Police State USSA

I don’t recall where I saw the link to the Harper’s article, The revolution will not be pasteurized: Inside the raw-milk underground, but I’m glad it came to my attention. The article is quite long, but very interesting, and mostly excellent. Oddly enough, it isn’t the subject of raw milk that leads me to write about the article.

I am quite undecided about this turn of events in the housing market. Banks’ mail jingles as borrowers walk is the headline on a commentary by James Saft. For anyone who hasn’t come across the phrase “jingle mail” yet, it describes the phenomenon of homeowners walking away from a home because the debt owed is greater than its current value—and so, they mail the keys to the lender. The unmistakable signal jingle mail sends is, “I’m done here. The house is yours.”—thus breaking the mortgage contract. Is that wrong? I’ve seen a fair bit of commentary arguing both ways; but none of it has been from a pro-freedom perspective.

That’s what CLS posted in the wee hours this morning, but without a link to back up the claim. A Wall Street Journal article has the details (emphasis mine):

The account of Client-9's [Spitzer] appointment is part of a larger case that broke last week when federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged four people with organizing and managing an international prostitution ring, known as the Emperors Club VIP.

According to the complaint and the sworn statement, the Emperors Club arranged connections between wealthy male clients and more than 50 prostitutes in locations from New York and Washington to Paris and London. The club's Web site showed photographs of prostitutes' bodies, with their heads hidden, and ranked the women with a "diamond" system. Fees varied by rank, from $1,000 an hour to more than $5,500 an hour.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's inquiry began in October 2007, when it was triggered at least in part by a bank that filed "suspicious activity" reports on the New York governor with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, according to a federal law-enforcement official and a lawyer involved in the matter. Suspicious activity reports are filed with the Internal Revenue Service when banks detect something unusual either through their tellers or software, including transfers of large amounts of cash, unknown counterparties, or the use of known tax havens and money-laundering centers.

The bank was concerned that Mr. Spitzer might have been engaged in "structuring," a money-laundering technique in which transactions are kept beneath $10,000 to avoid federal reporting rules, the official said. There has been a massive federal crackdown on money laundering in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and banks have been extremely diligent in filing such reports. Those reports often include details of transactions done by innocent people.

The suspicious transactions by Mr. Spitzer are a major part of the investigation, the federal official said, confirming a report by ABC News. It isn't clear if federal investigators were engaged in a crackdown on the prostitution ring when Mr. Spitzer entered their sights as an alleged client of the ring, or whether Mr. Spitzer's transactions helped trigger a probe of the prostitution operation.

So, as we were discussing previously, one can forget financial privacy from institutions. Cash is quieter; and with the economic turmoil cranking up, it may not be a bad idea for risk avoidance to keep a moderate stash on hand anyway.

The headline I saw this morning is cause enough for a bit of celebration: Real ID is postponed for 5 years. The main points:

The Bush administration hit the brakes Friday on a controversial law requiring Americans to carry tamper-proof driver's licenses, delaying its final implementation by five years, until 2017.

A number of states have balked at the law, objecting to it largely over cost and privacy concerns. But under the administration's new edict, states that continue to fight compliance with the law face a penalty: Their residents will be forbidden from using driver's licenses to board airplanes or enter federal buildings as of May 11 of this year.

Some might view that “penalty” as a negative, but I don’t, overall.

There’s been a lot of commentary over the USSA’s fall into blackness in the 2007 International Privacy Ranking, and rightly so. But when I look at their map, I see something far worse.

Courtesy of Gold Anti-trust Action Committee comes word of fedgoons killing the competition—to wit, Feds raid Liberty Dollar and seize and freeze everything [emphasis mine]:

Dear Liberty Dollar Supporters:

I sincerely regret to inform you that about 8 this morning a dozen FBI and Secret Service agents raided the Liberty Dollar office in Evansville, Indiana.

For approximately six hours they took all the gold, all the silver, all the platinum, and almost two tons of Ron Paul Dollars that were just delivered last Friday. They also took all the files and computers and froze our bank accounts.

We have no money. We have no products. We have no records to even know what was ordered or what you are owed. We have nothing but the will to push forward and overcome this massive assault on our liberty and our right to have real money as defined by the U.S. Constitution.

We should not be defrauded by the fake government money.

But to make matters worse, all the gold and silver that backs up the paper certificates and digital currency held in the vault at Sunshine Mint has also been confiscated. Even the dies for minting the gold and silver Libertys have been taken.

All this has happened even though Edmond C. Moy, the director of the U.S. Mint, acknowledged in a letter to a U.S. senator that the paper certificates did not violate Section 486 and were not illegal.

But the FBI and Secret Service took all the paper currency too.

The possibility of such action was the reason the Liberty Dollar was designed -- so that the vast majority of the money was in specie form and in the people's hands. Of the $20 million Liberty Dollars, only about a million is in paper or digital form.

