Some truthfulness? Like this...
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?
What exactly did you expect?
Some truthfulness? Like this...
But you have no problem stereotyping Southerners. White ones, of course. The last bastion of the closet bigots and the politically correct.
You represent the epitome of hypocrisy.
They're yankees. They have the same genetic code as that bunch of rabble that cowardly burned, raped and pillaged their way through the South.
From my observation, it appears that the coward gene has exponentially increased with each succeeding generation of yankee and is manifest in the bunch of lowlifes that are representing The Coven on FR.
Truth is, they're as harmless as a heel hound and no amount of them could or would try to stop us if we once again severed our ties to their yankee corrupted union.
Truth is, they're as harmless as a heel hound and no amount of them could or would try to stop us if we once again severed our ties to their yankee corrupted union.
Actually they want us to do it again.
The truth is you wouldn't know the truth if it slapped you upside the snout. The truth is that it matters not because you lack the nads to actually do anything but bark and yelp, and generally make a PITA of yourself.
Oh, I get it - you have to be one in order to fight one?
No, I don't think you do! This may help...
I am having a hard time keeping a running total of all your pot-meet-kettle moments.
Now who's stereotyping? Not to mention being factually challenged?
Didn’t she ask to be left alone.
Precisely the reason why most of us conservatives, especially us Southron conservatives, don't want to be associated those people.
Actually, I don't believe that cowardfromohio, ns, fudge_truck, kangarooski, temp ho, punkrr, are conservatives. Most likely they're some of that DU rabble and community organizers.
Still have you? Girl, I'm so tickled to have a sister-in-arms I did a happy dance!
I followed your, "The NOLA/Baton Rouge Mississippi River Road areas are an interesting study" conversation with ease and understood exactly what you were saying. You're right, interesting area to study. That's one I think I'll find some literature on.
I was going to see your "southern martyr" and raise ya one "I'm married to a pig", but I see you were steadily being visited w/insults.
Bears, did I say something about big ole' teddy bears? I meant to say, "DON'T FEED THE BEARS!"
I never said that I didn't.
Not to mention being factually challenged?
I am having a hard time keeping a running total of all your pot-meet-kettle moments.
Perhaps one or two of them. It would explain their rabid hatred of unreconstructed Southern whites, infidels, if you will, who fearlessly defy and refute their northron revisionism, lies and propaganda.
They are that full of just plain hate.
Just like all liberals, their hate knows no boundaries.
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