[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="173" caption="Richard Ulloa, as captured in a Times Herald-Record news story utilizing his Facebook page photo"][/caption]A national movement of anti-government "sovereigns," groups that believe that governments - federal, state and local - are corporations that have no right to enforce laws and feel the 14th Amendment created a new class of citizens that people could voluntarily join the "United States" and purport that current governments try and trick people into signing contracts to join these corporation, turns out to have a major local presence... at least in the tony Ulster County town of Marbletown. According to a front page story in the January 30 Times Herald-Record, Richard Ulloa, a Stone Ridge resident who was convicted of orchestrating an elaborate paperwork harrassment scheme against government officials in December, is "the Ulster County vanguard" of this growing national movement along with his two co-conspirators, Jeffrey Burfeindt and Ed Parenteau. As a result, reporter Adam Bosch writes, authorities are "keeping a watchful eye on a quiet but growing anti-government movement across the United States." Its members are known as sovereign citizens. Or "sovereigns," for short. "They use fake bills and property liens as weapons to terrorize police, lawmakers and banks. They sometimes turn violent, killing cops in Arkansas or plotting to bomb buildings in Oklahoma," the story, adding that the Ulster County trio has several ties to the national sovereign movement, including, most disturbingly, an apparent connection to a man who shot and killed two Arkansas police officers during a traffic stop last year... and signs lining Ullua's driveway warning that trespassers will be shot. Burfeindt, Parenteau and Ulloa have been found guilty of federal mail fraud, but they remain free on bond pending their sentencing dates in court this spring.


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Bosch's story works with the volumes of court documents their federal case has produced to date, and notes how all local political office holders have been alerted of their presence. Ullua, a 51-year-old IBM engineer, is quoted as saying, "We are a peaceful group, I am peaceful and not dangerous, like you guys make me out to be. I would NEVER EVER resort to ANY violence, never have and never will." Federal authorities have been silent about the sovereigns in our region, Bosch adds. but the federal prosecutor Belliss warned that Ulster County's three are "not an isolated incident."
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