A farmer's view of the Fed: Silver, Gold & the I.R.S.

Essay by Derry Brownfield

I began a recent presentation before a large group of cattle producers (R-CALFUSA) by showing a paper dollar bill and a silver coin. The words “one dollar” is inscribed on both the coin and the paper, yet the paper dollar will only pay for about one quart of gasoline at today’s prices, while the silver dollar will pay for well over five gallons. I explained to my audience that consumer prices are not high – the paper dollar has lost most of its value. It makes no difference how high the price of gasoline goes, a silver dollar will continue to buy gas for 20 cents a gallon, exactly the price gas was during the Great Depression. Based on 1940 prices, a paper dollar is worth about two pennies.

Today in America, we are being systematically robbed of our property because we have allowed the Federal Reserve to flood our banks with fiat, worthless paper money. There is actually a law against paper money but nobody seems to know about it. The Supreme law of the land is the US Constitution, which stated in Article I Section 10: Individual states are “not allowed to make any things but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The Constitution also states that “Congress has the power to COIN money and regulate the value thereof.” Our Founding Fathers knew how a central bank printing paper money would collapse our economy. Had we followed the US Constitution to the full letter of the law, gasoline would still be 20 cents a gallon. As the dollar continues to lose value we say our currency has lost its purchasing power. It should be more properly referred to as embezzlement by the banking industry.

Robert Kahre owns a family business and instead of using paper money he paid his workers with gold and silver coins minted by the United States government. He paid them based on the “face value” of the coins. If he paid a worker a dollar an hour he paid with a silver dollar, which states on the coin that it is “one dollar” regardless of today’s value. His wages were so low that he didn’t have to file W-2 income tax forms or withhold taxes or pay workman’s comp. This upset the IRS, which charged him and his family with 161 federal tax crimes.

The case which was tried before a Las Vegas jury in a Federal Court, heard testimony for almost four months. Defendants believed they had no legal obligation to withhold, pay income taxes or report anything to the government because the “face value” of the gold and silver coins is so small as to fall beneath the reporting thresholds set by the Internal Revenue Code. The government argued that the payments in gold and silver US coins must be considered at their bullion, full-market value when considering the worth of the wages for purposes of the IRS code. The essence of the argument is that Congress is obligated by law to mint and circulate such coins as demand requires, and must establish the value of coins as they are used as legal tender, but a coin’s market value is a distinct, separate attribute of such coins and is of no legal consequence if the coins are used as legal tender. If a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable income can only be the face value indicated on the coin. “A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value anymore than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them.”

On September 17, the jury returned its verdict refusing to convict all nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with. One would think, “we the tax payers would want to hear that the IRS was defeated by the use of the true money.” To my knowledge, the results of this trial were never printed or broadcast by any of the major news media. Three days after the trial’s conclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal ran its first and last story about the outcome and then only because of public pressure from interested parties who attended the trial.

The Department of Justice prosecutors know that justice was done and that if this information was made available to the general public their house of cards would come tumbling down. All federal agencies have a great fear of the truth and only by controlling the news media can they keep the world from caving in on their heads.

(After typing this article, Beth (my secretary) has now surrendered the raise that she has yet to receive, contingent on me agreeing to pay her in gold & silver coins; see the truth does hurt.)

Derry Brownfield was born in 1932 and grew up during the depression. He is a farmer and a broadcaster. Derry attended the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri where he received his B.S. and M.S. degrees. He taught Vocational Agriculture several years before going to work as a Marketing Specialist with the Missouri Department of Agriculture. Derry served as Director of the Kansas City Livestock Market Foundation at the Kansas City Stockyard prior to establishing himself in farm broadcasting. Derry started farming when he was 16 years old and received the Future Farmers of America State Farmer degree in 1949. Since that time the Brownfield Farm has grown to over 1000 acres maintaining a herd of 200 registered Charolias cows.

Web Site: www.derrybrownfield.com

E-Mail: derrybrownfield@learfield.com