Posted by gemccull (Gary McCullars) on August 16, 2009 at 7:36 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Rogaine should take care the hair problem.

It might something like Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra for the EDa?

Posted by OldGrandDad (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 7:42 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Kevin, thanks for keeping us informed of this. Please continue riding 'em on through the next elections.

Posted by gemccull (Gary McCullars) on August 16, 2009 at 7:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)

"It might something like Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra for the EDa?" probably should have read: It might take something along the lines of Viagra, Cialis or Levitra for the EDa.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 8:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)

The solution to the city's budget problems is very simple. The city just needs to print up some city currency and pay all its local bills in that currency. Give it a nice name like the "Pilgrimage Dollar" and put some nice pictures of antebellum homes on it, and some nice platitudes about trust and God and back it with the full faith and credit of the city's ability to raise taxes and jail tax evaders, and there you go! The best thing about doing this is that it is not possible to ever run low on money because if you do you can just print some more.

To make it work the city should create a local income tax payable only in Pilgrimage dollars. Don't worry about citizen protests, that won't last long once the people see a new recreation complex with polo fields, steeplechase, two covered olympic pools, nine fields each for soccer, football, baseball, softball, nine courts for basketball, a state of the art gymnasium, tennis courts, racquetball courts, an eco golf course bufferzone surrounding the city, and expanded social services all paid for with Pilgrimage dollars.

I declare, if I have to keep doing all the thinking for the city of Natchez I'm going to demand some kind of compensation.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 9:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Just in case some of you don't understand why it would be necessary to create a local income tax payable in Pilgrimage dollars I'll explain. If there were such an income tax, all merchants would be forced to sell a portion of their goods in exchange for Pilgrimage dollars in order to get the money to pay their local income tax. They wouldn't be able to refuse city employees or vendors paid in Pilgrimage dollars goods or services. Everyone else would be in the same boat too, everyone would have to demand some payment in Pilgrimages in order to pay their taxes.

To kick off the system the city only needs to set the tax rate, figure out how much it will collect in the first year, and print up that amount of Pilgrimage dollars. If the city wanted to introduce an economic stimulus effect the city could print up some multiple of anticipated tax collections and this is the course I advise the city to take.

Above the amount needed to cover anticipated tax revenue, the city should print up an additional 20 million to pay for the recreation complex and 10 million more for cost overruns and graft; another 10 million for a city program to train workers to build the complex and maybe 2.5 to 5 million for the aldermen to pass around for political favors.

The city only needs to realize, just like Abe Lincoln realized, that it has the power to print up this 75 million next week to end all the woes.

I futher advise the city against the temptation to allow the local banks to issue the Pilgrimage against bonds issued by the city because this would introduce an inflationary aspect into the local monetary system and I will give the city leaders a much better deal if they take my option II.

Option I:
The city should let Donnie Holloway issue this money directly from the clerk's office. Doing it this way the Pilgrimage would be interest free, a blessing for the taxpayers.

Option II:
Alternatively, I suggest the city allow me to issue the Pilgrimage because I know best how it should be done and I would even pay for the machine and the materials to print the money; I'll expect an exclusive contract of course since I will be providing an altruistic public service and I can be trusted to look out for the public interest independent of any political considerations. I will of course expect the city to back my currency issue with bonds, but I promise not to charge as much interest as the banks would and as long as the city keeps up the interest payments I'll just let the principal ride on indefinitely.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 9:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Disclaimer:

The above was not intended, nor should it be taken, to be a finalized offer on my part. Additional issues would have to be considered prior to finalizing any monopoly contracts with the city, including that the recreation complex will be held by me as collateral against bond issues securing the 30 million in Pilgrimages for the recreation complex should the city accept Option II.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 9:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Private Offering of Stock Notice:

Natchez Adams County political leaders are hereby invited to consider a ground floor investment opportunity seeking to capitalize the Pilgrimage Reserve Bank of Natchez. This offer is not open to the general public, your special status as a voting member of a board of aldermen or supervisors, water or sewerage provider, school superintendent, creek authority member, or mayor having tie breaking power is your entitlement to this offering.

