Month: November 2020

20 November 2020

One of the earliest productions of the U.S.Mint, the “Chain Cent” would set you back several pretty pennies if you wanted to score one for yourself.  It enjoyed a relatively brief tenure among US coinage, less than a year, particularly as compared to our present Lincoln Cent’s century of endurance. 

Legend has it that many objected to the chain because it evokes chattel slavery.  That’s a plausible argument, but I doubt it was the prime cause.  While slavery was thought to be immoral and repugnant by many in the Eighteenth Century, such folk were in fact a minority, and often considered to be unfit for polite society.  Slavery was still the living heritage of history, sanctioned by faith and tradition and the natural human desire to not want to be seen as rocking the boat. 

Another obvious evocation of chains is political bondage, and many found that antithetical to still recent revolutionary and secessionist sentiments.  Whatever the whole truth may be, now obscured by centuries, the design never saw another year. 

And that was fitting.

The chain, intended to represent “indivisibility,” was never supported by the literal confederate language of the Constitution, and is, in fact, undermined by the Tenth Amendment (and by ratification language from various State legislatures). It certainly is a cool specimen, but as a matter of policy for the official mint of what Mr Lincoln USED TO call The Grand Confederacy, the chain had to go.

31 March 2002

Federal, state, and local taxes, combined with our efforts to comply with them or to avoid them account for the wasting of fully half of our productive capacity. To release our full creative potential we must lift the crushing burden of the state from the engine of prosperity. A Libertarian Congress will eliminate the federal income tax. Present Federal claims of real property are more than enough to buy our way out of what may well be an awkward transition as the Federal Welfare State is dismantled and the Federal Debt is resolved. Some Libertarians make the argument, and it is not without merit, that the Federal Government had no legitimate claim to the vast West that it administers (or mismanages), and that these lands are properly already the property of the people or the states. However, I think the issue of Federal assets is one worth exploring, and may well provide us with the means to retire the Federal debt without the prospect of default, dislocation, or widespread social violence. When the jig is up, and people see that not only is the emperor naked, but his promised feast has already been eaten by previous congresses, I fear that many disaffected people will respond with violence rather than forbearance.

Republicans talk a fair free-trade position, but when it comes down to it, they’re all too happy to raise tariffs to protect their contributors. Welfare for the wealthy is just as destructive of the free market as withholding income taxes from workers’ paychecks. Democrats talk a great deal about compassion, but they’re always ready to raise taxes to support their pet lobbyists. Millions of families are supported by two wage-earners. One works to pay the mortgage, buy the groceries, and put braces on the children’s teeth. The other works to pay Uncle Ben and Uncle Sam. America doesn’t need more “free” goodies from the federal trough. We certainly don’t need subsidized child-care. We need real tax cuts so that Ward can stay home and take care of Wally and the Beaver while June goes to the office. Or vice versa.

update 180304: It would be remiss not to mention that additional peoples‘ property claims (both in the islands, and throughout the States) continue to manifest. The Lakota Republic, for example, and their Silver Bank, are securing their local and native interests against an uncertain future, while elsewhere other secessionist movements, from Cascadia to The Coral Republic, plan for their post-united States.
“Uncle Ben” is Benjamin Cayatano, Governor of the State of Hawaii in 2002, and the hero of creepy old men throughout the islands when he vetoed the legislatures’ raising the legal age of consent from fourteen to sixteen. Said heroism was thwarted when the legislature overrode his veto with their super-majority. The general infantilization of Western Civilization continues today as talk is bandied about over raising the minimum age to purchase certain scary looking guns to twenty-one years.
Aaaaand El Donaldo continues to demonstrate his fealty to mercantilist mythology. Republicans, meanwhile, cling to their traditional bad economics and base social appeal. Fremont’s Folly may have come full circle. New tariffs and nativist retrenchment echo the Proto-Republican Know-Nothings of the Nineteenth Century.
At this point, powdered Whigs wouldn’t surprise me.

These comments are sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh //  401 Rio Concho Drive, #105;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903