Independent American News

BRENT E. CRUMMEY, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. KLEIN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT; THOMAS PETREK; DEBORAH H. WEHNER, Defendants - Appellees.
No. 08-20133 Summary Calendar
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 20981
October 2, 2008, Filed

PRIOR HISTORY:  [*1]    Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. 4:07-CV-1685.

COUNSEL: For BRENT E CRUMMEY, Plaintiff - Appellant: Brent E Crummey, Scottsdale, AZ.

For KLEIN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, THOMAS PETREK, DEBORAH H WEHNER, Defendants - Appellees: David M Feldman, Ellen Huchital Spalding, Adam David Courtin, Feldman, Rogers, Morris & Grover, Houston, TX.

JUDGES: Before DAVIS, GARZA, and PRADO, Circuit Judges.

OPINION PER CURIAM: *

*   Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5THCIR. R. 47.5.4.
Brent E. Crummey brought this lawsuit complaining that the defendants/appellees, Klein Independent School District (”KISD”) and two employees of the KISD tax office, declined to accept Crummey’s fifty-dollar United States American Eagle gold coins for any more than the face value of the coins in Federal Reserve Note dollars as tender in payment for taxes Crummey owed. Crummey, proceeding pro se, sought to assert various federal and state causes of action arising from this incident, including that the appellees violated Crummey’s alleged right under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution  [*2] to pay a debt in gold coin. 2 The district court, adopting the Memorandum, Recommendation and Order of the Magistrate Judge, dismissed sua sponte Crummey’s federal claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Crummey’s remaining state law claims,which were remanded to state court. Crummey appeals.

2   Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution provides, in part: “No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
The core of Crummey’s appeal rests on Crummey’s argument that the legal monetary value of fifty dollars in United States American Eagle gold coin is different than (and worth more than) the legal monetary value of fifty dollars in Federal Reserve Notes, or as it is sometimes affectionately called, cash. Regardless of any currency confusion that may have arisen in bygone eras, our present standard is clear: As legal tender, a dollar is a dollar.

Crummey suggests that the United States has a parallel or dual monetary valuation system for the dollar. Crummey relies for support on a statute authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to mint certain coins and to sell them to the public at a price based on the market value of the  [*3] bullion plus production costs. See 31 U.S.C. § 5112(f)(1). According to Crummey, the fact that the United States Mint sells coins into circulation at an amount that is often different than the face value of the coins, supports his theory for the existence of some form of dollar-for-dollar exchange rate between the “coin” dollar and the “FRN” dollar.

Crummey’s argument conflates the market value of such coins as bullion, or as a collectors’ items, with the value of the coins as legal tender. Fittingly, the Supreme Court has explained:

A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value any more than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, that is to say, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them.

Thompson v. Butler, 95 U.S. 694, 696, 24 L. Ed. 540 (1877). “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  [*4] tender for debts.” 31 U.S.C. § 5103; see also Mathes v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 576 F.2d 70, 71 (5th Cir. 1978) (per curiam) (”Congress has delegated the power to establish this national currency which is lawful money to the Federal Reserve System.”); United States v. Wangrud, 533 F.2d 495, 495 (9th Cir. 1976) (per curiam) (”By statute it is established that federal reserve notes, on an equal basis with other coins and currencies of the United States, shall be legal tender for all debts, public and private, including taxes.”).
We reject Crummey’s suggestion that the “dollar” has multiple meanings or values within the United States system of currency. See 31 U.S.C. § 5101 (”United States money is expressed in dollars, dimes or tenths, cents or hundreths, and mills or thousandths. A dime is a tenth of a dollar, a cent is a hundredth of a dollar, and a mill is a thousandth of a dollar.”). As legal tender, a dollar is a dollar, regardless of the physical embodiment of the currency.

The legal monetary value of Crummey’s fifty dollar American Gold Eagle coin is equivalent to that of a fifty dollar Federal Reserve Note. Crummey’s argument to the contrary, on which the bulk of his  [*5] appeal rests, fails.

Having carefully considered all of Crummey’s issues on appeal in light of the record and the applicable law, we find them to be without merit. For these reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

Furthermore, appellees’ motion for sanctions pursuant to Rule 38 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure is DENIED. Crummey’s alternative request for an evidentiary hearing on appellees’ motion for sanctions is DENIED as moot

by Roger Roots

Historians of Soviet Russia occasionally note that the communist workers’ paradise was originally intended to adhere to a written constitution that expressly guaranteed freedoms such as speech, press and assembly. In practice, however, none of the freedoms guaranteed in the Soviet constitution were recognized in the country’s legal system, and millions of dissenters and suspected dissenters were imprisoned or killed for disagreeing with the commissars of the state.

