Work Fair Executive Summary Part II

The Imper­a­tive

New York State and City’s alter­na­tive energy pol­icy, like the national pol­icy, remain unde­vel­oped. Like nuclear waste, it is a long term casu­alty of the Cold War with a half life, to date, of twenty eight years. One unde­ni­able chink in the Rea­gan armor is remov­ing those solar pan­els from the White House.

They work.

But solar pan­els are just the begin­ning. Solar ther­mal, build­ing wraps, thin film solar and all sorts of cool stuff is hit­ting the mar­ket, if not in the U.S. then in the inter­na­tional mar­ket. We’re in touch with the lead­ing com­pa­nies in the field. Not just for clean energy gen­er­a­tion, weath­er­iza­tion, but for the whole range of clean­tech solu­tions we will require, and have some IP of our own.

And are com­pletely afford­able and within your reach. And we are deter­mined to help YOU get there too.

Plus, you know, it is a lit­tle self­ish in that I live here.

But one of the rea­sons we picked New York for the pilot is because of its vis­i­bil­ity and vul­ner­a­bil­ity. But the prob­lems we face, so do you. They’re just big­ger. Like every­thing in the Big Apple always seems to be. But explain that to a kid in Lower Man­hat­tan, I don’t care how much Mommy or Daddy or both make, when she finds out she doesn’t have them any­more, she doesn’t have a home to go to, and her life as she knows it is gone for­ever. And how that’s dif­fer­ent from a poor kid in New Orleans who faced exactly the same thing.

The fact is, there isn’t any.

Money doesn’t matter.

There are some things that Humpty Dumpty can never put back together ever again. How do you mend a bro­ken soul? Of any age for that matter?

Super Glue? I’m sure that’s the rec­om­men­da­tion of the bureau­cratic pin­heads out of DC.

But hav­ing actu­ally dealt with vic­tims of mass cass, not to men­tion real tor­ture, I don’t think so. Spin again, and come back again with a dif­fer­ent answer. Even if it means star­ing at your Magic Eight Ball for hours. Because when you come back you’ll still be clueless.

Because as usual, the peo­ple run­ning things, and mak­ing the deci­sions, and who think they are um, can I even use this word with­out laugh­ing openly any­more, “smarter” than us, don’t have a flip­ping clue what they are doing. On this issue and many oth­ers. And not plan­ning on even plan­ning on exam­in­ing the issue prop­erly either. Last talk I heard they were plan­ning on hav­ing a “com­mis­sion” on it. Or a “study.”

Which is Wash­ing­ton BS dou­ble speak, out of the Oval Office no less, for “Go away, I don’t care less, couldn’t give a rat’s ass, so what, and go away. You are giv­ing me a headache. And I’ve got bet­ter things to do. Like take Michelle to New York on the taxpayer’s dime at $215K a pop, and then get peeved when the peons, who are starv­ing thanks to my own screwups on the econ­omy I ignored have come true. And they are starving.”

Not cool dude. And Con­gress is equally over­bear­ing and out of touch.

So I say it’s way over­due for our dip­shit lead­ers to start open­ing their eyes, To real inno­v­a­tive solu­tions that work and aren’t cor­rupt, and um, COME FROM THE PEOPLE, not some crony. And actu­ally do fix the mas­sive prob­lems we face. Like this pro­posal actu­ally does. Includ­ing emer­gency man­age­ment, right down to where to get diapers.

I can guar­an­tee you Con­gress HAS NOT focused on things like that. They’re too busy nap­ping dur­ing brief­ings. Or going to cock­tail hours and being bought off by K Street lob­by­ists and other unelected and decid­edly unde­mo­c­ra­tic inter­ests, who most cer­tainly DON’T like this plan. And have gone to great lengths to block it.

For one thing, because it is seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion from alot of small busi­nesses, and even if you don’t open a small green firm, you’re going to save alot of money just in energy costs. As well as a few other things too.

But apart from yes, my cer­tain, I should think under­stand­able self­ish­ness in choos­ing my home­town, and in fact my neigh­bor­hood, (which also does give me a remark­able knowl­edge of it’s resources, demo­graph­ics, etc.) and my neigh­bors’ hous­ing project as the per­fect loca­tion for the pilot, both the city and the build­ing itself are per­fect sym­bol­ism of how much dan­ger we are in. And a per­fect place to show how eas­ily and cheaply we can turn it around. On both eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal grounds.

GLOBALLY.

New York City, as an island, actu­ally as an arch­i­pel­ago of islands that depends on sub­ter­ranean energy, water and trans­porta­tion ser­vices is in deep trouble.

