More Liberty

Federal Judge is WRONG!

Paper Money is Bad for Everyone – Not Just Blind People

By keeping all U.S. currency the same size and texture, the government has denied blind people meaningful access to money, a federal judge said Tuesday.  U.S. District Judge James Robertson said the Treasury Department has violated the law, and he ordered the government to come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart.  Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations," Robertson wrote.  "More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired. The fact that each of these features is currently used in other currencies suggests that, at least on the face of things, such accommodations are reasonable," he wrote.  He said the government was violating the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in government programs.  The opinion came after a four-year legal fight.

Of course, the real problem is not with the unitary size of the paper money.  It is the tragedy of paper money unbacked by any real commodity that should be occupying the minds of treasury officials. Absent paper money being tied to some commodity, government is free to print it cheaply and devalue and destroy existing money in circulation.  In other words, if you think counterfeiting U.S. notes is tough, try alchemy.

Black Civil Rights Leader Wants to Restore Slavery

According to the Associated Press, civil rights activist and U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel from the 15^th District of New York, will introduce a bill when the 110^th Congress reconvenes to reinstate the draft. Apparently lost on the self-proclaimed civil rights leader is the text of the slavery-banning 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which reads, in part: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. It seems that either Congressman Rangel doesn’t equate being conscripted into the military as “involuntary service” or he somehow believes slavery is dandy, so long as it is government that is the slave owner. Neither is tenable.

It is self-evident that forcing citizens to register and be conscripted into the military is both an extreme form of servitude and certainly most involuntary. In these days of ongoing U.S. foreign global interventionism, one would hope that the rounding up of young men by warlords, only to have them shipped off to unfamiliar and dangerous lands against their wills might strike a disharmonious chord -- especially among those forever loudly claiming strong ties to their cultural heritage, their history, and those still seeking reparations.

Or, can it be that in Mr. Rangel’s mind, because it is government rather than private individuals assuming ownership of the enslaved that this “military slavery” is somehow innocuous? From his voting record it is apparent that Mr. Rangel believes generally that collective ownership and control of property is preferable to self ownership and individual liberty. He apparently also fails to understand that, for a good number of reasons, government-owned-and-operated slavery is necessarily and decidedly worse even than that of a system of private or monarchial slavery.

Political Hay

It seems the Democrats are trying to make political hay by again brandishing before the masses Republican budget shortfalls (i.e. more money spent differently).  The Democrats do so with the nonsensical belief that those outside the Beltway actually pay attention to such endeavors.  They nevertheless yearn for this second bite at the apple of demagoguery by charging the Republicans with knowingly sending a technically-defective reconciliation bill to President Bush for his signature -- a bill not approved by both houses of Congress in identical form.

As it turns out, some feckless Hill staffer (probably the son or daughter of some major campaign donor) apparently erred, most likely around 3:00 a.m., in the final edits to the 181-page monster.  One should, of course, be aware that such controversial bills are seldom made available with enough advance time for perusal, much less thorough review, prior to the voting hour.