You know around 1999, I got this idea of typing political slogans and stuff like that on the back of paper money. I asked our probate lawyer about it. Then he went off on this moral tirade that you should never deface U.S. currency. It belongs to the U.S. government he explained. Then I told him not really. When I have a dollar bill in my hand it belongs to me. Then he said not really, and then went off on this bizarre tangent on how cows used to be used a currency for cavemen. And then I told him, well at the Greenfield Village historic park in Dearborn they have a machine that allows you to squash your pennies for a fee. (Up till then little children were placing their pennies on the railroad tracks often damaging their historic locomotives.) And the machine explained according the U.S. code, destroying money would never be considered defacing it. And then it gave the name and number of that statute. And then he said bizarrely, well maybe then that is a rule that just applies in Greenfield Village, whatever that means. So I told him I'd look it up. I went to the Henry Ford Community College book store and looked up the statute in their law encyclopedia. It explained that there are two parts to the act of the defacement of money and currency that must be met according to the U.S. code: • You must damage the paper note or coin to the point that it would be unfit for circulation, and • You must do with a fraudulent intent. Ironically squashing your pennies or completely burning up your paper money (like they used to do in California I think, as a voodoo ritual or something) would never be illegal. Because although you'd be rendering it unfit for circulation, you could never have a fraudulent intent. For that, you would have to then try to pass it back into circulation. And at that point it would be totally destroyed. I also told our probate lawyer it sounded to me more like they were describing a lesser included crime to counterfeiting. They described things like cutting numbers off one denomination of currency and pasting it onto another. Or taking a green marker and trying to make it look like a different denomination and value. And I also asked him, wouldn't this be protected by the First Amendment? Because it seems to me like it may. He said, well yeah. But you have to remember people aren't going to react kindly to the fact you typed all over their money. Instead of being inspired by your political slogan they'll probably wonder who was doing this to their currency. He said you should really go on the internet for that now. And he told me he'd look into the First Amendment part. Then a couple of days later when he spoke to me he said, you know there might be something to that. That the First Amendment protects writing political slogans on money IOW. BTW, I have to ask. This was about 20 years ago. And I guess I probably more or less stopped around 2004 when I had other issues in my life to worry about. But did anyone ever see one of my typed dollar bills? Like I said, they'd have political slogan neatly typed and centered on their backs. Because I always wondered how far they circulated. I've seen coins and currency from all over where I live. California, the Caribbean, Canada, etc.