Actu­ally the entire region around New York Har­bor is, but the city is espe­cially vulnerable.

New York’s pipes are old and fail­ing at a time when global warm­ing is now caus­ing the pre­dicted extreme weather pat­terns such as floods and hur­ri­canes, and of course ris­ing energy and food prices. There was a drink­ing WATER SHORTAGE IN NEW YORK CITY.

The city is extremely vul­ner­a­ble to nat­ural dis­as­ter. Much of it is built, lit­er­ally, on slate and sand.

As any res­i­dent of the city in 2003 will tell you, the power out­age felt sur­real. But, at least, we joked, there was no flash of light in the sky. If we don’t deal with the seri­ous and unad­dressed issues addressed in this pro­posal, many of us will wish that we had seen it.

This rev­o­lu­tion, no pun intended, is one that will be most suc­cess­ful if dri­ven by the grass­roots and small busi­ness and remain open to inter­na­tional trade.

The inter­est is there. And with the inte­gra­tion of the Green Sanc­tu­ary Move­ment (very pow­er­ful in churches like the Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ists for exam­ple who are inti­mately tied to the UN), the power of social change and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice can add fuel to the fire to har­ness a move­ment that could help to re-invigorate America’s enor­mous indus­trial and entre­pre­neur­ial poten­tial as much as bring us together again as a spir­i­tual nation, with a com­mon eco­nomic and patri­otic goal.

While we are not anti-corporate, and indeed intend to uti­lize cor­po­rate spon­sors and part­ners, we do not believe that giv­ing all the clean­tech and green stim­u­lus to the already rich, Wall Street and the util­i­ties (who are going to jack up rates, not decrease them, just as they have in New Jer­sey) for going green, is the answer.

Our plan gives ammu­ni­tion to under­cut Repub­li­cans and Blue Dogs to oppose real envi­ron­men­tal reform, and dis­cour­ages such things as “clean coal pro­duc­tion” and nuclear power as options, which are a dis­as­ter. Despite the president’s sup­port of them. And stop this crap about sign­ing checks for CORPORATE wel­fare, when noth­ing but dis­dain is deserved for the poor, and real wel­fare for them, not to men­tion PWDs, is con­tin­u­ally trimmed if not eliminated.

We also do not believe that Google should be given any more gov­ern­ment busi­ness and most def­i­nitely should not be given gov­ern­ment prod­uct pro­mo­tion and allowed to col­lect per­sonal infor­ma­tion from pri­vate cit­i­zens on the White House web­site, espe­cially for their own pri­vate profit. If Google can’t solve the cookie prob­lem, then the White House needs to find another vendor.

The answer I got from the White House legal office of “don’t click on the video” or “we have writ­ten warn­ings and pop­ups” is not a valid one.

Over thirty mil­lion Amer­i­cans can­not read, mainly due to dis­abil­ity, and/or are not com­puter lit­er­ate, even if they do not have a dis­abil­ity, and cer­tainly those who have the least access to such things don’t know enough to manip­u­late their com­put­ers (even if spe­cial ed pro­grams and teach­ers EVEN KNOW about adap­tive tech­nol­ogy or are given the bud­gets and tools they need to teach their stu­dents) to turn on speech read­ing soft­ware in stan­dard soft­ware, even if they do own a com­puter. That’s why one of the things this site does is give EVERYONE ideas and access to CHEAP as we can find, adap­tive learn­ing tools, for those peo­ple who need them.

When it comes to IT lit­er­acy, the sit­u­a­tion is even more dire…or the so called “dig­i­tal divide.” The major­ity of Amer­i­cans don’t even know what a cookie is, able bod­ied or PWDs. Even the kids who scam the lat­est smart phones from their parents.

Not to men­tion any­one over say 45, who still thinks email is a mod­ern won­der. And attach­ments to email? Boy, out of this world.

And these are the same folks who don’t know what the IT form of cook­ies even are. Or men­tion cookie and they think of Sesame Street and the Cookie Mon­ster. Or think they are akin to some­thing like Oreos that go well with milk. That’s why, just one rea­son, what the White House is doing is so immoral. You don’t take advan­tage of the peo­ple you serve as the ULTIMATE PUBLIC SERVANT. That is the ulti­mate def­i­n­i­tion of a cor­rupt and power mad, ego­tis­ti­cal bas­tard, who ulti­mately cares noth­ing about any­one but him­self. Hardly a man I want as this nation’s leader. Much less one I can respect. I don’t care if he is the President.

RESPECT must be earned. You don’t put it on like a suit, while hid­ing the many skele­tons in your closet (and in Obama’s case, there are many rat­tling ole’ bones that haven’t hit the light of day yet.).

And since PWDs usu­ally are so poor they often have to choose between food or meds, and obvi­ously can’t afford adap­tive tech­nol­ogy, they are forced to use com­put­ers in libraries (another hur­dle those geniuses in DC haven’t thought of either, because they don’t think of PWDs at all, and when they do, they think of us as garbage), so voice acti­va­tion soft­ware is obvi­ously not an option either.

And since Google is already a monop­oly, with a his­tory of anti-trust, envi­ron­men­tal crimes, stock manip­u­la­tion, and other high crimes and mis­de­meanors, not to men­tion the rather odd and I would say extremely ques­tion­able busi­ness deal it has worked out with the White House to keep YOUR per­sonal infor­ma­tion for it’s own pri­vate profit when you inter­act with the gov­ern­ment, (I believe it is ille­gal, espe­cially because both the CEO of Google is a pres­i­den­tial adviser, AND Google is get­ting alot of bailout money in clean­tech), not to men­tion vio­lates sev­eral BIG laws, it is the height of irre­spon­si­bil­ity, not to men­tion con­flict of inter­est for the White House to engage in this type of behavior.

Not to men­tion highly uneth­i­cal to sus­pend civil rights law, if not Con­sti­tu­tion law, the right to pri­vacy, for its own inter­est. The White House needs to find another video vendor.

This is a mas­sive con­flict of inter­est, and an unprece­dented prod­uct pro­mo­tion by the gov­ern­ment, the White House at that, and unfor­tu­nately typ­i­cal of the kind of insider deal­ing, favoritism in award­ing con­tract­ing, and other cor­rup­tion, not to men­tion ram­pant dis­crim­i­na­tion and thug­gery, already emerg­ing in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion (not that cor­rup­tion and bribery wasn’t already ram­pant in DC in the form of ear­mark­ing and lob­by­ing), not to men­tion already out of con­trol in New York under Bloomberg for his rich male cronies. But Obama is going to take it up another notch or two. I guess that’s his warped idea of “change,” but cer­tainly not one I believe in.

Par­tic­u­larly in clean­tech, where all the con­tracts to date have gone to white, male run firms, includ­ing those with his­to­ries of abuse and cost over runs. Not to men­tion gov­ern­ment pro­grams rife with his­to­ries of abuse, waste, and even in one case in New York, at the present time, bailout money is going to a city pro­gram sub­ject to at least three class action law­suits on agency wide ram­pant vio­la­tions of every­thing from fed­eral fraud to appalling civil rights abuses.

A pro­gram cre­ated by Bloomberg by the way. And equally cor­rupt politi­cian and bully.

PILOT

Site Overview

This pro­posal, and roadmap was writ­ten, designed and cre­ated, with a spe­cific project in mind as a pilot to cre­ate a range of ideas and options, but the model is infi­nitely scal­able and adapt­able and could be applied to just about any site or devel­op­ment, pub­lic or pri­vate, urban or rural. This web­site itself kicks it off already, as you can already see. Just in giv­ing peo­ple the tools, incen­tives, dis­counts and other 411’s nec­es­sary to both sur­vive, and make this coun­try both car­bon free, and tran­si­tion to an envi­ron­men­tally friendly, clean­tech economy.

With a strong domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing base, lots of jobs at liv­ing if not good wages and for every­one, and some­thing that is called a sus­tain­able eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy that is crit­i­cal to our national secu­rity. Just as much, if not more, than send­ing kids off to fight immoral wars.

And I’m tak­ing the lead, and kick­ing ass, for one thing because our national lead­er­ship, doesn’t have a clue. Or worse, doesn’t seem to care.

And sec­ondly they won’t open their ears. And finally, because they have com­mit­ted rather big and large trans­gres­sions, one might say, vio­la­tions, of very big statutes, which even the guy sit­ting his butt in the Oval Office is not immune to pros­e­cu­tion from. Not to men­tion I have, as you will see from the asso­ci­ated tabs, a lit­tle prac­tice in ass kick­ing at 1600 Penn. And a whole lot more of a con­science than its cur­rent res­i­dent, and a whole lot of its predecessors.

