Should Concord businesses stop accepting pennies?

This whole thing is hysterically funny. You should get on The Daily Show. Yes, pennies are worthless but this is the most fun I've had with them in years. I'd like to hear a comment from one of the people who is voting to keep them.

Once again...the "shot heard round the world" comes from Concord !

Sounds like a good albeit trivial idea. But worth doing just to get the poem from your first article erected on a monument in town. "here the embattled merchants stood' ??? who comes up with this stuff ???

I'd say you people all need lives except I'm one of them by leaving this comment. I do have a real comment and question. all this copper and zinc gets wasted on pennies but what are we going to do with the ones we have?

What to do with your pennies? Bring them to one of the merchants participating in the protest and drop them in the collection jars for Open Table. They'll go to a good cause-feeding local families in need.

For more information on Open Table:

http://www.opentableinc.org/mission/

yes, this is all very funny (like really really funny) but it's serious too. Zinc mining kills fish and birds and for what? So stores and customers can be inconvenienced? I will ONLY be shopping at stores which round down and will tell my friends the same.

Oxymoron (noun): Broadly: Something (as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron).

Example:
Concord's median family income in 1999 was $115,839 per year (http://www.wickedlocal.com/concord/town_info/x1070362781/Concord-at-a-glance). Concord is a wealthy town. Yet Concord's citizens and businesses want to protest money.

Now THAT is funny.

IT's not funny to the people in the town who go hungry and use the Open Table. You can throw away your extra pennies or give them to Open Table. That doesn't seem like a hard choice.

I found two in my soap dish

I found two in my soap dish

I found two in my soap dish. Dont even think Open Table would take thoe. whatis the argument FOR pennies?

Boy, get several people convinced of something and they can abolish anything! how about we all get our pennies together (they all add up to dollars..) and donate them to a cause called beds for children. Several children in and around MA sleep on the floor in low income housing. Several pennies were saved for this same group in Lowell and the money raised enabled them to buy 68 beds for children!. So pennies aren't worth anything? When did that news come out. I don't recall the Denver and Penn mints coming out with news on that....

Shot heard round the world came from Lexington..not Concord. Read your history books.

"whatis the argument FOR pennies?" - Marie.

In response, the argument FOR pennies is that they are legal tender.

Bob, the first shot of the revolution was, indeed, fired in Lexington, but the phrase "the shot heard 'round the world" comes from Emerson's "Concord Hymn" and refers to the battle at the Old North Bridge in Concord:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard 'round the world."

(We Concordians know our literature as well as our history!)

Katherine, using that logic we would never have revolted against the British or abolished slavery. In any event pennies would still be legal tender for any business which wanted to keep them as legal tender, and you can always give them to OpenTable or another charity.

I have two observations, being the guy whose idea this is. First, it isn't just about the penny. The existence of pennies (which no other developed country now has) is a constant everyday visible reminder of government waste, stupidity and inability to act in the face of special interests (in thise case, the zinc lobby). If Obama with one Executive Order can solve this one in a creative, voluntary win-win way, he gains our confidence that he can solve larger problems. Lack of confidence is one of the huge issues facing the economy today and this Executive Order would go a long way to restoring it

Second, to Henry David's point, I propose the following quattrain for West Concord Center, outside Teacakes:

To the rude lobbyists who corrupted our good
Congressmen to support their zinc
Here the embattled merchants stood
And said, "We think your pennies stink.

Al, you must have quite a bit of time on your hands. Liberals love to find something to quack about. You spent those pennies well since you have been on this earth. We as americans fight hard not to give more of our pennies back to the gov't every year! I bet you do the same Al. Some of us have ancestors that founded Concord and were here before they founded the town, now you want to damn them, and the beliefs? Go fight for the ban of horse racing or hey how about recycling in every merchants store in Concord! Go save the lives of your family!

Bob, I navigated here from the Kruse Kronicle, which is a conservative blog and most of us on it believe in God and the teachings of Jesus. Even though I am conservative, I believe that God would want us to respect the earth, and not mine zinc just to turn it into waste. This propoal, which is very popular on Kruse (and with Mr. Kruse), is not a liberal proposal. It's a proposal which respects individual rights. You need to read it again before you criticize it and the person who came up with it.

Abolish the penny...hmmmm? What would be next, the nickle, the dime, the quarter, etc. ? If companies want to round down to the nickle more power to them. But leave the money system the way it is.