The United States Constitution, by contrast, is thought to be in good standing. Yet there are numerous provisions of the U.S. Constitution that are never enforced. These provisions, analogous to “dead letters” in the U.S. Postal System, are either totally ignored by federal judges or given such a narrow construction that they might as well not exist. As columnist and curmudgeon Joseph Sobran has written, the Supreme Court has, in essence, exercised a “line-item veto” over the document, totally ignoring provisions that interfere with the justices’ national vision or social objectives.

When the Supreme Court switched to discretionary certiorari in 1925 (thus allowing the court to pick and choose its own docket), the Court paved the way for a highly selective treatment of the Constitution. While some constitutional provisions (e.g., the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment) are routinely accorded Supreme Court consideration, many others are almost completely ignored.

It can hardly be a coincidence that all of the dead letters happen to place limitations on the scope and power of government. In contrast, the few provisions of the Constitution granting powers to government have been interpreted expansively. The clause giving Congress power to regulate interstate commerce, for example, has been interpreted by the courts to allow Congress to imprison people for acts that can be linked to either commerce or interstate activities only by a tenuous series of conceptual inferences.

There are even provisions which were included in the Constitution to limit government but which have now been interpreted to empower government. The Takings Clause, which states that no person shall be deprived of property “without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” was recently construed by the Supreme Court to give government at all levels near carte blanche power over all property. In a 2005 decision entitled Kelo v. City of New London, the Court reinterpreted the phrase “for public use” to mean for whatever use any government desires – including private use.

Similarly, the Fifth Amendment Grand Jury clause was placed in the Constitution in order to limit government but has now been interpreted in a way that empowers government. As the criminal law grew more complicated during the 1800s, courts began allowing public prosecutors to appear and discuss cases before grand juries (a practice strictly forbidden at the time of the Founding). This became embedded in grand jury practice by the 1900s. Today’s Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state that prosecutors may be present before grand juries at all times and prohibit grand jurors from issuing independent presentments.

There is nothing new about this insidious trend. The Necessary and Proper clause was originally intended to bind Congress to legislating only in ways that were “necessary” to carry out the few limited powers the national government had been granted. By the early nineteenth century, however, the Supreme Court had already interpreted “necessary and proper” to mean only “proper” – in the eyes of the government. As Jefferson observed, “[t]he natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

Courts have increasingly subjected all rights mentioned in the Constitution to balancing tests, meaning that rights have become mere interests to be balanced against the (always pressing) interests of government. Thus, it is asserted that “no rights are absolute” and that courts may deny the application of a right where “the Government’s regulatory interest in community safety

. . . outweigh[s] an individual’s liberty interest.” However, the Supreme Court has abandoned any pretense of balancing tests with regard to governmental powers (such as those found in the Tax Clause or the Spending Clause), for which the Constitution’

s provisions are described as plenary .

Some rights enshrined in the Constitution are rendered dead by the lack of any remedy to enforce them. For example, in 1974, the Supreme Court held that no taxpayer ever has standing to challenge the secret budget of the CIA (which clearly violates Article 1’s requirement that “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account . . . of all public Money shall be published”).

Finally, there are newly invented “maxims” of law that have crept into modern jurisprudence by means of pronouncements that they are long-recognized. One such so-called maxim originated with Justice Stone’s “Footnote Four” in the 1938 case of United States v. Carolene Products Company. Justice Stone proclaimed that most congressional enactments are “presumed constitutional” and will be struck down only if they blatantly contradict explicit constitutional protections. Stone’s “presumption of validity” has been cited in dozens if not hundreds of appellate decisions to turn away constitutional challenges.

As many scholars have pointed out, this “presumption of constitutionality” was enunciated nowhere in the many letters and speeches that punctuated ratification debates in the late 1700s. In fact, Founding-era voices more than occasionally expressed the opposite opinion. A widely-distributed editorial by Alexander White, a member of the First U.S. Congress from Virginia, proclaimed (in opposition to proposals for a bill of rights) that “In America it is the governors not the governed that must produce their Bills of Rights: unless they can shew the charters under which they act, the people will not yield obedience.” Moreover, the Carolene Products presumption of validity can be said to overrule the plain text of the Ninth Amendment (”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”) as well as the Tenth Amendment (”The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to the States . . . or to the people”).

A list of other recently invented “maxims” would include (1) Justice Robert H. Jackson’s proclamation in 1949 that the Constitution is not a “suicide pact” (i.e., it should never be interpreted to mean the government is not always in control), and (2) the doctrine of “harmless error” (invented in 1967 in Chapman v. California) by which an appellate court may concede a constitutional violation but uphold a criminal conviction by proclaiming that the defendant would have been convicted even if the Constitution had been followed. There are also insidious doctrines such as “sovereign immunity” (which allows government agents to escape liability for illegal acts – on the ground that they are with the government) and the “state secrets” doctrine (which deprives citizens of any redress by the assertion that proof of a constitutional violation would expose intelligence sources or methods), which are found nowhere in the text or the original understanding of the Constitution.