As a Board Member of the Bank you will be expected, but not required, to uphold the highest ethical standards in relation to separation of Municipal Government and Banking.

The Corporation guarantees that as a Board Member of the Bank your interests will not conflict with any other competing interest you may have. The Corporation guarantees to honor your Banking Interest above all others.

Posted by destiny (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 11:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)

PLEASE...PLEASE...PLEASE.... Don't give these people such ideas. They may take off running with it. They're just like obama. They have no idea of what they're doing and what the're doing is just scratching chicken ----.

Posted by gemccull (Gary McCullars) on August 16, 2009 at 11:55 a.m. (Suggest removal)

It looks like the elected are following some of the advice above but just have not taken the last step.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 1:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)

That's why they are running into problems Gary. They need to formalize the process and have an independent party help keep all the balance sheets balanced. Politicians shouldn't be encumbered with keeping track of money, they need to be out figuring out what the people want and giving it to them. That's what they are good at and keeping things in balance is what independent altruists like me are good at.

How good a politician can one be if one has to worry about how to finance this or that direly needed program? Not very! What a politician needs to know is that he has access to as much money as he needs when he needs it. That is where I can be of service to the people of Natchez.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 1:57 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The truth is, there is a lot of dead and rusty capital that could have new life breathed into and be greased up to produce local wealth. What is stopping this from happening is the city is under financial constraints imposed by a competing government with a vast array of regulatory agencies that do not favor local development- that would be, of course, the Federal Government, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve Bank. Why shouldn't the city play by the same rules those bodies do?

We have a lot of people who have no jobs or who are underemployed, and we have a lot of things that need fixing, like the roads and the dilapidated houses and so on. We have this dead capital in these houses and lots, and we have this unused human capital.

By creating another stream of currency this unused and underused capital could be put to work creating local wealth in the form of nice housing and public areas.

The city could set up a program addressing, for instance, the dilapidated housing problem, financed with Pilgrimage dollars. The city could enact, through ordinance, a European type minimum wage program of 20-25 dollars an hour for all persons paid solely in Pilgrimage dollars. This would motivate people to seek jobs in the housing project, and create a good tax base for economic expansion, and the workers would have enough money to buy the houses they helped build, and they would have money to buy other things as well, increasing the business of all the merchants.

There is a certain amount of under utilized production capacity and land in the city that only needs enlightened financing to awaken it. As long as the city didn't print money in amounts in excess of a reasonable value for this production capacity and land this idea actually would work. The key is to not print too much money, but just enough that everyone is fairly paid for whatever they provide. The Pilgrimage dollar need not replace the Federal Reserve dollar, there would be great advantage in having the two currencies circulating. Exchange conducted in Pilgrimages would not be subject to federal tax since the federal government would have no ownership in the Pilgrimage. This woud be a terrific boon, not having the fruits of local labor siphoned off to Washington.

What are we missing that has hurt us so? We are missing those good paying factory jobs the federal government incentivized and subsidized to move offshore in the name of free trade. We could create our own good paying jobs developing all forms of local capital and exchanging it in local currency. Other cities have done this, but not with the boldness of the plan I suggest. It is not illegal to do this, nor immoral, because developing this second local economy would not impinge on the federal economy in operation locally, our local economy would be truly local and exist alongside the federal economy.

Posted by OldGrandDad (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 2:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)

EnKiKur, you've been quiet recently. I figured you were probably stuck on a sandbar someplace. Are you gonna get onboard our Amendment movement?
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 2:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Think of it like this, imagine one of those dilapidated houses sitting on an overgrown lot on the edge of a nicer area of town.

What is the problem? The owner lacks anything of value to exchange for the labor and materials to improve his property.

What is the current approach to the problem? The current approach is to go after this property through tax liens which create all sorts of problems when it comes to borrowing Federal Reserve money for improvements; the other approach is to try to think of some way to transfer that property to city ownership without going the tax seizure route. Neither is very fair for the owner, who simply lacks anything of value to exchange for the improvements he needs.

