Miracle on Main Street: A Lesson They’ll Never Forget/The Miracle on Main Street
A LESSON
THEY’LL NEVER FORGET
Ba
Many of the ugly, ridiculous fixtures in public educa-
tion parents and teachers feel so helpless to repair came
about through the printing of paper money. Remember, it
is paper money that makes possible dumb projects like
busing. Constitutional money would stop the deterio-
ration of our school systems in a snap.
In Tennessee and probably in your state, too, all public
schoolteachers are required to take an oath to support the
Constitution of the state and of the United States. In Ten-
nessee, those teachers “who refuse to take the
oath .. . shall be immediately dismissed from the ser-
vice.” (TCA 49-1304). I assume that the punishment for
perjuring that oath would be as harsh as for refusing to
take it, wouldn’t you? Maybe even harsher. Both instances
would certainly show a disregard for the Supreme Law of
the Land, to the thinking of any reasonable person.
So if you’re a Tennessee schoolteacher you’re a duly
sworn Constitutional officer! You are prohibited from making
any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in the payment of
debts. If you choose to take a paycheck of ever-depreciating
paper when the law entitles you—requires you—to take
85
86 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
gold and silver coin, what kind of model are you for young
sensibilities?
Would you want your child to come under the daily in-
fluence of a person who couldn’t tell the difference be-
tween a solid gold disc and a paper rectangle?
Even if you're not a sworn Constitutional officer of your
state, you can have enormous effect. Rather than engage in
abrasive strikes for higher pay, for example, you can simply
hold out for lawful pay. (All people who receive paper
money from cities, counties, or states could do this.) That
way, you'll eliminate the need ever to have to strike again,
because you'll be getting both higher and lawful pay. Pay
that will hold its value year after year. Your pension will be
worth something when you retire.
All that paperwork that’s driving you nuts: it would stop
expanding overnight with the restoration of gold and silver
coin, soon slowing to a trickle with all other dumb projects.
And you'll be free to settle down to what attracted you to
school teaching in the first place: helping youngsters learn.
Isn’t that the true joy of teaching?
You could teach
ee
LF
THE LESSON OF
THE TUMBLE-BUGS,
the untold story of one of the world’s earliest
currency-manipulations:
These are scarabs, Y Re p
A LESSON THEY’LL NEVER FORGET 87
little stones carved in the shape of
beetles. The carvings were introduced into Egypt in 2200
B.c., after a great natural catastrophe destroyed much of
the land. The Hyksos (“Shepherd Kings”) brought the idea
from Mesopotamia, the birthplace of central banking, writ-
ing, military conscription, world war, and juryless trials. It
took less than five minutes for a carver to make a scarab; its
equivalent in gold took many hours to mine and refine.
The live beetle—we call them Tumble-bugs in Tennessee—
rolls amorphous animal waste into perfect spheres, like
reconstructing a destroyed planet into a brand new one.
Tumble-bugs bury the spheres in the ground, enriching the
soil. Because of their good work, and because their stone
likenesses bore uplifting mottoes and names of officials
(like all artificial ‘bank’ money), the native Egyptians
trusted in them. They freely, enthusiastically, traded their
gold and silver for them.
Gradually, the Hyksos officials pulled the gold and silver
off for themselves, leaving an ever-increasing supply of
scarabs to circulate. Dream money. The scarabs became
worth whatever the Hyksos said they were worth. Since
officials determined the value of human labor, they could
direct human beings to dumb projects, like the pyramids!
The pyramids (there are about 36 major ones in Egypt)
may be beautiful and very scientific, but they really are
quite dumb.’ With a country’s manpower building
pyramids—or fighting a war or making costly things that
get lost in outer space like today—agriculture operates at a
1. ‘Most Egyptologists conclude that the Pyramid was built as a tomb for some
pharoah. No other reason is offered for piling up so massive a mound of masonry
than to protect the dead Pharoah from grave robbers. Oddly, this is the single function
which neither the Great Pyramid, nor any of the others, managed to fulfill, there being no
reliable report of any body having been found in any of the pyramids.” (Peter
Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, New York: Harper Colophon Books, p. 236)
88 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
bare minimum. This means scarce food. Scarce food means
food must be controlled by a central bureau. The Hyksos
used the Egyptians’ own gold to buy grain from other
nations; to eat, the Egyptians had to go, scarabs in hand, to
the central storehouses and hope the officials were in a .
good mood.
So you see, controlling populations by lifting their
money into the ideasphere is old, old, old. The same rules
apply today. They apply for all time. There will always be
attempts to hook people on artificial money.
