LIBtranslator

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Volstead Act World War III, 1-4

Typical German poster in 1919 (link)

Title III.

INDUSTRIAL ALCOHOL.

Sec. 1. When used in this title—

The term “alcohol” means that substance known as ethyl alcohol, hydrated oxide of ethyl, or spirit of wine, from whatever source or whatever processes produced.

The term “container” includes any receptacle, vessel, or form of package, tank, or conduit used or capable of use for holding, storing, transferring, or shipment of alcohol.

INDUSTRIAL ALCOHOL PLANTS AND WAREHOUSES.

Sec. 2 Any person now producing alcohol shall, within thirty days after the passage of this Act, make application to the commissioner for registration of his industrial alcohol plant, and as soon thereafter as practicable the premises shall be bonded and permit may issue for the operation of such plant, and any person hereafter establishing a plant for the production of alcohol shall likewise before operation make application, file bond, and receive permit.

Sec. 3. Warehouses for the storage and distribution of alcohol to be used exclusively for other than beverage purposes may be established upon filing of application and bond, and issuance of permit at such places, either in connection with the manufacturing plant or elsewhere, as the commissioner may determine; and the entry and storage of alcohol therein, and the withdrawals of alcohol therefrom shall be made in such containers and by such means as the commissioner by regulation may prescribe.

Sec. 4. Alcohol produced at any registered industrial alcohol plant or stored in any bonded warehouse may be transferred under regulations to any other registered industrial alcohol plant or bonded warehouse for any lawful purpose.

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The wartime version of the Volstead Act had been in effect since mid-1919 as a sort of test to see how far Americans can be pushed toward a Centrally Planned Economy.

Russia had just such a law beginning after China's 1911 opium ban caused a glut in the Balkans out of which WW1 emerged as competition for primacy in drug markets. American alcohol prohibition took effect in summer, 1919. The Czar had been murdered the previous, year, after six years of alcohol prohibition. Congress was understandably alarmed, but not so much as following the Soviet debt repudiation announced six months earlier. After all, Russia's revolution and the separate peace of March 1918 forced the USA to resort to conscription and enter the war lest the Allies lose to Germany and default on their war loans. Imagine the embarrassment if alcohol prohibition were to topple the Czar and lose the war triggered by American efforts to defuse a boycott by making China's drug prohibitions a worldwide encumbrance!

Only much later would it surface that industrial alcohol accounted for a tiny fraction of illegal liquor. What bothered voters was the continued addition of mutilating deadly poison to industrial alcohol used for such things as fuel and reagents. Before prohibition, with unpoisoned alcohol readily avaliable, resentment of deliberate government poisoning of citizens was not widespread.

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Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, economic collapse,

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Volstead Act Collapse, II-39

Dry fanatics regarded Prohibition as "the" Constitution (link)

SEC. 38. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the Attorney General of the United States are hereby respectively authorized to appoint and employ such assistants, experts, clerks, and other employees in the District of Columbia or elsewhere, and to purchase such supplies and equipment as they may deem necessary for the enforcement of the provisions of this Act, but such assistants, experts, clerks, and other employees, except such executive officers as may be appointed by the Commissioner or the Attorney General to have immediate direction of the enforcement of the provisions of this Act, and persons authorized to issue permits, and agents and inspectors in the field service, shall be appointed under the rules and regulations prescribed by the Civil Service Act: Provided, That the Commissioner and Attorney General in making such appointments shall give preference to those who have served in the military or naval service in the recent war, if otherwise qualified, and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such sum as may be required for the enforcement of this Act including personal services in the District of Columbia, and for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1920, there is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $2,000,000 for the use of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and $100,000, for the use of the Department of Justice for the enforcement of the provisions of this Act, including personal services in the District of Columbia and necessary printing and binding.

SEC. 39. In all cases wherein the property of any citizen is proceeded against or wherein a judgment affecting it might be rendered, and the citizen is not the one who in person violated the provisions of the law, summons must be issued in due form and served personally, if said person is to be found within the jurisdiction of the court.

