I broke the law yesterday and again today and I will probably break the law tomorrow. Don’t mistake me, I have done nothing wrong. I don’t even know what laws I have broken. Nevertheless, I am reasonably confident that I have broken some laws, rules, or regulations recently because its hard for anyone to live today without breaking the law. Doubt me? Have you ever thrown out some junk mail that came to your house but was addressed to someone else? That’s a violation of federal law punishable by up to .
Harvey Silverglate argues that a typical American commits . I think that number is too high but it is easy to violate the law without intent or knowledge. Most crimes used to be based on the common law and ancient understandings of wrong (murder, assault, theft and so on) but today there are thousands of federal criminal laws that bear no relation to common law or common understanding. The WSJ :
Last September (2011), retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 misdemeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal record.
Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.
Or how about this:
In 2009, Mr. Anderson loaned his son some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs. Unfortunately, they were on federal land….
There is no evidence the Andersons intended to break the law, or even knew the law existed, according to court records and interviews. But the law, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, doesn’t require criminal intent and makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to attempt to take artifacts off federal land without a permit.
The Anderson’s didn’t even find any arrowheads but the attempt to find was punishable by imprisonment. Under statutes such as the Lacey Act one can even face criminal prosecution for violating the laws of . Ignorance of another
country’s laws is no excuse.
If someone tracked you for a year are you confident that they would find no evidence of a crime? Remember, under the common law, mens rea, criminal intent, was a standard requirement for criminal prosecution but today that is typically no longer the case especially under federal criminal law .
Faced with the evidence of an non-intentional crime, most prosecutors, of course, would use their discretion and not threaten imprisonment. Evidence and discretion, however, are precisely the point. Today, no one is innocent and thus our freedom is maintained only by the high cost of evidence and the prosecutor’s discretion.
One of the responses to the revelations about the mass spying on Americans by the NSA and other agencies is “I have nothing to hide. What me worry?” I tweeted in response “If you have nothing to hide, you live a boring life.” More fundamentally, the NSA spying machine has reduced the cost of evidence so that today our freedom–or our –is to a large extent at the discretion of those in control of the panopticon.
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August 2003The Federal Reserve Stores $1 Billion In Dollar Coins That No One Wants : NPR
$1 Billion That Nobody Wants
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Millions of dollars worth of $1 coins languish in a vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Baltimore branch.
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Millions of dollars worth of $1 coins languish in a vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Baltimore branch.
John W. Poole/NPR
Politicians in Washington hardly let a few minutes go by without mentioning how broke the government is. So, it's a little surprising that they've created a stash of more than $1 billion that almost no one wants.
Unused dollar coins have been quietly piling up in Federal Reserve vaults in breathtaking numbers, thanks to a government program that has required their production since 2007.
And even though the neglected mountain of money recently grew past the $1 billion mark, the U.S. Mint will keep making more and more of the coins under a congressional mandate.
The pile of idle coins, which so far cost $300 million to manufacture, could double by the time the program ends in 2016, the Federal Reserve told Congress last year.
A joint inquiry by NPR's Planet Money and Investigations teams found that the coins are the wasteful byproducts of a third, failed congressional effort to get Americans to use one-dollar coins in everyday commerce.
In 2005, Congress decided that a new series of dollar coins should be minted to engage the public. These coins would bear the likeness of every former president, starting with George Washington. There would be a new one every quarter. So, far, the Mint has produced coins through the 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant.
Members of Congress reasoned that a coin series that changed frequently and had educational appeal would make dollar coins more popular. The idea came from the successful program that put each of the 50 states on the backs of quarters.
But as the new presidential dollar coins rolled out, the greenback lost none of its dominance in Americans' hearts and wallets.
If the mandate to make presidential coins wasn't enough to generate a growing heap of unwanted coins, a political deal ensured that even more unwanted coins would be produced.
Golden dollar coins featuring Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States.
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Golden dollar coins featuring Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States.
John W. Poole/NPR
It was easier for the bill's sponsor, then-Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), to move the presidential coin bill forward if it didn't displace other dollar coins honoring Sacagawea, the teenage Native American guide to Lewis and Clark.
