Bryan Hyde is a news commentator and co-host of the Perspectives morning show on Fox News 1450 AM 93.1 FM. The opinions stated in this article are his and not those of St. George News.
OPINION – Most Americans have never heard of former Las Vegas businessman Robert Kahre. The fact that he is locked away in a federal prison has a lot to do with that. But those who understand Kahre’s story tend to view money as well as our justice system in a different light.
Kahre was convicted in 2009 of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, tax evasion and hiding assets. But his real crime was something far more serious in the eyes of the IRS and federal prosecutors. Kahre paid his employees as independent contractors rather than salaried employees and he paid them in gold and silver coin.
By doing so, he brought unwelcome attention to the ongoing official debasement of our money supply. This action is what brought the full might of the federal government crashing down upon him.
Kahre offered to pay his workers in face value of federally issued gold and silver coins. These coins are legal tender at their face value. For instance, a one ounce gold American Eagle coin has a face value of $50. The actual value today of a one-ounce coin of fine gold is closer to $1,685 ±. If a person wished to pay for a tank of gas with an American Eagle at its $50 face value, they have a perfect legal right to do so. Of course, the wiser thing to do would be to sell the coin for its value in Federal Reserve notes and pocket the $1,635 in cash.
When Kahre offered to pay his workers in gold and silver, the legal tender laws should have considered those coins at face value. This means that an employee receiving 50 American Eagles annually would be making only $2,500 at face value. Therefore, the employee’s wages would fall below the threshold of reportable income.
Of course, the IRS takes umbrage at the thought of someone earning roughly $83,000 in Federal Reserve notes and not paying what the tax collectors consider their “fair share.” But there remains the issue of legal tender laws that clearly state that those Eagles are worth $50 face value.
If the federal government makes gold and silver coins that are legal tender, then why punish those who use them at face value? So which standard are we to follow? For that matter, why are there two different standards in the first place?
These troublesome questions are likely what prompted federal prosecutors to go after Kahre with a vengeance.
A federal SWAT team crashed through the gate of Kahre’s business with an armored vehicle and held Kahre’s employees at gunpoint for hours when the feds made their move. Kahre was charged with 49 counts of failure to collect or pay employment taxes, four counts of tax evasion, two counts of attempting to interfere with IRS laws and a single count of wire fraud. An uninformed jury convicted him on the judge’s instructions and he was sent to prison for 15 years and ordered to pay millions of dollars to the IRS.
The judge who sentenced him actually had the audacity to caution Kahre’s wife that allowing the couple’s children to develop a negative view of the federal government’s actions would be a grave injustice.
It’s hard to imagine how the government’s actions can even begin to square with the concept of justice. What Kahre and his employees did was hardly illegal. It did, however, expose the growing official debasement of our irredeemable paper currency when compared to sound money.
Most Americans have forgotten that our nation was founded upon a monetary system of gold and silver coin. For many years, paper currency was forbidden because, historically, it allowed government officials to plunder the public through inflation.
With the creation of the Federal Reserve nearly a century ago and the subsequent abandonment of a precious metal-backed currency, inflation has steadily robbed the dollar of roughly 95 percent of its purchasing power since 1913.
When a gold $50 American Eagle is worth far more than fifty paper dollars, it should be clear to all but the most obtuse that something fraudulent is happening to our money. Robert Kahre earned the wrath of the federal government by allowing its currency debasement to be brought to light.
email: [email protected]
twitter: @youcancallmebry
Copyright 2012 St. George News.
The glaring issues of paper money and inflation aside, it’s clear that his intent was to evade taxes. You can’t tell me he unknowingly gamed the system. His conviction was heavy handed indeed, but this article paints the picture that nothing wrong was done. Just because you find a creative way for you and your employees to evade paying taxes, doesn’t make it right.