Work Fair as an actual on the ground, rolled out pro­gram, includes and can be applied to sin­gle dwelling units, mul­ti­fam­ily hous­ing, inde­pen­dent liv­ing cen­ters or even sky­scrap­ers. Pub­lic, pri­vate, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two. Again, we are focus­ing on pub­lic hous­ing first because of the basic eco­nomic premise that you can­not leave the poor behind and focus­ing on pub­lic hous­ing first will both gen­er­ate a lot of munic­i­pal income, in sev­eral streams, and cut a great deal of spend­ing, (read YOUR TAX PAYER DOLLARS, to the tune of the national debt annu­ally) while boost­ing job cre­ation IMMEDIATELY, even in the pri­vate sector.

IMAGINE THAT! Ter­ri­ble idea, right?

The con­cept also cre­ates a dynamic cen­ter of com­mu­nity life and eco­nomic enter­prise that will build upon itself, spread­ing, block by block, com­plex by com­plex, even house by house, for real urban renewal.

And it is pre­cisely the grow­ing gaps between rich and poor that are at the root of many of this country’s prob­lems, includ­ing the increas­ingly rapid esca­la­tion of global eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal destruction.

The two can­not be sep­a­rated any more. As much as the below makes a game of it, the issue is far from child’s play.

10 Stan­ton Street

The build­ing is on the cor­ner of Bow­ery and Stan­ton Streets. It is a mixed use hous­ing project, which means that some peo­ple work and some peo­ple don’t, but every­one is poor.

It is a Sec­tion 8, HUD pub­lic hous­ing project build­ing with a long his­tory of poor main­te­nance and other vio­la­tions, includ­ing bro­ken ele­va­tors – a major prob­lem for peo­ple with mobil­ity issues. It is pre­cisely for this rea­son that I want strong polit­i­cal sup­port for con­tin­ued gov­ern­ment sub­sidy before I go much fur­ther with pro­vid­ing the bud­get and mov­ing for­ward on this building.

There is no backup plan, much less con­tin­gency evac­u­a­tion plan or drill for any­thing. Much less a major dis­as­ter. Like say, Ms. Kat­rina gone North?

I don’t want the sub­sidy removed until the pro­gram is up and run­ning. The res­i­dents are poor and have no other place to go. Much less have the money or edu­ca­tion to get the help in place that our first res­i­dents need. Our model changes their real­ity entirely for them. And pro­vides a model of real hope for both folks in the same predica­ment, and even the dis­placed mid­dle class.

Face it folks, the world as we knew it ain’t com­ing back. Which is why these eco­nomic poli­cies com­ing out of Summer’s ass (that’s the only ori­fice I can think they could be com­ing from, con­sid­er­ing how full of shit they are) are so stu­pid, and ulti­mately head­ing us for another crash. Because he thinks the world hasn’t changed at all.

The real­ity is that we’ve just entered another uni­verse, if not a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion. Time to put our think­ing caps on, and stop try­ing to save your cor­rupt Wall Street bud­dies asses.

Our approach, is of course, rather dif­fer­ent than con­ven­tional wis­dom which is so obvi­ously work­ing so fab­u­lously (looked at the unem­ploy­ment rate lately? Or the pro­jec­tions on the PRIME mort­gages set to go belly up next year, along with the com­mer­cial ones? What does the Obama genius eco­nomic team do? Don’t help the peo­ple who already HAVE homes save theirs, but raise FHA loans (designed for lower income peo­ple and backed by the gov­ern­ment, but trust me, sliced and diced by Wall Street all the same, just the way they did last time) by another $200K for NEW HOMEOWNERS, even who’s credit is poor so we can have another hous­ing melt­down along with another finan­cial crash, because of course nobody has even touched the sub­ject of reg­u­lat­ing Wall Street either.

Why not? Well, there are those Pres­i­den­tial golf games to play. And those are far more impor­tant. Don’t you think?

Now does that sound like sound eco­nom­ics to you? Or even good or respon­si­ble leadership?

We plan to use resources at our dis­posal, plus alot of uncon­ven­tional tech­niques. Or con­ven­tional things used in uncon­ven­tional ways. Or a lit­tle of both. That’s what cre­ativ­ity is all about.

And the thing is, this should have been the FIRST ROUTE the eco­nomic self pro­claimed geniuses in the inner cir­cles of power should have thought about, because they are tools that already exist. So they should have been obvi­ous to the uh, experts.

Because they cer­tainly were obvi­ous to us…even if we are bio­log­i­cally infe­rior, walk­ing pieces of human garbage gimps. Oh, and female too.…let’s not for­get that.

