Perhaps worrisomely, I don’t actually have this agreement in writing. But then, even if I did, contracts with Leviathan aren’t especially reliable anyway. So I’ll plow ahead and hope for the best.

Thanks again, so much, to everyone who helped me back when this tempête de merde first broke in July.

In other news, I had an email meltdown yesterday on my Auburn account and lost thousands of emails. Our IT department is looking into seeing whether they can recover them.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad ….

This afternoon in the mail I got a tax lien notice (dated July 20th but postmarked yesterday); I don’t think it represents anything especially new, but I called the lawyer. He asked me to bring it by his office tomorrow morning. I asked “any news otherwise?” He said, “not yet.”

I’ve added a new tag for this topic.

In other news, I’ve paid my rent for the month – thanks to the generosity of my readers. More developments as they unfold ….

Once I’ve got my own situation together again I’d like to do what I can to “pay it forward” by contributing in some way to the creation and funding of some sort of libertarian mutual-aid network. Any thoughts or suggestions on how this might work?

In other news, my radio interview from this afternoon with “Little Alex in Wonderland” is now online to play or download. We ended up talking about natural law, racism, children’s rights, anarchism, class conflict theory, and left-libertarianism rather than about agorism specifically. He also has interviews available with Scott Horton (just before me on today’s show) and Gary Chartier (from the previous show), which I haven’t had a chance to listen to yet.

NOW READ THIS LATEST UPDATE.

After endless wrangling on the phone today I was just informed ten minutes ago, to my amazement, that this levy was not from the Alabama Department of Revenue but from a 20-year-old credit card I believed I’d paid off long ago. (I certainly haven’t received any calls or mail from them, let alone notice of a court order.)

This is in direct contradiction of what I was told yesterday and of the printed document they gave me that distinctly says “tax levy.” (I can provide people with a copy of the document if anyone wants to see it; I don’t want anyone thinking that I’ve been raising money under false pretenses.) Apparently Wachovia itself had been under the impression that it was a tax levy, and only when I finally got through to the creditor’s attorney did I find out otherwise.

I realise that many people who donated yesterday or today may have done so solely because they thought my emergency was tax-related. If anyone would like their gifts or loans returned in light of this new information, please let me know and I’ll get your money back to you as soon as I can.

Obviously I still need help just as much, whatever the cause, but I don’t want to exploit specifically libertarian sentiment to get it.

NOW READ THIS SECOND UPDATE.

I’ve never asked for money on my blog before, but I’ve just been hit with a major financial emergency.

Several months ago, the Alabama Department of Revenue decided I’d underpaid on state taxes from ten years earlier. (I wasn’t aware of having done so, but I don’t have those records any more and so can’t prove otherwise.) After they’d added on interest and late fees, the total due was about $12,000. I submitted a request form to pay it off in installments; they never said yes or no to the request form, but I kept sending in payments and they kept cashing them, which led me to be more sanguine than in retrospect I should have been.

Then suddenly today, without warning or announcement (either from the tax department or from my bank), the tax department completely cleared out my checking account, and my savings account, and my mother’s checking account (I guess because we’re joint on it), leaving me $8000 overdrawn to boot.

I found out the money’d been taken only by checking my balance online today – and I had to go to the bank in person to find out it was a tax levy (the online balance had no information about who’d withdrawn the money).

My college salary doesn’t start up again until September, and I have no relatives from whom to borrow, so here I am with no money (or actually, negative $8000) for food, rent, or bills for the rest of the summer.

I haven’t had a chance to contact either the tax department or a lawyer yet (having spent the afternoon waiting and waiting at my bank), but I’m not exactly optimistic about getting a swift and favourable resolution.

Which is why I am desperately requesting help. If you can help, please let me know whether it’s a gift or a loan, and send either via PayPal:

or to my snailmail address:

Roderick T. Long
402 Martin Ave.
Auburn AL 36849