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Prohibition was palmed off as the will of the people, eager to have men with guns stop, search, arrest, fine, jail them and confiscate their property--all of this on the understanding that The Economy would benefit from these layers of coercive regulation and enforcement. So why was so much money needed to pay for the deadly force needed to enforce this popular enactment? Gold was $20.67182 per Troy ounce so the enforcement cost then worked out to 101596 Troy ounces of gold, which at $1804.30 each put the initial, hypothetical cost of enforcement at $183 million at today's gold prices. But that wasn't enough to save the economy from sin. Just after the Crash, John J Raskob estimated prohibition enforcement to cost $900 million 1930 dollars. Other sources in 1932 calculated enforcement at 370 million gold dollars or 32 billion of today's gold dollars. The record shows this did the opposite of save the economy.

This appeared 23FEB1929, not 21FEB (link)

Meanwhile, European countries desperate for cash to pay World War loan debts and reparations charges could not help but see the line of ships hovering off the U.S. coast as an opportunity to sell other prohibited items for ready cash...

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Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Volstead Act Collapse, II-36

The Democratic Platform of 1924 took note of heroin use (link)

That year foreign submarines were photographed in the Hudson River (link)

SEC. 36. If any provision of this Act shall be held invalid it shall not be construed to invalidate other provisions of the Act.

SEC. 37. Nothing herein shall prevent the storage in United States bonded warehouses of all liquor manufactured prior to the taking effect of this Act, or prevent the transportation of such liquor to such warehouses or to any wholesale druggist for sale to such druggist for purposes not prohibited when the tax is paid, and permits may be issued therefor.

A manufacturer of any beverage containing less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume may, on making application and giving such bond as the commissioner shall prescribe, be given a permit to develop in the manufacture thereof by the usual methods of fermentation and fortification or otherwise a liquid such as beer, ale, porter, or wine, containing more than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume, but before any such liquid is withdrawn from the factory or otherwise disposed of the alcoholic contents thereof shall under such rules and regulations as the commissioner may prescribe be reduced below such one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol: Provided, That such liquid may be removed and transported, under bond and under such regulations as the commissioner may prescribe, from one bonded plant or warehouse to another for the purpose of having the alcohol extracted therefrom. And such liquids may be developed, under permit, by persons other than the manufacturers of beverages containing less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume, and sold to such manufacturers for conversion into such beverages. The alcohol removed from such liquid, if evaporated and not condensed and saved, shall not be subject to tax; if saved, it shall be subject to the same law as other alcoholic liquors. Credit shall be allowed on the tax due on any alcohol so saved to the amount of any tax paid upon distilled spirits or brandy used in the fortification of the liquor from which the same is saved.

When fortified wines are made and used for the production of non-beverage alcohol, and dealcoholized wines containing less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume, no tax shall be assessed or paid on the spirits used in such fortification, and such dealcoholized wines produced under the provisions of this Act, whether carbonated or not, shall not be subject to the tax on artificially carbonated or sparkling wines, but shall be subject to the tax on still wines only.

In any case where the manufacturer is charged with manufacturing or selling for beverage purposes any malt, vinous, or fermented liquids containing one-half of 1 per centum or more of alcohol by volume, or in any case where the manufacturer, having been permitted by the commissioner to develop a liquid such as ale, beer, porter, or wine containing more than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume in the manner and for the purpose herein provided, is charged with failure to reduce the alcoholic content of any such liquid below such one-half of 1 per centum before withdrawing the same from the factory, then in either such case the burden of proof shall be on such manufacturer to show that such liquid so manufactured, sold, or withdrawn contains less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume. In any suit or proceeding involving the alcoholic content of any beverage, the reasonable expense of analysis of such beverage shall be taxed as costs in the case.

