If having women represented on US currency is “politically correct” as some here assert, what do you call having ONLY men on US currency?
(I wonder if those calling putting women on currency “politically correct” are men themselves)
Why not introduce additional bills instead of messing with the current bills in circulation?
$3 - MLK
$30 - Tubman
$40 (or maybe $70) - The three amigas of equality
And for heaven’s sake, let’s print more of the TJ $2 bill.
He also presided over the passage of the first civil rights act and practically succeeded in suppressing the first iteration of the KKK when they tried to terrorize the Black populace and pro-union citizens/officials in the Reconstruction South during his presidential administration.
It would definitely need to be someone else with the first name Benjamin, if there was to be a change.
Maybe Benjamin Banneker (born on November 9, 1731, in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland. A free black man who owned a farm near Baltimore, Banneker was largely self-educated in astronomy and mathematics.).
Benjamin Bernanke may be too recent…
We could have all sorts of Benjamins on there. It’s interesting that both Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Banneker were both such multitalented Renaissance men.
Post No. 30 read…“Yay, more politically correct silliness…”
That’s nonsense. It’s a change in media undertaken that also happens to have the benefit of revising outdated, and in Jackson’s case, inaccurate images; as has been noted, Jackson despised banks and paper money. Who knows, maybe the Treasury officials who authorized Jackson’s image back in the day intended to prank the American public and posthumously spite Jackson? After all, there were many other folks they could have chosen.
Add my vote to bring back the $2 bill, or mint a new $2 coin. Stop giving in to the vending machine and cash register manufacturers. Paper money COSTS MONEY to produce; much more so than coins (over time). And while I am at it, get rid of the penny, which is another money loser (pun intended).
It is interesting that the founder of the modern Democratic party is replaced by a gun-toting, liberty loving Republican.
It never went away. It’s still being printed; it’s just nobody likes it. 
I’m with you on this one. My country may be less than perfect in many respects, but at least they round to the nearest 0.05€, eliminating the need for those pest 1 and 2 cent coins.
If Jackson is offensive to people, we could always go back to Grover Cleveland on the $20. Seriously, it should have all been founding fathers, maybe John Marshall and James Madison instead of Jackson and Grant. Throw a nod in to Lincoln for keeping the country together. Since its not and never was, I have a modest proposal - just go with pop culture icons. Nobody today knows who those old guys and gals were anyway.
Frankly, the only thing that really matters is the purchasing power of those $5, $10, $20 bless.
LOL.
But what would all those retailers do who use increments of a penny to identify sale prices?
Um…that was ‘bills’ not ‘bless’.
Does anyone (outside of a casino) ever see a $1 coin?
The stamp vending machines at the post office give them in change. I’ve used them at the driving range in the vending machine that gives you the bucket of balls. I use one as my flipping coin when I referee high school sports because its bigger than a quarter and easier to catch in the air. 
And again, another remark which ignores how both parties have changed radically in their political platforms/beliefs as illustrated by the following facts:
The Republican platform and Union cause in the 1860’s was such Karl Marx actually wrote an letter expressing support for them:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
In the '50s, several southern Democratic politicians such as Strom Thurmond decamped to the Republican party as a result of increasing support for desegregation and Civil Rights from an increasingly dominant progressive wing.
This was only accelerated in the '60’s when LBJ correctly predicted that the Democratic party will “lose the south for a generation” as a result of his signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon completed this switchup by catering to southern Whites resentful of desegregation and passage of stronger Civil Rights legislation in what became known among political scientists as “Nixon’s Southern Strategy”. This also became one basis for the rise of the politicized fundamentalist Christian movement within the GOP as one main issue which originally galvanized them was anger over the passage desegregation and Civil Rights legislation during the '50s and '60s.
In short, if Harriet Tubman was alive today, she’s very unlikely to identify as a Republican today as much of its current platform and attitudes are much more closely aligned with those of the Democratic party before the switch-up…especially in the antebellum/Civil War period.
Not sure the American electorate from both sides of the spectrum would be willing to accept a president who:
Was an effective draft dodger during the Civil War when he paid someone else to serve in his place. Keep in mind that this policy which allowed one to pay someone else to serve in one’s place required a fee($150-300) which was such this option was only available to those who were upper/upper-middle class.
Faced serious rape allegations some of which are still unresolved and being investigated by historians and biographers:
http://www.buffalonews.com/new_bio_examines_the_skeletons_in_grover_clevelandaposs_closet.html
Related to that, he and his friends also tried to commit the widow to a mental institution to imply she was crazy even though the doctors there found nothing wrong with her and released her within a few days.