I regret that if you are due an order, it may be some time until it will be filled, if ever. It now all depends on our actions.

Everyone who has an unfulfilled order or has digital or paper currency should band together for a class-action suit and demand redemption. We cannot allow the government to steal our money.

Please don't let this happen.

Many of you read the articles quoting the government and Federal Reserve officials saying the Liberty Dollar was legal. You did nothing wrong. You are legally entitled to your property. Let us use this terrible act to band together and further our goal -- to return America to a value-based currency.

Please forward this important alert so everyone who possesses or uses the Liberty Dollar is aware of the situation.

Please go here to sign up for the class action lawsuit and get your property back:

http://www.libertydollar.org/classaction/index.php

Thanks again for your support at this darkest time as the damn government and its dollar sinks to a new low.

Bernard von NotHaus, Monetary Architect
Liberty Dollar
Evansville, Indiana

Now, are there any other questions as to why I’m a hard-core anarchist?

I just read a news story, found via Strike the Root, that warmed my heart. The overcolorful headline reads Arrests drain bathtub cheese sellers.

Some things have not changed much . . .

Let it roll, baby, roll . . .

That’s what ABC News is reporting, in O, Canada! More Americans Heading North; the subheading states that the number of Americans moving to Canada hit a 30-year high last year. And—absolutely no offense intended to any Canadians in the audience—I’m wondering why.

Unofficial Steve Earle lyrics page; 'nuf said.

It’s sure looking that way, at least in the Browns’ case. From the San Diego Union-Tribune, Feds say they have no plans for raid on home of NH tax evader, who doesn't buy it:

day after heavily armed officers surrounded his fortified compound, a convicted tax evader said Friday he believes federal agents planned to raid his home before they were discovered by one of his supporters.

Federal authorities said they were only guarding Ed and Elaine Brown's 110-acre spread to protect against violence while they seized the woman's dental practice in neighboring Lebanon to help satisfy a federal court judgment.

“We had no intention of assaulting the house,” U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said Friday.

A judge had ordered the property forfeited as part of the couple's sentence for scheming to hide $1.9 million of income between 1996 and 2003.

The Browns insist federal income tax laws are invalid and stopped attending their trial partway through. They were convicted in January and have been fugitives since they were sentenced to 5½ years in prison each at an April hearing they did not attend.

Their home has a watchtower and concrete walls and can run on wind and solar power. Ed Brown, who has at least one gun, has said he has stockpiled food and supplies.

Given what’s said in the rest of the article, why should the Browns believe them? After what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco, why should any free-thinking individual believe the federales?

I’m also all kinds of curious ... what, if anything, are Porcupines doing to help or support the Browns?

I haven’t taken a blow to the head and embraced socialism or anything like that. But Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez have earned some thanks from freedom-loving individuals.

I saw this movie last night. It may not be in theaters much longer. It has qualities that a large screen will show better than a small one.
First the trailer -

From the Los Angeles Times by way of the Seattle Times comes word of a new Amerikan czar. Interestingly, though, instead of the usual assurances that the new top-level poodocrat position will help, the headline asks the simple question, Can new food safety czar mend “broken” system?.

US authorities lose patience with e-gold, says the TechWorld headline. The details are rather more ominous, though:

A federal grand jury has indicted online payment provider e-gold and three men on charges of money laundering and conspiracy.

According to a four-count indictment unsealed Friday, Dr. Douglas Jackson, Reid Jackson and Barry Downey, and their company e-gold, transferred funds even though they knew the monies were proceeds of child pornography, credit card fraud and bank fraud.

E-gold carried out these transfers over a six-year period from 1999 to 2005, the government said.

"Criminals of every stripe gravitated to e-gold as a place to move their money with impunity," Jeffrey Taylor, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement. "The defendants in this case knowingly allowed them to do so and profited from their crimes."

After the indictment was passed down, federal prosecutors seized funds in 58 e-gold accounts and froze the company's assets. E-gold can continue to operate under government supervision, however, and use existing funds to cash out unaffected accounts.

E-gold, which was founded in 1996, has been a favourite of online scammers because it is completely anonymous, said Ron O'Brien, a senior security analyst at Sophos. E-gold required only an email address to register, and as a digital gold exchange it is not required to perform background checks on users. "E-gold has attracted cybercriminals because of the anonymity," said O'Brien. ....

"It's great that there is punishment doled out for these types of activities," said O'Brien. "But we'll have to see if [this indictment] serves as a deterrent."

And that’s really what this is all about, methinks. With the fedgov hemorrhaging money into Iraq and other black holes, the dollar’s ongoing slide against other funny monies, and other shenanigans, the hunt is on to find “revenue” sources wherever possible. Anonymous digital transfers are a serious threat to the guys at the mints, so the push is on not only to shut down E-Gold, but to scare off anyone considering a similar business.