Category Archives: jobs

Light on the Horizon

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…for Sudan.

I think this is brilliant.  It’s going to be grown in a sustainable fashion.  And through fair trade practices, the farmers will be paid a good price for their coffee.  The economic support will help them fend off the outside forces (and inside forces) that seek to divide them.

There are other reports of millions of dollars leaving the country while the public struggles to survive.  (Probably took their cue from Mitt Romney)

And what do power players always fall back on when they want to start trouble?  Bring up religion.  After the discover of oil in the region, suddenly religion became an issue, although the many different religions of the region didn’t make anyone uncomfortable before the oil discovery.

Here’s a map on the prominent religions of different areas in Sudan.

Detroit, Broke City

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(I didn’t get much sleep last night, and my ADD is always worse when I’m tired, so forgive any faux pas.)

I’m flipping through the channels this morning and land on CNBC with Dan Gilbert, the grand pooh bah wizard of rejuvenating Detroit.  I only caught the last part of his schpiel, but what I was hearing made me sick.  He spoke of bringing in “interns”.  Interns? Yep, he’s bringing in young minds that can be manipulated into believing what they’re doing is innovative and exciting and the right thing to do….

…I find it more than mildly curious that 50-somethings are by appearances being ignored.

And it’s disturbing how the article below reads that the sharks are circling to see how much they can get away with–everyone is watching to see who wins the “tug of war” between the unions and the moneyed interests.

From the NYTimes article:

….Detroit officials have proposed paying off small fractions of what the city owes, they have indicated they intend to treat investors holding general obligation bonds as having no higher priority for payment than, for instance, city workers — a notion that conflicts with the conventions of the market…

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An obligation is an obligation.  I don’t know why the city would be any less obligated to the workers who labored and were made a promise than to bond holders who were also made promises but did nothing to earn that but sit on their butts?  In my view, EVERYBODY should be made to give a little.  Everybody loses a little bit for the good of the whole.

Now I know folks will be saying that “investors won’t invest if they aren’t getting top dollar…”  I don’t believe that if they are still making money for doing nothing that they are going to pass on that opportunity.  Investing is a risk….why shouldn’t the investors share in the losses as well as the gains?

(Ironically, or not, I’m playing David Crosby’s “Hero”  )

My other blogs on Detroit here and here . Note the link to Dan Gilbert profiteering off of the carcass of Detroit.

Background on the “Emergency Manager”

 

A post script

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A post script to this blog…what I meant when I referred to Katrina is that I told them I thought the George W. Bush administrations’ slow response to the emergency was racist.  It was September, 2005, so it was only a month after the storm hit, but it was apparent to me.  What really shocked me was how only the one black woman agreed with me, again, subtly, but she saw it, too.    This why I probably began to think that Daniels was dismantling or weakening the Civil Rights Commission and blurted that out.

When I think about that interview and how I missed such a fabulous opportunity–a  life changer- because it would have been a career I would have enjoyed with its daily change, using the creative along with the analytical, and fighting for the underdog—and all the misery that mercury has caused me, I want to cry in despair.   This poison has taken so much more than can be neasured…

I give myself 24 hours to feel sorry for myself, and then move on…

House repubs omit food stamps from bill

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Report here.

Republican leaders said food stamps, traditionally part of the farm bill, would be handled later and that, for now, they needed a way to start negotiations with the Senate over a compromise bill.

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If you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Indiana I want to sell you….

No doubt these members of Congress will go to church Sunday and puff their chests out at what good Christians they are…

I’m not going to comment any further because I’m too upset and I’ll say something I’ll regret later.

Walmart: Always low wages…Always

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…was on a sign protesting their continued more-for-us-less-for-you campaign.  Thankfully, they were unsuccessful in their bullying tactics.

From the first link:

“From day one, we have said this legislation is arbitrary, discriminatory, and discourages investment in D.C.,” Alex Barron, a general manager for Wal-Mart whose region includes D.C., writes in a company statement. “It means most shopping dollars will stay in the suburbs, unemployment will remain in the double-digits in some neighborhoods and underserved communities will continue to have disproportionate access to affordable groceries.”

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I followed the last link to this:

The company’s hardball tactics come out of a well-worn playbook that involves successfully using Wal-Mart’s leverage in the form of jobs and low-priced goods to fend off legislation and regulation that could cut into its profits and set precedent in other potential markets. In the Wilson Building, elected officials have found their reliable liberal, pro-union political sentiments in conflict with their desire to bring amenities to underserved neighborhoods.

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I just can’t understand the thinking that losing Wal-Mart is a bad thing?  Good Riddance to a big box store that pays poor wages, encourages employees to apply for food stamps, guts entire towns that were once full of independent small business owners, and imports cheap plastic crap from China, where again, people are paid low wages (which I know are beginning to rise, but still…).

