Monday, March 25, 2013

EVERYTHING'S CRAZIER IN TEXAS?

Just ran across this story from late last week about gold lunacy in Texas:
Call it the Rick Perry gold rush: The governor wants to bring the state's gold reserves back from a New York vault to Texas.

And he may have legislative support to do it. Freshman Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, is carrying a bill that would establish the Texas Bullion Depository, a secure state-based bank to house $1 billion worth of gold bars owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Company, or UTIMCO, and currently stored by the Federal Reserve.
There'd be nothing wrong with Texas having physical possession of its own gold -- but, um, what's wrong with the status quo? Well, what's wrong with it is the usual right-wing fear/craving of apocalypse combined with the unscratchable Texas/Confederate itch for secession. The implication seems to be that the Civil War might start up again, or Texas might get an urge for goin', or Cyprus/Greece/Spain might happen in America (paranoid right-wingers are going crazy these days waiting for that shoe to drop -- they're like an economic doomsday cult). Um, frankly, if a meltdown that awful ever did come to America, the federal government might screw all kinds of people, but it sure as hell would protect the investment of Texas. But it's pleasing to crazy right-wingers to believe otherwise.

Ron Paul shows up in this story, of course:
... "If you think gold is a hedge, or a protection, you always want it as close to the individual and the entity as possible," [Ron] Paul told the Tribune on Thursday. "Texas is better served if it knows exactly where the gold is rather than depending on the security of the Federal Reserve."
Right -- you wouldn't want to trust the security of a podunk outfit like the Federal Reserve in New York.

America's other high-profile fruitcake gold bug also shows up in this story -- Governor Perry discussed this last Tuesday on Glenn Beck's radio show.

But you know who else wants this? Bidnessmen:
"Something on the scorecards of a lot of these businesses in deciding whether they want to come to Texas is stability and gold as being one of those items," Capriglione said.
Seriously? You're running a large corporation and you're as paranoid as a crank in Mom's basement listening to Beck and Alex Jones with Fox News blaring in the background? Is that why I'm not a wealthy entrepreneur -- I'm not paranoid enough?

Someday history will reckon with how right-wing media made a significant portion of this country clinically insane for decades. For now, the rest of us just have to live with the consequences.

7 comments:

Victor said...

Steve,
Slithtly OT - but along the same "Teh Crazy" train - how the home schooling advocates heroically defeated the Senatorial allies of the blue-helmeted SocialistFascists from the UN, coming to take away their handicapped home-schooled children (as if being schooled by religious adult morons in their homes isn’t enough of a handicap) and using them for mulch, or restoring golf courses to wetlands, or some other crazy thing, and making sure that poor old Bob Dole has has one last “a sad…” before leaving this mortall coil:

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2013/03/23/the-story-washington-gridlock-seen-through-the-eyes-bob-dole/zyQ05CKoGMKjPBDcNJGAVP/story.html

It’s really pathetic when the idiotic Republican politicians are so afraid of the morons in their base, that they even, basically, spit in the eye of their party elder, and former Presidential candidate.

Pathetic.
Sad.
And dangerous, for the nation.
I say we split into two nations, and we can work out the trade for the good Liberals in the Red States, for our, mostly rural, inner-Confederates, here in the Blue States, later.

We can’t as a nation, long survive, being half half rational, half moronic.

Let them form their own country – JesusHomeSchoolsMyKidsAndYou’llGetMyGunsWhenYouPryThemFromMy-ColdDeadHandsistan, or something like that.

Steve M. said...

Leading the charge against that treaty was Rick Santorum, enabled by the Daily Beast's Tina Brown.

Ten Bears said...

Let me know when y'awl figure out how to eat gold.

I find there is very good reason, indeed historical precidence, to distrust the private banking entity The "Federal" Reserve. Like the IRS, it is both unconstitutional (never ratified by a full quorum of states) and contrary to The Founders' experience/intent.

No fear...

Victor said...

Jeez, I'd forgotten that twit had given Icky Sticky Ricky a shoebox to stand and scream from.

And I'm sure she wonders why everything she touches turns, not into gold, but into shite.

Mark said...

This idea is a load of stupid. The reason so much gold is kept in the NY vault (in addition to it being secure) is that it makes it easy to sell it when the owner wants to raise funds. The gold is just transferred within the bank (either physically or on paper, I don't recall which). If Texas held its own gold, nobody would want to buy any of it from them, they'd just deal with someone who makes it easier to take possession.

Although, Perry's idea ro physically move the gold sounds like the premise of a movie, "The Great Texas Gold Train Robbery" (with Bruce Willis and Shia LeBoeuf).

Buford said...

Can't we invade Texas and do a regime change? Or are we going to convert Texas into our national insane asylum...

Examinator said...

Buford,
Nah Congress has that distinction.

Like I said to a colleague when I read this story originally.
“What the representative needs is a golden clap. ”
“What’s that… some type of STD?” he asked
” Hmm Could be… But I mean take a gold bar in each hand and clap them together with the representatives head in the middle” I answered.
“Won’t that hurt?” he said concerned
“Only if you get your fingers in the way” .