Posted on 05/28/2012 3:36:36 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
How many things are in a person's pocket that they don't even know about?
We take money for granted -- most people can't tell us which way George Washington is facing on the quarter. They can tell us that Ben Franklin is on the front of the hundred, but they can't tell us that Independence Hall (where he helped draft the Constitution) is on the back.
One might think that as denominations get smaller and more common, the pictures on them would become more famous and well-known. The ten-dollar bill features Alexander Hamilton on the front. Since he was never a president himself, one wonders how many Americans could explain how he got on the note. A hint is on the back, where there is a picture of the U.S. Treasury. In short, Alexander Hamilton was the first secretary of the Treasury.
But it was how he handled that position that garnered him immortality on our money.
A lot of people living in the United States in 1790 believed (as a lot of people do today) that the debts incurred during the American Revolution should just be ignored. What modern people would think of as the United States didn't begin until 1789. The debts run up before that time were under a different government, so why should the new government be responsible for that debt?
Alexander Hamilton argued against this.
He believed that the new nation needed a good reputation on the international scene. If the United States was known to honor its debts, it would find it easier to get loans. Hamilton pointed out that this would be especially useful in a national emergency. Moreover, Hamilton wanted the federal government to take up all the state debt as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
It’s my understanding that in those days, debts were inheritable. His father’s estate debt, to be specific. That’s why Jefferson was so far in debt. That, and the fact that at some point, loans borrowed in scrip were later made payable only in specie (gold) that nobody had.
What I noticed in “public education” U.S. history classes, Jefferson’s voluminous utterings on the danger of public debt were always, always dismissed with his personal debt situation, to brand him as hypocritical, but of course (surprise) leaving out the true facts of the matter.
Sounds to me like the “liberal” version of Jefferson is a bit skewed. Hm.
Washington was peerless, no doubt.
But even Jefferson saw the inevitable harvest that must come of their compromise of their own stated ideals.
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.”
Read something this morning, that if true, needs to be realized when anyone talks about raising taxes or the problem with California’s fiscal situtation.
It’s a big scam. California has roughly 500 billions in investments and assets that are included in the CAFR aka comprehensive annual financial report, but studiously avoided when it pertains to debts and taxes. Read this and tell me what you think.
http://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/california-government-hides-billions-from-taxpayers/
I don’t think it is accurate to blame TJ’s financial problems on debts inherited from his father.
Pop died in 1773, TJ lived to 1826. His financial situation at death surely can’t be blamed on what happened 50+ years earlier.
I’m not sure your claims about payment of debts incurred in scrip by gold are correct. Early America, largely due to Hamilton, generally had a stable currency. The scrip era was mostly during colonial and revolutionary days.
>Sadly, today we live under Jeffersonian democracy as you so eloquently stated. The plantation still exists.<
You are wrong. Jefferson would not recognize what our nation has become today. “Nation of yeoman farmers” that regulates and taxes our every breath, that meddles in the affairs of country after country?
How on earth do you defend that outrageous position?
By the way, that “plantation” is voluntary. Anyone can simply walk away easily, by paying attention in school.
Oh I certainly believe it and have suspected for years. Those assets include natural resources, land, etc. Mulholland spent years and years screwing the gullible in California for their water rights for a pittance in perpetuity. Likewise, about half the siphon-off of Hoover goes to Kallie IIRC. Land, assets in options/leases, oil drilling. Of course liberals won’t ever give that up, and they will lie, obfuscate, omit, cheat and steal to protect it.
Your link lost me when it started talking about the state employees’ pension funds as available for paying off current deficits.
It is well known that state pension funds, particularly in CA, not only do not have excess funds available, but are in fact wildly underfunded. To an extent that would be criminal if perpetrated by a private business.
Sorry, but no. TR’s assertion that Hamilton “would have loved how the Grand Experiment turned out” is almost assuredly not true, as is your own assertion that Hamilton “would have loved the modern day IRS.”
This is especially the case given Hamilton’s own defence of a Constitution which specifically forbade an income tax (at that time), as well as his specific arguments in Federalists #33 and 34 in favour of concurrent taxation power versus entire subordination the states to the federal government on the issue of taxation.
Personally, I view the difference between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians as one of industry and commerce vs. landed wealth. In a sense, Hamilton represented the development of capitalism as we understand it today while Jefferson represented pre-capitalist landholder values.
You'll pardon if I'm less than impressed by your assertion. I've met many people with advanced degrees in subjects who spent a good portion of their academic lives studying these subjects - and yet who were obliviously clueless about them.
Would you mind FReepmailing me some of your papers?
