Don Cline
11 May 2001
BANKSBank
of America has now arbitrarily decided, like Citibank before it, that
it will not provide merchant services to any firearm-related business.
Citibank finally rescinded that stupid tyranny after half the people in
this country raised hell and threatened to close their accounts and the
same groundswell of opinion must be brought to bear against Bank of
America.
However, there is more to it than that. We have here
one of the most dangerous tyrannies our nation has ever faced. We are,
literally, right on the hairy edge of a government-sanctioned plan
where you get with the political program designed for you or you don't
eat or pay rent. There are three separate threads of tyranny coming
together here.
For some time now, Bank of America (and most
other banks) have required a fingerprint of any non-account-holder who
wanted to cash a check — specifically, a payroll check. They claim,
falsely, they need to do this to stop check fraud. The claim
is false
because it is very easy to stop check fraud — but they won't employ the
means to do it because if they did, they wouldn't have any grounds to
force electronic money down our throats or demand a fingerprint as a
condition of cashing a paper check.
I talked to the retired FBI
agent who designed this inkless fingerprint system the banks are using
to force us into their system. I pointed out that requiring a
fingerprint from me as a condition of cashing a payroll check and
thereby providing me with my own property lawfully due me — my wages,
in legal tender — was a direct and egregious violation of many of my
rights.
First of all, the fingerprint is not used for
identification. It is merely kept on file in case the check turns out
to be fraudulent. That is the very definition of a warrantless and a
priori restraint on my rights to privacy and due process in the absence
of probable cause of wrong-doing.
Secondly, I have a right to my property — my wages — and this is a violation of my right to receive my property lawfully due me.
Thirdly,
this is twice a violation of my right to be secure from impairment of
contract — once a violation of the contract between myself and my
employer in which he agrees to pay me for my services and once because
the purpose of this is to force me to open a bank account, thereby
becoming subject to the surveillance of my financial affairs afforded
by the Bank Secrecy Act.
The retired FBI agent dismissed all
that with the statement that he didn't care; all he was doing was
supplementing his government retirement by designing this program for
the banks. Then he said, "Anyway, your fingerprints are already all
over this payroll check. Why do you care if we require you to put your
fingerprint on it before we cash it?"
"If my fingerprints are all over the check, why do you need me to put my fingerprint on it?" I asked in reply.
"Oh, uh, well ...." he hemmed and hawed, "because it has to be voluntary," he admitted.
"Uh-huh.
It has to be voluntary so that a few years from now when all of our
fingerprints are loaded into a database and we no longer have any
financial privacy
at all, we can't complain about it because we
volunteered now. Right?"
"Well ... I can't get into that." He terminated our conversation and walked away..
Two
years after the fingerprint program started, they tightened the noose.
Suddenly you had to give a fingerprint and show two forms of
identification, both of which
had to be from an "approved list". Every
form of identification on that "approved list" was a bank card of some
kind with the exception that a "department store membership card" was
acceptable as one of the two forms of identification.
A year
later they tightened the noose still further. Now you need a
fingerprint, two forms of identification from an approved list and you
need to pay a fee to collect
your own wages in legal tender.
Now,
guess what...all the alternative methods of cashing your payroll check,
such
as supermarket customer service kiosks, are now refusing cash
checks at all.
They have now installed "RPM" machines where you have to
punch in your government-issued serial number (Social Security Number)
so they can look at
your credit history. The machine then takes your
digital picture so they can identify
you in a crowd at the next Super
Bowl, you insert your check and punch in the
amount and it gives you
the cash — less a 1.75% (minimum) processing fee
rounded off to the
next highest dollar because the machine doesn't give you coins. The
bank fee is cheaper, of course, because they want you to open an
account —
but you have to give your fingerprint and be forced to
contract with other banks or department stores.
The banks can
get away with all this because the banks have court rulings in their
favor all the way back to the beginnings of this country to the effect
that as soon as
you put your money in a bank, it is no longer yours. If
the bank goes belly up, you
have no specific right to YOUR money. You
have only the same rights as any other general creditor. Also, if the
bank refuses to cash your check for any reason or no reason at all, you
have no right against the bank. You have a right against the
person who
gave you the check, but that's all. If you go back to the person who
wrote you the check, you find that he has no right to his own money he
put into his account to cover the check either because it has been
"co-mingled" with everyone else's money.
Government loves that
word, "co-mingled".. If you co-mingle your money with the money of
others, you no longer have any claim to your money. But if government
robs you in an illegal IRS or RICO confiscation and co-mingles your
money with
other legalized thefts, robberies, and
euphemistically-labeled confiscations, you
don't have any right to
their money either.
If the bank can refuse to cash your payroll
check because you claim your right to
the privacy of your fingerprint,
then the bank can refuse to cash your payroll check
for any reason at
all — or no reason.
If the bank can refuse to cash your payroll
check because you refuse to pay their extortionate fee to collect your
own wages, then the bank can set any fee it wants
and keep your
earnings if you don't want to pay the fee.
GUNSSo here is how it
all ties together: If Bank of America can refuse to provide merchant
services to a gunsmith, then they can refuse to cash a check on their
bank which is presented by a gunsmith. And when the gunsmith goes back
to the customer who wrote him the check, Bank of America can refuse to
return the customers' money to him on the grounds he is consorting with
a gunsmith. I believe Moscow employed a similar brand of
totalitarianism against anyone not in favor with the Communist Party.
FEUDAL LORDSThe
banks can do all of this primarily because they hold a "Title of
Nobility" which is specifically prohibited by our Constitution. The
purpose of a Title of Nobility under feudal law was to elevate an
individual above "the common herd" and make him
less accountable to his
"subjects" on the theory that his actions were in "the public
interest." This is exactly the same purpose for creating
limited-liability corporations.
If some jerk in a bank decides to use
the enormous economic power of a bank you advance his personal
political agenda, he is legally untouchable so long as government
believes his actions are "in the public interest".
Our nation if
founded upon the principle of equality under the law. This is precisely
why Titles of Nobility are specifically prohibited by the U.S.
Constitution, and why Thomas Jefferson considered banks to be the
greatest threat to liberty the world
had ever known. I agree with him
and I have not had a bank account for 25 years.
Now those who are
trying to avoid entanglements with banking systems and
maintain their
sovereignty as natural individuals at law are facing the very real
possibility of not being able to eat or pay rent unless they are
willing to pay a fee
for the privilege of receiving their own property
lawfully due them (their wages)
AND get themselves on a banking
(government) fingerprint database in the absence of any probable cause
of wrong-doing.
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