End the Fed! Whether Congress Wants us to or Not! (@TenthAmendment Center #nullification)

Today was a big day for supporters of Sound Money – as Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bill passed the House 326-99. But, it still needs to get through a very hostile Senate, where it will likely never see the light of day. So in closing tonight, a new approach – Ending the Fed. Whether Congress Wants us to or Not!

Since its inception, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies have led to a decline of over 95% in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. As a result, there have been several attempts to reduce or even eliminate the Federal Reserve’s powers...

... Not to say that you should want a secret national bank, but rather – is this kind of activism the best place for you to put your energy…and hope? Will lobbying the Senate get Harry Reid to allow a vote? Will calling Mitch McConnell change anything? Will Barack Obama or Mitt Romney allow such a bill to pass without their veto?

I believe the answer to all these questions is a big, fat NO.

PULLING THE RUG OUT

On the other hand, in contrast to attempts to put a stop to the Fed at the national level, a paper that William Greene presented at the Mises Institute’s “Austrian Scholars Conference” proposes an alternative approach to ending the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money. The “Constitutional Tender Act” is a bill template that can be introduced in every State legislature in the nation. Passage would return each of them to the Constitution’s “legal tender” provisions of Article I, Section 10:

“No State Shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts”

Such a tactic would achieve the desired goal of abolishing the Federal Reserve system by attacking it from the bottom up – pulling the rug out from under it by working to make its functions irrelevant at the State and local level...

Tenth Amendment Center podcast:

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE...

"The GOP's New Gold Rush: Inside the conservative plan to take down the Fed from the bottom up"

Aaaand... Mother Jones joins the chorus of left-wing publications waking up and realizing that we're making progress at the State level. It's a fairly typical media piece, not severely denigrating, but including enough silly quotes from establishment economists - "make wampum legal tender" - and getting enough facts wrong, like using "pre-1985 Golden Eagles" (what?) - to render the article pretty much useless in terms of helpful information for anyone that actually wanted to learn more. At least they included a bunch of good links. And I did like how he subtitled the article, "Inside the conservative plan to take down the Fed from the bottom up" - taken directly from my paper & article at Tenth Amendment Center. -- BG

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After three decades of railing against America's monetary policies, Congress' most famous gold bug and anti-Fed crusader, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), doesn't have much to show for his efforts on the national level.

But Paul's message finally seems to be gaining traction outside Washington. Since the beginning of 2009, lawmakers in more than a dozen states, with the backing of conservative organizations like the Tenth Amendment Center and the American Principles Project, have introduced bills promoting the use of gold and silver currency for everything from buying groceries to paying taxes. Last week, Utah became the first state to enact such legislation, declaring gold and silver coins from the US mint legal tender, and creating a commission to study the efficacy of this move.

Other proposals, in Georgia and Iowa, would mandate that all state taxes be paid in gold and silver. In Montana, a "sound money" bill that would have required all taxes on cigarettes and tobacco products be paid in precious metals was narrowly defeated on Monday.

Some supporters hope the movement will succeed where Paul's efforts have fallen short—by bringing down the Federal Reserve system from the bottom up.

"It's much more difficult to be lobbying against one bill than it is against 50 bills," says Bill Greene, a conservative activist and political consultant whose sample legislation has served as a foundation for a bill that's currently before the Georgia legislature. "As soon as one state passes a sound money bill, that state is going to reap the most benefits first. That'll open the floodgates and get the ball rolling and more and more states wanting to do it."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE...