A piece titled "Coin fraud prompts reform efforts" by a propagandist named Dan Browning appeared in a second rate hack paper called "Star Tribune" from Minnaepolis.
I had hoped the piece would give me some ideas on how to detect fraud and forged coins. Instead of news, the piece was partisan nonsense.
Apparently, a partisan politician named Anthony Weiner (D-NY) dislikes Fox News. He launched an investigation into its advertisers. As a result of the investigation, Representative Weiner wanted to pass a silly new law called "The Precious Coins and Bullion Disclosure Act" that would create additional laws to go after his enemies.
The law did not pass. So Weiner responds:
"There is this sense among my Republican colleagues that this is somehow an attack on Fox [Television] and their hawkers of gold, so I think their inclination is to defend it," Weiner said.
What a joke. Weiner is so arrogant that he included a partisan snipe in his attempt to claim his law wasn't a partisan snipe.
The rest of the article is a sick joke as well.
Dan Browning wants us to believe that the coin industry is "unregulated," and claims to be on "a mission to bring regulation to the coin industry."
The truth of the matter is that coins are one of the most regulated items in history.
I know that coins are regulated by governments because coins have regular sizes, with regular weights and bear the stamps of the government that authorized the minting of the coin.
Coins are part of the monetary supply. The government is very strick about anything to do with money.
The idea that coins aren't regulated is a laugh. Coins, by their nature, are highly regulated.
As the stated thesis of the article is an idiocy of the highest degree, I can see no purpose to this article other than as an attack on political enemies labeled "hawkers of gold."
The article fails to mention that the biggest hawker of gold and coins on this planet is a government agency called the US Mint.
The US Mint not only is the agency that produces American coins, the Mint has strict oversight over "gold hawkers" who wish to resell golden eagles and silver eagles. Only a few coin dealers in each state manage to get approval to hawk the gold sold by the mint.
As for the rest of the article.
Anthony Weiner wants "coin dealers to disclose the melt value of the coins they sell, along with any fees and markups on their products."
Weiner fails to mention that the US Mint aggressively markets "presidental dollars" to children. These coins have a deceptive gold colored coating and a melt value of under 7 cents a coin. I logged onto the catalog.usmint.gov to find that the US government just released a proof set of the "Andrew Johnson" coin with a "First Spouse medal" for $14.95. Shipping and handling is an additional $4.95.
The United States Government is deceptively hawking a set of two gold colored coins with a melt value of fifteen cents for twenty dollars! That is a 99% mark up!
The set has a legal tender value of $1.00, but the purchasing power of this coin will diminish with time.
The US Mint (a government agency) is producing one of these overpriced sets for every president! Children are being duped out of some serious dough to buy the full set.
Before Representative Weiner starts going after businesses reselling products from the US Mint, he should look at his own house. The US Mint is guilty of the offenses for which he condemns others.
Anyway, I was extremely disappointed with the attack journalism of The Star Journal. I filed this piece of nothing by Dan Browning in the category of Journalistic Fraud.
Just as a forgery is a useless piece of metal fraudulently masquerading as a coin, Dan Browning is clearly a propagandist masquerading as a reporter.
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