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One-half of one percent of a gallon by volume comes to 20 cubic centimeters of alcohol, less than half the volume of a shot glass. To drink enough liquid to absorb a single shot of liquor you'd have to drink two gallons, which is LD 50, the volume that kills half of those foolish enough to try it. Two gallons is enough to so upset electrolyte balance to the point of killing roughly half who drink such a dose of pure water. The Christian nature of this law, and of the 1908 law forcing producers to add deadly poison to industrial alcohol exempted from the "sin tax" excise speaks volumes about such fanatics' claims to be "pro-life" in their motivations for prescribing the deliberate blinding and killing of other persons. (Industrial Alcohol regulations are also found in the Volstead Act)

But even non-chemists can see the energy and labor required to extract potable alcohol from such a weak solution is prohibitive. Far easier to take advantage of huge surpluses of heroin and codeine converted from morphine extracted from opium. And that is precisely what newspaper accounts from faraway New Zealand reveal happened. Today's headlines are full of reports of fatalities resulting from prohibition laws that make everything except poisonous, addictive fentanyl impossible to find.

Already competition for narcotic sales outlets led fanatically prohibitionist China to ruin in a series of opium wars and related turmoil that resulted in some 25 million killed and a communist dictatorship no less bloodthirsty than the Quing Dynasty Empire it replaced. Pressure from Chinese boycotts begun in 1903 persuaded American politicians to export Chinese prohibitionism worldwide by 1909. The Balkan States east of Italy promptly sprouted wars that spread into the chemical refining industries of Switzerland, The Low Counties, France, Austria, Germany and England before blossoming into World War 1 the day President Wilson proclaimed the income tax records of U.S. corporations open to inspection. This slowed but did not stop the Hague Opium Convention from exporting prohibition regulations all over the world.

After WW1, the Armistice treaties and Treaty of Versailles were loaded with unmentionable mention of narcotics. Ratification of the Versailles treaty bound Germany and Austria to the terms of the 1912 Opium Convention--a sad state for the world's largest producer of narcotics and refiner of stimulants that offset some of the side effects of addictive narcotics. No surprise then that the 1924 surge in heroin use brought forth the 1925 drug prohibition convention instead of the much more sensible legalization of alcoholic beverages--which formerly competed with narcotics. This was followed by the use of tax laws as weapons of prohibition against both, with the 1927 disturbances and 1929 market crashes they caused.

We'll be returning to all this while examining the 1937 Technical Analysis of the 1931 Narcotics Limitation Convention that did to the German banking system what alcohol and drug prohibition was then doing to the U.S. banking system and financial markets. Ask yourself whether it seems strange that you have to go to New Zealand newspapers to find information so carefully elided from the U.S. and Canadian press.

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Good reading: Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage, by the talented Joseph Persico. The Roosevelt family fortune came in large part from Warren Delano II's dealings in opium even before the Civil War made it suddenly more lucrative. This is of course omitted from the story of how subtly qualified was FDR, descended from a drug empire, to wage a global war against an industrial-era rival conglomerate of that same trade. Yet the book is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in how These States extricated Europe from a tar-baby of it's own design. (link)

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Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Volstead Act Collapse, II-34

Why did Germany Crash before mid-1927?

SEC. 34. All records and reports kept or filed under the provisions of this Act shall be subject to inspection at any reasonable hour by the commissioner or any of his agents or by any public prosecutor or by any person designated by him, or by any peace officer in the State where the record is kept, and copies of such records and reports duly certified by the person with whom kept or filed may be introduced in evidence with like effect as the originals thereof, and verified copies of such records shall be furnished to the commissioner when called for.

