FBI, Secret Service Seize Thousands of Coins in Raid
Two Tons of Ron Paul Dollars Seized
How did a long-simmering philosophical and legal difference of opinion between a private coin organization and the United States Government spill over into the 2008 presidential elections?
THE HEADLINES FROM EARLIER TODAY:
FBI Raid Seizes 2 Tons of Ron Paul Dollars and the UPDATES
The joint FBI/Secret Service raid on Evansville, IN-based Liberty Dollars today caused a stir in the blogosphere today. The disturbance had to do with the fact that among the items seized by the Agents were nearly 2 tons of Ron Paul dollars.
The mere mention of Ron Paul fires most people up into a Ohio State-Michigan football-like frenzy. This news likely will cause two bitter rival cults, the Pro- and anti-Paul commentators to furious action.
A number of views have already been presented at DBKP about this story and it’s connection to the Ron Paul presidential campaign. Some are for and some are against; trying to weave them into a single tapestry makes one dizzy.
It seems sensible to look at them in order. So, we’ll examine the background first, try to maintain an even balance and let the readers make up their own minds.
This is largely the tale of the fight between Liberty Dollar and the U.S. Government. As some of us feel that the Paul campaign’s involvement was incidental at most, we’ll leave that for a later article.
WHY WAS LIBERTY DOLLAR RAIDED?
Liberty Dollar has been involved in an ongoing struggle with various divisions of the federal government for awhile now. The source of their dispute is whether Liberty Dollar (once named NORFED–National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code) is creating its own currency system to compete with the government.
The man who signed the letters that went out from Liberty today was Bernard von NotHaus. Keep his name in mind.
From NORFED’s Historical site:
Please be aware that this is the historic site for NORFED, that distributed the Liberty Dollar (1998 to 2006). Since its founding by Bernard von NotHaus, the Liberty Dollar has consistently gathered momentum by becoming more main stream.
Liberty, naturally denies it; the emphasis there seems to be on using the coins as a sort of “value preservative.” That is, the coins would ensure that the holder had something of value in case of a collapse of the federally-backed paper money.
They also argue that the coins can be exchanged for goods at certain merchants who willingly take them to support the idea of another way of having something of value in case of a crash.
There is a lot of stock market, money system collapse talk among the fanciers of coins. Liberty talks this point up.
From NORFED’s web page:
Andrew Williams, a spokesman for the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.:
“There is no law that says goods and services must be paid for with Federal Reserve notes. Parties entering into a transaction can establish any medium of exchange that is agreed upon.”
Paul Harvey, well-known and respected news commentator, reported:
What’s new? The Liberty Dollar! Fed Ex competes with the Post Office. So now there’s the Liberty Dollar competing with the greenbacks printed by your government. The Liberty Dollar is backed by gold and silver. Yes, there’s a competitive currency right here in the United States. In five years it has become the second most popular currency in America.
How does Ron Paul figure into all this?
Read rest of story:
Ron Paul Dollars: FBI, Secret Service Raid Liberty Dollar–An Old FoeÂ
Sources:
Ron Paul Dollars: FBI, Secret Service Raid Liberty Dollar–An Old Foe
FBI Raid Seizes 2 Tons of Ron Paul Dollars
Mondoreb blogs at Death By 1000 Papercuts. Interested readers can e-mail him at
mondoreb@gmail.com.
18 users commented in " Ron Paul Dollars: FBI Raid Latest Salvo Fired at Liberty Dollar "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackSomeone should tell Paul Harvey that greenbacks are not printed by our government. They are printed by the “Federal Reserve”, which is not federal at all. It’s a private central banking system! That’s the problem with so many people in this country. They aren’t even aware the federal reserve greenbacks are nothing but IOUs to a private banking system.
Chip, well said! This is typically government tyranny. Now we cannot satisfy personal debts by whatever means we desire. You know why uncle scam is mad? If I ran a business and satisfied a purchase with a liberty dollar, why, how would they tax that?
The government is willing to seize all of your assets and send you to jail for your life, simply because you do not use a piece of paper with their names on it to satisfy debt. I guess we’re closer to communism than I thought.
Sorry folks but when you produce an ‘alternative currency’ to
the Legal Tender used for Trade and Commerce you risk imprisonment
and charges of counterfeiting the Currency of the United States.
If these coins were produced as collector’s pieces instead of
an alternative to Legan US Tendered Currency this never would have
happened. They might have well been printing fake $100 bills – dumb!
This could be great publicity for the Paul campaign. If this gets in the mainstream media, Paul may be called up for interviews to explain his support for competing currencies and making gold legal tender.
