When Will They Ever Learn?
According to the Citizen Times and as also noted in the Daily Beast, a North Carolina man recently found guilty of minting and distributing “Liberty Dollars” was, as stated by U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins, a domestic terrorist. The conviction resulted from an investigation which began in 2005. As reported in the Citizen Times,
“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins said. “While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country.”
We are determined to meet these threats through infiltration, disruption and dismantling of organizations which seek to challenge the legitimacy of our democratic form of government,” Tompkins said.
This obviously deminted demented right-wing domestic terrorist has been “ordered to hand over 16,000 pounds of Liberty Dollars and precious metal valued at $7 million. . . . [and] faces up to 25 years in prison.” Charges remain pending against another terrorist, an Asheville man charged with recruiting merchants in Western North Carolina to accept the vile counterfeit “barter” currency. He faces forty-five years in prison if convicted; his excuse that “one of the first things I did when I started this in Asheville was to go to the police and tell them what I was doing.” Rubbish!
It is reassuring to know that these dangerous swine are being tried and convicted. Still, one must wonder whether such horrors will ever cease and when we can hope to be be truly safe.
Note that it wasn’t a “barter currency”. (For one thing, there’s no such thing as barter currency: barter is exchange of in-kind items; currency is a value-holding medium that stands in for the items themselves. The whole point of currency is that you don’t have to barter.) I presume you mean by that that he was trading them to people for their value in metal, or as collectibles or something. That’s not the case. He was attempting to use them as actual currency, with the explicit intention of undermining the real currency. The coins were designed to fool people into believing they were legal tender, and had design elements of actual us coins on them, including the marks “US” and the dollar sign. The explicit purpose of his plan was to destroy the US currency system, presumably so we could go back to the gold standard, or wampum, or whatever other weird fantasy is current on the right wing this week.
I don’t understand what your objection is. He told the police what he was doing? Yes, and they realized it was a federal crime, and told the FBI, and the FBI investigated, and then arrested his seditious ass and prosecuted him. The fact that he didn’t see that coming is somehow a point in his favor? What else – you don’t think it’s a very serious crime? Well, it wasn’t very likely to succeed (I think it’s been established that this guy appears to be kind of dumb), but are you suggesting that is also a defense? Note that destroying a country’s economy by injecting counterfeit money is a well-known tactic (the Nazis tried it in WWII against both England and the US); the fact that he didn’t have the means to really pull it off doesn’t mean it isn’t a serious crime.
A photo of one of the coins appears at Comment # 19 here. The coin is identified on its face as a “Liberty Dollar” and it also has the inscriptions “Notice: Not intended to be used as legal tender – or coin” and “888.Lib.Dollar – LibertyDollar.org.”
Alas, some might still be deceived.
The disclaimer on the coin helps. It’s not clear whether all their coins had it. Their Web site has been taken down, but Wikipedia has an entry that shows pictures of other NORFED coins that do not have that legend on the faces shown; a Google Images turns up a lot of other images that appear to be their coins and do not have such a disclaimer. (Of course, the fact that many of them also bear the image of currency crank Ron Paul ought to be a clue, but maybe not . . . .) One of their standard designs is a very nice rendering of the head of the Statue of Liberty with the words “Trust in God”, and on the obverse the Liberty torch, the words “Liberty Dollar” and “Twenty Dollars”; it looks easily mistakable for real US coinage and does not appear to have a disclaimer.
You’re right that to the extent the coins are clearly identified as NOT legal tender, that undercuts the charge they were being circulated as such. It appears to me that at least some of their coins are not so identified, and are deliberately designed to confuse the user. Also, it appears that the people charged were not simply marketing them as collectibles or raw gold, like Krugerrands or something (note that the US Mint does actually produce bullion coins for those who want them; they are legal tender, but trade at their value in gold – so even if you are a gold crank, there’s still no reason to make your own); they were reportedly encouraging people to use them as currency in preference to US legal tender, which is the point at which they cross the line.