SEC. 35. All provisions of law that are inconsistent with this Act are repealed only to the extent of such inconsistency and the regulations herein provided for the manufacture or traffic in intoxicating liquor shall be construed as in addition to existing laws. This Act shall not relieve anyone from paying any taxes or other charges imposed upon the manufacture or traffic in such liquor. No liquor revenue stamps or tax receipts for any illegal manufacture or sale shall be issued in advance, but upon evidence of such illegal manufacture or sale a tax shall be assessed against, and collected from, the person responsible for such illegal manufacture or sale in double the amount now provided by law, with an additional penalty of $500 on retail dealers and $1,000 on manufacturers. The payment of such tax or penalty shall give no right to engage in the manufacture or sale of such liquor, or relieve anyone from criminal liability, nor shall this Act relieve any person from any liability, civil or criminal, heretofore or hereafter incurred under existing laws.
The commissioner, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, may compromise any civil cause arising under this title before bringing action in court; and with the approval of the Attorney General he may compromise any such cause after action thereon has been commenced.

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Section 34 ran counter to Bill of Rights Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated... It clearly invited minions to trespass "at any reasonable hour" and make off with records and assets. This happened in October 1924 and the resulting income tax case made it to the Supreme Court in 1927.(link)

Section 35 added to the legal travails of Charleston attorney and alleged bootlegger Manly Sullivan whom the feds convicted of 1922 tax evasion, but who won on appeal in 1926 before being haled before the Supreme Court in 1927.(link)

German volume of trading peaked sharply in 1927

A large number of such cases, many involving state and federal officials operating in the niche formerly occupied by distillers, brewers and international pharma companies, were affected by these Supreme Court cases. Already submarines--used to haul drug cargo since 1916--were spotted in the Hudson river in 1924. That was the year German inflation abated and the Democratic platform decried the "spreading of heroin addiction among the youth."

The decision to vacate the Circuit court's ruling and jail Sullivan coincided with market breaks and banking problems in many European countries that had only just waged a major war over enjoyable drug markets and were still fighting over reparations. Many of them owned affiliated companies in the U.S.A. This whole business of politicians angling for ways to equivocate ordinary vices into victimless "crimes" as pretext for resorting to the violence of law had by 1927 taken on the characteristics of a globalized financial crisis. Nobody at the time could envision where this was headed.

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Good reading:

Taylor, Arnold H.; American Diplomacy and the Narcotics Traffic, 1900-1939: A Study in International Humanitarian Reform. Durham: Duke University Press, 1969. Details of the way Germany led the world in the production and distribution of chemical drugs exist mainly in State Department publications. Trade in drugs is regarded as frightening, mainly by people who have never set eyes on any of the drugs politicians feel require control by deadly force--which is somehow appealing. The topic is burdened with an aura of taboo that discourages contemplation of unintended financial and economic consequences and forters the proliferation of appalling lies and humbug.

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Monday, July 25, 2022

Volstead Act Collapse, II-33

Economic collapse & communism everywhere

April Fools' Day, 1932

SEC. 33. After February 1, 1920, the possession of liquors by any person not legally permitted under this title to possess liquor shall be prima facie evidence that such liquor is kept for the purpose of being sold, bartered, exchanged, given away, furnished, or otherwise disposed of in violation of the provisions of this title. Every person legally permitted under this title to have liquor shall report to the commissioner within ten days after the date when the eighteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States goes into effect, the kind and amount of intoxicating liquors in his possession. But it shall not be unlawful to possess liquors in one’s private dwelling while the same is occupied and used by him as his dwelling only and such liquor need not be reported, provided such liquors are for use only for the personal consumption of the owner thereof and his family residing in such dwelling and of his bona fide guests when entertained by him therein; and the burden of proof shall be upon the possessor in any action concerning the same to prove that such liquor was lawfully acquired, possessed, and used.

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The straw that broke the camel's back, consolidating the stock market Crash and launching the Great Depression was a ruling by Federal Judge Louis Fitzhenry that anyone who bought or possessed a bottle of beer could be sentenced to five years in prison. This interpretation of Volstead Sec. 33 was in light of the Jones Increased Penalties Act signed by Calvin Coolidge 2 days before Herbert Hoover's inauguration.The five in the Jones "Five & Ten" law made practically everything a felony, and by extension, failure to inform the police of a felony made practically all Americans into stool pigeons or felons.

