By
Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
May 19, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
One
of the major hurdles to true monetary reform—that is, making United
States silver and gold coinage readily available for WE THE PEOPLE’S
use as actual currency in day-to-day transactions—is the presence
at every level of the federal system of various taxes imposed on exchanges
of gold and silver coinage for Federal Reserve Notes, and vice versa.
In principle, the States should not be able to do this because of Article
I, Section 8, Clause 5, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, and Article
VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution. See, e.g., McCulloch v. Maryland,
17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316 (1819). The General Government should not impose
such taxes, either, because all forms of United States coin and currency
should be on a constitutional par (assuming for purposes of argument
that Federal Reserve Notes are valid United States currency at all),
especially inasmuch as all forms of United States coin and currency
have been declared by statute to be equally “legal tender”.
See 31 U.S.C. §§ 5103 and 5112(h). So the model statute set
out below should be “noncontroversial”.
Under
present conditions, it is also absolutely necessary.
I
am posting this material as a public service in the hope that hundreds
and even thousands of Americans will propose this model—immediately,
if not sooner—to their Representatives and Senators in Congress
as a first step in returning this country to a semblance of sound money
before the collapse of the Federal Reserve System throws the economy
into possibly irremediable chaos.
With
minor amendments obvious to anyone, this model can easily be adapted
for use as a State statute, too.
Please
make good use of it.
MODEL
CONGRESSIONAL ACT FOR THE PROTECTION OF PERSONS WHO EXCHANGE VARIOUS
FORMS OF UNITED STATES COIN AND CURRENCY
Public
Law ___-___
Congress
An
Act
To enounce the
rights of all persons to exchange some forms of United States coin and
currency for other forms thereof without discrimination or burden; to
effectuate the monetary powers and disabilities of Article I, Section
8, Clauses 3 and 5 and Article I, Section, 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution
of the United States; to ensure the supremacy of the laws of the United
States under Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution; and to enforce
privileges and immunities, and rights of due process and equal protection,
guaranteed by Sections 1 and 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. For the purposes of this Act, “United States coin and
currency” shall include
(a) all coins of silver, gold, or base metals, and
(b) all paper currency,
of
whatever kind, nature, and description, minted, coined, issued, or emitted
by the United States, or authorized to be issued or emitted by any other
individual, person, or entity, at any time under any of the laws of
the United States.
SECTION 2. No public officer, agency, employee, or other individual,
person, or entity exercising any authority under any of the laws of
the United States or of any State or political subdivision thereof shall
assess, demand, or levy any tax, excise, fee, assessment, or other charge
or due on, or collect, mandate the collection, or enter any judgment
or other order providing for, enforcing, or otherwise facilitating or
allowing under color of law the collection or any tax, excise, fee,
assessment, or other charge or due of any sort as a consequence of,
as a license for, or in any other relation or with respect to the exchange
of any form or forms of United States coin or currency for any other
form or forms thereof by any individual, partnership, corporation, or
other person or entity, notwithstanding that such exchange is performed
for profit in the course of a business, trade, profession, or any other
pursuit, or that the nominal or face values of any form or forms of
such coin or currency involved in the transaction may exceed the nominal
or face values of any other form or forms thereof so involved.
SECTION 3. Any individual who shall violate SECTION 2 of this Act shall
be civilly liable to the individual, partnership, corporation, or other
person or entity upon or from whom the tax, excise, fee, assessment,
or other charge or due has been assessed, demanded, levied, collected,
ordered, or made the subject of any judgment or like action, and upon
the proof of such assessment, demand, levy, collection, order, judgment,
or like action shall be subject to a judgment, in his individual capacity,
for
(a)
restitution to the complaining party of any tax, excise, fee, assessment,
or other charge or due the same has been assessed, has paid, has otherwise
delivered, or has suffered to be taken from him, plus adequate interest
from the date of assessment or other loss; and
(b) damages of ten (10) times the tax, excise fee, assessment, or other
charge or due assessed, demanded, levied, collected, ordered, or adjudicated,
or $5,000, whichever is greater, the same to be imposed for each transaction
subjected to such tax, excise, fee, assessment, or other charge or due.
Provided,
that if the tax, excise, fee, assessment, or other charge or due has
been collected and paid in to any public treasury, office, or fiscal
agent of the United States or of any State or political subdivision
thereof, upon order of the court hearing the case it shall be returned
to the complaining party, and such payment shall be credited against
the restitution required under subsection (a) of this SECTION. For the
purposes of this proviso, the court hearing the cause shall have jurisdiction
to join as parties defendant public officials having authority to order
and effect the disbursement of funds held in or by such public treasury,
office, or fiscal agent.
Provided further, that no portion of any damages imposed upon
any individual found liable under this Act shall be paid by any public
treasury, office, fiscal agent, or other authority of the United States
or of any State or political subdivision thereof; nor shall any such
public treasury, office, fiscal agent, or other authority reimburse
or make whole any individual against whom a judgment shall be entered
under this Act, either directly or through insurance, guarantee, surety,
or any other third-party payment, for any portion of restitution or
damages imposed upon such individual.
SECTION 4. The
District Courts of the United States, situated in any State in which
any claim under this Act shall arise, shall have jurisdiction to hear
and decide all cases and controversies arising under this Act, and may
grant whatever relief, including declaratory judgments, mandatory injunctions,
and writs of mandamus or prohibition, as may be necessary and proper
in addition to (but not in lieu of) any other relief specified in this
Act.
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SECTION 5. In
any civil action brought pursuant to this Act, the court shall allow
no defense of official immunity, whether absolute, qualified, or of
any other character or type whatsoever. All individual defendants and
attorneys asserting any such defense shall be subject to such sanctions
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 as the court shall adjudge
proper, to be entered jointly and severally against them. Payment of
such sanctions shall be governed by the rule set out in the second proviso
to SECTION 3 of this Act. Next week, Monetary Reform 202.
Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four
degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).
For more than thirty years he has
practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme
Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases
leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education,
Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America
v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on
the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors,
may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their
employment.
He has written numerous monographs
and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county.
His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces
of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States
Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American
monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us
He is also the co-author (under
a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER:
A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash
of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com
I
am posting this material as a public service in the hope that hundreds
and even thousands of Americans will propose this model--immediately,
if not sooner—to their Representatives and Senators in Congress
as a first step in returning this country to a semblance of sound money...
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