patrick.net

State-wide, there is an exemption on all precious metal purchases above $1,500, which means that investors seeking to buy more than an ounce (in 2015 prices) will not need to pay any kind of tax. If the purchase is less than this amount, the sales tax does apply, but this differs from region to region.

Stephen Miller
@StephenM
Oct 30
Conspiracy theories are dangerous & those promoting them must be silenced. Anyone involved in spreading the lies that Iraq had WMDs, that the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia, that covid came from nature, or that Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake, must have their accounts locked.

O ministro Alexandre de Moraes, do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), determinou o bloqueio das contas bancárias de 40 pessoas físicas e empresas de Mato Grosso, suspeitas de financiar os protestos contra a vitória de Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) para presidente.

Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Supreme Court (STF), ordered the blocking of the bank accounts of 40 individuals and companies in Mato Grosso, suspected of financing the protests against the victory of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) for President.

Wait, color revolutions are baaaaad. Nevermind. Carry on.

Wait, color revolutions are baaaaad. Nevermind. Carry on.

Name a color revolution that improved the nation. Give me every example you can think of.

Nigel Farage wasn’t the only Brit getting de-banked this week. The UK Times ran a story yesterday headlined, “Yorkshire Building Society ‘Closed Vicar’s Account After Trans Protest’.”

The Yorkshire Building Society is a large, oddly-named British bank, having over three million customers. About two weeks ago, YBS emailed customers a monthly survey asking for feedback on the bank’s customer service and operations.

That’s where the trouble started.

Meet Anglican Vicar Richard Fothergill, 62, a satisfied YBS customer for over seventeen years. Well. He’s not satisfied anymore.

The good vicar, feeling a sense of loyalty and a desire only to be helpful, responded to the bank’s June 18th inquiry, politely offering among other more mundane feedback that the bank might consider dialing down all the rainbow-colored transgender ideology in its communications and on its website, suggesting instead that the bank “should concentrate their efforts on managing money, instead of promoting LGBT ideology.”

Seems fair.

But four days later, on June 22nd, Richard received a formal notice from his bank, responding to his feedback. It referenced his “views regarding LGBTQIA+,” and ominously advising the vicar that his feedback offended the bank’s “zero-tolerance approach to discrimination,” explaining his survey comments were “not tolerable.”

When asked by the Times for an explanation, YBS sort-of denied cancelling Vicar Fothergill, suggesting the pastor had been debunked for some reason other than his beliefs, but without exactly saying that, in a classic Orwellian statement:

We never close savings accounts based on different opinions regarding beliefs or feedback provided by our customers. We only ever make the difficult decision to close a savings account if a customer is rude, abusive, violent or discriminates in any way, based on the specific facts, comments and behaviour in each case.
“Discriminates in ANY WAY.” I wonder if in the bank’s view, Richard’s orthodox Christian beliefs are “discriminating in any way.”

Paradoxically, by de-banking Reverend Fothergill, YBS seems to have “discriminated in any way” against the vicar for his religious beliefs. Remember, ZERO tolerance. There’s only one way out of this paradox.

YBS should de-bank itself! It should refuse to do any business with itself any more.

Chase Bank Shuts Down Dr. Joseph Mercola's Business Bank Accounts, Including CEO, CFO, And Their Family Members
No Reason Given

The right answer is to use credit unions, which are local.

And have multiple accounts, at least two at two different credit unions.

In case anyone isn't aware, Chase Manhattan is the original name for the "Chase" side of the current bank, founded by the Rockefeller's. JP Morgan bank is the other half. They have merged, and are now called just Chase.

Let’s protect free speech for all not just the Left, says Toby Young

The truth is that if your opinions align with those of the metropolitan elite you have little to fear from your bank manager or your employer, but if you're a maverick or dissenter you'd better watch out, writes Toby Young.

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to whip up support for Nigel Farage in his battle against woke British banks.

Closing people’s accounts for expressing the “wrong” views is a brutally effective type of censorship that originated in Communist China and has no place in a supposedly free country like ours.

My first thought was to create a meme based on the old advert for the National Lottery.

A giant hand holding a pair of rainbow-coloured scissors would emerge from a high street bank.

Then it would cut up the credit card of an unsuspecting member of the public, with the caption: “It could be you!”

But I realised this wouldn’t capture the threat posed by this sinister new form of cancel culture because not everyone is equally at risk.

The people most in danger of losing their accounts are those with unfashionable views, whether it’s the former leader of the Brexit Party or Richard Fothergill, a Church of England vicar who was de-banked by the Yorkshire Building Society after he objected to its promotion of trans ideology.

I think that’s why almost no one on the Left of British politics has taken Nigel’s side in this dispute.

So far, broadcasters Paul Mason and Emily Maitlis, Remoaner propagandist Alastair Campbell, Labour’s Rachel Reeves and comedian Omid Djalili have defended Coutts’s decision to defenestrate the GB News presenter.

A YouGov opinion poll last week revealed 24 percent of Labour voters think banks should be allowed to remove customers who have personal or political beliefs that don’t align with their values.

Labour leader Keir Starmer did eventually mutter something about how no one should be refused banking services because of their views, but it had to be dragged out of him.

Think how different the reaction would have been if it had been Jeremy Corbyn who’d been de-banked and not Nigel Farage, particularly if the lender then leaked confidential details of his finances to the BBC in an effort to pretend the reason he’d lost his account was for purely “commercial reasons”.

The entire Liberal Establishment would have been up in arms, demanding the head of the bank’s CEO.

The same people who’ve been sniggering at Nigel’s misfortune would have been loudly proclaiming that having a bank account is a basic human right, like access to water and electricity.

Indeed, something like this happened a few weeks ago when The Sun published a story alleging that a senior BBC presenter had been paying a teenager to send him sexually explicit photographs.

When it emerged that the presenter in question was Huw Edwards, a similar cast of Left-wing panjandrums to those who’ve been making excuses for Coutts leapt to his defence and attacked the newspaper for trying to “cancel” him.

He’d done nothing illegal, they argued, so why should he lose his livelihood?

I couldn’t help laughing at that.

At the Free Speech Union, we defend people every week who’ve lost their jobs, not because they’ve broken the law but because they’ve challenged some aspect of woke dogma, whether it’s objecting to the Black Lives Matter flag hanging from their office building or refusing to attend “trans awareness” training.

The truth is that if your opinions align with those of the metropolitan elite you have little to fear from your bank manager or your employer, but if you’re a maverick or dissenter you’d better watch out.

If you voted Remain in the EU referendum, you wear a rainbow-coloured lanyard professing yourself to be an ally of the LGBTQ+ community and you suffer regular anxiety attacks because you think we’re in the midst of a climate emergency, you’re entitled to the full suite of human rights, including due process if you’re accused of any wrongdoing.

But if you’re a Brexiteer, the Pride flag brings you out in hives and you’re sceptical about Net Zero, you have fewer rights than an Albanian drug smuggler arriving on a rubber dinghy.

I cannot help thinking it’s short-sighted of the Liberal Left to be so selective about whose rights they defend. They may be in the ascendancy at the moment, but what if their political fortunes change?

As American free speech activist Ira Glasser put it: “Speech restrictions are like poison gas: they seem like a good idea when you’ve got the gas and a deserving target in sight. But then the wind shifts and blows the gas back on you.”