All sides of this argument are wrong in principle. Virtual dollars are
nowhere defined as legal tender. This is why ND, doing business as ‘The
Bank of North Dakota’, can apparently violate the Constitution when ’emitting’
dollar ‘bills’: precisely because it only does so as ‘credit’ entries. More
corrupt was for Lincoln not to veto the 1863 National Banking Act (allowing
national banks to do likewise as their own Fed, & rigging the banking system
against state-chartered banks), which Wall Street knew he’d sign: to finance
a war that they heartily promoted on both sides. Furthermore, it’s only tax
evasion if one mixes apples & oranges on one’s books, which is a violation of
GAAP transparency, so negating Utah’s Legal Tender Act. Only virtual dollars
created by federal gov’t borrowing should have the full faith & credit of the
United States. Letting private banks create dollars at the click of a mouse is
socialist corporate welfare. However, any State ought to be able to do so,
just like ND does now, as advocated at http://publicbanking.wordpress.com/
On the other hand, Kahre’s lawyer helped the government convict him, by not
advocating any successful arguments used by those in identical circumstances,
as had George Gordon (& in Gordon v. Idaho). He won both cases, because he
had represented himself in court, rather than hiring a bar member, who as an
‘officer of the Court’ can always be threatened with disbarment, if she fails
to tow the institutional supremacist line by not sabotaging cases threatening
the interests of national banks who pull the strings in too-big-to-fail
corporations as well as gov’t. Just ask Angela Ford regarding her phen-phen
case, or Patricia Finn regarding her vaccine case.
A related ‘right to work’ cause not advocated by the Team Dumbo Tea Partyers
or Libertarians is the re-instatement of separation of attorney & state as has
been restored in Canada. They are hypocrites to condemn King George for having
licenced Protestant ministers, yet fail to condemn any Founding Father who, as
a member of the Bar, helped to perpetuate a rigged legal system, in which he
had derived a lucrative monopoly privilege by virtue of having been an ‘officer
of the Crown’. Didn’t Jefferson benefit from that system after the Revolution?
If so, that’s as hypocritical as continuing to own slaves, since he had also
condemned the Crown for suppressing the ‘free System of English Law’.
You can read more on this in my posts at http://adask.wordpress.com/radio/
A further enhancement should be to prevent members of the bar (‘barristers’ in
Canada) from serving in the executive and legislative branches of government,
so as to preserve separation of powers. Non-bar lawyers (true attorneys, or
‘solicitors’ in Canada) would be unaffected. You might be interested to know
that Schedule 2 of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement allows solicitors to
practice law in the U.S. – where an identical ‘right to work’ is nonetheless
denied to any U.S. non-bar lawyer. When just contrasting the legal systems on
each side of the border, it’s as if Canada had won the Revolution against King
George, eh?
victory in our time,
mAximo
I have one thing to say every civilization that has used fiat currency has collapsed in financial ruin. this story paints a picture of tax evasion but what about the governments criminal behavior. so its ok for them to do it to us but we can’t do it back? a system devided against it self will collapse inherently. the proper thing to do in this situation is to collapse the federal reserve, wipe the illegal public debit clean, and return the country back to a unified currency, backed by the value of the nation’s citizens..30million per citizen sounds about right. print money biased on population, not baised on inflation.
Avoid. His intention was to legally avoid taxes and he found a way to do it. The fact that the government railroaded him does not change the fact that hat he is saying is true. “Truth is treason in the Empire of lies.” – Ron Paul
This is silly. As it is illegal to deface, destroy or melt down American currency the value of the metal can only be set at what the government determines it to be. If the opposite were true and giant finds of silver or gold were made making the metals less valuable the value of the currency would drop, impoverishing millions who had “money” in the bank.
Why are some people so infantile about money? It’s as if they don’t want to understand.
..another example.. if a man showed up at your door offering to buy your million dollar home for 500,000 in silver dollars “because they’re worth a million today” you’d chase him away as a lunatic. And rightly so.
Currency is based on a broad public trust holding the country together. Not on wild swings in one particular commodity that can be melted or manipulated.
Currency is based on a broad public trust .. . Not on wild swings in one particular commodity that can be . . . manipulated.