Kevin, nonsense. Mexican money is used in some quarters in the U.S., which is an alternative currency. There is nothing illegal about alternative currencies. I doubt that that’s what the raid was about, but was probably something to do with alleged money laundering or something.
This looks like the handiwork of prosecutor Mike Nifong. Oh, I forgot he disbarred and in jail.
Let this be a warning, first egold/1mdc and now this? Get your money out of U.S. based dgc’s now. The weaker the dollar gets, the more desperate these thugs will be. They’re going after everything, I recommend Pecunix or Liberty Reserve as safe alternatives, they are entirely offshore.
https://www.autocambist.com/e-gold_update.aspx
This kind of irks me, are they going to raid your local arcade next? maybe a casino? Are they going to come to my house and take my silver dollars or my gold bullion? You can buy silver dollars at market value, the thing is they are not legal tender and neither are those coins with Ron Paul on them so i dont see the big deal. They either did something wrong or the FBI is corrupt and the fed is starting to get nerves? Could be both?
Hahaha…”counterfeit?”
What do you think the money the Federal Reserve prints is, if not counterfeit? What backs it up? Nothing but faith, hope and love. As long as those hold out, the dollar will be doing great…
I’ll be kicking myself every day for not buying some Ron Paul dollars. Dang.
Hint: Watch America: Freedom to Fascism, which you can watch online if you Google it. Fascinating and highly recommended.
This is tyranny, pure and simple. What most fail to realize is that the Fiat money so many get so excited about is worth nothing. For those who have poo-pooed Liberty Dollars-Use your melon for something more than a hat rack!!
One is dirty paper, one is a minted coin. Which is worth more?
As the federal reserve note loses value, which it is doing faster than ever, it costs more of them for the same amount of silver. If you have silver money, it just becomes worth more fed notes too. People and businesses who have used LDs for some time now have seen their money double in comparison to Fed notes. This is why so many people were buying them.
The banksters are getting desperate and scared that the people have figured out their ponzi scheme and are doing whatever they can to get the cat back in the bag.
Call all the judges and agents involved and demand they return what they seized. Your freedom depends on it!!!
The LD is a private barter currency which can be used between two people who both agree to accept it at the time of the transaction. Barter transactions have a tax basis and are recorded like any other income. There are hundreds of private barter currencies in use today all over the US, there is not a thing illegal about it.
Its a shame this has happened and I’m sure will cause a lot of headaches for people in the years to come. Private currency is NOT illegal if the parties both agree.
Mark Herpel
DigitalMoneyWorld
Where can I buy Ron Paul dollars??? Now I REALLY want to buy them, if nothing more as my small act of civil disobedience. What a great souvenir too.
If there was no corruption at LD then that means the FEDS are getting very nervous about the fact that there is a competitive currency. I’m fairly positive that LD will be able to put a shining on the secret service and the feds when their day comes in court. What would be nice is a counter suite against the feds and US government. Something that would hit the airwaves and expose them all in Washington for what they are. Anything we can do to go back to a gold backed currency I’m in favor of. 2008 election will be very interesting.
My name is Brad Linzy and I am an Assistant Organizer for the Evansville, Indiana Ron Paul Meetup Group. As many of you already know, the Liberty Dollar of Evansville, a company that mints its own specie (precious metal-backed currency), including a Ron Paul and Peace Dollar, was recently raided by the FBI and Secret Service.
I went over to Liberty Dollar’s national fulfillment office here in Evansville yesterday evening and had the occasion to be interviewed on 2 different news channels locally, one of which, Fox 7, was surprisingly courteous and fair in its reporting. The other, NBC 14, was predictably lax and even slanderous.
Below I will provide links to the videos and one can certainly see the difference. The reporter for Fox told me he had heard of Ron Paul already and had actualy done a little homework on him in preparation for this story and he was really sympathetic to the cause, agreeing with what we had to say about this raid being potentially unconstitutional (if no charges were filed and no arrests made) and he was especially interested in hearing about the Federal Reserve and the Ron Paul connection with all this. As you can see in the Fox video, Ron Paul features prominantly.
By contrast, the NBC coverage is amateur on the level of a high school journalism class. The reporter went in with a clear agenda. Even when he was interviewing me I could tell he wasn’t really listening to what I had to say. Then the story aired and my suspicions were justified when he twisted facts and said that the man who had lost his $5000 was suing the Liberty Dollar when, in fact, he had joined a class action suit against the Federal Government! This was, in my opinion, a BLATANT lie to make tis story fit his neat little script. The icing on the cake is when the anchorman calls real silver “funny money”!
