Standard Mischief

in India, they have coinage made out of stainless steel. While not at Zimbabwe’s level of inflation, it appears that their coinage is worth more as scrap than as coins. The steel coins are being melted down and used to make things like razor blades.

We’ve got the same issue here. Check out Coinflation.com. This site shows the value of coins expressed as the spot price of the coin makeup. Zinc is down this week, but a bit ago, even the copper-plated zinc pennies made since 1982 were worth more than their face value. While I’m not yet buying penny sorting machines and hording rolls of nickels, Every good coin I posses by the end of the day is ending up in a jar.

Below that is a handy listing of all the coins that have silver in them and the value based on spot price.

What we really need to do is to drop the penny and the nickel, and start pricing things in tenths of a dollar. We could also stop trying to make dollar coins the same weight and size as a Carter Quarter, (only the government would fail to figure out by now that no one wants these coins), and instead introduce a new coin about the size of a nickel. Punching a pentagon shaped hole in the coin and adding Twin Towers on the obverse, along with withdrawing dollar bills from circulation will insure that these coins will be used.

We should also scrap those laws that prevent people from doing what they will with their property. I know that’s a radical idea, but we could pretend that people actually own the things they own every once in a while.

Only $12 with $4.50 shipping and handling! Perfect for “upcycling”!

Are there really idiots who would buy this stuff? It’s like selling used dog food for the price of sirloin.

Shooting the dogs while the raid is unfolding is the NSFW part. They always shoot the dogs first.

Radley Balko says that there “are 100-150 of these raids every day in America”, the excessive amount probably because of the need to justify the SWAT team’s existence.

The most stunning part about this video was that it exists. I’m wondering about the backstory here. I would think the average police officer would view this one time and then say “Yes, your honor, the camera malfunctioned, but we did try to record the raid for evidence”. Who is the judge who signed the warrant? What was the overwhelming evidence presented to allow the drastic measure of a midnight raid? How can the people involved in this raid sleep at night, knowing that they endangered everyone in the household and shot two dogs over “a ‘small amount’ of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge”?

(I actually shut the video off about 60 seconds in. Not exactly the most cheery thing first thing in the morning.)