But the geniuses at the White House and Con­gress don’t seem to have fig­ured it out yet. And seem intent on going down the wrong side of the road of a Cal­i­for­nia free­way at rush hour.

In other words, they are dip­shits. And greedy ones at that. Who do you think has the money to go golf­ing in the first place, not to men­tion at lux­ury resorts? And don’t you think that invest­ing in things like solar elec­tri­cal chairs would have helped alot more peo­ple who actu­ally NEEDED IT, than some rich guys who swing stu­pid lit­tle sticks at lit­tle white balls and walk through some of the MOST envi­ron­men­tally destruc­tive devel­op­ment there is (golf courses are by nature hor­rif­i­cally envi­ron­men­tally destruc­tive and wasteful).

I guess Mr. Know-it-all wasn’t think­ing about that. He was think­ing about how to improve his golf score.

NOWHERE in that self pro­claimed, one might call it nar­cis­sis­tic and overblown ego of his, did Obama ever think about the things we have planned. Like say teach­ing sus­tain­able ecol­ogy and organic gar­den­ing basics using such obvi­ous (and cheap) resources as say online com­puter games to teach kids with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, short atten­tion spans, and those who learn bet­ter visu­ally than by read­ing. That is not a sign of stu­pid­ity. It’s the sign of your brain being wired dif­fer­ently. Or a teacher who sucks, because that is the only one they could hire, because the pay is so bad. Espe­cially for spe­cial ed teach­ers, who need skills that should get them paid, if they mas­ter them well, as highly as elec­tri­cal engi­neers. Or use badly designed teach­ing mate­ri­als, by peo­ple who have cul­tural and other dis­crim­i­na­tory biases hard wired into their prej­u­di­cial ideas about teach­ing and learn­ing. Not to men­tion intel­li­gence. And disability.

Remem­ber, Ein­stein failed 8th grade math. Is any­one going to call HIM stu­pid? Or “retard” perhaps.

Com­puter games as teach­ing aides, espe­cially those which are 508 com­pli­ant, are not only far more inter­est­ing than any text­book ever invented, but are inter­ac­tive, make sense and are cer­tainly an acknowl­edged way to teach, as they have been for cen­turies (what do you think children’s rhymes were) and cer­tainly one way to do it, in the age of ONLINE LEARNING that is 508 com­pli­ant and ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY, espe­cially in a fun way like a mobile com­puter game, played even on your mobile phone, which makes the knowl­edge they impart, stick.

Which is why games have always been such good teach­ing tools. And why mobile learn­ing is so impor­tant right now to every­one, but espe­cially this project. And made acces­si­ble to every­one. Per the law.

Take a look at this game for starters…while not per­fect, it’s only one exam­ple, and not even designed for this pur­pose. NOW are you get­ting my drift?

But there are plenty of other cheap resources that we plan on uti­liz­ing. Like say online train­ing courses, some of which you see adver­tised through­out the site, and much more I have up my sleeve. Which are applic­a­ble not only in the pilot, if not before, but a much wider audi­ence than that. And already on the mar­ket. Like these prod­ucts for exam­ple, which not only reach an audi­ence who need them, but also don’t know how to read. Or can’t. And are one of the 30 MILLION Amer­i­cans who share that trait. Yes, I know, I said it before, but since it’s largely invis­i­ble, it can’t bear repeat­ing enough. These folks are lit­er­ally illit­er­ate because of dis­abil­ity. And our nation’s lead­ers refusal to face the issue. After all, who cares about a piece of walk­ing human garbage gimp?

Like say JFK, FDR, Ol’ Abe, Win­ston Churchill, and a cer­tain U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice pick who just recently got her job as a token appointee, not that she wasn’t qual­i­fied, but it was also a very cyn­i­cal move by the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to say “look, we are doing some­thing about the sit­u­a­tion. Oh, and she’s Latino too. Triple dunk play.”

That’s how pol­i­tics works folks. Espe­cially cor­rupt pols like the one in the White House.

SORRY, but tokens don’t count. And that doesn’t help the 20% of the rest of the pop­u­la­tion, who you haven’t done SHIT about or for. And have done things like give money to states and pri­vate firms to develop solar golf carts at lux­ury resorts, instead of devel­op­ing solar wheelchairs.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the evi­dence. Along with the perp who was respon­si­ble for it. Caught like a rat in a trap. SNAP. Gotcha. Caught in the act.

Now where was that change we could believe in again?