Already in late August the New York Times and 20 other papers had begun publishing prosecutor Mabel Willebrandt's series on how deeply The Inside of Prohibition enforcement wove its tentacles into the penal, tax and banking system. Police, Customs and Prohibition agents turned out to be such superb organizers of profitable mischief that Willebrandt made sure they were required to inform on each other. The 1929 market downturn began as August ended.

Lysander Spooner had ironically observed of the dry laws in Boston 54 years earlier:

One answer is that if the fact that the use of liquors tends to poverty and pauperism be a sufficient reason for prohibiting the sale of them, it is equally a sufficient reason for prohibiting the use of them; for it is the use, and not the sale, that tends to poverty. The seller is, at most, merely an accomplice of the drinker. And it is a rule of law, as well as of reason, that if the principal in any act is not punishable, the accomplice cannot be. --Vices are Not Crimes, XXI

But superstitious hysteria cares little for the restraints of reason and causality. Reality made it explicit that laws making a crime of production and trade are what tend to poverty, with practically every country of Europe, Asia and South America confirming that truth. Neither the use nor sale of anything caused as much poverty as did tax-enforced Prohibition when it unleashed The Great Depression! Judge Fitzhenry blurted out his lamentable decision on 21NOV1929, after the Dow Jones averages had dropped by over a third and a New York banker, two Philadelphia brokers and a grain dealer committed suicide. Then, on 26NOV1929 Judge Fitzhenry was in the news again:

Federal Judge Louis Fitzhenry today issued a statement to correct an opinion handed down yesterday which, he said, either by inadvertent use of a word or by misquotation, conveyed the impression that he held any person knowing of another's possession of liquor to be a felon. (...) "I don't believe I said possession was a felony, but if I did it was incorrect," he said. "However any person witnessing a violation of the Jones Act without reporting it would be a felon."

Anyone can visit online newspaper archives and see that The Crash came as soon as word went out of a huge bank-subsidized liquor and drug smuggling syndicate suffered 35 simultaneous raids from Atlantic City across Long Beach to Montauk Point October 16, then worsened as police, Customs, NY banking department personnel, bankers and tycoons were dragged down by dope, bank fraud and murder cases from the US, to England and Germany as commerce was increasingly made a crime.

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Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Volstead Act Totalitarianism, II-32

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. --Lysander Spooner

SEC. 32. In any affidavit, information, or indictment for the violation of this Act, separate offenses may be united in separate counts and the defendant may be tried on all at one trial and the penalty for all offenses may be imposed. It shall not be necessary in any affidavit, information, or indictment to give the name of the purchaser or to include any defensive negative averments, but it shall be sufficient to state that the act complained of was then and there prohibited and unlawful, but this provision shall not be construed to preclude the trial court from directing the furnishing the defendant a bill of particulars when it deems it proper to do so.

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Following Assistant Attorney-General Mabel Willebrandt's example, prosecutors routinely "stack charges" against a defendant, thus building a very long potential prison sentence if convicted, and then approach the defendant with a "plea deal" that would result in a guaranteed, substantially reduced charge and sentence if the defendant agrees to plead guilty to the reduced offense. By stacking income tax charges onto prohibition cases prosecutors circumvented the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Bill of Rights. This last was "the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury."

Mixing revealed faith with the forcible restraint of men leads into the fallacy of equivocation. If innocent vices are wrongly transubstantiated into crimes, then the coercive initiation of force is just as easily distorted into a "right." But it is precisely to protect individual rights--moral claims to freedom of action, rather than to impose barbaric superstitions--that we place the means of coercive enforcement into the hand of government and limit it by law. Otherwise, as Lysander Spooner observed:

...government would be utterly impracticable, if it were to take cognizance of vices and punish them as crimes. Every human being has his or her vices. Nearly all men have a great many. And they are of all kinds—physiological, mental, emotional, religious, social, commercial, industrial, economical, etc., etc. If government is to take cognizance of any of these vices, and punish them as crimes, then, to be consistent, it must take cognizance of all, and punish all impartially.