If the city loaned the owner city issued currency, the city could hold the improved property as collateral. The owner could use the city money to make the improvements. This would save a great deal of capital in the form of money wasted on legal fees, time of public officials in dealing with the tax seizure or eminent domain or blight law proceedings, and allow much more rapid improvement.

The only thing that needs to be done is to create an alternate system of exchange acceptable to all the residents of the city. It really is that simple. People have just forgotten that wealth is the product of mental and physical labor and money is just what is used to exchange that among one another. A house or a recreation complex, or a full dinner plate of delicious homegrown food is wealth; nice clothes and the self esteem one gains from being well dressed and well fed and well educated are wealth; money is only what is used to exchange the items and services that create that wealth.

We have all the items and services for wealth creation at hand, but we don't have a system under which people are able to exchange them freely enough for those items and services to come together in pleasing expressions of prosperity. See?

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 2:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Think of this as well. Realistically that recreation complex the city really wants is going to cost about 20 million to do it right. Do we have 2 million dollars worth of sand and gravel in Adams County? Do we have 2 million dollars worth of millable timber? Do we have 10 million dollars worth of available labor that is just sitting around mainly, for want of a good paying job? All that stuff needed to build that complex is right here right now. The land, the people, the raw materials.

Only because we think inside the box of using Federal Reserve Notes and financing everything from within that system, when don't have to, we cannot get this land, these materials and people together to build that complex we are assured will attract more Federal Reserve Notes to the area.

What did Abe Lincoln do when the New York bankers wanted 30% interest to finance the Union Army? He printed up greenbacks. Where did he go wrong? He printed too many because he wanted to buy too much war. He got around the New York bankers and we can too. All we need to do is take a lesson from history and don't make more money than our assets are worth.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 2:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Yes, I'll join up OGD.

Wasn't stuck on a sandbar, just trying to keep my head above the rising tide of American poverty.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 3:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Some of you may have heard of Obama's youth service programs. That plan is to get young people to volunteer to perform community service work for no pay. Why?

If we had enlightened local leaders who understood, really, what money is and how it works, not just how the FRN's work, and who had more allegiance to the local constituency than to the Federal System, then we could have our own youth service programs except the young people could be paid in local currency units which would be a benefit to them if local businesses would accept these currency units. It would cost very little to create this currency system, but it would allow exchange of real value.

There are many projects the young people might gainfully be employed in.

For instance, NASD could reclaim the 16th section lands from whatever globalist scheme Hank Bounds came around peddling, and the young people could set about managing these forest lands, planting them in hardwoods, growing the seedlings needed to do so, replanting the cypress forests where they would grow. This would do several beneficial things, like preserving the forests and creating timber wealth, giving the young persons so employed hands on experience in timber management, a major business in our 8 state bioregion.

The young people, on the basis of their inexpensive local unit labor, could also sell seedlings to local private landowners and sell as well their services in planting the trees and improving private land.

Paying them in tradable local currency would cost next to nothing while creating real value in timber and skills.

The young could also be employed in salvaging whatever lumber is salvageable in these dilapidated houses, which might be too costly if attempted by labor paid in Federal Reserve Notes. The young could be encouraged to set up their own small businesses contracting to the city and county for cleanup and grass cutting, plant watering and landscape labor, which would teach them more about being and American than being part of some Obama youth brigade working for free like some communist Chinese peasants employed as slaves in a cultural revolution.

These local currency units could also be very useful to residents who items around their homes they no longer want. If a local system were in operation I would not hesitate to trade some things I want to get rid of for those local units, and I have some things young people might be well pleased to buy if those damned Federal Reserve Notes weren't so hard to get. I imagine many of us have such things.

The overall thing is, instead of taking care of ourselves, thinking for ourselves, local leaders and residents alike have for too long depended on the federal government. We could easily change this through the simple economic mechanisms so carefully laid out in the constitution, and with a little bit of education on what money really is and how it really works.

