Texas Takes Step Toward Secession With Rick Perry’s Plan to Hoard Gold

Texas takes step toward secession with Rick
Perry’s Plan to Hoard Gold

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and freshman state
Rep. Giovanni Capriglione have a plan to create a “Fort Knox of Texas” so
that the state can start hoarding gold.

Giovanni has filed a bill to establish a Texas
Bullion Depository to store the $1 billion worth of gold bars that are owned
by University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO), which are
currently being housed by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Speaking to conservative radio host Glenn Beck
on Tuesday, Perry said that lawmakers were in the process of “bringing gold
that belongs to the state of Texas back into the state.” Beck has been a
longtime paid spokesperson for the precious metal seller Goldline, which
agreed to refund up to $4.5 million to former customers last year after being
sued for marking up gold more than 50 percent.

“If we own it, I will suggest to you that
that’s not someone else’s determination whether we can take possession of it
back or not,” Perry told Beck.

Former Rep. Ron Paul on Thursday explained to
The Texas Tribune that the gold would be safer in the hands of Texans.

“If you think gold is a hedge, or a
protection, you always want it as close to the individual and the entity as
possible,” Paul said. “Texas is better served if it knows exactly where the
gold is rather than depending on the security of the Federal Reserve.”

For his part, Capriglione said that he had
gotten the idea while attending a tea party rally with Perry in Tarrant
County earlier this year.

“Something on the scorecards of a lot of these
businesses in deciding whether they want to come to Texas is stability and
gold as being one of those items,” Capriglione insisted. “I think it’s been
in his consciousness for a while in trying to get some sort of depository in
the state of Texas.”

“We don’t want just the certificates. We want
our gold. And if you’re the state of Texas, you should be able to get your
gold.”

Tangent Capital Partners senior managing
director Jim Rickards speculated to Yahoo Finance on Thursday that creating a
“Fort Knox of Texas” could be a step in Texas creating its own currency and eventually
moving to secede.

“This bill contains a provision that says to
the federal government that you, the federal government, purport to
confiscate this Texas gold, we, the state of Texas, consider that to be null
and void,” Rickards pointed out.

“And under the 10th Amendment of the United
States Constitution, they have that power.”

Earlier this year, more than 100,000 people
signed a petition on the White House website calling on President Barack
Obama’s administration to allow the state to secede.

White House Office of Public Engagement
Director Jon Carson responded by noting that the Supreme Court in 1869 that
states do not have a right to secede.

Carson noted that the Founding Fathers
established a Constitution and “enshrined in that document the right to
change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that
generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not
provide a right to walk away from it.”

In a 2009 interview, Perry had joked that
Texas was “thinking about” becoming an independent republic, but he dismissed
the call to secede last year.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/22/texas-takes-step-toward-secession-with-rick-perrys-plan-to-hoard-gold/