Just on the heels of an announcement that the U.S. Postal Service would trash its stamp-vending machines as being obsolete came the launch on Feb. 15 of the new one-dollar presidential coin.

It makes a taxpayer weary, since those Susan B. Anthony dollars that spew out of the stamp-vending machines are more of an annoyance than a convenience. Who wants to go around carrying five or more Susan B. Anthony or Sacagawea dollars? Even convenience store cashiers look in askance if one tries to use the dollar coins in a purchase.

And where is the slot machine that will take today’s cupronickel dollar coins? Is there a casino magnate who truly wishes to go to all the expense of modifying slot machines just because the Federal Reserve, for starters, ordered 300 million of the new Washington dollar coins? It already has cost the casinos millions to convert slot machines to taking paper currency in four denominations.

Supposedly the new dollar coins will have a different president on them every three months until all the deceased presidents are minted and in circulation again. The schedule for 2007 calls for Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to be coined on the anverse face of the new dollar version featuring the Statue of Liberty on the reverse side.

The presidential coins are scheduled to be struck from now into the year 2016. To appear on a coin, a president must have been deceased at least two years.