Of course, liberty dies incrementally, and the leviathanic government we see today took generations to bring about. It has been largely forgotten that the prohibition of intrastate liquor sales in the early twentieth century required a constitutional amendment (the Eighteenth) because policymakers and judges recognized that Congress had no constitutional authority to regulate intrastate sales of any commodity. The Supreme Court even wrote in a 1932 decision that “sales of [ ] forbidden drugs qua sales” was “a matter entirely beyond the authority of Congress.” The recent Gonzales v. Raich decision (upholding federal drugs laws as trumping California’s medical marijuana protections) highlights the fact that recent generations of Supreme Court justices have amended the Constitution without formal process.

A list of constitutional dead letters follows below. I honestly don’t know what weight to give some of the Bush Administration’s “unitary executive” practices such as its warrantless domestic eavesdropping and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which amount to complete abdications of the procedural rights laid out in the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th and 8^th Amendments. (If such matters are considered, it becomes arguable that the entirety of the Bill of Rights is a dead letter even if some of the rights are partially recognized for some people.) The list enumerated below, to paraphrase the dead-lettered Ninth Amendment, should not be considered all-inclusive, and there are, no doubt, other dead-lettered constitutional provisions I have neglected to identify.

• The House origination clause, Art. 1, § 7, requiring that all “Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,” has been rendered a dead letter by neglect. As Congressman Ron Paul has pointed out, the 2008 bank bailout bill with all its tax implications was deliberately introduced in the Senate after House members rejected it – a plain violation of this clause. Similar practices have gone on for many years.
• The congressional declaration of war clause, Art. 1, § 8. No “war” in the constitutional sense has been declared since 1941, although the executive branch has engaged in numerous undeclared wars and military escapades around the globe.
• The public accounting clause Art. 1, § 10: As already discussed, the secret budget of the CIA is in plain conflict with Article I of the Constitution (”No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time”).
• The Legal Tender Clause, Art. 1, § 10, prohibiting states from making “any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” The application of the Federal Reserve Act and many other statutes and executive orders are in plain violation of this clause. State and Federal governments demand and provide payment in paper currencies that are unbacked by any precious metals.
• The prohibition against bills of attainder, Art. 1, §10 – which was supposed to ensure that no one could ever be punished by the legislature – has been addressed only four times by the Supreme Court. Congress regularly enacts new laws placing extrajudicial punishments on various groups (felons, convicted sex offenders, disfavored corporations such as Wal-Mart, and even entire industries (e.g., “Big Tobacco”)).
• The Contract Clause, Art. 1, § 10, prohibiting states from impairing contractual obligations. Long dead and buried. Today the federal courts uphold wage, work, production, pricing, licensing and advertising regulations of every manner, irrespective of the Contract Clause.
• The Second Amendment right to bear arms. Despite the recent Heller decision (which issued a “landmark” ruling that the Amendment protects an individual right), there are still thousands of felons and other persons in federal prison for the mere possession of firearms. No defendant has ever been released from prison or cleared of gun charges in federal court on account of judges recognizing the right to bear arms. The gist of the Heller decision is that the Amendment protects a “reasonable” right to bear government-approved arms so long as you are government-approved. Of course, such a limited and conditional reading of the Second Amendment renders it a dead letter. The leaders of the American Revolution were themselves accused (and some convicted) felons, and several were notorious criminals (e.g., John Hancock, an accused tax evader and smuggler; John Paul Jones, a twice-indicted murderer who adopted his name as an alias to avoid arrest).
• The Fifth Amendment Grand Jury clause. While federal grand juries do still exist, they are now wholly subject to the control of federal prosecutors – the very persons the Clause was intended to limit. The grand juries known to the Framers were civilian institutions that acted independently of prosecutors, could investigate prosecutors, and could indict prosecutors. Today, prosecutors dispense all evidence, witnesses and testimony to the grand jurors, who then retire to a deliberation room to vote on whether to approve the prosecutors’ wishes. (A “no” vote will just mean that the prosecutors will coerce another grand jury to vote on the same case.)
• The Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy clause. Today, the federal government commonly charges defendants who have been previously charged with essentially the same offense in state court (and vice versa). This usually happens after an acquittal or a “light” sentence in the first prosecution. Because Congress has federalized almost every state crime over the past four decades (something the Founders could never have imagined), federal and state prosecutors are able to get two bites at the apple despite the double jeopardy clause.
• The Sixth Amendment right to jury trial in criminal cases. My inclusion of this one may puzzle some readers, because thousands of jury trials take place in American courtrooms annually. But the right to jury trial has been stripped for the vast majority of criminal prosecutions. Supreme Court rulings beginning in the late 1800s confined this right to cases of “serious” rather than “petty” crimes (i.e., punishable by less than six months’ imprisonment). This distinction exists nowhere in constitutional text, which explicitly guarantees a jury trial “[i]n all criminal prosecutions ” and for “all crimes.” The change has allowed government to impose its will on the populace with far greater efficiency. Justices Black and Douglas observed in a 1970 concurrence that their colleagues on the Supreme Court had effectively amended the Constitution by applying a balancing test and that “[t]hose who wrote and adopted our Constitution and Bill of Rights engaged in all the balancing necessary. They decided that the value of a jury trial far outweighed its costs for ” all crimes” and “[i]n all criminal prosecutions.”
• Of course, plea bargains have replaced jury trials in most “serious” cases, allowing government to prosecute and imprison a far higher proportion of the American population than the Framers could have anticipated. And even where defendants take their charges to trial, they are tried before emasculated juries that are ordered to follow the judges’ interpretations of the Constitution and the laws. The Founders would have condemned this wholesale takeover of juries by modern judges.
• The Sixth Amendment vicinage clause (requiring an “impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed”). In practice today, most federal court proceedings have been centralized into the largest urban areas of each federal court district, leaving rural defendants in many cases to face trials before urban juries drawn from jury districts that do not include the scene(s) of the alleged offense(s).
• The Seventh Amendment right to jury trial in civil cases where the amount in controversy exceeds twenty dollars ($20). The eternal drive of government officials at every level to collect petty duties, traffic and parking tickets, fees and other tributes has necessitated that they circumvent the plain language of the Seventh Amendment. Today the Seventh Amendment is one of three articles in the Bill of Rights not incorporated into state court practice by the Fourteenth Amendment. Even in federal courts, the civil remedies mandated by the Seventh Amendment are painted into an extremely narrow corner.
• The Ninth Amendment protection of other “rights retained by the people.” As already discussed, this important provision, insisted upon by the Anti-Federalists in 1791, has been dead-lettered by a combination of judicial doctrines, maxims and sophistries that in essence leave the people with few or no reserved rights.
• The Tenth Amendment. At the heart of the Supreme Court’s dead letter file is the abandonment of federalism in order to create a centralized regime run from Washington. Under the Founders’ intent, of course, each state was to retain its own sovereignty while the federal government was to act as the states’ mutual delegate in matters of foreign and interstate affairs. The absence of this rule in the pre-amendment Constitution precipitated massive resistance across the colonies. Yet today the federal courts regard the Tenth Amendment as a quaint “truism” – a mere statement that the States get to keep whatever jurisdiction is not overtaken by the federal government.
• The Fourteenth Amendment Privileges and Immunities clause, which was intended to require states to recognize legal rights recognized by the federal government and other states, was mostly dead-lettered in 1873 in The Slaughterhouse Cases, in which the Supreme Court held the provision applied primarily to freed slaves. In recent decades, courts have looked to the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause to replace the dead-lettered Privileges and Immunities clause.
• The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which requires that “No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened,” has been rendered a dead letter by means of the Supreme Court’s “standing” jurisprudence.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/roots2.html

