• That waitress who naively turned her $12k tip over to the cops? She’s getting her money back despite police claims that the cash … um, yeah, um … “smells like marijuana so we have to keep it, you know, for your own good.” (Amazing how self-congratulatory the jerks manage to be even after the whole country beat up on them for stealing from the poor woman.)
• Oh, Arizona, the silliness of your legislators never ends, does it? Now they’re trying to declare that you can be pregnant up to two weeks before having sex.
• Too late! Too late! You missed your chance to buy Buford, Wyoming.
• Did you know that (among other things) inability to think is now a federally protected disability? And it just gets weirder and weirder.
• If you liked Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games or Winter’s Bone you might like her even better in real life. :-) (Tip o’ hat to EN.)
• TaxKilla and Occupy the IRS. The aim: to teach the 99% how to use one of the tax advantages of the 1%. It’s just using Schedule C, which all us self-employed types already know. But it’s using it with Attitude. (You have to have JavaScript enabled to read the manifesto. Wish they wouldn’t do that, but it’s worth it.)
• I’m sorry the man’s dead. But he really was the George W. Bush of art.

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• Your hilarious dog story of the day, courtesy of naturegirl. (Which probably would have ended up much less hilarious had American cops been the ones doing the window smashing.)
• And so I don’t neglect you cat people, here. It’s not funny or even particularly dramatic. Just cuuuuuuuuute.
• Not so cute: The U.S. standard of living has fallen more than 50 percent. Depending on how you look at it.
• I hope I don’t ever have to do that. Especially when I’m 80.
• A big hurtful, annoying EFF-U to Arizona, spoken as only Ken from Popehat can speak write.
• Two for the movie buffs: six common arguments people make about movies that are always wrong; and seven ridiculously out-of-date things movies always show. (Yeah; why do they still keep dressing nuns that way?)
  
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• In China: rescuing dogs from the butcher.
• Survival Singles or doomsday dating. (Tip o’ hat to C^2)
• Memo to the fedgov: How not to attract tourists.
• The tale of Weela the lifesaving pit bull. Found this after a discussion of pit bulls came up in yesterday’s comments. It’s from quite a while back, but a wonderful story.
• Well. That about defines desperation. Ick.
• When clark mentioned in a recent comment section that a state government was about to raid small farms and slaughter their hogs, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. But it’s pretty awful. He’s the nice, straight MSM version, which doesn’t sound so heinous; reasonable, even. Here’s the other side of the story.
• “Gonzo libertarian” Jennifer Abel doesn’t have good health insurance. But she thinks having Obamacare would be a lot worse.
• Blind dog. Rescued from trash. Gets her sight back. Your Awwwwwww moment for today. (Video.)

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The Tireless Agorist looks at the burgeoning underground economy in Greece.

And Forbes asks if Bitcoin might become the favored currency of an international System D.

I’m as skeptical of Bitcoin as I am of every cyber currency (once burned …). And my first thought on reading the Forbes piece was, “What will the USA fedgov’s 900-pound gorilla do?” But one of these days, the flailing arms of that monster gorilla will be able to do … nothing. Some innovation in free-market money will defeat it. If it’s Bitcoin, good for Bitcoin.

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• Legally blind and a successful photographer.
• Now here’s a growing profession for you: consultants who coach white-collar criminals on how to get along in prison.
• The sagebrush rebellion rises again.
• Brothels. They’re now legal in Ontario, Canada. And for some pretty good reasons.
• “When we were making V we thought the mask might be popular at parties.”

And yet another intriguing trailer for Silver Circle. The coins are real; you can buy them from the movie’s store and Ron Paul was photographed last month using one to make a point.

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I’m not sure how many grains of salt this deserves to be taken with. Perhaps a whole shaker full. Or perhaps it’s the dead-solid truth. Judge for yourself. Marc Slavo tends to be a bit conspiratorial for my taste and the bona fides of the letter writer he quotes are unverifiable.

Whatever else, it’s fascinating that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission tossed this public comment down the memory hole yesterday almost as soon as it was posted. The comment’s author claims to be a whistleblower writing from inside JPMorgan Chase. And he or she confirms (among other things) the widespread suspicion that the silver market is being wildly manipulated to JPMorgan’s benefit.

The Internet, bless its many-pointed little head, rescued the comment from the obscurity the CFTC tried to consign it to and D. sent me the link.

Again, caveat lector (And thanks to David for giving proper form to the “Lat-ish” I previously entered.) Just thought it was worth a post.

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Pretty funny.

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The following is from an entrepreneur friend I’ve blogged about before. What he’s going through is a direct result of FATCA. You and me? We might not think we’re rich enough to be affected by this horrible, impossible law. If we have few or no offshore assets, we might think we have nothing to worry about.

But in the long run, we’re all hurt as American citizens become worldwide pariahs, as avenues of freedom are closed off, and as stupid government tricks push our commerce and technology into fear-created backwaters.

Anyhow, from my friend:

I’ve already whined to you about having to close my Swiss bank account. That process has been started. It will end up costing me about $10,000 in travel and fees. I’m moving the money from accounts denominated in Swiss Francs to a firm that will warehouse gold bullion for me – for a fee. I kept gold in my Swiss safe deposit box for annual fee of $150 – and no one, no one at all, know what was inside. Now I will pay a fee to buy bullion, plus about 1.5% of the value of the gold to the new firm every year, and they will know exactly what I have at all times.

It’s better than nothing, but it’s a major loss of money, privacy, and control.

I also had Swiss Travel Cash cards. These were very cool. You pay a small fee to load a card from your Swiss account. You can have cards for dollars, Euros, or Swiss Francs. You can have them for meatspace credit cards, or internet purchases, or as an iPhone app. I had dollar and Euro credit cards. Each card can hold up to 10,000 units of currency. There are no additional fees. The cards have no names on them, just a European mastercard number. You can use them anywhere mastercard is accepted, with a 4-digit pin. See here.

When a close friend was going through a nasty divorce, her wealthy in-laws paid a pack of lawyers to freeze all her assets, the better to steal the house and get custody of the kids, I handed her my dollar card and whispered the pin in her ear. She was able to hire her own lawyers and sort things out. I was repaid in full. The kids are with her. There were no records of the spending, no way for the other sharks to get at this money.

Now its gone. I got a polite but firm email stating that I have to close out all Swiss Travel Cash cards by June 1. Like closing the Swiss bank accounts, this applies to all US citizens.

I realize there won’t be much sympathy for a rich one-percenter. Actually I’m just breaking into the 10% class, the ones who make 43% of US AGI and paid 70.5% of total income taxes. But once the idea of class war is accepted, the lines get blurry. It really doesn’t matter if I’m in the 1%, 5%, 10%, or even 20%.

What matters is that I’ve been cut out of the herd, and forced into a series of ever tighter chutes, and I know what lies ahead.

I read libertopia dreamers who write about anonymous digital cash. It’s not a dream, it is cold plastic reality, but it is being denied to Americans while the rest of the world moves ahead.

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