Vetoed multiple attempts to increase pension support for Civil War veterans…a war he paid someone else to fight in his place.
Refused to use his executive powers to facilitate the protection of African-Americans against Jim Crow and other efforts at suppressing their voting rights.
Supported and passed the Scott act which expanded on the racist Chinese Exclusion act of 1882 by preventing Chinese laborers who traveled back for visits to China or planning such to ever return to the US.
Incidentally, a government official attempted to use a similar line of reasoning to strip Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese-American born in San Francisco of his citizenship after he returned from visiting relatives in China after previous trips undertaken without incident which led to a court ruling which solidified the concept of birthright citizenship for all Americans born on US soil…even those whose parents were not citizens*:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
As an aside, Grover Cleveland is another illustration of how the Republican and Democratic parties had a radical switchup in their political platforms over the last 150 or so years.
Even though Grover Cleveland was of the Democratic party, his affiliation with the “bourbon Democrats” which favored the gold standard and fiscal conservatism along with other political positions were such that if they were compared to the platforms of today’s parties, his platforms would be much more closely aligned with today’s Republican party.
- With the exception of children of foreign rulers, ambassadors, etc.
So you’re saying it shouldn’t have been Harriet Tubman, it should have been Abigail Adams?
But cobrat, some things have remained the same, like:
Repubs still favor economic liberty and are more likely to be hawkish
Dems still favor more economic coercion and are less likely to be hawkish
Not necessarily. See Grover Cleveland and his fiscally conservative platforms…especially his favoring of the gold standard…much more closer to what modern Republicans and libertarian-right folks consider “economic liberty”.
Lincoln and many Republicans in the 1860’s passed many policies which were antithetical to “economic liberty”, states rights, or liberty period…such as the first comprehensive nationwide military conscription act which wasn’t based on the state/local militia system in 1863*, the mandating of the hated Federal greenbacks of the Civil War period being legal tender, arresting of state governors/legislators who were suspected of being in league with the Confederacy, etc.
And I’m not even getting into areas considered especially egregious by southern Whites…such as the complete elimination of slavery after 1865 without compensation to slaveholders or the placing of the defeated Confederate states under military rule(a.k.a. Reconstruction).
In the same period, it was the Democratic party who were more likely to favor economic liberty, states rights, and limited government as shown through their favoring of a “hands off” approach to the slave-based economic systems before and even during the Civil War.
As for which party is more hawkish…it’s really a wash and depended on the time period.
For instance, the Republican party was the party of isolationism right after WWI up until the eve of WWII and exerted such a powerful influence that the US only entered WWII after being attacked unprovoked by Imperial Japan in December 7, 1941. It was only after that attack that substantial Republican opposition to involvement in providing military aid and participation in WWII ended.
Also, some current Republican pundits like to point to the Vietnam War as one which proves the Democratic party was just as/more hawkish than the Republican party. In actuality, this is more of a wash and complicated as the roots of American involvement actually started during the Eisenhower administration in the late '50s when they sent the first military advisers to advise the South Vietnamese government. JFK and LBJ expanded upon that in their respective subsequent administrations.
- To be fair, the Confederacy passed a similar nationwide comprehensive military conscription law a year earlier in 1862.
Please. If Eisenhower wanted to get involved in Vietnam, there were plenty of opportunities to do so when the French requested help. The escalation of that conflict took place under Kennedy and especially LBJ.
When Eisenhower first took office, the US still had its hands full fighting the Korean War.
Just around a year after he took office, the Viet Minh defeated the French Union at Dien Bien Phu, the French left, and conflicting settlement proposals by the Soviet and American backed Vietnamese factions meant what was supposed to be a temporary division at the 17th parallel in 1955 solidified. That was around the time Eisenhower started sending in US military advisers and aid to South Vietnam. More kept getting sent in subsequent administrations and yes, LBJ escalated the conflict.
Thus, regarding which party was hawkish in the last 150 or so years…it really was a wash and depended heavily on time period.
The Washington Post published a wonderful commentary article (titled “Origin of the Species”) back in 2004 that, somewhat tongue in cheek, chronicled the switch back and forth on issues between the Republican and Democratic Parties over their entire shared histories—and, I think somewhat compellingly, portrayed it as a virtue of our system.
(dfbdfb does some googling, finds it)
For those interested, it’s still available online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64984-2004Jul20.html