Nickel carvers rejoice!! In 1963 Ronald Lee Foster was convicted in North Carolina of coin mutilation. He was sentenced to one year of probation and a $20 fine. Today, 47 years later, he received a Presidential pardon. Obama grants first nine pardons of his presidency I could find no additional information regarding how Foster mutilated coins.
Looks like Willie's got a bead on it..... http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/...ex.html?hpt=T2 http://www.cointalk.com/t143584/
The CNN Article now has details of the crime: For 42 years, Ronald Foster didn't know he had a felony conviction for cutting up pennies. In 1963, he was earning $82 a month as a Marine at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, when he says he and 16 others hatched a scheme to cut pennies into dimes so they could use them in vending machines. But the Secret Service caught them. They were marched into a courtroom on base, where his commanding officer entered a plea on their behalf to mutilation of coins, he says. Then, in 2005, he applied for a gun permit and found out for the first time he had a felony conviction. He applied for a presidential pardon, which was officially granted Friday, in the first round of pardons during Obama's administration. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/03/obama.pardons/index.html?hpt=T2
I don't see that happening anytime soon. We are beholden to the Chinese (we need them to buy our debt so we as a nation can continue to spend a great deal more than we take in) and we don't want to upset them (because if they stop buying our debt we as a nation will have to either a) find someone else to buy our debt - at a much higher interest rate or b) live within our means - which ain't gonna happen).
Or move to Australia where the national debt is very low. Doesn't matter how you cut it up... a loan shark is a loan shark. And we don't care how much we give him. It's sad really. Wallmart, communist buggers...