This Spooner recognized as impossible in 1875, when Comstockist abuses were at their furious peak. Yet this same jurist, so often misquoted and falsely maligned as an anarchist, observed that a healthy distinction between vices and crimes is essential if we are to have a functioning government.

Such a thing as a government formed by voluntary association would never have been thought of if the object proposed had been the punishment of all vices impartially; because nobody wants such an institution, or would voluntarily submit to it. But a government formed by voluntary association for the punishment of all crimes is a reasonable matter; because everybody wants protection for himself against all crimes by others, and also acknowledges the justice of his own punishment, if he commits a crime.

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Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Volstead Act Totalitarianism, II-30, forfeiture.

The 1929 Crash occurred as investors realized asset-forfeiture meant Great Depression

317 SIXTY-SIXTH CONGRESS. Sess. I. CH. 85. 1919.

SEC. 30. No person shall be excused, on the ground that it may tend to incriminate him or subject him to a penalty or forfeiture, from attending and testifying, or producing books, papers, documents, and other evidence in obedience to a subpoena of any court in any suit or proceeding based upon or growing out of any alleged violation of this Act; but no natural person shall be prosecuted or subjected to any penalty or forfeiture for or on account of any transaction, matter, or thing as to which, in obedience to a subpoena and under oath, he may so testify or produce evidence, but no person shall be exempt from prosecution and punishment for perjury committed in so testifying.

SEC. 31. In case of a sale of liquor where the delivery thereof was made by a common or other carrier the sale and delivery shall be deemed to be made in the county or district wherein the delivery was made by such carrier to the consignee, his agent or employee, or in the county or district wherein the sale was made, or from which the shipment was made, and prosecution for such sale or delivery may be had in any such county or district.

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These Sections of Part 2 use "person" to mean individual or corporation. Both can be coerced and the Fifth Amendment is effectively suspended except as a reward exempting a "natural person" from penalties in exchange for becoming an informant against other targets of allegations. The Constitutional rights enumerated in the 4th and 5th Amendments [The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...] are declared alienable privileges to be dangled as bait to gull people into helping agents to rob gangs organized largely by "former" or off-duty cops. Still, perjury charges can be brought against "artificial person" corporations (which can neither be jailed or killed in reprisals) and hapless individuals who recalled once having had inalienable rights.

Here we are homing in on the lessons in Vices are Not Crimes by Lysander Spooner.(link) Spooner noted that the meddlesome habit of declaring that vices are crimes and demanding deadly force solutions are often advanced on economic grounds: that making trade and production into crimes makes prosperity. Spooner asks, then, of the causes of the Depression which the Panic of 1873 anticipated back when Comstockism made the postal monopoly into a way to criminalize birth control information, meddle in trade and censor mail.(link)

Was it their vices that turned the adult portion of those 20 millions out of doors without employment, compelled them to consume their little accumulations, if they had any, and then to become beggars—beggars for work, and, failing in this, beggars for bread? Was it their vices that, all at once, and without warning, filled the homes of so many of them with want, misery, sickness, and death? No. Clearly it was neither the drunkenness, nor any other vices, of these laboring people, that brought upon them all this ruin and wretchedness. And if it was not, what was it?
This is the problem that must be answered; for it is one that is repeatedly occurring and constantly before us and that cannot be put aside.

There you have the first inkling that the American crashes, crashes that occurred after China banned opium and was then attacked by British dope sellers and their government, might be causally related.

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Good Listening: The Darcy Gerow Podcast featured Tim Moen, former "Leader" of the Libertarian Party of Canada, struggling and stammering for a pretext to send men with guns to force Canadian women into the involuntary labor of reproduction. With "libertarians" like these, who needs fascists? (link)

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