And you choose to place your trust in a currency whose value is manipulated by the Federal Reserve cartel, and a chairman whose JOB is to manipulate the interest rates that further affect its value. Yeah, I can really appreciate your principled aversion to manipulation.
You may not be old enough to remember when the Hunt brothers of Texas tried to corner the silver market in the 1970’s. They almost succeeded but lost billions.. fortunately for them they still had billions of daddy’s oil money. But under your system of Metal is Money if they had succeeded it would have manipulated not on the market for silver but our currency. As inept as it is sometimes I trust our government to make basic rational decisions. I don’t trust wild schemes by private interests only looking to fatten their own bank books. There are millions of swindlers out there.
Here’s a link to the silver manipulation fiasco:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt
The Hunt brothers went bust in that attempt, which is what happens when the elite want to “corner” any market. So your example further strengthens the case for real money. Believing that professional liars (aka politicians) should have a monopoly on the issuance of money instead of allowing competition in the market is naive at best. Central planning authorities in economic matters for any good or service is bad, but when it is used to mask the fractional reserve banking scam it is wicked.
Dexter–First you have to know that the Federal Reserve is NOT part of this government –They ARE a world wide banking conglomeration and from what I have read, are the ones that started the united nations–the group that is destroying this country and this world–they pit countries against each other and finance the wars for both sides–they make a bunch on that –and they have been slowly devaluing this fiat( fake) money that most people don’t even know it is fake -(the frog in pot of water-slowly raise the temperature and the doesn’t even realize it until it is dead –kind of like you Dexter
I don’t trust the government but in one specific area, and that would be in the case of an invasion by a foreign power (in which case I know our military would be brought home and would fight like a …). But I sometimes doubt even that to a degree.
You can NOT trust the government to “make basic rational decisions”, what the hell is rational about inflating our money to the point that it is virtually worthless? I know it is hard to comprehend (for anyone, I’m not being a …), but without the Fed and related …, we would still be buying houses for a couple thousand, 6 or 7 bucks would feed a large family for a month, and the very weapons the “government” you trust is trying to take away would be available for 20-30 bucks (background check laws aside).
The point is, there isn’t a person alive that saw a time when the federal government was capable of rational thought.
Ed. ellipses. Please observe our terms of use which include admonitions re choice of language. Thank you so much.
http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/about-us/terms-of-use-and-participation-agreement/
James Fisk and Jay Gould attempted to corner the gold market in 1869 and caused what came to be known as Black Friday.
Wow that is an interesting story.
Go Ron Paul 🙂
I hope I can do my part to make this article go viral. Where is Harry Reid when one of his constituents needs protection from the federal government?
There’s a lot more to it than your summary here, Robert Kahre is an American hero. Whether he broke the law is a question for the courts, but he was acquitted in 2007 along with other defendants when the gov could not prove their case. When the accountants, both appearing as witnesses for the gov, went on the stand they could not tell if the legal tender gold was worth face value or market value, which the case hinged on… the gov lost that case, but came back with the current convictions in another trial. There has in fact been another case where a bank teller took an old lady customer’s gold coins for deposit at face value and the teller pocketed the gold depositing cash instead, that teller also went to jail. I believe it is commonly recognized that gold and silver coins have a market value over and above the stamped face value and those doing business at other than the market value can have problems. I think this is very clear now in the court/legal system. There is little debate, if you go to court and say, this hunk of gold is worth $50, you will lose. Shane Coley’s new book, “Know Stealing” covers this topic of a changing system of weights and measures for US gov. money very well. It’s illegal, immoral and unjust. Dr. Vieira covers it well in his books, Pieces of Eight : The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution
It’s a great Opinion you have written and you are right on the money, but the press won’t cover this, they look at me like I’m crazy when I tried to discuss it. We had a reprint of another excellent article in Feb 2008 that covered the original trial http://www.dgcmagazine.com/index.php/past-issues/digital-gold-currency-magazine-february-2008
All the best.
