is this a good idea?

["bill london" <bill_london@hotmail.com>]

Would this work here?
BL


North Coast county launches its own currency



MENDOCINO, Calif. (AP) -- Wildflowers, quaint bed and breakfasts and 
craggy
rocks may abound along this North Coast haven, but jobs are hard to come
by. So when some residents wanted to make some money, they did just 
that.

They printed their own currency.

The first bills for SEED, short for "self-sufficient ecological economic
development," were issued Sunday, following in the tradition of some 65
local currencies started in towns such as Berkeley, Ithaca, N.Y., and
Kansas City.

Those who can't afford the $5 to $5,000 membership to the nonprofit 
group
can barter their services -- chopping wood, baby-sitting or renting out
garden space -- in exchange for goods at businesses that take part.

"It's a weird and twisted world, and here's an opportunity to have a 
tiny
little neighborhood economic affair," said Stanley Miklose, who accepts
SEED at his Fort Bragg natural food store, Down Home Foods. "This is a
ground-level opportunity for us to engage in developing our own value
system."

So far, SEED -- two years in the making -- has 160 members in Mendocino
County, including a plumber, bookstore and medical clinic. Each bill is
worth an hour of work, valued at $10 for everyone from lawyers to 
laborers.

It's a way to keep money in a county that had an unemployment rate of 
8.2
percent in December, double the state's jobless rate. Environmental
regulations, clear cutting and overfishing have eroded traditional jobs 
in
the logging and >>salmon<< industries, and rainy weather has kept 
tourists
away.

And when Mendocino residents have something to buy, they often end up 
going
over the hill to the chain discount stores in Ukiah.

"... A U.S. dollar can be spent at RiteAid and then leave town," said 
Susan
Hofberg, who will accept SEED money at her Corners of the Mouth natural
foods store. "If a SEED is spent in the Mendocino Pharmacy, it has to be
spent again here."

The bills, which will also come in half-, quarter- and eighth-SEED 
notes,
are printed on recycled paper, some embellished with redwoods and a
waterfall and others with a nude woman clad only in a well-placed fig 
leaf.

The notes are embossed with a serial number to prevent counterfeiting 
and
can be used to purchase goods or labor in towns from Elk to Westport.

And it's perfectly legal, experts say.

While local governments are banned from printing money, nonprofit 
agencies
are allowed to exchange currency in bills larger than a dollar, said 
Lewis
D. Solomon, a business law professor at George Washington University Law
School.

SEED money may not escape the Internal Revenue Service -- transactions
still are taxed -- and besides helping to support the community, it's a 
lot
of fun, members said.

"It's like liking to play store when you're a kid," said Hofberg. "I'd 
make
food out of Play-doh. Here I am, with real food and play money."



______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

RReceived: from whale.fsr.net (slist@whale.fsr.net [207.141.26.9]) by fsr.com (8.8.8/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA09633 for <vision2020-archive@archive.fsr.com>; Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:53:34 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from slist@localhost)
	by whale.fsr.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) id LAA10151
	for vision2020-archive@archive.fsr.com; Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:53:57 -0800 (PST)
	(envelope-from vision2020-request@moscow.com)
Resent-Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:53:57 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <199903021952.LAA11499@wya-lfd71.hotmail.com>
X-Originating-IP: [134.121.3.117]
From: "bill london" <bill_london@hotmail.com>
To: vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: Health Notice revisited
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 11:52:24 PST
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain
Resent-Message-ID: <"1AyVL.A.XcC.8GE32"@whale.fsr.net>
Resent-From: vision2020@moscow.com
X-Mailing-List: <vision2020@moscow.com> archive/latest/2406
X-Loop: vision2020@moscow.com
Precedence: list
Resent-Sender: vision2020-request@moscow.com

For those of you who recall the "Health Notice" inserted in the Daily 
News a few months ago (the notice reprinted bogus claims by a Dennis 
Avery that organic food was dangerous), here's an update on the 
contraversy....BL