EXSY, a
¢ ,
TY
a Dottag
SPrinted 5 res i} ,
B in Phi! & Selers,§
we diladelphia, :
SAO EMG OM
XW 1776. §
2s Eire”
Of all the lessons alert teachers could give on money, the
most exciting one would be the LESSON OF LIVING BY
THE CONSTITUTION. It would be an object lesson.
In Tennessee and in many other states it is a teacher’s
A LESSON THEY’LL NEVER FORGET 89
duty, required by law, ‘To teach the Constitution of the
United States and of the state . . . for the purpose of in-
structing all the children as to their privileges and duties
under said constitutions and for the promotion of good
citizenship.” (TCA 49-1307) What a wonderful opportunity
for your pupils to witness history in the making! You, their
teacher, exercising your Constitutional Oath, demonstrat-
ing every American’s economic rights, privileges, and
duties in demanding that your paycheck be redeemable in
gold and silver coin (Article I Section 10) at a value regu-
lated by Congress (Article I Section 8)!
Your pupils would be seeing the power of the people
flexing right there in the classroom and being felt and re-
sponded to under the Capitol Rotunda in Washington.
Think of the confidence that would charge the atmosphere
in your school!
Much of the material sent you from Washington is subtly
designed to belittle you and your students, which is one of
the reasons young people are so edgy and volatile. But the
Supreme Law of the Land specifically provides that if any-
one is to belittle anyone, it’s to be the other way around. You
belittle Washington! As you steadfastly abide by your Con-
stitutional Oath your pupils will be experiencing firsthand
how their teacher, a state officer armed with Roger
Sherman’s 17 words, can require Congress to take steps to
restore a lawful economy to this country.
It will be one lesson they'll never forget.
“Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten
rulers that are in a city.”
—ECCLESIASTES 7:19
dT n America a new people had risen up without king, or
princes, or nobles, knowing nothing of tithes and little of land-
lords, the plough being for the most part in the hands of free
holders of the soil. They were more sincerely religious, better
educated, of serener minds, and of purer morals than the men of
any former republic. By calm meditation and friendly councils
they had prepared a constitution which, in the union of freedom
with strength and order, excelled every one known before; and
which secured itself against violence and revolution by providing a
peaceful method for every needed reform. In the happy morning of
their existence as one of the powers of the world, they had chosen
justice for their guide.”
—George Bancroft, History of the
United States of America, 1886
90
14
THE MIRACLE
ON MAIN STREET
we
The Miracle began happening early in 1981.
One afternoon in February, a Baltimore housewife,
whose husband is a lawyer, called me at home to narrate
her story. She was almost breathless with jubilance.
“I stayed up all last night reading your book. This morn-
ing my daughter and IJ drove to K-Mart and bought $82.00
worth of merchandise. I told the cashier that this would be
an Article I Section 10 no-tax sale.1 She’d never heard of
one of those, so. she asked the manager.”
The housewife explained to the manager that his com-
pany is a corporation, a creature of the state, therefore
bound by any Constitutional prohibitions against a state.
Since no state could make any thing but gold and silver
1. In Tennessee, the code provides: “The tax hereby imposed shall be collected by the
retailers from the consumer insofar as it can be done. TCA 67-3020 (d). The phrase insofar
as it can be done means “if the state cannot compel payment in paper or copper money,
and if there is no way of redeeming paper and copper dollar for dollar in gold and silver
coin, tax collection by retailers cannot be done from one who does not volunteer to pay.”
Many Miracle-Workers simply ask for the tax-exempt sheet kept under the counter
by retail cashiers, enter their names and the characters “AISECIOUSC” in place of a
number. This exempts the individual from the sales tax while reducing friction and
argument.
91
92 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
coin a tender in payment of debts, KMart was powerless
to make anyone pay a state tax in something other than
gold and silver coin. It being impossible to buy such coin
in face amount equal to the sales tax, she chose not to
voluntarily pay the tax in base-metal coin or paper. If there
was no gold and silver coin to pay with, it was the state’s
fault for evading its requirement to “crush paper money.”
Perplexed, the manager called the Maryland depart-
ment of revenue, and they told him—what else?—to
collect the tax.
“I stood my ground and said that I was buying the
goods, but not paying the tax,” the housewife told me. “I
counted out $82.00 and gave them to the cashier, sacked
the merchandise, and headed for the front door. “This
stuff is paid for,’ I told the manager. ‘If you don’t like it, do
what you have to do.’ ”
Revelling in the Constitution’s economic power, she
and her daughter drove away in their yellow Corvette.