The deal: The mint would be required to make a quota of Sacagawea coins. Currently, the law says 20 percent of dollar coins made must have Sacagawea on them.
So, there are now about 1.2 billion dollar-coin "assets" chilling in Federal Reserve vaults, unloved and bearing no interest. By the time the presidential coin series finishes, and there are coins honoring all past presidents, there could be 2 billion.
Several congressional leaders contacted by NPR declined to comment for this story.
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over coins. Its chairman, Tim Johnson (D-SD), would not agree to be interviewed about dollar coins.
Neither would the committee's ranking member, Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, who recently requested a Government Accountability Office study on dollar coins.
Both the Mint and the Federal Reserve provided information for this story, but neither agency would agree to an on-the-record interview.
The finances of all of this? You could say the government has wasted money to make money.
Some 2.4 billion dollar coins have been minted since the start of the program in 2007, costing taxpayers about $720 million. The government has made about $680 million in profit by selling some 1.4 billion dollar coins to the public since the program began.
Still, it's the program's waste that hits home when you're staring at millions of unused coins.
The Inner Sanctum
Inside one basementlike Federal Reserve vault in Baltimore, NPR was able to see 45 million $1 coins of various types. The coins were overflow from vaults elsewhere.
coin storage area of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Baltimore branch, where unused $1 coins are piling up.
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coin storage area of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Baltimore branch, where unused $1 coins are piling up.
John W. Poole/NPR
And despite a national indifference to the coins, they were heavily guarded.
A group of journalists from NPR passed through a metal detector and special secure doorway before reaching the inner entrance to the vault, a fence gate secured by two common Master padlocks.
Two staffers minding the coins each had a key to one of them, and as the NPR group moved around the vault, the minders kept the group physically surrounded.
Inside the vault, dollar coins languished in clear plastic bags piled high on sturdy metal pallets that looked like baby cribs.
Through the bags, one could see Sacagawea mingling with Suffragette Susan B. Anthony and rubbing edges with some of America's early chief executives. Glaring fluorescent lights coaxed an occasional shimmer from the dollars, which are made mostly of manganese brass and have a gold color.
One row of pallets bore a handwritten note that said, "Dollars ... 48 skids ... 6,720,000."
But how many of them will ever see a laundromat, soda machine or toll booth?
Without an overhaul to the cash system that completely substitutes coins for bills, very few.
Try, Try Again
After the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea series lost their bids to become America's pocket change sweethearts, the presidential series was the next big idea.
But in a report to Congress last year, the Federal Reserve said the coins are now being held "with no perceivable benefit to the taxpayer," and that banks are sending them back to the Fed in increasing numbers.
"We have no reason to expect demand to improve," the Fed said. "We also note that a 2008 Harris poll found that more than three fourths of people questioned continue to prefer the $1 note."
Piling Up Inside The Vaults
The number of one-dollar coins in Federal Reserve vaults has increased steadily since the presidential
dollar coin program began in 2007. This
chart shows data through mid-2010, but the Federal Reserve recently said there are 1.2 billion one-dollar coins in its vaults.
Still, dollar coin proponents, including some advocacy groups and vending-based industries, are undeterred.
Leslie Paige, who represents watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, says the government should withdraw the dollar bill from the market and force Americans to use the coins.
"I think Americans will definitely embrace the dollar coin if they're just given the opportunity," she says.
As for the Harris Poll showing Americans don't want dollar coins, Paige says, "I suspect that they just don't understand what the up sides are," including the fact that coins don't need to be disposed of as bills are.
"The idea that, 'Oh, I don't want them jingling in my pocket,' I mean, I don't know, most people carry quarters with them," Paige says. "They use them for meters and all kinds of other things, so I certainly think Americans can adapt."
Money-Saver Or Hidden Tax?
You may have heard that dollar coins are more cost-effective than dollar bills. Paige and other dollar-coin advocates point out that coins last longer than bills, and that's why they save money. A coin could last 30 years, but a new dollar bill will be ready for the shredder in less than four years.