>>> FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
>>> February 17, 1999, Wednesday
>>>           Dining In, Dining Out/Style Desk
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>           EATING WELL; Anti-Organic, And Flawed
>>> 
>>> 
>>>           By Marian Burros
>>> 
>>>           DENNIS T. AVERY wants organic food to go away. And he 
doesn't
>>> care what it takes. Four years ago, he said that organic food could
>>>           not feed the world without destroying the environment. 
Now, he
>>> says it's lethal.
>>> 
>>>           In an article in the fall issue of American Outlook 
magazine,
>>> published by his employer, the Hudson Institute, a conservative 
research
>>>           group, Mr. Avery wrote, ''Organic foods have clearly 
become the
>>> deadliest food choice.'' This is the case, he said, because organic 
farms
>>>           use animal manure and do not use chemicals or permit
>>> pasteurization. The last assertion is untrue, as were several other
>>> statements in the
>>>           article.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>           The accusation might have gone unnoticed, but excerpts 
from the
>>> article were published in The Wall Street Journal and continue to be
>>>           picked up around the country, by The Associated Press, The 
Tampa
>>> Tribune and trade industry publications.
>>> 
>>>           The simplest definition of ''organic'' is food grown 
without
>>> hormones, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. But Mr. Avery, whose 
work
>>is
>>>           financed by agribusiness, used the terms ''organic,'' 
''free
>>> range,'' ''natural'' and ''unpasteurized'' interchangeably.
>>> 
>>>           ''I grant you that I've mixed together natural and 
organic,''
>>Mr.
>>> Avery, the author of ''Saving the Planet With Pesticides and 
Plastic''
>>>           (Hudson Institute, 1995), said in an interview last week. 
''But
>>> to me they are distinctions without significant difference in terms 
of
>>public
>>>           health.''
>>> 
>>>           His most combative accusation is based on his reading of 
1996
>>> data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
>>>           showing, he said, that ''people who eat organic and 
'natural'
>>> foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the population to be
>>> attacked by a
>>>           deadly new strain of E. coli bacteria (O157:H7).''
>>> 
>>>           Yet, some of the foods that caused the outbreak, which he 
called
>>> organic, were not, like unpasteurized Odwalla apple juice.
>>> 
>>>           Mr. Avery's claim that ''consumers of organic food are 
also more
>>> likely to be attacked by a relatively new, more virulent strain of 
the
>>>           infamous salmonella bacteria'' was based on a Consumers 
Union
>>> study in 1998 showing that ''premium'' chickens had higher levels of
>>>           salmonella than regular supermarket chickens. But the 
premium
>>> chickens were not organic.
>>> 
>>>           In the article, Mr. Avery took the Food and Drug 
Administration
>>> to task for failing ''to issue any warnings to consumers about the 
higher
>>>           levels of natural toxins their researchers regularly find 
in
>>> organic foods.'' In the interview, he said that that assertion was 
based
>>on a
>>>           statement by Dr. Robert Lake, an official in the agency's 
Center
>>> for Food Safety and Nutrition.
>>> 
>>>           Dr. Lake denied making such a statement, saying, ''We 
don't go
>>> out of our way to sample organic food, and hence I don't think we 
are in
>>>           a position to say anything one way or another about it.''
>>> 
>>>           Mr. Avery wrote that because ''organic farmers use animal 
manure
>>> as the major source of fertilizer,'' there are higher levels of 
harmful
>>>           bacteria in organic food. Katherine DiMatteo, the 
executive
>>> director of the Organic Trade Association, said that manure is not 
the
>>major
>>>           source of fertilizer on organic farms (it is also used in
>>> conventional farming) and that when it is used, certain rules must 
be
>>> followed for
>>>           safety.
>>> 
>>>           Mr. Avery said he had never ''bothered that much about 
consumer
>>> safety aspects of organic food until O157:H7.'' His goal, he 
continued,
>>>           is to prevent organic agriculture from becoming the norm. 
''My
>>> big concern is that we do not have room on the planet to feed 
ourselves
>>>           organically,'' he added.
>>> 
>>>           The attack on organic food by a well-financed research
>>> organization suggests that, though organic food accounts for only 1
>>percent of
>>>           food sales in the United States, the conventional food 
industry
>>> is worried.
>

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

eceived: from whale.fsr.net (slist@whale.fsr.net [207.141.26.9]) by fsr.com (8.8.8/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA09632 for <vision2020-archive@archive.fsr.com>; Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:53:34 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from slist@localhost)
	by whale.fsr.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) id LAA10176
	for vision2020-archive@archive.fsr.com; Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:54:03 -0800 (PST)
	(envelope-from vision2020-request@moscow.com)
Resent-Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:54:03 -0800 (PST)
X-Authentication-Warning: raven.csrv.uidaho.edu: peggy931 owned process doing -bs
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 11:53:00 -0800 (PST)
From: Peggy Adams <peggy931@uidaho.edu>
X-Sender: peggy931@raven.csrv.uidaho.edu
To: bill london <bill_london@hotmail.com>
cc: vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: Re: is this a good idea?
In-Reply-To: <19990302193129.8052.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GHP.4.05.9903021137080.13241-100000@raven.csrv.uidaho.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Resent-Message-ID: <"fcESCD.A.ucC._GE32"@whale.fsr.net>
Resent-From: vision2020@moscow.com
X-Mailing-List: <vision2020@moscow.com> archive/latest/2407
X-Loop: vision2020@moscow.com
Precedence: list
Resent-Sender: vision2020-request@moscow.com


Bill, 

The idea for local currency has been floating around for several years and
has been tried with varying degrees of success in several communities.  I
believe the most durable example is Ithica Dollars in New York State. It's
a great idea but it needs a cohesive, organized business community to get
on board and implement it.

Developing a local currency and "keeping local dollars local" is one of
the themes that will be discussed this coming Sunday at the "Reinventing
Community Economic Development in the Inland Northwest" session of the
small farms conference at UI. If you're interested call me at 885-4636.

Peggy Adams
PCEI