Monetary Step Backward?

The New York Times has a good article about people in Utah pushing the state to adopt a law that would make it easier for people to buy things with gold and silver coins (based on the value of their weight). This is a Tea Party idea and it seems as if they want to push the idea of allowing states to coin their own money. There are a lot of ways to attack this, but it should be sufficient to say that the idea is a big step backwards and shows just how out of touch the Tea Partiers are with basic economics.