Senate Tea-Publicans vote for nullification and minting their own money

Tea-Publicans in the Arizona Senate demonstrated that they are just as batshit crazy as their counterparts in the Arizona House this week.

Tea-Publican senators voted to pass SR 1003 (.pdf) the Neo-Confederate Senate Resolution for “nullification” of EPA regulations in Arizona, on a vote of 18-11, with one member not voting. Democrat Carlyle Begay, who represents the SRP Navajo Power Generating Station, voted with the Tea-Publicans.

The long-discredited “nullification” theory is unconstitutional, how many times do we have to go over this? The Supremacy Clause, Article VI, paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, and the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, Section 3 is settled law. These Neo-Confederate dead-enders always want to re-litigate the discredited theories that led to the Civil War.

Then there were Sen. Gail Griffin’s Mexican Gray Wolf bills, SB 1211 (.pdf) which passed on a vote of 18-12, with Democrat Barbara McGuire voting with the Tea-Publicans. The Mexican Gray Wolf is listed as a protected endangered species under U.S. and Mexican law. SB 1211 permits an employee of the Arizona Department of Agriculture (ADA) and livestock operators to kill wolves in the act of killing livestock without penalty under federal law.

Sen. Griffin’s companion bill, SB 121 (.pdf) passed on a vote of 16 -14, with Tea-Publican Michele Reagan joining all the Democrats in opposition. SB 1212 appropriates $250,000 from the state General Fund (GF) in FY 2015 to the Arizona Attorney General for litigation expenses relating to a challenge against any expansion of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program (Program).

That’s right, these Neo-Confederate dead-enders want to challenge the law of not one but two sovereign nations and international treaty because some rancher supposedly lost a cow to a protected endangered species. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to set up a state insurance trust to cover the proven loss of livestock in such rare circumstances? Always with having to defy the big bad federal “guvmint” for these Teabaggers.

Tea-Publican senators also voted to pass  Sen. Chester Crandell’s bill (back again this year) on behalf of the Old Glory Mint, a company that makes gold and silver coins, SB 1096 (.pdf), which purports to allow the state of Arizona to mint its own coinage because the U.S. dollar is “fiat money” and worthless. The bill passed on a party-line vote of 18-12, with Democrat Barbara McGuire voting with the Republicans.

I explained last year when this bill was being considered that this bill is unconstitutional:

Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids the states from issuing “bills of credit” (paper or “fiat” money) or making anything but gold and silver coin legal “tender.” There is no corresponding explicit prohibition against the federal government, nor any explicit authorization. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifically gives Congress power to “borrow money” and also power to “coin money and regulate the value” of both U.S. and foreign coins. The federal government first issued paper money in 1861 in order to fund the Civil War by an act of Congress, the Legal Tender Act of 1862. The Legal Tender Cases, Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis (1871), and Juilliard v. Greenman (1884), upheld the constitutionality of the Act.

Last year, Keith Weiner, president of the Gold Standard Institute, which supports gold-backed currencies, testified that he envisioned a system where people can pay for goods and services with debit and credit cards backed by gold and silver.

Gold-backed money fell out of favor during World War I because the U.S. and many other countries needed to print more cash to pay for the war. In 1971, President Richard Nixon formally abandoned the gold standard.

These Glenn Beck conspiracy theorists, who apparently got burned in his Goldline fraud — “The company’s business model was built on systemically swindling and scaring its mostly elderly clientele into purchasing overpriced gold coins, prosecutors in California alleged, leading the company to settle for $4.5 million in refunds to its customers,” Beck-backed gold fraud? – Salon.com — are looking for a way to unload their gold coins while living out their paranoid end-times apocalyptic fantasies.