Mark Herpel
[email protected]
It has become dogma for some parts of the political spectrum to hate anything to do with Washington and the Federal government. But the alternatives are always bizarre. We have people here seeming to want to go back to the system of the 1790’s when America had no common currency and central bank.. ..and anyone could open a bank and print or mint their own money. It was chaos and almost destroyed the country.. It certainly made business across state lines and even from town to town nearly impossible. Luckily Hamilton won sympathy for a more modern system, defeating Jefferson’s idea that everyone should be farmers and raise their own food and barter. Unless you’re a rabid ecologist who wants to live off the land and hate the idea of owning any manufactured goods, a car or a TV, be glad Hamilton won and Jefferson’s ideas were defeated. Thomas sadly promoted a way of life that was only fit for people like himself.. large land owners with numerous slaves to do the work.. who coincidentally don’t need money for paying them.
Being a homesteader is hardly the only other option.
A vast network of “private” money exists now. From paypal to the new android type phone systems to bitcoins. World of Warcraft gold mining is a $3 billion dollar a year enterprise and places like American Express have trillion dollar credit and debit systems that never see an actual USD. VISA was the only allowed form of payment for these Olympics, I can’t find a better definition of private money.
We aren’t at the level of mom and pop banks printing money and leaving town.
Yeah as Ghost said the idea that we’d all be stuck trading playing cards if the USD failed tomorrow is ludicrous. Private currency solutions are already numerous and if not for the federal regulations the USD would probably be as common as the confederate dollar by now.
Have you ever seen this book?
https://archive.org/details/coinsfinancialsc00harvrich
Should give that a read…
Well I’ve written on the issue and the reality is Dexter that gold and silver coin is the ONLY form of money states are allowed to receive under the Constitution and Congress is the only body authorized to coin money and thus the only money that should be coined is gold or silver. You can read the story here: http://frontporchpolitics.com/2012/03/ignoring-the-constitution-destroys-our-money/
Can we please stop this under-the-Constitution business? The Constitution was written BEFORE America used dollars! Parts of the new nation still used Pounds, Shillings, Spanish Doubloons, French Francs, any kind of gold or silver, counterfeited and worse. Changes were made by sensible adults.. If a central bank and a single currency hadn’t been established BACKED BY THE GOVERNMENT, some of you government haters would be living in a Mad Max horror show right now, slitting each other’s throats for a scrap of food. Of course too much government spending is a legitimate issue. Paying for your new house with 1 million silver dollars is madness.
What has the FED provided since it began in 1913????
the ability to pay for WW 1 and 11
endless debt and a bubble economy
tyranny
Goldman Sacks stealing elections( Diebold, Sequoia count the VOTE???) etc
IMF and World bank, UN
when the bubble breaks, and no one outside the 50 States wants FRNs, Mad Max will look like a Sunday school picnic, ask the folks in Zimbabwei dying from colera etc
It is not the spending so much, its that these counterfeiters( FED) charge us taxpayers interest on their fake fiat “money”
They even pay for government trolls ( see above) to promote the urserpation of sound money and the Constutition, which the Fereral Reaserve urserps. Where is the amendment that allows this monentary beast to devour all of our savings through inflating the “money” supply, and taxation at higher rates????
Dollars were redeemable for silver coin until the 1965 Coinage Act (passed just after Kennedy was gone) Google LBJ Signing statements on that act and see if you can trust the government to preserve the vast commonwealth that was circulating as Silver coin at that time.
Then google the first series of Federal Reserve note series 1913 – What happened to the commonwealth of circulating gold coin that circulated and acted as capital until 1933.
Why didn’t they ever have to redeem their notes in gold like it says on the back of that series 1914 note (that was supposed to only be used as bank credit per the Federal Reserve act? They got the American people to act as unwilling consignors.
Now google “McFadden an astounding exposure” and read that. There is a lot more to the story as they say.
You have to remember that the Constitution only recognizes Federally minted gold and silver coinage as currency. Nowhere does it mention the printing of fiat currency…either by the government or a private enterprise such as the Federal Reserve Banking system.