And refuse, because nat­u­rally, you know bet­ter, because you’re smarter than every­one on the planet, that giv­ing all the help to those who don’t need it, while fur­ther crush­ing the poor­est of the poor is really good pub­lic pol­icy, and a solu­tion to the prob­lem. Hate to remind you, you dumb twit, that eco­nomic pol­icy is called “Trickle Down Eco­nom­ics” and was even denounced by it’s “cre­ator” Mr. Stock­man as a lousy piece of shit. TWENTY YEARS AGO.

What a change. I’m impressed. Yes Mas­sah. Wel­come to the plantation.

FUCK YOU. I voted for change. Not more of the same, just gussied up in pretty speeches and empty promises.

And I’m doing some­thing about it.

This is not the change I voted for, and 515 bro­ken cam­paign promises later (give or take) I’m tired of wait­ing for you to get your shit together. Unlike some peo­ple, I have a con­science. And I’ve never SOLD OUT. And I know very well, and refuse to turn my head away at the eco­nomic dis­as­ter your elit­ist twits are cre­at­ing. While refus­ing to meet with me. I DO have the answer. But it just won’t make your finan­cial back­ers very happy.

Do I care? What do you think?

That is why I call this sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially that which faces the PWD pop­u­la­tion, the Amer­i­can Apartheid. Right down to Bantu Edu­ca­tion. And you’re work­ing really hard on get­ting the next Bull Con­ner Award, unless you shape up real quick. Think I can’t make it stick? Just try me, you elit­ist, sex­ist, and ungrate­ful, not to men­tion hyp­o­crit­i­cal prick.

And why I intend to change all that. As you can read on my tab next door, I’m rather good at lead­ing Anti Apartheid protests. Not to men­tion chang­ing national pol­icy, at an age when the cur­rent res­i­dent of the White House was still screw­ing around in two obscure hous­ing projects some­where out in the Midwest.

But ulti­mately what I’m doing will help you too, even if you aren’t as des­per­ate as me right now, or had your life com­pletely destroyed, thanks to good Ol’ Uncle Sam. Or live in a pub­lic hous­ing project. Because guess what (and com­ing soon) there are going to be all sorts of things THAT YOU CAN USE apart from buy­ing prod­ucts that will save you money, (and hope­fully from this site, not only because you’re get­ting a good deal, help­ing save the coun­try, and con­tribut­ing to the suc­cess of this project, but will be get­ting things like infor­ma­tion on TAX BREAKS AND INCENTIVES to green your life.

If you feel like buy­ing any that you see that strike your fancy below, or any­where on this site, for that mat­ter, I’d really appre­ci­ate it if you bought any and all from me. For one thing it’s my only source of income right now and I do kind of need to pay my rent. Con­sider it an act of both worth­while char­ity, and a down­pay­ment on both your and America’s finan­cial future.

Because one of the things I’ll be doing with say reg­u­lar blog arti­cles once I offi­cially launch, along with giv­ing you the 411 on the best deals on the planet, and in fact Work Fair is already designed to do pre­cisely that too, on a slightly larger scale, is help­ing Amer­i­cans get even big­ger FINANCIAL help in green­ing their homes, includ­ing the equip­ment to do it.

How can you not sup­port THAT?

Like these prod­ucts for example.

Did you know that insu­lat­ing your home by the end of the year (Decem­ber 31 2009), saves you 30% on your taxes spent to weath­er­ize your home? See? Sav­ings already, and we’re just get­ting started. That have noth­ing to do with pub­lic hous­ing. But alot to do with start­ing to buy prod­ucts like the fol­low­ing, although I have to say, even these are depress­ingly prim­i­tive. And as I develop this site even more, look for even more cut­ting edge and cheaper prod­ucts to come.

Which is just one of the rea­sons I want to make Work Fair a ‘brand’ and not a franchise.

Apart from open­ing up a col­lab­o­ra­tive project to com­pa­nies already in busi­ness, and putting peo­ple back to work with skills they need to learn how to trans­fer or even never had at all, this is also about help­ing the aver­age Amer­i­can learn how to green their lives. In the cheap­est most effec­tive ways to do it.

And I think we all need to feel own­er­ship in sav­ing our coun­try, not to men­tion our envi­ron­ment, our econ­omy, and that’s not men­tion­ing of course the daily strug­gles we face in just keep­ing our jobs, our homes, our health­care, our san­ity, oh, while also mak­ing sure not to destroy our planet.

But while the under­pin­nings of Work Fair are far more com­plex than just say gen­er­at­ing clean energy or organic gar­den­ing, or even the sum total of the indi­vid­ual small busi­nesses we start and incu­bate, the actual appli­ca­tion, phi­los­o­phy, land and air­space use, tech­nol­ogy and eco­nom­ics behind it, are most cer­tainly not.