By Christopher Hansen:

Many American wonder what just happened to their 401Ks, and their stocks. They wonder why the cannot pay their mortgage and why the Federal Reserve Notes, they falsely believe to be dollars, are becoming more and more worth less and less. Thomas Jefferson explained, in the year of our Lord 1819, what was going to occur if the bankers were allowed to do what they have done to us.

“The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.” — Letter to John Taylor (28 May 1816 AD)

Interesting that Jefferson stated that these bankers would sweep away not only the fortunes of our citizens but our morals.

In the words of President George W. Bush: “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!”

By the way, a current silver dollar minted by the U.S. mint since 1986 AD can still buy four gallon of gas and three gallons of milk.

But then no one can say we were not warned by a higher power:

Prov. 20: 10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord.

Micah 6: 10 ¶ Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?

Dear Mr Hansen,

Do you remember me? I am one of the International Visitors who had a meeting with you through video conference at University of Nevada, Reno, while we were at University of Les Vegas sometimes in March this year. It has been a long time. You spoke about the Independent Party, and your party’s stand on wide range of issues.

Currently, I have written a book on my US experience, which will be published in a couple of days from now. Its titled, Portraits of A Trip: A Journalist’s Glimpse of the United States of America. But I realised that, I have to put a little I can have about the Independent Party of America, which I do not know. So, I need your help.

I have entered the google search, but it has not been helpful, that is why I have to contact you.

I need a brief history of the Independent Party, its manifestoes, campaign strategies - ways to convince Americans, its mass appeal among Americans, and possibly future anticipations.