Our current fiat Federal Reserve dollars have been around since 1914…during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson and the beginning of the “progressive” period, which we’re still very much in….not to mention the formation of the Federal Reserve.
“Paper money” says it all.
Just because something wasn’t mentioned as specifically permitted in the Constitution doesn’t mean it was also meant to be prohibited. Should objectors to seat belt laws and airbags, catalytic converters drag the Constitution into their feeble arguments.. “Where does it say in the Constitution I can’t use my cell-phone when I’m driving?”
The Constitution is no Bible. In fact the Bible is no Bible ..unless you want to stone adulteresses to death.. it will soon tire your arm.
Dexter, you’re wrong.
.
The Constitution is the only law for governing the land. If we want to go against it then we need to amend it. There is no other legal way, no matter what evidence backs up any claims or solutions to modern problems. The law is the law and must reign supreme, or else we’ll have the mad max situation you describe. The constitution may be imperfect, but it is the law nonetheless. Amend it and we can do what you and any other liberals propose. Until then, it must be obeyed without fail.
The Constitution, for heaven’s sake, is a rather short document. It mentions little and rightly so. America has evolved to deal with evolving problems and needs.. unless you don’t believe in evolution, either. You critics of paper money refuse to describe how you would buy a new car or house with silver. Apparently you want to make a giant business for Brinks trucks. Bankers and Brinks guards would have to have special expensive health insurance to pay for hernias and bad backs. The Constitution was never designed nor is it equipped to make detailed rules about stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies. The Ten Commandments are shorter and much clearer. Thou Shall Not Steal… but that hasn’t stopped any bankers or currency manipulators. And never forget it’s a thousand times easier to counterfeit a silver dollar than a dollar bill.
Hi, I’m PoinDexter and I like paper money, it’s the best medium for everyone even though it’s worthless. In fact, I’m a proponent of a cashless scociety, that way the bankers will forver control me and the rest of the sheep just the way we like it. It’s a thousand times easier for the private federal reserve to insert digital numbers into a digital database than to print tree bark. I’m PoinDexter and this is my reality.
The whole “paper as money system” is a fraud and I cannot believe how many of you by your comments are willing to perpetuate this satanic unAmerican racket. The paper is what is illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional, immoral, and satanic. Letting the federal reserve system debase our money and exchange their paper notes for our gold and silver is what is wrong. The federal income tax is illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional, immoral, satanic, and a fraud. The very notion that the federal government has jurisdiction over we the people just because we work and earn a living is a fraud. We the people are over them the government lawfully.
Surely only an idiot cannot see that inflation puts everyone on a hill of sand, trying to climb to the top and always sliding backward? The more paper they print, the less they can pretend it is worth anything? There is no way you can save for retirement because down the road those paper notes will have only 1% or 2% of the purchasing power they had when you were paid with them in the first place. Tax evasion???? What tax evasion? There is no lawful tax to evade.
“A thousand times easier to counterfeit a silver dollar than a dollar bill (really a federal reserve note, an IOU)”??? A silver coin cannot be counterfeited, either it is one troy ounce of silver .999 pure or it is something else, like a debased copper filled government issue “quarter” (of what?) or “dime”. Paper is nothing but paper and can be counterfeited and is to the tune of hundreds of millions I hear by North Korea. They’re probably thinking why should the federal reserve system be the only counterfeiter?
A little off point here, but the same idiocy is behind the war on drugs and illegal immigration. Absolutely stop all regulation of drugs and the cartels will melt overnight as the drugs are essentially of the same value of farm products. All the DEA and the cops do is support their artificially high price. Illegal immigrants? We are all illegal immigrants according to Cochise and Geronimo. The real problem is the very unAmerican socialist institutions of welfare, medicare, medicade, all the entitlements and “government handouts” that everyone else had to pay for at gunpoint. End that, and there is no problem with immigration, no government theft at the point of the paycheck and no redistribution to those who did not earn it.