There's a very good reason that Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists bitterly opposed him."
Well, there were very well-defined political reasons why Jefferson and the anti-Feds opposed him, but this is not the same as saying that they were good reasons.
Jefferson and his agrarian worldview opposed Hamilton and his view of commerce and industry. The former naturally favoured the large-landholding slave owners in the plantation states, while the latter favoured the free man capitalistic manufacturer and merchant. It's not surprising that slave owners would oppose a group whose worldview was increasingly coming to value free labour (in the sense of "free to take their labour where they can get the best value for it) over and against "free" labour (in the sense of getting to compel it from someone else by force).
Most Revolutionary War officers were Federalists. The people who bled for years were hardly disposed to create a home grown version of the tyranny they fought. Watching soldiers die from malnutrition, disease, inadequate clothing because of the hapless Confederation government left a mark on their psyche they were determined to correct.
It is believed he set the trigger, then accidentally brushed it causing his weapon to fire before he was on target (Burr).
Burr then shot him dead.
I think comparing the founders in modern day political terms is foolish. Remember these were highly educated men with very different backgrounds building a concept for a country without precedent. And they took considerable personal risk to do so.
They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
I would have any one of them as President in a heartbeat, or any other executive position for that matter, if they were alive today.
They could think, and they had values. They could write and express their ideas in ways few today can do without agents and helpers.
We were blessed to have them all, including the ones whose personal lives had 18th century baggage.
Not true. Before adopting a position you should do a little research. Hamilton was a major contributor to The Federalist. He would not have disagreed with the notion of States retaining their sovereignty, nor would he have wanted what has happened to this country over time. Saying that he was for a stronger national government than other revolutionary contemporaries is a strawman. It’s like saying that Washington wanted the extinction of cherry trees because he chopped one down. (I know that is a myth by the, to save you the trouble.)
For the past couple months, after discovering that all the bank tellers that I dealt with had no idea as to who that was on the ten-dollar bill, I have asked people--where appropriate--about that drawing on the bill, and I would estimate that maybe 5 percent knew that it was Alexander Hamilton.
As for the others, when told who it was (although the name appears below the engraving), usually I got a blank stare. They had no idea as to the role Alexander Hamilton played in our country's history. Yep, the teachers are doing a bang-up job in teaching the children about the Founding Fathers.
The pensions are “underfunded”, indeed - and that means (surprise!) by legislation that taxpayers will be tapped to make up the shortfall.
Money is fungible, and what the CAFR documents is that (apparently) California is sitting on billions of dollars (outside of pension programs) that are not being counted.
While it has long been my wish to have a pony too, why shouldn’t the pension funds be tapped to pay off pensioners, versus raising taxes to exorbitant rates on others who have neither the means nor the inclination to fund these programs?
Pension funds are, in theory anyway, funds set aside to pay for present and future pensions. Raiding them to pay current general fund expenses is a really bad idea. Works for this year, but makes future problems much greater.
Similarly with most if not all of the other funds mentioned, I assume. The money might be there, but it is already committed by law to certain uses.
Now one might make a good case that some of these other uses are things the state shouldn’t be doing anyway, but I can guarantee you each of them has a rabid special interest group willing to go to the mattresses in its defense.
Regarding Hamilton’s advocating the Federal assumption of war debt, you said:
“I’m sure in his time, most in government were on the plus side of honorable.....”
“True, he felt it was for the collective good will and camaraderie, etc. and that it would foster a common will..”
I have never seen a quote of this sort from Hamilton, and you certainly cannot ‘channel’ Hamilton.
Hamilton’s motivation was to transfer wealth through debt which would be paid by a federal bank from one class of people to another.
I’d take any one of them over Barack ORomney!
Let's examine a quick summary of Hamilton and see if you are right.
Alexander Hamilton was probably the strongest supporter of the trend towards aristocratic government. By early 1789 he was the treasurer of the U.S. and continually used all his influence to work toward a aristocracy.
According to Hamilton himself, only the “well bred and rich” as he expressed it, were to be recognized in governmental circles. “Lower” people, as he called them, were to have little or no part in government and would be held in check by “coercion of laws and coercion of arms”.
Hamilton's party became known as the Federalists and attempted to install a more powerful federal government (aristocracy) as opposed to Thomas Jefferson's Anti-federalist party which was pushing for state's rights.
This Democratic-Republican Party was founded in opposition to the Federalist party. Together with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison founded the Democratic-Republican Party, a forerunner to the Democratic Party.
Their Platform centered on the rights of states, agricultural interests, and decentralized government.
This was in direct opposition to Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and the Federalists.
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