I don’t know what the jury heard or why they voted to convict. But just note that it’s perfectly easy to make and sell gold coins without going to jail – many companies do so (and Glenn Beck makes millions shilling for them). These people went to extra efforts not just to sell commemorative coins, but to challenge the stability of the national currency. And, yes, the federal government took notice of that. Most nations will, you know.
I’m missing a few points here.
1. Gold and Silver are defined as “money” in this country.
2. How much silver was in a “Liberty Dollar” and what was the price of said “dollar”? Our current Federal Reserve Notes are backed by nothing at all unless you consider the “full faith and credit” of the United States to have any value whatsoever.
3. Does anyone think that these Liberty Dollars (coins)could be mistaken for US currency? I’m not trying to be humorous here, but the design of US paper currency changes so frequently that one wonders which is valid currency and which is not.
According to the photo noted in my reply to Comment #1 above, each contains two-fifths ounce .999 fine silver.
Haven’t some terrorist fast food chains in the United States offered play money in their promotions? If so, we can all hope that they will be prosecuted promptly, fully and fairly.
They had a variety of different coins in different base metals, including gold, silver, and apparently others.
And as noted previously, there’s a difference between play money and counterfeit money: the difference is you don’t try to convince people it’s real.
There are lots of forms of alternative non-legal-tender currencies (some municipalities have even issued them, to encourage people to trade with local merchants); there are lots of collectible coins (some even issued by governments, including the US government). None of this is illegal. What is illegal is making currency that people can or will confuse with the real thing, deceiving them into thinking it is the real thing, or encouraging them to use it to devalue the real thing.
It would have been very easy for these people to make and sell gold coins legally if that was all they wanted to do. But that wasn’t the purpose of their coins. They explicitly promoted a theory that the US currency system was “unconstitutional” and circulated coins designed to, and with the explicit intention to, undermine the existing currency. They went out of their way to do this. A jury believed they had done it.
I find it really hard to imagine that same jury would have believed the same things about Monopoly money or McDonald’s giveaways. There’s a difference between that and trying to destabilize the national currency – one that really doesn’t seem that hard to comprehend.
Even assuming arguendo that every factual and legal argument made is entirely correct and that crimes were therefore committed, doesn’t this statement by the U.S. attorney give some pause?
I seem to recall that there has been great reluctance on the part of the federal government to apply the label “terrorism” to obviously “insidious” instances of what would traditionally be so regarded. They have sometimes been referred to as mere criminal offenses. Use of “terrorism” in the present context dilutes the word into abject meaninglessness. How might it next be used?
It’s obvious the DoJ is trying to ramp up “domestic terrorism” statistics so that when real Islamic terrorism occurs, they can claim it is only a small percentage of the terrorism in the US
Why would anyone go to the expense of counterfeiting coins when those who print paper money are now and have always been very successful? With so much fake paper money discovered each year, wouldn’t that be more of a threat? Those people who are caught printing such aren’t considered ‘terrorists’, but common criminals… Is this a joke?
News reports last week stated that Utah is voting on a bill to coin currency and accept it as legal tender….Will the federal government declare Utah a terrorist state?
Re: counterfeiting: Traditional counterfeiting is not intended to undermine the currency system (in fact, it depends on that system remaining sound to make its fake money worth something). This crime was intended to either overtake the US currency system, or sow confusion and distrust about it. Both are serious crimes, but one is aimed at fundamentally destabilizing the economy, which is much worse than simply diluting its money supply. The NORFED people got charged with a crime that reflects what they were attempting to accomplish; that hardly seems unreasonable.
Re: Utah: They won’t be declared terrorists, but they will be shut down right quick. Section 10 of the Constitution explicitly states that “No State shall . . . coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts . . .” (or exercise many other privileges of sovereign states, such as declaring war). In other words, states can’t have their own monetary systems. Note that the references to “coin” do not prohibit the federal government from issuing paper dollars; they prevent the states from creating a separate currency. (This was before the establishment of the national mint or the federal reserve banks; thus base metal coins from private mints were interchangeable in a way that bank notes were not.) The various clauses together prohibit the states from issuing any legal tender instrument of their own.