Gee, that almost sounds like the way America was before the War of Northern Aggression when Lincoln printed his greenbacks to finance his vandalism and destruction of the civilian population of the south. If only Lee had been such a low life, he might have pillaged and burned the north the way Sherman did and we might be free today. I am sure Sherman doesn’t enjoy fire as much as he did then.
Sincerely,
David Parker
Gosh.. I guess I should be flattered. One commentator felt compelled to make a lame joke about my name. Another to slander Abraham Lincoln…. to attack paper money and defend REAL slavery in the same paragraph takes some interesting mental processes.
Let’s get basic here. The American economy is a multi-trillion dollar economy. Are you truly demanding the mining and stacking someplace (empty Utah?) of a trillion dollars worth of metal?????? Every single day billions of dollars cross oceans in the form of stock and bond purchases. So you envision air craft carrier sized ships constantly traversing the ocean exchanging metal???? The waste of fuel! The pollution… or that’s right… you don’t believe pollution exists, either.
If you want to protect America get money out of politics.. begin by demanding that the Supreme court no longer regards corporations as people.. because as long as it does Exxon and Monsanto have a billion more votes than your one.
..and for the record coin counterfeiters usually disguised lead with a thin layer of silver.. that’s why it used to be profitable.
Right on David Parker, Mark and Bryan. As a Newby to St. George it is a pleasure to read reasoned civilized thought in this neat little cyber newspaper.
David Parker longs for the days “before Northern aggression”, the days of southern slavery when everything was just peachy.
Thomas Jefferson, ( who owned some 600 slaves during his lifetime, and perhaps a hypocrite,?) also wrote this passage to the Declaration of Independence, which was was removed after the complaints by Southern states.
He wrote of the King of England in the Declaration.. “He has waged a cruel war against human nature itself., violating the most sacred rights of life and liberty in the person of distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in the transportation thither.. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.”
Will you add Jefferson’s name to Lincoln’s in your list of villains, David? Thank God your South will never rise again. It seems to be doing fine as it is now..
“Get money out of politics”
The only way to do that is to get the government out of everyone’s pockets. If the state and federal governments actually followed the constitution, they would be about 10% of their current size. Your rights would be protected and voting wouldn’t be a very big deal because the politicians would be powerless to spend any more money or take away your rights. For that reason, the only way to take the money out of politics is to take it out of government.
As for the story here, this points to the lie of the present money system. The law declares a coin to have a certain face value, then that’s the value. If I paid you in nickels, you’d pay the tax on those nickels, even though today they have a melt value of 8 cents, not 5.
HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAA, This argument has regressed to the “slavery” talking point. You are ALL my slaves.
Go Fed GO!
1. How was this a crime at all? If the IRS believed more tax was due then why not just bill him?
2. 15 years in prison for tax evasion is utterly brutal and uncivilised.
David
It seems unjust that he is in jail. It seems like he was exploiting a loophole, and if the government wants him to stop, they should close the loophole, not put him in jail.
Dexter VanDango, you are incredibly stupid, or a liar, or both. You’re wrong on pretty much every point you’ve attempted to make. We’ll start with the government setting metals prices. The Constitution says so, but any bozo knows they are traded on the open market. And anybody who turned down 500,000 silver dollars for a million-dollar house would just prove that he was stupid, too. The silver dollar doesn’t exist that is worth only two dollars. You are just so wrong on so many things that I don’t have the time to address them
One question – WHY was “the jury uninformed” ? In a jury trial, both sides in the case should present their case to the jury for its eventual INFORMED decision-making activity. Strange….
Bill, in answer to your question, the jury was uninformed in that not one of its members realized that jurors have the absolute authority to judge the law as well as the facts. Instead, they followed the judge’s instructions to judge only the facts of the case and not to consider whether the law under which Mr. Kahre was being prosecuted was unjust. There is a wealth of information on the need for fully informed juries at http://www.fija.org
Watch and you will be smarter.
Money In A Free Society – https://vimeo.com/22824400
Government Meddling With Money – https://vimeo.com/39092418
The Collapse of the Dollar – https://vimeo.com/51374942