"United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts" (31 U.S.C. § 5103).
The Liberty Dollar is not legal tender and its creators have never claimed that it was. Black's Law Dictionary defines legal tender as "the money (bills and coins) approved in a country for the payment of debts, the purchase of goods, and other exchanges for value." What that means is you cannot pay your taxes with Liberty Dollars and no one is required to accept Liberty Dollars as a payment of debt.
However, there is nothing in the U.S. Code or the Constitution that prohibits citizens from bartering. For example, if I offer you a toaster in exchange for a coffee maker, and you agree, the government cannot prevent the transaction from taking place.
In essence, that is how the Liberty Dollar works. If I offer you 20 Liberty Dollars (i.e., $20 worth of precious metal) in exchange for the same coffee maker, and you agree, the government cannot (or at least should not) interfere. We are simply making what each of us believes is a fair trade.
The federal raid on the Liberty Dollar headquarters in Evansville, Indiana, is an assault on liberty. First of all, it is the latest example of how the government cracks down on perceived competition. Secondly, it shows just how fragile the U.S. fiat currency really is. The last thing the private bankers in charge of the nation's money supply want is for people to realize that the "legal tender" they are supposed to be using is completely worthless. Finally, if the U.S. dollar is undermined, there will no longer be an endless stream of it to finance the welfare-warfare state.
So, you can see why the feds are taking this "threat" seriously.
The Liberty Dollar is not legal tender and its creators have never claimed that it was. Black's Law Dictionary defines legal tender as "the money (bills and coins) approved in a country for the payment of debts, the purchase of goods, and other exchanges for value." What that means is you cannot pay your taxes with Liberty Dollars and no one is required to accept Liberty Dollars as a payment of debt.
However, there is nothing in the U.S. Code or the Constitution that prohibits citizens from bartering. For example, if I offer you a toaster in exchange for a coffee maker, and you agree, the government cannot prevent the transaction from taking place.
In essence, that is how the Liberty Dollar works. If I offer you 20 Liberty Dollars (i.e., $20 worth of precious metal) in exchange for the same coffee maker, and you agree, the government cannot (or at least should not) interfere. We are simply making what each of us believes is a fair trade.
The federal raid on the Liberty Dollar headquarters in Evansville, Indiana, is an assault on liberty. First of all, it is the latest example of how the government cracks down on perceived competition. Secondly, it shows just how fragile the U.S. fiat currency really is. The last thing the private bankers in charge of the nation's money supply want is for people to realize that the "legal tender" they are supposed to be using is completely worthless. Finally, if the U.S. dollar is undermined, there will no longer be an endless stream of it to finance the welfare-warfare state.
So, you can see why the feds are taking this "threat" seriously.
Labels: Economics, Free Market, Government Corruption, Liberty
4 Comments:
I just dugg this story. Thanks for pointing out the real "legal tender" issue here!
http://digg.com/business_finance/Anti_Liberty_Liberty_Dollar_Raid_Liberty_Dollar_vs_US_Legal_Tender
I digg the story too. Thanks for the editorial!
Other good info about USC Title 18 here:
http://www.moneynetnews.com/articles/36/1/Liberty-Dollar-says-No---Part-II/Liberty-Dollar-Says-No---Part-II.html
"The Mint press release is carefully worded to connect separate concepts as if they were related. It implies that making private money is illegal because the United States Federal Government has an "exclusive" power to coin money, citing Article I, section 8, clause 5 of the Constitution. But the word "exclusive" does not appear in the Constitution as quoted. The Constitution is, by its very nature, a set of enumerated powers and restrictions on governments, not on people. The *states* are restricted from coining money. The *people* are not, and in fact numismatists are aware that the United States has a rich and well-documented history of private mints producing private circulating currency which, while not "legal tender", was "lawful money". Americans create new forms of private money all the time, from casino tokens to debit cards to PayPal to GoldMoney. The Treasury Department appears to have suddenly targeted certain private money, and we suspect it expand its scope soon enough.
