Posted on 08/21/2010 7:17:45 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Today, the U.S. Treasury released a $1 coin commemorating former President James Buchanan. And people aren't happy about it.
To understand why, some background is helpful. In 2007, thanks to a bill promoted by then-Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, the Treasury began minting $1 coins with the likenesses of former Presidents, starting with George Washington.
The coins -- which have been appearing ever since, featuring a new President every three months -- are meant to improve use and circulation of America's dollar coins, which are often seen as an awkward misfit among currency, neither fish nor fowl.
Sununu's initiative drew inspiration from the 50 State Quarters Program, which launched in 1999. The runaway success of that effort, according to his legislation, "shows that a design on a U.S. circulating coin that is regularly changed... radically increases demand for the coin, rapidly pulling it through the economy."
The bill also suggested that a program wherein Presidents are featured on a succession of $1 coins, and First Spouses commemorated on gold $10 coins, could help correct a state of affairs where "many people cannot name all of the Presidents, and fewer can name the spouses, nor can many people accurately place each President in the proper time period of American history."
So the bill passed, and the Washington dollar coin appeared not long after. It was followed by Adams, Jefferson, et al., with the First Spouse coins minted alongside.
Now we're up to Buchanan, the fifteenth President, who took office in 1857 and turned things over to Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and whose coin (produced at the Philadelphia and Denver Mints and purchasable through the U.S. Mint website) has occasioned the aforementioned grousing. Here's where some feel the coin program is falling short:
1. The coins aren't circulating.
Many Americans have never gotten into the habit of using $1 coins, and as a result, over a billion commemorative Presidential coins are sitting around in a stockpile at the Federal Reserve. As BBC News reports, if these coins were stacked up and laid on their side, they'd stretch for 1,367 miles, or the distance from Chicago to New Mexico.
2. They don't seem to be educating people, either.
In February 2008, a year after the first presidential coins were minted, The New York Times reported that a survey had found large numbers of American teens to be woefully ignorant of their country's history. It was far from the first time Americans had gotten a dismal grade in history, suggesting that Sununu's commemorative-coin campaign isn't having much of an effect in that arena, either.
3. James Buchanan was kind of a crappy president.
In fairness, this is a grievance with a specific president, not the presidential coins program as a whole. Still, it seems to come up in all the coverage of the new coin: Buchanan wasn't very good at his job.
That's the consensus of historians, anyway, who have traditionally censured Buchanan for his failure to prevent the Civil War. Last year, a C-SPAN survey of historians granted Buchanan the dubious distinction of worst president ever.
Still, all of this isn't reason enough to declare the commemorative-coins program a total failure. If more coin collectors start avidly pursuing the presidential coins, it could have the effect of pushing down the national debt, thanks to the way the value of the coins fluctuates with their availability. And if the dollar coins were to catch on and replace paper $1 bills entirely, it could save the country between $500 and $700 million each year in printing costs.
Plus, if things stay on track, 2012 will see the release of the Chester A. Arthur dollar coin -- marking the first time that long non-commemorated president's face has ever appeared on any nation's currency. And who are we to deprive him of that?
There is a certain similarity these days between Val Kilmer and a cow, though.
True enough, but one side, the Southern Officers were trying to keep good order and discipline as opposed to ignoring or condoning atrocity like the Yankee Zero's did.
An army made up of drunken Irishmen can't be faulted to much when so poorly officered. So bad, that Yankee Army units were half the size of Southern units due to this incompetence.
It worked out about as well as your “south will rise again” garbage.
Way to be a Confederate from behind your keyboard boy.
You might think you’re done with me, but I’m going NOWHERE.
Yeah, another thug boob Neo-Yankee proving our point one post at a time. You guys create more lurking secesh FRer's than I could alone. Thank you and welcome, face it, your hooked.
I guess we can add the Irish to the list of groups you’re bigoted against.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL-1T9g5-vU
They just didn't try very hard.
An army made up of drunken Irishmen can't be faulted to much when so poorly officered. So bad, that Yankee Army units were half the size of Southern units due to this incompetence.
Your comments are becoming more moronic as the day goes on. To listen to you one has to wonder just how it was that those undermanned Union units filled with drunken Irishmen and led by such poor officers managed to kick the rebel army's ass from one end of the confederacy to the other. Truly a miracle. </sarcasm>
It might be easier to try and figure out who they're not bigoted against rather than keep track of the ones they are. Other than inbred, Southron hate-mongers I can't think of any.
Probably right.
I was not aware of that. I see he also helped Howard University get its start. Didn't know that either. I can't help wondering though what a constitutional law course would be like at Lincoln Memorial University.
Harrogate is in East Tennessee. Probably the only section of the state where a University named after Lincoln could take root.
Howard apparently had trouble controlling his men as my earlier post indicated. His 15th Division was known to be the most destructive of Sherman's divisions. Here is some information on Howard's stay in Columbia, SC. From the editor's introduction to "A City Laid Waste" by William Gilmore Simms:
Louisa McCord considered sending her daughters along to provide for their safety. Instead she positioned the girls in the upstairs portion of the house and had the staircase removed. There they remained during the four days General O. O. Howard and his staff occupied the widow's home, which they ransacked, littering the yard with her personal papers before they left.
A class act. (/sarc)
LOL - that’s ok, I guess.
Not a one of you is ever going to DO anything except whine about a conflict that’s been over for nearly 150 years on the internet.
Yet, here you are posting away. Will the FR neo-Yankee ever see their own hypocrisy? Probably not, which is why I love them so much....
Conversely what would one be like at the Jefferson Davis College of Law? Very short if not totally absent.
Do you know how amazingly ignorant that is and do I have to explain why?
Boy, if they were to put your brain in a hummingbird it would suck a mules ass thinking it was a morning glory.
Way to be a Confederate from behind your keyboard boy.
Would you like to come to my house for a visit and see for yourself? I'll trade names and addresses and you can come to my place and decide how much of a 'keyboard Confederate' I am. (if you time your visit right you'll be able to catch the leaves changing here in the Southern Appalachians and get some fresh venison to boot)
Put up or shut up.
You might think you’re done with me, but I’m going NOWHERE.
Oh YEAH!! Well I'm RUBBER and you're GLUE and that BILGE you spout BOUNCES off me and STICKS to YOU and the rest of the DAMNYANKEE COVEN TOO!!
End the Occupation!
Free Dixie!
LOL! Considering Lost Causer blindness to their own hypocrisy, your complaining about hypocrisy in others is most amusing. Not ROTFLMAO amusing, but funny enough.
Sorta like the William Tecumseh Sherman School of Honor?
Or the US Grant School of Sobriety?
Or the Abe Lincoln School of Racial Equality?
Nope, not like any of those. Though if you would expect a Jefferson Davis College of Law to deal with honor, ethics, constitutional law, or racial equality then there would be no classes at all.
There must be something here because a bunch of secesh kooks posting on FR should not raise such hackles with the establishment(to borrow a '60's phrase). I mean threads that should have maybe 10 posts go on and on and on. You guys have something to prove and are afraid, that's clear.
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