Party of the poor wants penny banished

I recently received an e-mail from Jack Layton telling me how the NDP was the only party providing an opposition(true,unfortunately)and extolling all the good things the NDP had done.I answered back that I had been a voter for the NDP all my life and was now leaving for the Green party as I felt they better represented my personal view of my country.I feel the NDP has abandoned it's roots and forgotten where it came from.Now i read this article in the paper about an NDP MP that wants to banish the penny to history.Pat Martin wants prices rounded off to the nearest five cent mark.I guess he finds it annoying having to mess with pennies when things could be rounded off.I happen to come from an upper middle class family.I have ,however been down on my luck a few times and was counting my pennies,literally.Mr Martin doesn't care any more about people that have to count pennies than he does for the penny.He would like the penny and all those that count them to be put somewhere and forgotten.The one thing that makes the penny so important,coincidentally,is that it is so unimportant to people like Mr.Martin and probably mr.Layton as well and therefore they're willing to part with them for charities and panhandlers and anyone else that's down on their luck.Like the old fellow that was just recently on the news because he was collecting pennies for charity.I see this as the same kind of mentality that you hear whenever the minimum wage is brought up.There are those that care about making life better for everyone and there are those that only care about themselves.You hear them complain that if the minimum wage is raised then they'll lose spending power on their money.So what if people are working and can't afford to eat.I'll have to pay more for my beer.The penny is always a way of anyone being able to put a few bucks aside for a rainy day and easier than collecting your empties for a few months.It's sad that the party of Tommy Douglas that gave us our health care system has forgotten where it comes from.Like the health care system that is being starved out of existence by politicians in collusion with the CMA in a selfish and greedy push for a two tiered medical system the NDP is now more about the money than it is about making life a little more even for everyone in this country.When I saw the country sign on for the necessity to possess picture ID in order to vote.I knew there was no-one in Ottawa that was working for the poor and lower income working stiff.If picture ID is to be a requirment,it must be provided free to every voter.Otherwise it's a means of disenfranchising a large segment of society that isn't capable of holding on to or keeping up to date,photo ID.