“But about six blocks later,” she said, “we were over-
taken by several police cars. They made us get out, and
were really rude to us. They insulted us, called us shop-
lifters and such, and escorted us down to the police sta-
tion. I was really mad! At the station, the city attorney was
there, and several other officers, and the man from the
department of revenue.
“Theld page 31 of your book right up to their faces,” she
continued, “and cried ‘Can’t you see you're prohibited
from taxing anybody in anything but gold and silver?’ But
these men actually turned their heads and threw their
hands up to their eyes—they were very nervous—and
they shouted, ‘Don’t show us that; we don’t want to see
that!’
“Mr. Saussy, it was like waving a silver cross in a den of
vampires!” she exclaimed. .
“Before too long, the city attorney got up and said ‘Well,
I’m leaving,’ and shortly afterward, the tax man left, and
pretty soon the booking officer closed the statute book
THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET 93
he’d been thumbing through. ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I can’t find
that you’ve broken any law, so I guess we’ll have to release
you.’
“And so we left. I’m going to talk to my husband about
suing them for false arrest, but whether we sue them or
not, [just wanted you to know that this is about the most
exciting thing that’s ever happened to me in my life!”
And that was just the beginning.
Assertions of economic rights increased with such fer-
vor that on July 4, 1981, I established a monthly publica-
tion to report how people were working miracles on Main
Streets all over the land. THE MAIN STREET JOURNAL
reported the story’? of a Kansas municipal judge who
was so impressed with the Constitutional solution to
our economic woes that he began reading “money
rights” to anyone facing a fine in his court. Judge Moritz’s
“money rights” warning was praised by all lovers of the’
Constitution:
It is clear by Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution
and by Title 31 Section 371 of the United States Code that this Court
can only make gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.
However, this Court will accept other forms of money such as
Federal Reserve notes or personal checks if voluntarily tendered.
Another MSJ story® contains the transcript of Ron Had-
dad’s trial in Justice of the Peace court in Pima County,
Arizona. Haddad had been charged with driving with
expired license plates. His defense was that he was driv-
ing with precisely the license plates the state required him
to have, since: (a) the state had no authority to compel him
to pay for the plates in paper money, and (b) he couldn’t
purchase the plates because he could not redeem Federal
Reserve notes in their face-value equivalent in gold and
silver coin.
2. THE MAIN STREET JOURNAL, Volume I No. 3, October, 1981. $3.50 per issue,
$36.00 annual subscription, $125.00 lifetime. Post Office Box 39, Sewanee, TN 37375.
3. THE MAIN STREET JOURNAL, Volume iI No. 4, November, 1982.
94 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
Judge Thomas Rallis understood Haddad’s position,
but reached a Constitutional compromise:
The Court finds you guilty because you still don’t have a registra-
tion but I will not impose a fine. Because I don’t want you to pay the
Court in gold or silver if you do not have it.
Many Miracle-Workers have written letters to their state
attorney-general asking if Article I Section 10 is still bind-
ing on the state. Many attorneys-general suggest that the
petitioner consult with a private attorney.
One western-state Miracle-Worker sought the advice of
a private attorney. A private attorney who also happens to
be his county's official prosecuting attorney—and has
been for 24 years! On October 3, 1983, County Attorney
for Chase County, Nebraska, Guy Curtis wrote:
My opinion to your inquiry regarding the payment of your tax
debt...is applicable to any state...
Article i, Section 10 requires the state...to denominate your tax
debt in gold or silver coin.
Unless and until the state authority denominates your tax debt in
gold or silver coin, you are legally immune from such tax, since any
assessment repugnant to Article I, Section 10 is absolutely void...
The stereotyped response by the state attorney general is to cite
the federal legal tender law and peremptorally claim that it over-
rides the state’s obligation under Art. 1, Sec. 10. That this
“supremacy” argument is spurious is proved by the fact that the
mandate of Article I, Section 10 comes from the U.S. Constitution
itself and is the supreme law of the land. The feds can insure their
fiat paper money decree for payment of debts between individuals
and for payment of federal taxes and debts, but not between states
and their citizens.‘
Pure economic justice is marvelously working its
course: Just as the Friends of Paper Money withdrew gold
and silver from circulation, the people on Main Street are
withdrawing from their obligations to pay debts in a form
4. A full copy of this letter accompanied by an in-depth interview with Mr. Curtis is
found in THE MAIN STREET JOURNAL, Volume III No. 3, October, 1983.
THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET 95
of money prohibited by law.5
But that’s just half of it. They’re also demanding that
states deliver the dollars specified on their bank drafts! A
Missouri dentist received checks totalling $682.00 as com-
pensation for dental services he performed for the state of
Missouri's department of family services. He demanded
payment in silver coin, and was refused. He forthwith
sued for a declaratory judgment against the state, and the
court denied the state’s motion to dismiss. Ordered by the
court to explain why it couldn’t pay out silver, the state’s
flimsy excuse was (in a nutshell) “We don’t have any.”
Literally thousands of awakened Americans are bring-
ing to a grand and happy crisis this foolish economy we
live in. How will it resolve? With an almost laughable
simplicity. If you think that restoring silver or gold to our
monetary system will require a difficult and tortuous
journey through the corridors of Congress, read the
United states Attorney General’s opinion, attached to 31
USC 31] in the federal statutes:
Unlimited coinage of silver
The President has authority to proclaim and put into effect a
_ plan for the unlimited coinage . . .of domestic silver produced after
the effective date of the proclamation.
—1933, 37 Op. Atty. Gen. 344,
at 31 USC 311.
5. An exciting, “hands-on” demonstration of the absurdity of our current monetary
system is the “Public Office Money Certificate,” which is a note tendered to public
offices redeemable in whatever your attorney-general determines is “the money of
account of the United States” (in which “all accounts in the public offices must be kept
and had...by law.)” Book of 64 POMC'’s, available from Spencer Judd, Publishers:
$6.00. See Appendix I for update on POMCmanship.
6. Declaratory judgment is an extraordinary remedy, usually decided from 2 weeks to
30 days. Judge Byron Kinder took the case under advisement November 15, 1983. As of
April 2, 1984, the court has not decided this important case. Since THE MSJ's Legal
Director, Amos Bruce, is involved, the case is being carefully reported in THE MAIN
STREET JOURNAL, chiefly Volume II Nos. 10 and 11, May and June, 1983.
96 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
And so, appropriate state authorities will inform the
President that their state is having trouble with its com-
mercial and public revenues because the people are stand-
ing on the Constitutional prohibition against irredeemable
paper. (I'll give a prize to the first state to reach the White
House with this complaint. Keep me posted of your ad-
vances, by all means; you can reach me through Spencer
Judd, Publishers.)
With the utterance of a few words and the flourish of a
pen, our money will be locked into a permanent value.
Inflation will literally be scribbled away with the signing of a
man’s name. \ suspect, in fact, that the Proclamation is al-
ready written and that new redeemable paper notes have
already been prepared and are simply waiting for you to
call them out.
You must understand, though, that it is not your
responsibility to petition the President for redeemability.
It is your state’s. You’ve got better things to do with your
time and energy. The state is your servant, remember. Let
your servant do the work.
Redeemability will be restored in the way redeemability
has always been restored. It’s a very routine operation, and
the Friends of Paper Money know it by heart. They’ve
been doing it for centuries.
The new paper will be United States Treasury money, and
it will be redeemable dollar for dollar in gold and silver
coin. Irredeemable Federal Reserve paper may still be
used, worth a fraction of its value today, but I imagine
most of it will simply be traded in and burned. There will
probably be new Federal Reserve paper, too, if the Fed
people can escape the restoration with their reputations
intact. It will promise redemption just like the United
States Treasury money. It will be a very smooth transition
with no hard feelings if it happens before the tragedy.
If the Miracle were to happen as I write this, one United
States Note would be worth one dollar of silver or 13 Fed-
eral Reserve paper dollars. The new pricing would be de-
THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET 97
nominated in both new United States Notes and old Fed-
eral Reserve paper. Since paper and silver and gold would
be exchangeable again, there would be no need to hoard
precious metals, and we’d once again be able to experience
that delicious sound of silver coins ringing on counter-
tops. Our beautiful real money would creep out of hiding.
A gallon of gas would cost $1.30 Federal Reserve paper
or one silver dime. Imagine gasoline at 10¢ a gallon! A can
of tuna fish, about a dime, too. A great suit of clothes $20
United States notes, or $260.00 Federal Reserve paper.
Stable prices, year after year.
The American Dream would be over before it lapsed into
madness. The monetary system that allows dreamers to
snap their fingers and have funds for whatever they can
scheme up without any concern for whether there is de-
mand or need for it would be gone. The monetary system
that creates Viet Nams and subsidizes drug addiction and
all its crime and family-shattering and heartbreak would be
gone. The monetary system that delivers control of your
property to officials who use that control to foment idlers
against you, the monetary system that drives truckers and
pricing boys and small businessmen and elderly pension-
ers and struggling young couples crazy, the monetary sys-
tem that makes rich men out of debtors and poor men out
of savers, that rewards incompetency and unexplained
projects, that makes perversity the fashion, that celebrates
the flames of violence, that favors untruth over truth, this
system would be gone. The Friends of Paper Money would
be free to invest solid money in worthwhile projects people
really want.
