Monday, April 13, 2015

Cash Banned in Louisiana at Garage Sales, Flea Markets etc.

On the heels of my report that top Citigroup economist Willem Buiter is calling for the abolishment of cash, Joe Salerno writes:
With the passage of House Bill 195 into law, the State of Louisiana has banned the use of cash in all transactions involving secondhand goods.  State representative Ricky Hardy, a co-author of the bill, claims that the bill targets criminals who traffic in stolen goods.  According to Hardy, “It’s a mechanism to be used so the police department has something to go on and have a lead.” The bill prohibits cash transactions by "secondhand dealers," defined to include garage sales, flea markets, resellers of specialty items, and even non-profit resellers like Goodwill.  Curiously, it specifically exempts pawnbrokers from the ban.   But of course, pawn shops--and not rented stalls at local church flea markets--are notorious as places that criminals frequent to convert stolen goods into quick cash. So what gives?  Are the authors of the bill and those who voted for it ignoramuses--or are they deliberately obscuring the real purpose of the bill?
The answer is clear once we examine the other provisions of the bill.  In fact, the bill goes far beyond banning cash transactions.   As lawyer Thad Ackel notes, the bill requires:

. . . secondhand dealers to turn over a valuable business asset, namely, their business’ proprietary client information. For every transaction a secondhand dealer must obtain the seller’s personal information such as their name, address, driver’s license number and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the goods were delivered. They must also make a detailed description of the item(s) purchased and submit this with the personal identification information of every transaction to the local policing authorities through electronic daily reports. If a seller cannot or refuses to produce to the secondhand dealer any of the required forms of identification, the secondhand dealer is prohibited from completing the transaction.
So the aim of the bill is not to aid law enforcement in apprehending criminals, none of whom would be ever stupid enough to turn over such information.  The real intent is to feed government's insatiable hunger for tax revenues by completely stripping law-abiding citizens of financial privacy in secondhand transactions, every detail of which is fed directly into police files. 
This troubling development in Louisiana parallels the intensification of the war on cash by the Federal government.  Last month it was reported that the U.S. Justice Department ordered bank employees to snitch to the cops on customers who withdrew $5,000 or more.  In a speech, assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell exhorted banks to “alert law enforcement authorities about the problem” so that police can “seize the funds” or at least “initiate an investigation”.
 -RW

15 comments:

  1. Time for the Institute for Justice to ride to the rescue....

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    1. This law was amended in 2012 to include language that the law applied to "scrap metals". The law was created to identify theft of copper and other valuable metals.

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  2. i am speechless. How does this shit pass?

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  3. The escalating "War on Cash" is right in step with the Brisbane, G20 decision on November 16th, 2014 that the money you have in your bank account is no longer considered to be yours, but is now the legal property of the bank. The Neo-Dark Age is falling on us like shroud of locust on a moonless night.

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  4. Treat every one as a criminal, instead of punishment for crimes committed.

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  5. How does this not violate both the US Constitution and Federal legal tender laws? And how are people supposed to bribe cops and govt officials without cash?

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  6. WHAT???oh no there's no Conspiracy,,,, no not all,,,oh no the Government is absolutely got the peoples best interest in mind,,,,no no no no there 's no Conspracy!! Wake up people

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  7. James Corbett picks up on the fact that this law, the Louisiana law banning use of cash for transacting in second hand goods, is an old story. Legislation was signed into law in July of 2011 by none other than Bobby Jindal, a Republican diversity heart throb.
    https://www.corbettreport.com/the-criminalization-of-cash/

    Corbett notes,
    "... in another example of that strange internet phenomenon by which a very old “news” story gets picked up as new news by one website and then copy-pasted around the internet, it looks like Louisiana’s anti-cash secondhand goods law just got recycled (appropriately enough) as a secondhand news story.
    And why not? The story itself may be old, but it is part of an unfolding agenda to create a cashless society, an agenda that continues to this very day."

    Corbett ends his piece with,
    "Let’s see if we can push that inclination [viz. to "opt to go for cash transactions and human interaction"] to its logical conclusion by shunning the government-issued colored paper altogether and transacting with alternative and complementary currencies as much as possible."

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  8. FINANCIAL FASCISM. AND SO IT BEGINS.... got schindler list?

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  9. Yeah, because legislation like this prevents the existence of a black market _ NOT!

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  10. God damn Babylon USA, it will burn very soon and all will see her smoke from a far and wail as revelation predicted.

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  11. So maybe I don't open my new business in two years and generate more tax income. Ah well, I'll just go on the dole. Every try to buy a used book for 1.00 with a check or plastic?

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