There is a menace among us — it rolls about in the shadows, yearning to weigh our pockets and bags down. It longs to get lost amongst our precious quarters and nickels.

My friends (insert John McCain’s voice for the full effect), the danger is here and it comes forth boldly from cash registers in all of its golden pomp and frivolity.

The $1 coin must be stopped. It threatens the inefficiency this nation has grown to rely on.

To imagine that the government, of all institutions, would attempt to undo 147 years of wallet-stuffing misery and commercial impotence is simply preposterous.

If this sort of self-induced melancholy and masochism was good enough for Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the Treasury in 1862, it’s good enough for me.

Haven’t those legislators on Capitol Hill learned anything about the resolve of the American consumer?

We don’t want more efficient exchanges on “public transportation, parking meters, vending machines, and low-dollar value transactions” as the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 set out to accomplish.

Not only do we enjoy the limitations the buck induces, we enjoy the fact that it wears out 28 years faster than the average coin — it truly does stop here.

Take a look at the circulation statistics and the cost of printing that many extra dollars per year, you’ll quickly see the government costs the American taxpayer anywhere between $500 million and $1 billion a year.

That’s fantastic. We wouldn’t want that money to be freed up for healthcare, transportation or some other constructive project.

In all seriousness though, the bills are endemic of the sort of inefficiency that plagues the country — and the University for that matter.

To the disgrace of the memory of Ronald Reagan, the true American hero, we’ve built a giant system of government where a series of mid-level managers serve other aides and managers in a never-ending loop of futility.

Government is not the remedy to our problems — government has once again become the problem.

This isn’t simple whining on my part — take a look around and count all the places where the government has made these sorts of strategic errors. They’re going to nickel and dime the economy to death (so to speak).

Printing $1 bills instead of minting their equivalent coins may be pretty low on the list of the government’s errors over the last decade, but a billion dollars is not something to shake a stick at.

It’s the same sort of error the University has been making. Sometimes these little sums ($1 billion is small when compared to the nation’s tab) are just as significant as the big ticket items.

My mother always used to tell me I needed to save my money a penny at a time. The University and the feds should take heed of that advice.

The brand new commercial during the game last night was flashy and supposedly cost-effective, but did we really need it? What about all of these centers and the countless administrators they employ — are they serving as vital a task as say, the language tutorial center was?

These items may be small, but they really do add up. Save those pennies kids.

Last time I checked, the University wasn’t in the business of printing money, but if it did, I guarantee we’d be printing dollars.

Send Russell your thoughts on government inefficiencies to [email protected].