But the sim­plic­ity of the design and its ease of both under­stand­ing it, and explain­ing it, means that Work Fair is a model that could be applied any­where. And for peo­ple with far more resources and in much bet­ter shape.

And who own pri­vate prop­erty. With money in the bank.

My ideal pilot, as I describe below, is a low rise brick unit fed­eral HUD pub­lic hous­ing hell­hole (as all of them are), ten sto­ries high, built in what appears to be the mid to late sev­en­ties. Its con­crete and brick con­struc­tion would make what appears to be an easy retro­fit with min­i­mal haz­ardous waste removal and wiring prob­lems. Accord­ing to some reports, 85% of New York real estate will still be stand­ing by 2030 (despite the intense lob­by­ing by pow­er­ful devel­op­ers), as will the major­ity of America’s cur­rent hous­ing stock.

Retro­fitting rather than rebuild­ing is the future of green­ing our hous­ing, and thus this would make a good model.

The roof is flat.

The build­ing takes up one small city block (Stan­ton) just south of Hous­ton, between the Bow­ery and Christie Streets, a major thor­ough­fare divid­ing Man­hat­tan offi­cially into “uptown” and “down­town”. It is about four blocks east of Broad­way. Bow­ery is the offi­cial divid­ing line between “East” and “West” sides of New York. For a long time, this area was lit­er­ally, the wrong side of the tracks. When I first moved into my apart­ment, right across the street in 2001, junkies still haunted the area on a reg­u­lar basis. Drunks from the Bow­ery Mis­sion, right around the cor­ner, still sit on my stoop most days of the week.

The loca­tion is also served by an off-street park­ing lot that would eas­ily accom­mo­date the accom­pa­ny­ing taxi fleet, described below.

It is also served by an on site park which would be uti­lized for addi­tional hydro research and organic grow­ing farm. This area is cur­rently almost com­pletely unlandscaped.

The Area

The Bow­ery is an area of New York long known for its immi­grant his­tory, of peo­ple who worked hard, and over­came unbe­liev­able odds. It is also, won­der­fully, where Tesla lived and worked. Right as he was being ripped off by Edison.

Tesla also had a very inter­est­ing dis­abil­ity, usu­ally caused by a head injury today known as TBI, or trau­matic brain injury, a con­di­tion many of our troops share (in fact it’s a con­di­tion now known as the “sig­na­ture wound of the wars we are fight­ing) but plenty of civil­ians have the con­di­tion too. Both Natasha Richard­son and Princess Di, both died of TBI related injuries.

In Tesla’s case, like many of us with dis­abil­i­ties, despite the stigma and the humil­i­a­tion, if not down­right degra­da­tion and con­de­s­cen­tion most of us face on a daily basis, actu­ally also often gives us gifts the “able bod­ied” do not have, and in his case, as in mine appar­ently which may have led to so many of his inven­tions and even gave peo­ple with such head injuries SUPERIOR gifts that the able bod­ied don’t have, can’t com­pete with and never will.

Which is just one of the MANY rea­sons as they say in the PWD com­mu­nity, DON’T look at the DISABILITY. LOOK AT THE ABILITY. You know we all look funny to some­body some time. Per­fect exam­ple. Baby pic­tures. Burned mine long ago. And if the excuse is, well ‘you look dif­fer­ent,’ you know that won’t fly. It’s the same old recy­cled dis­crim­i­na­tory crap they used against peo­ple of color (and still do) and women (ditto).

Am I get­ting through?

The hous­ing project is also directly adja­cent to one of America’s first ‘set­tle­ment houses’ an early attempt to help poor immi­grants out of poverty through edu­ca­tion, faith, and fam­ily. Set­tle­ment houses were invented not in Chicago, as many Amer­i­cans believe, but in Eng­land, by Dame Hen­ri­etta Bar­nett, who also planned Hamp­stead Gar­den Sub­urb in Lon­don, and founded the gram­mar school where I took and passed my eleven plusses (a now ‘old fash­ioned’ but highly com­pet­i­tive British entrance exam as a seed­ing device for col­lege prep). It’s con­sid­ered the best gram­mar school in Lon­don, if not the UK and sends more of its stu­dents to Uni­ver­sity than Eton. Canary Wharf, in London’s East End, was where she and her hus­band started Toyn­bee Hall, the first Set­tle­ment House upon which the Amer­i­can move­ment was based.

