Why spend money on Lincoln penny?

The government is planning to celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday next year by reissuing the penny in four new iterations.

The U.S. Mint unveiled the new designs during a ceremony Sept. 22 at the Lincoln Memorial.

What are they thinking? The penny is a useless coin that costs two cents to produce.

How many well placed design firms received big bucks to redesign this obsolete coin? And how much more will be spent on the hoopla next year?

The costs associated with redesigning and reissuing the penny, instead of simply retiring it, are nothing compared with staggering deficits, trade imbalances and bailouts that are going on.

However, it does serve to remind us of the too typical, thoughtless, frivolous spending of money we don't have by our head-in-the-sand government "representatives," both national and here in Illinois.

Jim Osebold

Arlington Heights