{"id":13632,"date":"2007-11-17T13:00:30","date_gmt":"2007-11-17T18:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13632.html"},"modified":"2007-11-17T13:00:30","modified_gmt":"2007-11-17T18:00:30","slug":"note-to-ron-paul-fans-dont-make-your-own-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/note-to-ron-paul-fans-dont-make-your-own-currency\/","title":{"rendered":"Note to Ron Paul fans: Don’t make your own currency"},"content":{"rendered":"

It doesn’t matter how loyal some of Ron Paul’s fans are — if they start making their own money, and then put it into circulation, some nice federal agents are going to pay them a visit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), an organization of “sound money” advocates that for the past decade has been selling a private currency it calls “Liberty Dollars.” The company says it has put into circulation more than $20 million in Liberty Dollars, coins and paper certificates it contends are backed by silver and gold stored in Idaho, are far more reliable than a U.S. dollar and are accepted for use by a nationwide underground economy.<\/p>\n

Norfed officials said yesterday that the six-hour raid occurred just as its six employees were mailing out the first batch of 60,000 “Ron Paul Dollars,” copper coins sold for $1 to honor the candidate, who is a longtime advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve. The group says it has shipped out about 10,000 silver Ron Paul Dollars that sold for $20 and about 3,500 of the copper $1 coins. But it said the agents seized more than 50,000 of the copper coins — more than two tons’ worth — plus smaller amounts of the silver coins and gold and platinum Ron Paul Dollars, which sell for $1,000 and $2,000.<\/p>\n

“They took everything, all of the computers, everything but the desks and chairs,” the company’s founder and head, Bernard von NotHaus, said in a telephone interview from his home in Miami. “The federal government really is afraid.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last quote actually speaks to the predictable reaction — that the feds’ raid is part of some kind of conspiracy. Indeed, the WaPo noted that reports of the raid offered Paul supporters “a new source of outrage and motivation.”<\/p>\n

I realize that not all Ron Paul supporters are going to defend selling a private currency, or printing coins with Paul’s picture. For that matter, the campaign itself was quick to emphasize that it has “no affiliation” with Ron Paul Dollars.<\/p>\n

But the fact that campaign backers were troubled by this at all is kind of odd.
\n<\/p>\n

…Paul’s supporters said the seizure of the coins is sure to further stoke support for the campaign.<\/p>\n

“People are pretty upset about this,” said Jim Forsythe, head of the Paul Meetup group in New Hampshire, who said he recently ordered 150 of the copper coins. “The dollar is going down the tubes, and this is something that can protect the value of their money, and the Federal Reserve is threatened by that. It’ll definitely fire people up.”<\/p>\n

Von NotHaus said agents also raided Sunshine Minting in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, a company that makes the organization’s coins. He said agents seized huge pallets of silver and gold, worth more than $1 million, that the organization says back the Liberty Dollars. Sunshine Minting did not return calls seeking comment.<\/p>\n

The Indianapolis bureau of the FBI referred calls to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte. That office’s spokeswoman, Suellen Pierce, declined to comment. But bloggers at the libertarian Reason Foundation posted online a 35-page copy of the affidavit for a search warrant filed last week in Asheville, N.C., laying out the government’s case against Norfed. Pierce said the search warrant had been accidentally made public and has since been sealed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the affidavit, an FBI special agent states that he is investigating Norfed for federal violations including “uttering coins of gold, silver, or other metal,” “making or possessing likeness of coins,” mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. “The goal of Norfed is to undermine the United States government’s financial systems by the issuance of a non-governmental competing currency for the purpose of repealing the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code,” he states.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the “undermine the United States government’s financial systems” seems to strike a chord with some folks in this crowd.<\/p>\n

I vaguely recall some of Howard Dean’s most fervent supporters pushing the boundaries a bit in 2004, but I can’t think of any comparable group of supporters to Ron Paul fans. Ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It doesn’t matter how loyal some of Ron Paul’s fans are — if they start making their own money, and then put it into circulation, some nice federal agents are going to pay them a visit. Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}