Posted by 2008 (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 3:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)

One of the countries LARGEST welfare recipients are the churches in this country. In every small town and city metropolis “the church” holds the best prime real estate. “The Church” has become BIG business in every sense of the word, they own everything from land, multiple investments, vast media empires - all of it off the tax rolls, and then of course there are parking lots, among some of the tax exempt business’s owned by churches. As tax payers we are paying for ALL churches whether we are a member or even hold the same beliefs. If you are a Scientologist, Catholic, Baptist, Mormon or Church of Atheists we are all paying their taxes.

Our founding fathers “James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, James Garfield and Ulysses Grant all opposed the exemption. Grant said to Congress, ""I would also call your attention to the importance of correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will probably lead to great trouble in our land... it is the accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church property."
“The estimated value of untaxed church properties in the United States is on the order of $300 billion to $500 billion or more considering real estate values (a wide range because no central database collates these numbers from counties across the country). Undeniably, residents pay higher taxes than they would if religious institutions paid their share on this vast sum. Churches use city services, rely on good streets, are protected by the police, and would expect the fire department to respond to a blaze on church property. Yet churches do not contribute to the city accounts from which funds are drawn to pay for those services. Everyone else has to pay more to make up the difference.”

In this day and age there is no excuse for the continued tax exemption of churches. These laws are outdated and not relevant to today’s world. The internet is filled with websites on how to become a tax exempt “church”, more lawyers than you can imagine that specialize in church “law”, To deny that tax exemption is a meaningful public subsidy is to put forth an absurd proposition: just consider what your personal financial picture would look like if you never paid any taxes. Yet it is exactly this type of ludicrous logic

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 4:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

2008, what happens in other counties is of no concern to us. Our churches are not a strain on the tax rolls, any moreso than any other tax exempt community service organization or non-profit.

Our churches do good things for the community and their revenue comes from church members who already have paid ample taxes. Taxing the churches would just be another tax on some of the most productive and giving members of our local community.

Would you tax the Sunshine Shelter or the orphanages because they are tax free occupiers of land? How about all the tax free prime land occupied by the federal government in Natchez? Ought we to tax them?

I don't personally go to any churches because none have offered me a leadership position and commensurate salary and benefits, but I do see the good they do. Taxing them would cut down on the good they are able to do.

Posted by OldGrandDad (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 4:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)

2008, a "church" is people. And all of those people that make up the churches ARE paying for any services that they receive from government.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 5:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)

One example of an alternative marketplace, the Vermont Sustainable Exchange: http://www.changethemarket.com/index.htm...

There are many others.

Posted by EnKiKur (Marty Ellerbe) on August 16, 2009 at 5:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)

A world map of alternative currencies used to improve local economies: http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccD...

Posted by getalifenatchez (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 5:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)

2008, your proposterous idea of taxing churches might fly outside the Bible belt.... but not in these parts, thank God...
God is quickly being erased from the American landscape,
and thus we have social issues that continue to sky rocket due to this mentality of doing whatever, whenever.... There are no boundaries or consequences.... morality seems to be on the verge of becoming extinct.... Maybe I should have been born 100 years ago, because my way of thinking is going the way of the dinosaur. America needs a wake up call---- and it is going to get it one day soon when our entire civilization collapses just like the Roman empire.... Our government is spiraling out of control, and our citizens are becoming dumber by the minute. Lord have mercy!

Posted by OldGrandDad (anonymous) on August 16, 2009 at 7:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. --- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC

:)

Posted by marinefrmntz (anonymous) on August 17, 2009 at 9:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)

@Enki, I read yesterday that some city in I think MA, was using alternative currency so that idea is not farfetched.

@Getalife, Yes God is leaving the American landscape. Next were going to be a country of homosexuals because they are pushing that down our throats harder that the presidents stimulus.

Nice article, We hear about all the lawyers in government all the time but where are all the accountants?