armor occurred when, after much debate, Sharon convinced Bret to procure a laptop for her. Les argued that it was a mistake, but like Ted Kaczynski years earlier, Sharon wanted to publish her manifesto. Like I said, Ted K and Sharon were cut from the same cloth.

Sharon published her manifesto on social media in sections, releasing a new chapter once a week. But Les’ greatest fears were realized when he and Sharon fell prey to Lao Tzu’s warning: “There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.”

Les knew the government's pockets were deep, but he didn't fully grasp that they were bottomless. Their money, time, manpower, and desire to bring someone like Sharon down in the worst way possible were unlimited. The government tracked them down through triangularization plus platoons of private detectives and US Marshalls.

The headline buried on the back pages of the internet news read, "Anti-Tax activist Sharon Sullivan found dead with her attorney and lover Les Morgan in the jungles of Central America. Double suicide suspected." There was no mention of it on the nightly news, local or national. It was as if they never existed. Of course, we knew it was all bullshit.

You can fight city hall, but you can’t win.