3/25/11 by Sheldon Richman
Sometimes we don’t see the trees for the forest.
But victims abound. One of the latest is Bernard von NotHaus.
One week ago today a North Carolina federal jury convicted von NotHaus of something the government considers a threat to our very society: “making coins resembling and similar to United States coins; of issuing, passing, selling, and possessing Liberty Dollar coins; of issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money; and of conspiracy against the United States.” (See FBI release [1]; emphasis added.) His trial followed a 2007 FBI and Secret Service raid at his offices and his indictment in 2009.
Conspiracy against the United States?
Here’s what the bureau says he did:
According to the evidence introduced during the trial, von NotHaus was the founder of an organization called the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code, commonly known as NORFED and also known as Liberty Services.
Von NotHaus designed the Liberty Dollar currency in 1998 and the Liberty coins were marked with the dollar sign ($); the words dollar, USA, Liberty, Trust in God (instead of In God We Trust); and other features associated with legitimate U.S. coinage. Since 1998, NORFED has been issuing, disseminating, and placing into circulation the Liberty Dollar in all its forms throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. NORFED’s purpose was to mix Liberty Dollars into the current money of the United States. NORFED intended for the Liberty Dollar to be used as current money in order to limit reliance on, and to compete with, United States currency.
These are crimes in “the land of the theoretically free” (H. L. Mencken’s [2] term)?
Von NotHaus, who is 67, faces up to 25 years in prison and fines up to $500,000. “In addition, the United States is seeking the forfeiture of approximately 16,000 pounds of Liberty Dollar coins and precious metals, currently valued at nearly $7 million,” the FBI says. The forfeiture trial is in progress. Von NotHaus is free pending sentencing.
[read more at the above link.]
Part 2
A Victim of the State, pt. 2
The case of Siobhan Reynolds.
s it a criminal offense to irritate a U.S. attorney? Apparently so. If the case of Siobhan Reynolds is any indication, it’s a serious offense that can cost a person a lot of money as well as her freedom to speak in public — without ever being charged with a conventional crime.
That’s not how the civic books said it was supposed to work in America. Something is gravely wrong.
Until late last year Reynolds was president of the Pain Relief Network, (PRN) which tried to defend chronic, severe pain patients from a government intent — in its obsession with narcotics — on intimidating doctors into underprescribing pain medication. The Drug Enforcement Administration does this by putting doctors in fear of prosecution as drug pushers — a charge that could bring decades-long prison terms — if their treatment policies displease DEA’s so-called experts. This of course interferes with the practice of medicine. (See The Freeman: “The Myth of Available Pain Care,” by Frank Fisher and “Another Victim of the Drug War,” by Radley Balko.)
Reynolds had personal knowledge of how government drug policy makes hell of pain sufferers’ lives: Her late former husband saw the innovative drug treatment that relieved his chronic pain stopped cold when the government convicted his doctor of drug trafficking.
Reynolds’s latest travails began when the government went after a Wichita, Kansas, doctor and his nurse wife. In 2007 Dr. Stephen and Linda Schneider were indicted on 34 drug counts, and as often happens, the prosecution essentially tried the case in public long before it got into court. (They were eventually convicted and sentenced to 30 and 33 years, respectively. The case is under appeal.)
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