I know you have a tight and busy schedules, but I believe you will help me. In addition, below is the portion of the book about our meeting on that day.

Thanx,

BABANGIDA KAKAKI,

LEADERSHIP NEWSPAPERS,

KADUNA, NIGERIA.

+234 80 260 255 07

Then at quarter to 2:00pm on thursday, February 28, 2008, we again boarded buses to University of Nevada in Reno, where we had a video conference with Mr. Christopher Hansen, the President of Independent Party of America. He spoke very critically of the Bush administration and even the union of the United States of America itself. He criticized the foreign policy of the US since early 50s. In fact, when asked about the so-called war on terror, Hansen admitted that it was Bush administration that masterminded it against its own people and country, in order to justify perpetual war on its perceived foes according to reliable evidences. He denounced the US foreign policy that US blindly support Israel, and even some dictators around the world. Honestly, I was bewildered that, how can Department of State organized this meeting which someone who does not support the US government at all. It’s amazing to many of us. So when I asked one of our English Language Officers, (ELO), he replied that, it was democracy in action. Their people have the right to voice their opinions by First Amendment. So, I wish our political leaders would one day not only tolerate opposition, and constructive criticism, but work with them for the good of our democracy and the nation.

By staxbrix,

Wayne Madsen a Washington based investigative journalist, author, columnist and former U.S. Naval Officer is reporting a document called the “C & R” document is being passed around among senior members of Congress and their staff.

Bush planning martial law

FEMA sources have told Madsen that the Bush administration is putting final touches on a plan that would initiate martial law in the event of continuing economic collapse causing massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

Troops on American streets

In addition to FEMA sources, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade to NorthCom to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement for the purpose of traffic control, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared.

America may default on it’s loans

The “C & R” document reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwritten from China, Japan and Russia and America unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world.

“Conflict” is the “C word” in the document.

Washington fears a popular Revolution

The other possibility discussed in the document is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government.

“Revolution” is the document’s “R” word.

By Steve Scherer

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world’s financial markets while they “rewrite the rules of international finance.”

“The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,” Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis “can’t just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much 8.1 percent in early trading and pared most of those losses after Berlusconi’s remarks. The Dow was down 0.5 percent to 8540.52 at 10:10 in New York.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington today, and will stay in town for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend. European Union leaders may gather in Paris on Oct. 12, three days before a scheduled summit in Brussels, Berlusconi said today, while Group of Eight leaders may hold a meeting on the crisis “in coming days,” he said.

Berlusconi didn’t give any details about what kind of rules leaders were looking to change, except to say that leaders are “talking about a new Bretton Woods.”

The Bretton Woods Agreements were adopted to rebuild the international economic system after World War II in a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The aim of the agreements was to establish a monetary management system, initially by pegging currencies to gold. The IMF was set up later to help manage the international financial system.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net

By Chuck Baldwin

When asked why they will not vote for a third party candidate, many people will respond by saying something like, “He cannot win.” Or, “I don’t want to waste my vote.” It is true: America has not elected a third party candidate since 1860. Does that automatically mean, however, that every vote cast for one of the two major party candidates is not a wasted vote? I don’t think so.

In the first place, a wasted vote is a vote for someone you know does not represent your own beliefs and principles. A wasted vote is a vote for someone you know will not lead the country in the way it should go. A wasted vote is a vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Or, in the case of John McCain and Barack Obama, what we have is a choice between the “evil of two lessers.”

Albert Einstein is credited with saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. For years now, Republicans and Democrats have been leading the country in the same basic direction: toward bigger and bigger government; more and more socialism, globalism, corporatism, and foreign interventionism; and the dismantling of constitutional liberties. Yet, voters continue to think that they are voting for “change” when they vote for a Republican or Democrat. This is truly insane!

Take a look at the recent $700 billion Wall Street bailout: both John McCain and Barack Obama endorsed and lobbied for it. Both McCain and Obama will continue to bail out these international banksters on the backs of the American taxpayers. Both McCain and Obama support giving illegal aliens amnesty and a path to citizenship. In the debate this past Tuesday night, both McCain and Obama expressed support for sending U.S. forces around the world for “peacekeeping” purposes. They also expressed support for sending combat forces against foreign countries even if those countries do not pose a threat to the United States. Neither Obama nor McCain will do anything to stem the tide of a burgeoning police state or a mushrooming New World Order. Both Obama and McCain support NAFTA and similar “free trade” deals. Neither candidate will do anything to rid America of the Federal Reserve, or work to eliminate the personal income tax, or disband the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Both Obama and McCain support the United Nations. So, pray tell, how is a vote for either McCain or Obama not a wasted vote?

But, back to the “he cannot win” argument: to vote for John McCain is to vote for a man who cannot win. Yes, I am saying it here and now: John McCain cannot win this election. The handwriting is on the wall. The Fat Lady is singing. It is all over. Finished. John McCain cannot win.