Potentially most disturbing of all, 18 USC 486 was actually passed to keep people from passing counterfeit replica coinage that was not backed by actual bullion. It is now being used to do the exact opposite - to ban using money that has real value.
Bill Murphy posts over at La Metropole Cafe that he performed an extensive analysis of 18 USC 486's legislative and legal history. The historical record showed it was firmly intended for use as a counterfeiting law, not to ban private currency. The courts have ruled on this specific issue and found that 18 USC 486 does not reach private currencies. The reasons are straightforward: to counterfeit something is to make a passable copy of it for purposes of deception. The standard for counterfeiting has always been that an ordinary person in ordinary commerce would likely confuse the item with a specific other item. If you color photocopy a $20 bill, you are counterfeiting. If you substitute Mickey Mouse for the President, color it orange, and call it a Disney Dollar, you are not counterfeiting. Disney has not committed a crime by making their own money, even though its overall look may be similar to that of the FRN and it may use similar symbols. No ordinary person would confuse a Disney Dollar with a Federal Reserve Note. For the same reason, you cannot counterfeit a $3 bill. It is well known that there is no such bill. You could make one, and you might even convince someone that it was a FRN, and that would be fraud, but the bill itself could not be counterfeit.
18 USC 486 was a Reconstruction-era law intended to police counterfeiting. At the end of the Civil War, the United States re-backed its currency with bullion. During the war, private businesses had issued "store tokens" to deal with the dearth of specie. Some were legitimate, but others looked very like cents and were easily confused. But a collection of cents was redeemable in bullion; a collection of tokens was not. Congress acted to insure individuals could not issue private coinage that would deceive an ordinary observer into thinking it was U.S. coin, but was not actually redeemable in bullion. That law was later re-codified as 18 USC 486.
One hundred and twenty years later, the Treasury Department has acted to stand 18 USC 486 on its head, using it to ban the use of coinage that *is* bullion and does not closely resemble circulating coin, in place of coinage that has no real value. Black has become white; white has become black - or so Treasury would have us believe.
So it seems quite clear: The US Mint has screwed up. They are misapplying law intended to prosecute those counterfeiting the Federal Reserves fiat scrip scrap and the Mint's debased debauchery. They aren't going to get away with it, and the public sees through this Wizard of Oz routine, as demonstrated by the vast increase in interest in Liberty Dollars. "
and also look into this: http://www.nocriminalcode.us/
Live Free and Prosper!
Does the U.S. Govt. Owe YOU Money?
Hearing about the raid on the national fulfillment office of the Liberty Dollar didn't put me in the fit of pink, but I learned to get over it by donating all of my interest in my unfulfilled orders (that were either curtailed or confiscated by the government on Nov. 14). And to encourage greater participation among bystanders, I've further divided my give-away down to as little as one penny provided that these tiny demands for refund be donated to the Liberty Dollar, Legal Defense Fund to help eliminate the logistical nightmare of the Liberty Dollar staff trying to disperse a mere penny to gazillions of people from the proceeds gained whenever the class action lawsuit is completed. But any demand for a refund greater than, or equal to a dollar, could go to the bystander. Since I can contract-out my property to anyone I choose, and further subdivide my give-away down to ridiculously small fractions, my feeble loss (as great as it may seem to me) can be magnified to potentially include lots of participation from anyone who isn't already involved, but who might now consider the possibility that more than just my rights have been violated, but their's as well.
For more details about becoming involved, go to:
www.I-Rob-You.info
Vinyasi, Liberty Associate of the San Fernando Valley....
I've been a supporter of the Liberty Dollar and lost a fair bit when the FBI stole, without justification or conviction, my property as part of the raid. This puts my successful online store- http://LibertyDollarUSA.com in a position where I can no longer get new supply. So, we're having a "going out of business sale." We're the only online store selling Libertys these days, and our prices are much lower than the current ebay prices.
If you support the Liberty Dollar and wish you had gotten more of them, nows your chance...until we run out.
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