This is just another one of those “nullification” things the red states keep cooking up: passing flagrantly unconstitutional laws asserting privileges of sovereignty, when they’re not busy sucking down tax dollars as net welfare recipients from taxes paid by the blue states, in order to support their self-sufficient, sovereign independence. It has no effect, but it seems to make them feel good, and it garners votes for local pols from yokels who don’t care or don’t notice that they’re being pandered to.
“It is reassuring to know that these dangerous swine are being tried and convicted.”
Yeah, I toss and turn all night long worrying about guys who would rather use their own homemade money than trust the fiat money issued by the feds.
“News reports last week stated that Utah is voting on a bill to coin currency…”
Forbidden by Article One, Section Ten of the United States Constitution, so I think that’s rather unlikely.
“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit…”
It really is terrorism to introduce a currency worth more than a few square inches of cotton rag cloth.
Especially because it actually has vale. That there is a very terroristic thought toa government accustomed to paying you in debased coinage.
A copper penny? 3, 4 cents easy. A nickel nickel? At least seven cents.
The chinese knew the empire waas going down when the government debased the currency – took the metal out of the coins. Nixon took the gold standard away.
Ever seen a silver certificate? Used to be, all our printed currency was a silver certificate, redeemable in silver at the treasury.
Try that today.
Yea, a real comedy. And this guy is a terrorist. I know where the real terrorists are, and it aint NC.
One letter wrong.
vale – well, try value. one letter missing and it all goes to hel.
The NORFED group made one mistake: It put an amount in dollars, the recgnized unit of U.S. currency, on its coins. That’s what opened them to prosecution. Two things will now occur:
1. The NORFED coins will become collectables;
2. Persons interested in using the precious metals as an alternate medium of exchange will be very careful to make use only of silver and copper rounds that do NOT have an amount in dollars stamped on them.
By the way, by my count there are now twenty-four independent producers of such silver and copper rounds. The market in them has been brisk. I can heartily recommend acquiring some, even if you think the fiat currency of the United States can be trusted to hold its value. As the late-night commercials once said, “Makes a fine Christmas gift!”
There is valid U.S. legal silver currency available in different denominations, but a 90% silver dime ($0.10 face value) sells for about $3.00 these days.
Re: counterfeiting: Traditional counterfeiting is not intended to undermine the currency system (in fact, it depends on that system remaining sound to make its fake money worth something). This crime was intended to either overtake the US currency system, or sow confusion and distrust about it. Both are serious crimes, but one is aimed at fundamentally destabilizing the economy, which is much worse than simply diluting its money supply. The NORFED people got charged with a crime that reflects what they were attempting to accomplish; that hardly seems unreasonable.
Re: Utah: They won’t be declared terrorists, but they will be shut down right quick. Section 10 of the Constitution explicitly states that “No State shall . . . coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts . . .” (or exercise many other privileges of sovereign states, such as declaring war). In other words, states can’t have their own monetary systems. Note that the references to “coin” do not prohibit the federal government from issuing paper dollars; they prevent the states from creating a separate currency. (This was before the establishment of the national mint or the federal reserve banks; thus base metal coins from private mints were interchangeable in a way that bank notes were not.) The various clauses together prohibit the states from issuing any legal tender instrument of their own.
This is just another one of those “nullification” things the red states keep cooking up: passing flagrantly unconstitutional laws asserting privileges of sovereignty, when they’re not busy sucking down tax dollars as net welfare recipients from taxes paid by the blue states, in order to support their self-sufficient, sovereign independence. It has no effect, but it seems to make them feel good, and it garners votes for local pols from yokels who don’t care or don’t notice that they’re being pandered to.
hmm, let me get this straight..the Red states are sucking money from Blue states pandering to unions and entitlement derelicts AND engaging in unconstitutional behavior, Mass giving auntie Zatuni a free ride on MY tax dollars. Remember AZ? She who was, and still is, illegally in this country, and received welfare, housing, and all the freebies available.
Might I suggest that you actually research all pertinent facts before spouting off. As to “pandering” The progressives and Liberals” are masters of “pandering to the lowest of the low