With only three weeks before the election, Barack Obama is pulling away. McCain has already pulled his campaign out of Michigan. In other key battleground states, McCain is slipping fast. He was ahead in Missouri; now it is a toss-up or leaning to Obama. A couple of weeks ago, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida were all leaning towards McCain, or at least toss-up states. Now, they are all leaning to Obama. Even the longtime GOP bellwether state of Indiana is moving toward Obama. In addition, new voter registrations are at an all-time high, and few of them are registering as Republicans. In fact, the Republican Party now claims only around 25% of the electorate, and Independents are increasingly leaning toward Obama.

Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama is headed for an electoral landslide victory over John McCain. John McCain can no more beat Barack Obama than Bob Dole could beat Bill Clinton.

I ask, therefore, Are not conservatives and Christians who vote for John McCain guilty of the same thing that they accuse people who vote for third party candidates of doing? Are they not voting for someone who cannot win? Indeed, they are. In fact, conservatives and Christians who vote for John McCain are not only voting for a man who cannot win, they are voting for a man who does not share their own beliefs and principles. If this is not insanity, nothing is!

So, why not (for once in your life, perhaps) cast a vote purely for principle! Vote for someone who is truly pro-life. Someone who would quickly secure our nation’s borders, and end the invasion of our country by illegal aliens. Someone who would, on his first day in office, release Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean and fire U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton. Someone who would immediately, upon assuming office, begin leading the charge to dismantle the Federal Reserve, overturn the 16th Amendment, expunge the IRS, and return America to sound money principles. Someone who would get the US out of the UN. Someone who would stop spending billions and trillions of dollars for foreign aid. Someone who would prosecute the Wall Street bankers who defrauded the American people out of billions of dollars. Someone who would work to repeal NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and stop the NAFTA superhighway. Someone who would say a resounding “No” to the New World Order. Someone who would stop using our brave men and women in uniform as global cops for the United Nations. Someone who would stop America’s global adventurism and interventionism. Someone who would steadfastly support and defend the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Scholley, Susan wrote:
>
> Dear Mr. Hansen:
>
>
>
> Let me first clarify that the Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB) does not give legal advice to members of the public. The Research Division assists members of the public in locating information on a wide variety of topics but we are not legal authorities on the tax or currency questions you have.
>
>
>
> The e-mail you reference was responding to a question taken over the phone from a legislator’s staff person on behalf of a constituent. In preparing the response, I contacted the Nevada Department of Taxation for assistance on the question of the sales tax implications, if any, of using silver dollars to pay for goods or services. It appears that you have a copy of the e-mail response sent to the legislator’s staff person.
>
>
>
> Please note that the response is very general (given the broad nature of the question) and is in no way a legal opinion or comprehensive statement on the general topic. Moreover, I was not provided any specific facts nor was I advised that the question related to a matter in litigation. Therefore, if you need direct confirmation of a particular fact or an opinion or additional information on this topic, you are advised to contact the Department of Taxation at (775) 684-2000.
>
>
>
> Thank you.
>
> ___________________________
>
> Susan Scholley
> Chief Principal Research Analyst
> Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau
> Telephone: (775) 684-6825
> Fax: (775) 684-6400
> sscholley@lcb.state.nv.us
>
> From: Christopher Hansen [mailto:christopher@ubernet.net]
> Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 8:24 PM
> To: Scholley, Susan
> Subject: Silver Dollars
>
>
>
> Dear Susan Scholley,
>
> I am in the middle of a lawsuit that deals with the issue of how the State of Nevada handles silver dollars v Federal Reserve Notes.
>
> I do not trust email that have been forwarded to me because they can be faked. I would like you to send me an email that states:
>
> Assuming that a transaction is taxable under Nevada law (e.g., purchase of an item), the Department advises that a silver dollar is considered the same as a dollar and would not be treated differently than payment by a one dollar bill.
>
> Thank you. I would not want to include that statement if you had not stated it so I wanted to be sure you actually wrote it.
>
> One other question I hope you can answer. Will a silver dollar be treated specifically the same as a “one dollar” Federal Reserve Note. I ask because a United States note (a one dollar bill) is different, according to the United States Treasury Website, than a Federal Reserve Note.
>
> Thank you in advance for the conformation and answer.
>
> Christopher Hansen
>
>
> Dear Michelle:
>
> I checked with the Department of Taxation on the question of whether payment in silver dollars affects the potential State sales or use tax liability of the person receiving such payment.
>
> Your question (I think) asked about payment for services with silver dollars and I should point out that Nevada does NOT impose sales or use taxes on services. But, assuming that a transaction is taxable under Nevada law (e.g., purchase of an item), the Department advises that a silver dollar is considered the same as a dollar and would not be treated differently than payment by a one dollar bill.
>
> Of course the wisdom of using silver dollars to purchase items is questionable since the coin would likely be worth more than a dollar to a coin dealer.
>
> Please note that this response is in the context of State sales and use taxes and does not address any federal income tax issues. For answers to questions relating to federal income tax liability, the constituent should be directed to the IRS or www.irs.gov for assistance.
>
> I hope that is helpful. I am out of the office next week but will return Oct. 7th so if this answer leads to more questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at (775) 684-6484 or via e-mail. If you need more immediate assistance, please call (775) 684-6825.
>
> ___________________________
>
> Susan Scholley
> Chief Principal Research Analyst
> Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau
> Telephone: (775) 684-6825
> Fax: (775) 684-6400
> sscholley@lcb.state.nv.us

