Numismaticism Update: 2013 Marathon Fundraising Edition

Congressional Republican economy terrorists have been holding the country hostage for a while now—Sequester! Fiscal Cliff! Debt Ceiling! Meet All Our Crazypants Demands or We’ll Blame Obama!—and people who don’t enjoy negotiating with terrorists have been looking for a way around dealing with them. How can we keep paying our bills if there’s no money in the bank? Well, one obvious way would be to print some more money.

Technically, the Government can’t print more money, but the Federal Reserve can. (They are not the same thing and if you don’t know this, that is because you are not a nutbucket conspiracy theorist like me. Most normal people do not know how the Fed works.) BUT: Back in 2011, a Constitutional law professor at Yale started talking about an idea to take advantage of the one way in which the Government can mint more money: commemorative coins! The Secretary of the Treasury is allowed (31 USC § 5112!) to strike platinum coins in any denomination. So all the Secretary of the Treasury has to do is to mint two one-trillion-dollar platinum coins, deposit them with the Federal Reserve, and hey presto! It’s all good. (And go to hell, Repubican economy terrorists.)

The trillion-dollar-coin idea started being talked up again a couple months ago, as the Sequester approached, and it was even endorsed by some Celebrity Economists, but in the end Jacob Lew was confirmed as the new Secretary of the Treasury and even if he tried to issue The Coin, no one can read his handwriting and the Treasury would probably just issue a couple of platinum Slinkys instead.

Still, I do believe we could apply the trillion-dollar-coin principle to raising money to support WFMU.  When Former Cohost Jay and I decided to produce our own Thunk Tank currency (the Bieb, the official currency of Iceland!) we discovered that it is illegal for anyone but the Government to issue specie (coins), but anyone can issue paper money. (So we did.) Why should we continue with the annual Marathon and the Record Fair and the Secret Off-Air October fundraiser and the Superstorm Sandy Wrecked the Station Special Appeal and Station Manager Ken in a Lawn Chair Attached to Weather Balloons, going back to the Listeners for their support again and again, just because we’re a Listener-Supported station? (And God bless the Listeners, they have been fantastic!)

All Station Manager Ken has to do is issue a 1-milion Bieb note (which trades at a rate of 1 Bieb to 1 US dollar), deposit the note in the WFMU bank account, and then pay all our bills! (Or just deposit 10,000 100-Bieb notes, because I think there are plenty of them lying around the station from Thunk Tank’s overproduced Marathon premiums.) Assuming the bank that has the WFMU bank account will accept it for deposit, which maybe they will not.

Alas, the one- trillion-dollar coin is not to be. The main problem seems to have been that it would have called attention to the fact that our entire economy is based on the fiction of fiat currency and debt. So I will never be able to add the Biden Commemorative $1 trillion dubloon to my collection, and I also still have never got a Guam quarter, either, so what’s up with that? You can still use your Federal Reserve-issued currency to support WFMU, though, so go to wfmu.org and make your pledge now.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and thanks for supporting WFMU.

 

 

Comments

[SPB]

While it's true that the Republicans are terrible, so are the Democrats. There are two parties wholly owned by Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex and everything from our endless wars to austerity and beyond is both of their fault. The whole sequestering nonsense in a little sideshow to make people think that austerity budget cuts is the party-they-don't-prefer's fault.

2009-2011 the Dems had control of both houses of Congress and we got a trillion dollars for business bailouts, more undeclared war and more war on working people. (With Clinton in and Dems in control of both houses we got fast-track NAFTA, steamrolling unions and environmentalists.)

Obama has presided over the Race to the Top attacks on public education and the teachers' unions (outright kicked the ones in Wisconsin to the curb), he's the one screwing Bradley Manning and Wikileaks, he's the one deporting record numbers of immigrants (including gay spouses legally married by the states), he's the one attacking a half dozen countries in violation of the constitution and spending most of our money doing it. Obama's the one who hasn't prosecuted a single person on Wall St for any reason, he's the one who's covered for Bush-Cheney war crimes, he's the one who coordinated national attacks on Occupy and who raids marijuana facilities that states say are legal. Obama's the one who's asserted that he has the right to kill anybody anywhere for any reason and call it "due process." Obama's the fracking and Arctic drilling and tar sands/ Keystone XL pipeline president.

