China Asshoe Saturday!!!
The Debate
Well, let’s just say that in a battle of wits Joe Hiden is unarmed.
Actually he was pretty well wired for this one…except that when one says “wired,” they usually mean really tensed up and ready to go. In this case, he was literally wired. From two sightings of what was probably something illicit (by the rules of the debate), to his black beady eyes, to his body language, right down to saying “good luck” at the beginning (d’oh!) it’s plain Joe had some of the help he needed to take on President Trump.
But only some of it.
He did end by urging everyone to get out and vote as it will make a difference.
Don’t worry, Joe, I will.
Let’s see, what else…Klinton foundation in the crosshairs, Flynn again in the news, ACB up for SCOTUS…oh, yeah, that reminds me.
The difference between this time and with Merrick Garland is NOT that Obola didn’t nominate someone, and Trump did. Because they both did. No, it’s the likely fate of the nomination in the Senate. So if the Dems should be getting mad at someone for alleged hypocrisy, it’s the Senate, not the President. But really the Dems shouldn’t get mad, they should just f*ck right the hell off.
Justice Must Be done.
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.
Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
The Mandatory Coin
Queer as a three cent piece?
Well, no. The fact of the matter is we had not just one, but two distinct series of three cent pieces circulating at the same time in the United States. And a three dollar gold coin.
The federal government, however, never did issue a three dollar bill, so those actually are…queer. (Private banks could issue their own banknotes backed by deposits and the bank’s assets until 1862, and there were all sorts of funky denominations, including three and even seven dollar notes.)
Oh, and I almost forgot–there was a US government issued three cent bill once upon a time. (Just so you know there’s balance with the three dollar coin).
As is probably seeming to be entirely too usual for my stories, it goes back to the 1850s though at least it’s not 1853 we’re talking about this time.
Nope, it’s 1851 we’re concerned with. On March 3rd a law was passed authorizing the minting of a three cent silver coin, with 12 3/8 grains of .750 fine silver. The act also specified that the devices (design) would be conspicuously different from the other silver coins.
Why? Because this silver coin was seriously underweight compared to the others. That was done deliberately, because (as you may have read a few weeks ago) we were going through a substantial silver coin shortage at the time, because gold had become relatively cheap after the California gold strikes. These coins didn’t have enough silver in them, so hopefully they’d be spared the melting pot.
As to why they chose three cents for the denomination, the rationale usually guessed at was that that was the price of a postage stamp. I find that unconvincing, to be honest. We didn’t have an eight cent coin when first class postage was eight cents.
Another reason I’m not convinced is that apparently before 1847 postal rates were based on distance and even after 1847 I can’t really find a statement that the rate was three cents. The first thing I find is that in 1863 the rate was six cents, dropping as low as 2 cents in 1885, going up a bit then back down to two cents under President Hoover. Even as late as 1968 the rate was five cents, telling me the postal service had become more and more efficient over the years. Nothing else that cost 6 cents during the civil war cost a mere 5 cents in 1968!
Anyhow, I started with 1851, not 1853, but that’s not to say that 1853 has nothing to do with this story. Shortly after the act of February 1853 that cut the weight of the half dime, dime, quarter and half dollar and ended free coinage of silver, another act was passed raising the silver content of the three cent piece to match the others. And yes, arrows were added to the design here too, to denote the change.
Another distinguishing feature of this, versus the prior design, is that the star now has three raised outlines, rather than no such outline. And incidentally, it’s tough to find this sub-type well made. You can see some softness in this picture; it’s not untypical even for a mint-state coin. In 1858, another design change was made, reducing to two the number of outlines on the star.
In 1854, we have the three dollar gold piece. It looked a lot like the then-current one dollar coin, complete with Indian Princess wearing African bird feathers on her head dress. These are generally a bit expensive in high grades, more so than you’d expect from the roughly 15% of a troy ounce of gold contained in the coin.
Then in 1862, when it became plain that the Civil War wasn’t going to end in just a few months, and that there was a genuine danger the United States would break apart, all of the silver and gold in circulation simply…vanished. People were hoarding it, expecting the Irwin Schiff to really hit the fan soon.
So what we had in circulation was one cent pieces (“pennies”) and paper money from banks. Nothing in between. (The 5 cent nickel we know today didn’t exist yet, which is why I talk of half dimes…they were silver, half the weight of a dime.) That was a pretty dire situation, and a bunch of things were done to try to correct it. The United States began issuing paper money, for the first time since the constitution had been ratified–this was as a result of nearly being bankrupt by 1863. (There were interest bearing notes issued during the War of 1812, but they weren’t paper money as we think of it today.) We also required banks to join the national bank system if they wished to issue money; that put them under federal supervision and standardized the design of the bank notes (a not inconsiderable benefit for people wary of counterfeits).
But perhaps the craziest thing we did was issue fractional paper money! Yes, 5, 10, 25 and 50 cent notes! These were considerably smaller than “full size” paper money, but most relevant is the third issue, where a three cent note was introduced, running from 1864 to 1867.
“But,” you say, “The Civil War ended in 1865, Steve.”
Yes the war ended in 1865. The coin shortage did not. In large part because the government had issued too much paper money, and had to work to bring it back into par with gold and silver. It looked like this would finally happen in 1876, so the mint started ramping up production in anticipation of the day they’d be able to release coins and not have them disappear. Then WHAM!!! the day arrived, and almost instantly all the old coins came back from hiding. When added to the mint’s big output, this flooded the economy with coinage, so the mint got to go back to sleep again for a few years.
Pretty much all of the silver three cent pieces made between 1863 and 1872 were melted down; those years are expensive today except as proofs (specimens specially made for collectors; these got saved and are often more common today than mint-state pieces from the same year). They had become superfluous, and the series was terminated in 1873 along with the half dime. [The last of the three cent silvers illustrated above is probably a proof coin.]
And in case you’re wondering, yes, people did sometimes call them “trimes” back then, as a play on “dime” and “tri”, but more often they were called fish scales.
So one more piece to the story.
Another desperate measure we undertook to get something hard into circulation, was new denominations of base metal coinage. We introduced a two cent piece in 1864 (and discontinued it in 1873). We introduced a three cent nickel in 1865, and discontinued it in 1889.
(Albeit mine is of a different date, but neither my date or this one is particularly rare.)
This three cent nickel is about the size of a dime. I even heard just a few years ago a man telling me he had found one of these in what was supposed to be roll of dimes! And since it was the same composition as our “nickel” which hadn’t come out yet, it briefly was nicknamed the “nickel.”
And finally, in 1866 we introduced the five cent nickel we use today. That and paper money are the two lasting legacies of the Civil War.
With a three cent and five cent nickel coin actually circulating, it’s no wonder the mint dropped the two identical (but silver) denominations in 1873 that were not circulating!
The three cent nickel and the three dollar gold piece both met their demise in 1889 (along with the one dollar gold), after which point we had, excluding the gold that they had and we don’t, our modern system of denominations. The only thing left to do to turn it into the crap we use today is losing the silver from the dime, quarter and half dollar, and losing the copper out of the cent.
Standard Disclaimer: None of the coins shown are ones I own, though I’ll admit (in this case) to owning some examples of each of these designs. Prospective burglars should note that gold and silver aren’t the only heavy metals I collect, and that the other, unnamed heavy metal is kept a lot closer to me than the coins are.
Important Reminder
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
Remember Hong Kong!!!
中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!