By Paul Craig Roberts

America has become a pretty discouraging place. Americans, for the most part, will never know what happened to them, because they no longer have a free and responsible press. They have Big Brother’s press. For example, on September 28, 2008, a New York Times editorial blamed the current financial crisis on “antiregulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution.”

What utter nonsense. Every example of deregulation that the New York Times editorial provides is located in the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush administration. I was a member of the Reagan administration. We most certainly did not deregulate the financial system.

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, was the achievement of the Democratic Clinton Administration. It happened in 1999, over a decade after Reagan left office.

It was in 2000 that derivatives and credit default swaps were excluded from regulation.

The greatest mistake was made in 2004, the year that Reagan died. That year the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr, was head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In the spring of 2004, the investment banks, led by Paulson, met with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this meeting with the New Deal regulatory agency tasked with regulating the US financial system, Paulson convinced the SEC Commissioners to exempt the investment banks from maintaining reserves to cover losses on investments. The exemption granted by the SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage financial instruments beyond any bounds of prudence.

In place of time-proven standards of prudence, computer models engineered by hot shots determined acceptable risk. As one result Bear Stearns, for example, pushed its leverage ratio to 33 to 1. For every one dollar in equity, the investment bank had $33 of debt!

It was computer models that led to the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the first systemic threat to the financial system. Why the SEC went along with Paulson and set aside capital requirements after the scare of Long-Term Capital Management is inexplicable.

The blame is headed toward SEC chairman Christopher Cox. This is more of Big Brother’s disinformation. Cox, like so many others, was a victim of a free market ideology, itself a reaction to over-regulation, that was boosted by academic economic opinion, rewarded with Nobel prizes, that the market “always knows best.”

The 20th century proves that the market is likely to know better than a central planning bureau. It was Soviet Communism that collapsed, not American capitalism. However, the market has to be protected from greed. It was greed, not the market, that was unleashed by deregulation during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes.

I remember when the deregulation of the financial sector began. One of the first inroads was the legislation, written by bankers, to permit national branch banking. George Champion, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, testified against it. In columns I argued that national branch banking would focus banks away from local business needs.

The deregulation of the financial sector was achieved by the Democratic Clinton Administration and by the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, with the acquiescence of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Paulson bailout saves his firm, Goldman Sachs. The Paulson bailout transfers the troubled financial instruments that the financial sector created from the books of the financial sector to the books of the taxpayers at the US Treasury.

This is all the bailout does. It rescues the guilty.

The Paulson bailout does not address the problem, which is the defaulting home mortgages.

The defaults will continue, because the economy is sinking into recession. Homeowners are losing their jobs, and homeowners are being hit with rising mortgage payments resulting from adjustable rate mortgages and escalator interest rate clauses in their mortgages that make homeowners unable to service their debt.

Shifting the troubled assets from the financial sectors’ books to the taxpayers’ books absolves the people who caused the problem from responsibility. As the economy declines and mortgage default rates rise, the US Treasury and the American taxpayers could end up with a $700 billion loss.

Initially, the House, but not the Senate, resisted the bailout of the financial institutions, whose executives had received millions of dollars in bonuses for wrecking the US financial system. However, the people’s representatives could not withstand the specter of martial law and Great Depression with which Paulson and the Bush administration threatened them. The people’s representatives succumbed as they did during the New Deal.

The impotence of Congress traces to the Great Depression. As Theodore Lowi in his classic book, The End of Liberalism, makes clear, the New Deal stripped Congress of its law-making power and gave it to the executive agencies. Prior to the New Deal, Congress wrote the laws. After the New Deal a bill is merely an authorization for executive agencies to create the law through regulations. The Paulson bailout has further diminished the legislative branch’s power.

Since Paulson’s bailout of his firm and his financial friends does nothing to lessen the default rate on mortgages, how will the bailout play out?

If the $700 billion bailout is based on an estimate of the current amount of bad mortgages, as the recession deepens and Americans lose their jobs, the default rate will rise. The $700 billion might not suffice. The Treasury will have to go hat in hand to its foreign creditors for more loans.

