Oh boy. Here we go again.

Last Thursday the United States Mint released the new George Washington $1 coin into circulation, which is to be the first in a series of gold dollars commemorating each deceased American president. Four new presidential coins will be released each year until 2016. The coins have the same weight, size, and metal composition specifications as the Sacagawea gold dollar that was introduced in 2000.

Remember those Sacagawea gold dollars? By now they're probably collecting dust at the bottom of a drawer somewhere alongside a shoe horn and an empty cassette case.

And if history is any guide, those worthless items will have some company in the next few years as a result of the new presidential dollar coins.

As Dwight Eisenhower, Susan B. Anthony, and Sacagawea would tell you, dollar coins haven't been able to come into common use in the past few decades. Yet, every few years the government seems to get drunk with dollar-coin mania and enacts a public law to issue new ones. So is the government just plain stupid?

Quite the opposite. We're the stupid ones for agreeing to accept them in the first place.

According to the United States Mint Website (www.USmint.gov), it costs the government about 10 cents to make a dollar coin. That means if you receive a new Washington dollar coin at McLanahan's and decide to keep it, the government will make 90 cents off of you because you essentially bought ten cents for a dollar.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the new presidential coins will generate around $280 million of profit. The government continues to press for the issuance of new coins for this reason.

The State Quarter series is even more suspect than the dollar coins. The program, enacted in 1999, calls for the creation of a different commemorative quarter for each state, issued in order of their ratification of the Constitution. Five new quarters are released each year. The program has generated more than $4.5 billion of profit from its inception in 1999 until April 2005. The series will conclude in 2008, so you can be sure more money will be made. (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=6271&sequence=0)

If you collect every quarter, the government will make a cool $10 off you alone, as it costs less than five cents to make each quarter. Although an Associated Press article by Will Lester states "doing away with the [dollar] bill could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year in printing costs," in favor of the dollar coin, the US government has no plans of doing this.

In between the excessive amount of statistics I'm throwing at you, the point I'm trying to get across is that the new dollar coins are nothing more than a governmental money-making scheme.

Dollar coins are an inconvenience. They can't fit into vending machines. There's no space in your wallet for them. Using them to pay for items in the checkout line gets you some weird looks because stores would rather be given paper money.

As a result, receiving a dollar coin is about as worthless as receiving a wood nickle.

If coin collecting is your thing, trying to get each presidential coin will be a fun adventure for you, and that's fine. But especially for those of us in college who have bank account balances that resemble an NFL prospect's 40-yard dash time more than a dollar amount, dollar coins are nothing short of annoying.

We as Americans will never use dollar coins regularly because they are inconvenient. While credit cards and paper money fit neatly into our wallets, dollar coins remain a bulky nuisance that jingle loosely in our pockets. Because we still have dollar bills, we don't have any incentive to use dollar coins anyway.

Bearing this in mind, the next time a cashier hands you one of the presidential dollar coins as part of your change, kindly ask for a paper dollar instead. The designs are available online so you don't need to get one to see what they look like.

Next, gather any dollar coins you have collected over the years, take them to the bank, and have them switched over to paper money. Take a stand against Uncle Sam and dump his worthless coins back into his lap.

After all -- not only does paper money smell better, but there's also a place for it in your wallet.