“In God We Trust” and the new Presidential Dollar Coins

I received an email with the title “FW: It has Begun…Refuse New Coins!” from a friend recently.

And it made my blood boil!! They’re going to remove “In God We Trust” from the new Presidential Dollars!!!!!


…….Oh, wait, no they didn’t.

First, I have only ever “replied all” on an email 1 time. I understand it’s not exactly proper netiquette. I had intended this posting to be in the email I did send in reply to everyone on the list that received that mail from our mutual friend, but changed my mind. Instead I sent a link to this post on my blog.

Secondly, I’m not trying to embarrass anyone, least of all my good friend that sent the mail to us.  But wrong information is too often spread by these chain emails, and the worst types of emails are the ones designed to provoke a “knee-jerk” response in us by claiming something so fundamental as “In God We Trust” is about to be removed from our money, or that a virus will destroy our computers on a given day, or that Congress is issuing Social Security benefits to illegals, etc.

I’m going to dispel this one.

This claim is just wrong. The mottos of the U.S., originally, but not by legislation, “E Pluribus Unum” or “From Many, One” and more recently, since 1956, by an act of Congress, “In God We Trust”, have not been removed from the new presidential coins.

The mottos were originally moved to be struck on the edges of the coins in order to give more room for the artwork, as specified by the 2005 Presidential $1 Coin act as signed by President G.W. Bush. However, in 2008, legislation was passed to restore the mottos to the front or back of the new coins, starting with William Henry Harrison’s coin in 2009.

Removing “In God We Trust” from our money would take, literally, an act of Congress.  Fox and CNN not ratting out such a thing would be impossible.  That’s big news, folks, and as I said in my Swine Flu rant CNN and Fox LIVE for news.

Furthermore, the possible claim that the mottos would wear off quickly from the edge of those coins issued with the edge stuck motto isn’t of much concern, as these coins aren’t doing much circulation, but are sitting in vaults and in collections, rather than being spent.

Finally, when I receive a claim in email like the one concerning the coins, I generally give it the “Snopes Test” and either go to http://snopes.com directly, or google something like “snopes new coins”

Either will lead you to here where you will find that the only coins that issued without the edge struck mottos were some of the Washington and John Adams coins that were the result of a minting error, as the edge-strike and the face strike processes are done on different machinery.

Please, let’s all start verifying the information we pass on in our emails.

And use BCC when forwarding on to lots of people.