Retire the penny, please -- April 11, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Washington is obsessed with trillions, but it’s the lowly penny that’s weighing us down.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday sent Congress a budget plan to spend almost $3.8 trillion in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Can anyone fathom one trillion, let alone nearly four? How about a measly billion?

Pennies we get. Not from heaven, but hand to hand. They are heavy in our pockets and wallets. Pennies clutter our dresser tops. Pennies fill old coffee cans and nest between sofa cushions. Pennies are a burden – small and needless.

It costs twice as much to produce a penny as it’s worth. In fiscal year 2012, pennies cost taxpayers $58 million. That’s hardly big bucks as far as federal spending goes, but why are we doing this?

Nearly everyone agrees the penny has outlived its usefulness. A penny buys nothing, not even penny candy. Many times I’ve heard the dramatic sighs of those behind me when I’ve dug deep to find the right change. Pennies aren’t even good for checking tire tread anymore. Better to use a quarter for today’s tires, retailers say.

The president says the penny is an apt symbol of what ails Washington. He was asked in a Google+ hangout “fireside chat” in February why we don’t stop minting pennies – as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have done.

“Any time we’re spending more money on something that people don’t actually use – that’s an example of something we should probably change,” he replied.

“One of the things you see chronically in government: It’s very hard to get rid of things that don’t work, so we can invest in the things that do. So the penny becomes a good metaphor for a lot of the problems that we’ve got,” he added.

I love a metaphor as much as the next English major, but why prolong our penny foolishness? Obama could have used his budget to declare our independence from the tyranny of pennies.

Instead, on page 144, the budget calls for the U.S. Mint to “change the composition of coins to more cost-effective materials, given that the current cost of making the penny is 2 cents and the cost of making the nickel is 11 cents.”

That’s right. To, um, coin a phrase, the 5-cent piece is nickeling us. We spent $51.2 million on nickels last year.

As for changing the content of coins, we’ve already adulterated the penny from all copper to 2.5 percent copper. It’s 97.5 percent zinc.

Obama recognizes that people are emotionally attached to pennies. They remember their childhood piggybanks and cashing in pennies for a dollar or two, he said.

Nostalgia didn’t stop the Royal Canadian Mint from ceasing production and distribution of pennies in February. Customers can still use the Canadian penny. The government’s Rounding Guidelines suggest that businesses round cash transactions to the nearest nickel. Credit, debit and check purchases are still in penny increments.

In 1857, the United States did kill a penny – a half penny, to be precise. It was the first coin the nation ever authorized and production started in 1793. People surely were sentimentally attached to it. It was worth what a dime is now, far more than the lowly penny is today.

For decades, smart people have said it’s time to retire the penny. My late friend and colleague Charley McDowell, beloved Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist, wrote in 1990:

“I, for one, am willing to do away with pennies even if merchants ease the prices only up, not down, to the nearest nickel. The percentage of general price increase…will not be great. Anyway, relief from pennies would be worth it.”

I wondered what Charley would have said about the couple in Chicago who tiled their bedroom in pennies recently, saying it was cheaper than using regular tile. As for me, I lugged 47 wrapped rolls of pennies to the bank.

The young teller was gracious, but his friend at the next window wore the smirk of a boy who can’t believe his luck when the teacher skips him and asks the next kid to solve the equation.

My teller counted and recounted the rolls. Pennies steal time and energy, even wrapped. He asked how I wanted my loot. I did not say I wanted nickels.

©2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Digital divide: Obama's tweet and Gerald Ford's watch -- July 7, 2011 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In December 1974, President Gerald R. Ford made news by becoming the first president to wear a digital wrist watch.

Writing about the digital watch, the great newspaper columnist Charles R. McDowell Jr. quoted a United Press International news story in its entirety:

“President Ford today wore a digital wrist watch. The watch, which shows the time in numerals, appeared on his left wrist when he chaired a meeting of his Domestic Council in the Cabinet Room. It was the first time they had seen the President wearing a watch without the big and little hands, some White House aides said.”

About this “strange little item,” McDowell wrote, “The significance of this story remains unclear to me after several readings and much deep thought. I suppose it should be taken at face value and with tolerance for the journalistic tradition that nothing is too trivial to report about the President of the United States.”

I was privileged later to work and be friends with Charley McDowell, who retired in 1998 and died last year. I came across the column in a booklet of some of his favorites. How I wish he were here for the news of Barack Obama’s big tweet.

President Obama made news Wednesday by becoming the first president to live tweet. Sitting on a tall stool in the East Room under the watchful gaze of the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, Obama typed a question in 140 characters.

The Washington Post, New York Times and other organizations providing news and commentary on platforms not even dreamt of in 1974 covered the milestone. A picture on the front page of The Wall Street Journal showed Obama next to a screen grab of a tweet from House Speaker John Boehner.

I’m not saying the first presidential tweet or the first Twitter Town Hall from the White House is trivial, but both seem puny compared with Franklin D. Roosevelt's appearance on TV in 1939, Jimmy Carter's installation of the first computer in the West Wing in 1978, or even George H.W. Bush's first presidential email in 1992.

Obama is no stranger to technology. He’s the first president to use a BlackBerry and a frequent online guest.

In April, he did a Facebook Town Hall with Mark Zuckerberg. In January, he answered video questions submitted by YouTube users in a town hall-style event sponsored by Google. More than 40,000 video questions were submitted.

Last October, he took questions from young people via Twitter in a live town hall sponsored by MTV, BET and CMT. In 2009, he did an online town hall with questions from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter users.

For his first tweet, Obama typed, “In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep – bo.”

Alas, the Twitter Town Hall went downhill from there. It proved that real-life town halls have a lot more going for them than the virtual variety. With a real-life town hall, there’s a chance, slim though it may be, for an unscripted moment between president and citizen.

In this case, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and an amiable fellow, read the tweets to Obama. Dorsey made a point of saying that neither he nor Obama knew what the questions would be, as if that added drama. The questions – chosen by “curators” around the country – were safe and surprise-free.

The one near-surprise came when Dorsey said there was a question from “someone you may know.” Speaker Boehner’s tweet: “After embarking on a record spending binge that’s left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?”

Obama patiently explained in his professorial style that Boehner is a Republican, so the question was “slightly skewed.”

If this was boring video, it was brilliant as a political organizing tool. The White House reported that by noon on the day of the event, more than 60,000 tweets had been sent to the hashtag #AskObama. Just think of all those fans, friends and followers.

In his Twitter debut, the president didn’t try to respond in 140-character tweets. He stuck to lengthy verbal responses. And so, another milestone awaits.

Obama still can become the first president to tweet a response. It’s no digital wrist watch. But if he does, you know it’ll make news.

© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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