As the US Treasury has not got $7, much less $700 billion, it must borrow the bailout money from foreign creditors, already overloaded with US paper. At what point do America’s foreign bankers decide that the additions to US debt exceed what can be repaid?

This question was ignored by the bailout. There were no hearings. No one consulted China, America’s principal banker, or the Japanese, or the OPEC sovereign wealth funds, or Europe.

Does the world have a blank check for America’s mistakes?

This is the same world that is faced with American demands that countries support with money and lives America’s quest for world hegemony. Europeans are dying in Afghanistan for American hegemony. Do Europeans want their banks, which hold US dollars as their reserves, to fail so that Paulson can bail out his company and his friends?

The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. It comprises the reserves of foreign central banks. Bush’s wars and economic policies are destroying the basis of the US dollar as reserve currency. The day the dollar loses its reserve currency role, the US government cannot pay its bills in its own currency. The result will be a dramatic reduction in US living standards.

Currently Treasuries are boosted by the habitual “flight to quality,” but as Treasury debt deepens, will investors still see quality? At what point do America’s foreign creditors cease to lend? That is the point at which American power ends. It might be close at hand.

The Paulson bailout is predicated on cleaning up financial institutions’ balance sheets and restoring the flow of credit. The assumption is that once lending resumes, the economy will pick up.

This assumption is problematic. The expansion of consumer debt, which kept the economy going in the 21st century, has reached its limit. There are no more credit cards to max out, and no more home equity to refinance and spend. The Paulson bailout might restore trust among financial institutions and enable them to lend to one another, but it doesn’t provide a jolt to consumer demand.

Moreover, there may be more shoes to drop. Credit card debt could be the next to threaten balance sheets of financial institutions. Apparently, credit card debt has been securitized and sold as well, and not all of the debt is good. In addition, the leasing programs of the car manufacturers have turned sour. As a result of high gasoline prices and absence of growth in take-home pay, the residual values of big trucks and SUVs are less than the leasing programs estimated them to be, thus creating more financial problems. Car manufacturers are canceling their leasing programs, and this will further cut into sales.

According to statistician John Williams [ http://www.shadowstats.com/section/commentaries ] who measures inflation, unemployment, and GDP according to the methodology used prior to the Clinton regime’s corruption of these measures, the US unemployment rate is currently at 14.7 per cent and the inflation rate is 13.2 per cent. Consequently, real US GDP growth in the 21st century has been negative.

This is not a picture of an economy that a bailout of financial institution balance sheets will revive. As the Paulson bailout does not address the mortgage problem per se, defaults and foreclosures are likely to rise, thus undermining the Treasury’s estimate that 90 per cent of the mortgages backing the troubled instruments are good.

Moreover, one consequence of the ongoing financial crisis is financial concentration. It is not inconceivable that the US will end up with four giant banks: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank of America, and Wachovia Wells Fargo. If defaulting credit card debt then assaults these banks’ balance sheets, who is there to take them over? Would the Treasury be able to borrow the money for another Paulson bailout?

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation refinanced one million home mortgages in order to prevent foreclosures. The refinancing apparently succeeded, and HOLC returned a profit. The problem then, as now, was not “deadbeats” who wouldn’t pay their mortgages, and the HOLC refinancing did not discourage others from paying their mortgages. Market purists who claim the only solution is for housing prices to fall to prior levels overlook that rising inventories can push prices below prior levels, thus causing more distress. They also overlook the role of interest rates. If a worsening credit crisis dries up mortgage lending and pushes mortgage interest rates higher, the rise in interest rates could offset the fall in home prices, and mortgages would remain unaffordable even in a falling housing market.

Some commentators are blaming the current mortgage problem on the pressure that the US government put on banks to lend to unqualified borrowers. However, whatever breaches of prudence there may have been only affected the earnings of individual institutions. They did not threaten the financial system. The current crisis required more than bad loans. It required securitization and its leverage. It required Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s inappropriate low interest rates, which created a real estate boom. Rapidly rising real estate prices quickly created home equity to justify 100 percent mortgages. Wall Street analysts pushed financial companies to improve their bottom lines, which they did by extreme leveraging.

An alternative to refinancing troubled mortgages would be to attempt to separate the bad mortgages from the good ones and revalue the mortgage-backed securities accordingly. If there are no further defaults, this approach would not require massive write-offs that threaten the solvency of financial institutions. However, if defaults continue, write-downs would be an ongoing enterprise.

Clearly, all Secretary Paulson thought about was getting troubled assets off the books of financial institutions.

The same reckless leadership that gave us expensive wars based on false premises has now concocted an expensive bailout that does not address the problem, which will fester and become worse.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com