Government should outlaw smelly pennies

Kill the penny. Sign me up as a penny hater.

They are virtually useless and hardly worth the weight they place on your pocket. At every chance, I weed them out of my pocket coin stash because they just don’t seem to belong with the other, shinier coins. They are just so drab.

I bring them to the house of Blue Eyes, where she agrees to accept them. Otherwise, I would just throw them out the window. Forget the phony $2.99 and $3.99 prices. Let’s be honest and call them $3 and $4. I for one will be glad to pay the difference if I don’t have to cart the offensive copper coins any more.

The only service pennies seem to perform is to tie up the cash register line while one shopper after the other (especially in my line) digs in a pocket or the bottom of a pocketbook for the damn things.

If you saw a penny lying on a sidewalk or a parking lot, would you bother to bend over and pick it up? What for? They are so useless that people voluntarily leave them in containers near the cash register to help the next customer. Think about that.

I think pennies smell funny, too. Your hands smell awful after you handle even a few of them.

Rep. Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana is with me. At least he was, until he died. Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona is with me and he is still alive and kicking, fighting pennies all the way. Both have filed legislation to kill the penny. Kolbe, fighting the good fight, said, “pennies have virtually no value.” His Legal Tender Modernization Act would make the coin obsolete.

Unfortunately, the penny death penalty bills never have made it out of committee. Because of penny lovers, obviously.

Americans for Common Cents, composed of mining and coin manufacturing interests, has argued successfully that killing the penny would be a de facto tax of $600 million on the poor, who conduct more transactions in cash.

Pennies were eliminated at U.S. military bases in Europe because it simply cost too much to fly them over. Just think of the time every store spends wrapping the damn things. Think of how much time the cashier line is idle while still another shopper searches for still another cent. Think of the lost wages paid to cashiers while they count out more and more pennies.

Let’s look at history.

The halfpenny was eliminated in 1858, when it was worth at least 10 times what the penny is worth today.

The U.S. Mint spends $100 million each year to produce 12 billion pennies at a total weight of 30,000 metric tons. Think of the shipping costs we could save, on top of the $100 million.

Why, the government probably would lower taxes if the penny was eliminated.

Kidding.

On his Web site, famed penny hater Jeff Gore has calculated that each penny transaction takes 24 seconds a day if you count the buyer and cashier. That means (his math) wasting 2.4 hours per person per year. If we figure both people are worth $15 an hour, then each person is losing $37 a year for a total cost to the nation of $10 billion a year … all for damn pennies. Gore (no relation) is a California biophysics student. You want to argue with a biophysicist?

Kill the penny.

Makes cents to me.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.