 

Food is….Life…and Love…

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I love this!  Instead of encouraging women to break the glass ceiling in the corporate world, here is an article about them breaking into farming–traditionally viewed as a man’s work.  (Although anybody who knows farmers know that the the entire family helps and that women had traditionally helped in the fields, along with taking care of the household.  You know the old tale that great grandma gave birth in the morning and plowed the back forty in the afternoon…)

Farming means independence in so many ways–owning your own land, growing not only your own food, but earning bucks selling to others, playing in the dirt is always fun :), and just being out in the fresh air uplifts the spirit.   During the last Depression, folks were very poor, but they could still feed themselves if they had enough land to grow food.  This time around, things have changed….making people more dependent on food stamps, IMO.

When I worked on the farm that summer a few years ago, it was such a great experience.  I could be planting, when a butterfly floats by…or a grasshopper hops past…we would see clouds rolling in and wait until the last possible moment to make a run for it.  If it wasn’t lightening out, we would just continue to work (as long as it wasn’t a downpour).  Just being out in the fresh air away from office cubicles (and office politics) is so freeing.

And if you needed to, you could bend the farm schedule around the family needs.  And then there is the sense of community that is a part of farming–farmers know one another and will help another out.  I’ve heard stories of a farmer being injured and unable to get the crop harvested, which would mean losing the crop, their income and their farm…and the other farmers would come to his aid and harvest the crop.

And the wonder of watching a seed planted grow and eventually produce food is nothing short of a miracle.  You never know when drought will occur, when torrential downpours will wash things out, or when overbearing heat will scorch the plants….and on…farming is not for the faint of heart.  It’s an art. A craft borne of experience.

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Here is a neat story on a man from Bangladesh whom now calls the U.S. home.  He started his own restaurant and began growing fresh food to supply the restaurant.  He wanted to expand that with emphasis on food justice and found it with the help of Julia Nerbonne of the HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs).  This ambitious project seeks to have fresh food brought to restaurants from nearby farms…and I love the idea of rickshaws bringing it to market.  As the story states, though, winter is the hard part–not only the end of growing season, but difficulty in transporting food to the restaurant.  It’s an interesting idea that I hope grows and takes hold.

Here’s to good food! And the farms that do it sustainably!

 

 

Solid Canada

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Color me shocked:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-24-2013/money-boo-boo—the-canadian-banking-system

Canada has NEVER had a financial crash. Yep.  Even during the Depression here, they were solid….because they were…wait for it…REGULATED.

Unbelievable, eh?

Listening to the American Tabacco’s *cough* joke at the end kind of tells of his mindset not only of women, but of those he perceives as weaker.

(….and anyone not willing to profit at others’ expense is…weaker….in his sociopathic view.)

 

 

The rape culture pushback

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(getting a migraine…spoke to soon. Pfft.  I’ll be back when I’m back.)

Wanted to put this up before things go downhill:

A guy sends a shot of his nether regions to a woman, unsolicited.  He’s basically a stranger she met on a date site who plays the victim when she calls him on his bullsh*t…and sends it to his mother.

I really wish I had acted proactively as she has done with men who have harassed me.  Women are not taught to be proactive like this.    We are taught to be nice.  We are taught that we are uptight bitches when we tell a man our boundaries.

Links to the other articles mentioned:  Yes means Yes

and Salon.…

I may have more to say when I get back from the migraine…see you then…

Helping ourselves

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commondreams has this up.  Be sure to look at all the videos–well worth the time.

The idea is so simple it’s like “duh!”

I have a quibble, though, with Klein saying that it’s up to the Left to “seize the moment”.  There are those who are NOT in the Tea Party on the Right who also need and want to find a solution to the crashes around us.  I say this because the Left has not been of the same mind — I was shot down on a progressive website when I advocated buying American so we could put people back to work.  I knew that Washington wasn’t going to get off its collective duff and do anything about the job loss.  (NAFTA being a good example of monumental job loss.)

I just don’t think people have been given the skills or knowledge to feel confident enough to take over a business if the owners want to sell out.  I think it may be a case of learned helplessness?  Not believing in yourself can be such a huge obstacle that one stops before even getting started.

Perhaps the “teach-ins” of 2013 should be “Business 101:  how to own a business without going belly-up nor bankrupting the environment on your way to the bank…”

The Native Americans learned this a loooong time ago–nature was not a second thought.  They did not separate their actions from nature.

It’s still so incredibly stupid that business has ignored the laws of nature, as if we could exist without clean water, clean air and chemical free food…

Well…exist is probably a bad word choice…since we are existing right now…perhaps thriving  is the better word.  All one has to do is look at folks’ skin and see that we are not thriving, but existing.  The skin is such a barometer of what’s going on in the insides…not doing too well by that account.

Anyway, Washington isn’t going to help us…most likely profiting off of NAFTA…so, it’s up to us if we want to save ourselves.