And, miraculously, no one would be hurt. Value would
return. There would not only be jobs galore, but jobs doing
things for which there is real demand. Genuine pride of
workmanship would be naturally restored. A person’s
value would again be determined by his good deeds, not
by his inside connections or his knack for finagling and
covering up.
98 ' THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
Because a sense of the value of one’s property would be
restored, a sense of privacy, too, would return. With a
healthy sense of privacy comes a natural revulsion for por-
nography, which is but a low regard for both privacy and
property. An esteem for one’s own property and privacy
naturally turns one’s attentions away from celebrities in
whose lives we are invited to live vicariously. Who needs
to live in a celebrity’s life or in a soap opera’s plot when his
own life has value, esteem, interest, and excitement?
Gold and silver coin, being rare, precious, and easily
accounted-for, automatically guarantees wise and prudent
government spending. Violators are easily detected, dis-
honored and removed from office. (Because it is impossible
to account for artificial money, corruption flourishes in a
paper economy.)
With gold and silver money, the United States budget
would be self-balancing.
The people would express needs to one another and
fulfill them among themselves, without government as-
sistance. Costly projects no one wants (no one, that is,
except their lobbyists) would shrivel and blow away for
lack of demand.
Hands once considered untalented would begin turning
out marvelous products. The joyous return of . . . quality!
Our children would grow up knowing they have
genuine value. Because we rejected money that said “I
don’t know what I’m worth,” we would stop hearing our
teenagers say “I don’t know what I want to do.” The “use
me” aimlessness of adolescence would vanish and leave
solid purpose. Cheating would become deplorable again,
instead of quasi-honorable as it is in many circles. The love
between boy and girl would cease to be a make-out project
and would become instead a sensitive comparison of real
values. Marriages would be built not on dreams but on
facts and abilities. Conversation would make sense. Life
would become too thrilling for dope.
THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET 99
There would no longer be a need to seek escape, since being here
would be so real and delightful and rewarding.
Our lives would be so worth living that suicide would be
reduced as an option among the cures of our ills. Suicide
and paper money march side by side thfoughout history.
Since the most important plank of the Communist Man-
ifesto is control of a country’s wealth through issuance of
paper money from a central bank, our restoration of Con-
_ stitutional money will eliminate communism and socialism
as menaces to our freedom. They won’t even make
interesting topics in news, in classrooms, or debate.
Perhaps the greatest relief would be felt by those public -
servants who today suffer from the nagging awareness
_ that they are living a lie; at last, they'd be free of the terrible
pressures of covering up their sins against the Constitu-
tion, the Supreme Law of the Land they have pledged
their honor to support.
Yes, everyone will benefit from the Miracle: bureaucrats,
rich, poor—even the Friends of Paper Money. We know
this because gold and silver money invariably benefits all
resourceful people.
The Constitution is our positive proof!
100 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
“ECONOMETRICS”: WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
IS HURTING YOU
PAPER MONEY BENEFITS intellectual theorists at the expense of
workers who produce goods. These charts, published February 1980
in Issues In Monetary Policy by the Research Division, Federal Reserve
Bank of Kansas City, Thomas E. Davis, Senior Vice President, require
vast special training and “inside’’ knowledge to be understood. Do
you understand them?
eras!
Rale
Paper money creates a “paper nobility” made up of information-
brokers and speculators who extract great wealth from changes in
101
value. But the United States Constitution did away with paper, nobil-
ity and changes in value.
With Article I Section 10 the Constitution established “the use of
both gold and silver as standard money to insure the equal power of
Interest
Rate
LM, (M=M,)
LM, (M = M,)
t
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by Pomme a nee ee —
every dollar at all times in the markets and in the payment of debts.”
(This policy is found in federal law at 31 USC 311.)
i Althou f the Constitution defined money once and for all time as
i’ “gold and silver coin,” the Federal Reserve System “regularly pub-
lishes data for five alternative money definitions. Multiple measures
Interest
Rale
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i
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are published because there are differences of opinion as to what is
the appropriate basis for defining money,” according to Issues In
f Monetary Policy,
| _ Whose definition will the courts be forced to uphold: the Federal
|. Reserve's or the Constitution’s?
God did not make death, and he does not delight in the
death of the living; the generative forces of the world are whole-
some.and there is no destructive poison in them.”
—The WISDOM OF SOLOMON,
1: 13, 14
102
15
UNDERSTANDING GOVERNMENT
FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS
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