Face it, Dems, when you voted for Obama you voted for GW Bush's 3rd and 4th terms, or if you prefer the 9th consecutive Ronald Reagan term. It's been overdue for anyone who claims to be liberal to look to small parties, independent candidates and political activity beyond the electoral arena. Stop pretending that one of the two War and Business parties is your friend. Ask some kid whose family's been drone-murdered in Pakistan (with money we need to help people here) what the difference is between a D and an R.

[Sciencekick.blogspot.com]

I say try the "Mouse that Roared" strategy to raise funds: WFMU becomes it's own country, goes to war with the U.S., looses, and then gets the U.S. gov't to rebuild the station and pay it's bills. I'm sure at least one of the DJs looks a bit like Peter Sellars.

[Irwin Chusid]

I note that you refer to congressional Republicans as "terrorists." I've been voting for GOP candidates for 32 years because they're (nominally) the party of limited government. Hence, by your analogy, I'm a supporter of terrorism.

Terrorists took down the WTC and murdered 3000 people. A single terrorist murdered 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood. Suicide-bombing terrorists strap on IEDs and murder Jews. Terrorists murdered a US ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi.

Yes, Republicans are just like that. In your world, Bronwyn, that's moral equivalency. Or perhaps just a cheap, tasteless joke. Daniel Pearl's wife would be very amused.

[Alison Porchnik]

Hey, don't forget the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the IRA, Shining Path, and the Red Army Faction. The most dangerous terrorists du decade may be predominantly fundamentalist Muslims, but that wasn't always the case.

[Irwin Chusid]

You amplify my point, Lisa.

[SPB]

"they're (nominally) the party of limited government"

Although in reality they're one of two parties of massively larger and more expensive and more intrusive government, starting with the biggest fraud of all, Reagan.

It's amazing, Republicans claim they wanted limited government, so they keep voting for people who bring them more wars, more spying on the US population, more expenditures, more spy agencies, more restrictive laws, more deficit.

Democrats claim to want peace and social justice, so they keep electing people who bring them more wars, more spying on the US population, more expenditures, more spy agencies, more restrictive laws, more deficit, and then follow that up with attacks on labor and the environment.

Ah but my Tweedledum can beat up your Tweedledee...

[Andy adderley]

Excellent point. Thanks a lot for sharing with us !!

[Ralphine]

I have a more pressing question. Why is Betty White's Off Their Rockers still on the air?

[ff]

last time i saw an angry post here on FMU it was deleted. or maybe it wasn't? i'll have to go back and look now but suffice to say, i haven't read this blog post i've only linked to it from BC's twitter...which is like a survey question all on it's own - like, what did they recently - twitter is more inflammatory than some research group, which makes it sound like EWG or MASSPIRG o...r Nielsen.? IS thsi what they call flaming? SORRY!but when you say 'angry comments!' i'm all ears. sign me up. i want to here. loud and clear. so oh my god is that what i'm going to get when i read the above?! HOW AM I GOING TO INTErpRet what was said. i mean what BC said! Do i feel it's accurate or a cheap come-on to get me interested?! I am going to have to stop this tomfoolery if i ever want to find out. WHAT AWAITS ME ABOVE! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[Brooklyn Bridget]

Second-most angry comments for a Bronwyn C. blog post:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/02/if_you_wont_be_.html
First-most angry comments were for the one she did when Teddy Kennedy died, but those got so vicious that they took down the whole post.

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Tá cónaí orainn go léir san am atá caite. Glacann muid nóiméad a fhios ag duine, uair an chloig le nós duine éigin, agus lá amháin duine a ghrá, ach an saol iomlán duine éigin a dearmad.

[Mostafizur]

Awesome point.Thanks for sharing.