But if moving exclusively to dollar coins would save money, the question is, whose money? Certainly, issuing the coins and having them circulate, rather than sit in vaults, would create a source of revenue for the government.
Whether taxpayers would benefit is another matter.
A Government Accountability Office study out this spring says that switching to a dollar coin "would provide a net benefit to the government" of about $5.5 billion over 30 years.
But it's not because coins are cheaper. The report says the government would not recover the cost of switching from bills to coins over that period.
Instead, the benefit to the government would come only from the profit it makes by manufacturing each coin for 30 cents and selling it to the public for a dollar.
When this profit, known as seigniorage, is factored out, switching to the dollar coin would actually cost taxpayers money over three decades, according to a Federal Reserve analysis of the GAO's figures. The cost works out to $3.4 billion.
The Fed's Louise Roseman wrote to the GAO that seigniorage should not be considered in an analysis of whether the switch would benefit the larger U.S. economy.
The reason, says Roseman, director of the Fed's Division of Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems, is that seigniorage "is a revenue transfer from the private sector to the government."
So, in other words, a tax? The profit to the government predicted by the GAO assumes that the government would have to issue 1.5 dollar coins for every dollar bill removed from circulation. That's because people handle coins differently than they do bills.
Even if all dollar bills were replaced with coins, some say the nation's evident distaste for dollar coins will simply mean more small transactions will be done electronically. And, it could accelerate a technological trend toward payments with mobile devices.
Jack Weatherford, an anthropologist who wrote the 1998 book The History of Money, says he loves coins, but he doesn't love the billion dollar coins piled up in the nation's coin vaults.
"Destroy them," he said. "People will not accept these coins. Nobody in America wants to use them. As long as they have a paper currency, they will use that."
Of using coins to save money, Weatherford says that in an era of electronic financial transactions, "the argument is about 50 years too late. Coins have rapidly become less and less important in our society — like paper money itself is becoming less and less important."
Buyer's Remorse For Bill's Proponents
Delaware's Castle, who left Congress after a primary loss and now practices law, acknowledges that the demand for golden dollars didn't materialize as he had hoped.
Castle says he and others knew when they were passing the bill that widespread adoption of dollar coins would be hindered by the continuing production of dollar bills. But he says that mandating a wholesale switch from bills to coins was politically untenable then, as it is now.
"It's not quite like cutting somebody's Social Security," Castle says, "but politically it's not something the members want to deal with, so it's just very hard to get something like that done."
When Congress was considering the law, the Congressional Budget Office warned that there would be low demand for the coins. The Federal Reserve Board cautioned that coin inventories and storage costs would increase.
Castle says the coins should continue to be produced, but in smaller numbers.
"It's ridiculous to have this kind of over-inventory pile up," he says. "I might actually make some phone calls myself as a result of reading these reports and learning more about what this problem appears to be."
U.S. Mint Director Edmund Moy (right) and Director of the Federal Reserve's Division of Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems Louise Roseman (left) unveiled the designs of the presidential series of $1 coins during a ceremony at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Nov. 20, 2006.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
U.S. Mint Director Edmund Moy (right) and Director of the Federal Reserve's Division of Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems Louise Roseman (left) unveiled the designs of the presidential series of $1 coins during a ceremony at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Nov. 20, 2006.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
But what should happen to that quota for Sacagawea coins, for which there is very little demand, and which the Federal Reserve no longer orders from the Mint?
Earl Pomeroy, a former Democratic congressman from North Dakota who championed the quota while serving in the House, hedges a bit.
Pomeroy stands by his defense of "dear old Sacagawea." But he acknowledges that there's at least some folly in continuing to make coins that will not be used.
"I think the foolish part of the law may be not the Sacagawea part, but the fact that with no one picking up these coins, we've got to keep printing them because we've got to get through the rest of the presidents list," says Pomeroy, who lost his bid for a 10th term in Congress last year. "That to me doesn't seem to make any sense at all.
"Is the nation waiting with bated breath for us to get to the Calvin Coolidge coin? No! Maybe we should call a halt to this whole thing."
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