I think I will be paying that station a visit tomorrow and asking for a clarification in their next broadcast. We are desperately trying to get the Ron Paul word out here in Evansville, Indiana and we need to be nice as possible to our local media, but this is really a slap in the face on the part of NBC, I think, to basically mock the whole issue that way.
Fox 7, on the other hand, perhaps even ironically, is getting a long email of praise from me. Their report was just what we needed for our local meetup group to go nuclear!
Fox 7 @ 6:00 Coverage:
http://www.youtube.com/v/qmNIdbl8cyk&rel=1
Fox 7 @ 9:00 Coverage: (Best coverage)
http://www.youtube.com/v/4_sSipUrBG0&rel=1
NBC 14 @ 10:00 Coverage:
http://www.youtube.com/v/lg8P9dNXTEg&rel=1
Chip Augello states: “Someone should tell Paul Harvey that greenbacks are not printed by our government. They are printed by the “Federal Reserve”, which is not federal at all. It’s a private central banking system! …”
In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created and granted a government-enforced monopoly on bank note issue by the federal government. In 1933, the use of gold as money by private citizens was outlawed by the federal government, forcing everyone to use Federal Reserve bank notes as money (since no one was allowed to issue competing bank notes). To claim that the Fed is a “private” central banking system is either profoundly naive, or deliberately misleading.
Kevin, they aren’t counterfeit. The government has said it themselves!
Claudia Dickens, spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said American Liberty Currency(the original name for the Liberty Currency) is legitimate.
“There’s nothing illegal about this,”
Dickens said after the Treasury Department’s legal team reviewed the currency.
“As long as it doesn’t say legal tender there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s not counterfeit money,”
concurs Ron Legan, Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle, Wash., Secret Service field office. Having investigated this regulatory matter closely, he concludes that the silver certificates are well within the highly restrictive boundaries of American monetary guidelines.
“We determined there wasn’t a federal currency violation,”
he explains. Although Legan concedes to being “skeptical” of NORFED, he admits there have been no “defrauds” or “complaints” filed against the political organization. Despite giving the newly coined cash a clean bill of health at the Treasury level, Legan believes ALC may possibly fall within the purview of another federal regulatory agency, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Still, the existence of any possible parallel investigation remains unclear at this time.
Art Rolnick, director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis says:
“These (NORFED) guys are right when they say there is nothing in the Constitution explicitly allowing a national bank. But the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate money and the value thereof, and courts have upheld Congress’ implied powers.”
“If these (NORFED) people want to issue their own money, so be it. It will be interesting to see what the public thinks,” Rolnick said.
So be it!
Not counterfeit.
Nothing illegal.
Since the Feds have declared war on the Ron Paul dollar, maybe Ron Paul supporters should declare war on the U.S. dollar. Wouldn’t it be great if every Ron Paul supporter desecrated the U.S. currency by writing “www.ronpaul2009.com” on Federal Reserve notes? What a wonderfully subversive way to get Ron Paul’s message into the hands of the masses and express our contempt at the government’s money.
“In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created and granted a government-enforced monopoly on bank note issue by the federal government. In 1933, the use of gold as money by private citizens was outlawed by the federal government, forcing everyone to use Federal Reserve bank notes as money (since no one was allowed to issue competing bank notes). To claim that the Fed is a “private” central banking system is either profoundly naive, or deliberately misleading.”
We Ron Paul supporters don’t argue that the Federal Government made a law in 1933 banning the use of gold by private citizens, what we argue is that these laws are unconstitutional regardless of the fact that even the Supreme Court upheld them. Sandra Day O’Conner in her book even points out that the Supreme Court does not have the final say on the Constitutionality of the issue, we the people do.
If you want to follow blindly devout behind the Federal Reserve (the same Federal Reserve that is responsible for the Great Depression, and now the Mortgage Crisis, and the increase of inflation) go for it.
But Gold and Silver prices are going through the roof, if anything, the liberty dollars should be respected for the fact that they are made of silver, as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of the issue.
I don’t consider the liberty dollars a conterfeit because they are backed up by something of value that can be converted to dollars, silver can be converted to dollars just like milk can be converted to dollars,(when you sell it)
Are the checks that we write conterfiets too?
The Federal Reserve Notes are checks, that is what they are suppose to be, greenbacks when they were first introduced were meant to be checks backed up by actual gold and silver. What are the greenback federal reserve notes backed up with now? T-notes from the Treasury department.
And no, the Federal Reserve is not part of the government, all the Constitutional authorities called for about coining money etc belong to the Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve is not a part of the Treasury department. The US Mint is, and last I looked, they still sold one ounce gold and one ounce silver dollars to collectors.
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