Bad American

Of course it does.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish among the bills’ varying values, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling upholds a decision by a lower court in 2006. It could force the Treasury Department to redesign its money. Suggested changes have ranged from making bills different sizes to printing them with raised markings.

The American Council for the Blind sued for such changes but the Treasury Department has been fighting the case for about six years.

“I don’t think we should have to rely on people to tell us what our money is,” said Mitch Pomerantz, the council’s president.

The U.S. acknowledges the design hinders blind people but it argued that blind people have adapted. Some relied on store clerks to help them, some used credit cards and others folded certain corners to help distinguish between bills.

Why do so many people around the world think Americans are beyond stupid? This story is one such example.

Of course the usual right-wing gasbags will start pontificating about yet another “federal court mandate” to placate some disadvantaged group that should just get with the American program and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and suck it up.

If anyone ever goes to Canada and uses their paper money you’ll notice that all of it is printed with Braille dots across the top right hand corner. They’ve simply been doing it for years. No big deal. It’s what civilized countries do for their citizens like single payer national health insurance.

What stops the idiot American government from doing the same thing? Is it that perhaps they just don’t want to? We have all these gyrations on our ugly currency to supposedly thwart counterfeiters but to add a few imprinted dots to help the blind will require a veritable Act of Congress.

So no great redesign has to take place here. Just add the Braille dots.

But if the idiots in Washington do decide to restructure the money again, maybe they might again follow the lead of the Canadians and stop printing one dollar bills and have a vendable one dollar coin and perhaps a two dollar coin. Americans need to grow up about their money - printing dollar bills is an idiotic waste of money in of itself.

But I won’t hold my breath.