This area of New York is one of the ‘hip­per’ places in the city at the moment, and very high pro­file – a major plus for all cor­po­rate part­ners who par­tic­i­pate. Arlene’s Gro­cery is a major music draw every week­end. It is hard to get soc­cer green any more on the Christie Street fields, built dur­ing the New Deal, just across the street.

Whole Foods national show­case store is just around the block as is a brand new Chi­na­town YMCA.

The New Museum just opened half a block away.

Chic restau­rants where Top Chefs pay the rent are just two. The Young Design­ers Mar­ket, not to men­tion the many tres chique bou­tiques, of the area just to the West of us are still man­ag­ing the eco­nomic storm, and they ARE the ris­ing tal­ent of this gen­er­a­tion, so they must be doing some­thing right.

You think they wouldn’t rise to a chal­lenge like this? Not to men­tion we have access to other local tal­ent, includ­ing the artists at the Lower East Side Ecol­ogy Cen­ter, and all are all acces­si­ble to make this project a suc­cess. And all will believe in it. It’s impos­si­ble not to. It’s a model for our future, all of us, as I hope you come to understand.

Not THE model, a model. We’re not that arro­gant. And designed to inter­ject a much needed voice, if not work­ing pilot into the debate.

The loca­tion will also enable us to par­tic­i­pate in addi­tional busi­ness incen­tives for lower Manhattan.

The site is also ide­ally located from a BCP/FEMA per­spec­tive. It is located over core tele­phone, util­ity and 2^nd Avenue sub­way lines which is impor­tant as dis­cus­sions about feed­ing elec­tric­ity into the grid begin to be seri­ously dis­cussed. Given the immense poten­tial of this site, and its strate­gic impor­tance to the trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture of the city, it has to be developed.

We will encour­age the devel­op­ment of web appli­ca­tions onsite, and pro­vide train­ing for res­i­dents in com­puter pro­gram­ming through online train­ing courses as green busi­ness devel­op­ment. No mat­ter what they end up doing, com­puter lit­er­acy is a must, and most of the poor, even the able bod­ied, (mostly non GED hold­ing minori­ties who often barely even know how to check email, not because they’re stu­pid, but because the hor­rific pub­lic school sys­tem still relies on books from say half a cen­tury ago, and uses class­rooms with bro­ken win­dow panes, no heat, no air con­di­tion­ing, and mildew on the walls and ceil­ings from leaks through the unre­paired infra­struc­ture when it rains.)

But hey, Bloomberg decided that build­ing a pri­vate base­ball sta­dium for one of the rich­est, pri­vately owned sports teams in HISTORY with tax­payer dol­lars (that no-one can afford to attend any­more) was MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than invest­ing in poor or mid­dle class kids’ edu­ca­tion instead. GREAT BUSINESS AND LEADERSHIP NOT TO MENTION MANAGEMENT SKILLS MIKE. THUMBS UP! YOU SUCK.

I’ve met peo­ple (the major­ity I’m sad to say, and all of them adults) in New York’s wel­fare pro­grams who are not even actu­ally lit­er­ate. Much less web lit­er­ate. How did that escape your atten­tion Mr. Mayor? Or is that you just don’t give a fuck, and really don’t care.

You don’t have to answer. We already know. You elit­ist, snotty bas­tard. Who, just like Obama, thinks noth­ing of say humil­i­at­ing a PWD, in this case a reporter in a wheel­chair, who dropped his recorder, and the Mayor in his oh so sen­si­tive way, gave the guy a pub­lic tongue lash­ing in front of an audi­ence of appalled city reporters, with­out even both­er­ing to apol­o­gize, because his majesty didn’t like being inter­rupted by a worth­less piece of garbage gimp. And that’s not the only crime that man has com­mit­ted. He should be behind bars, not in office for a third term as Mayor, despite the craven response of a City Coun­cil too chicken to stand up to him, and back the VOTERS of New York, who voted unques­tion­ably on the sub­ject that no Mayor was to hold more than TWO TERMS IN OFFICE. Espe­cially one who’s screwed up so badly. I mean really, do you call “good man­age­ment skills” cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion where it costs tax­pay­ers about twice as much to keep peo­ple in poverty, shelved in shel­ters, than it costs me for my yearly rent on a very mod­est walk up stu­dio apart­ment, in the cheap­est area of Man­hat­tan. Excel­lent fis­cal man­age­ment there.

Don’t you think so? I mean that sounds like an EXCELLENT way to WASTE tax­payer money, but apart from that I can’t think of a sin­gle pos­i­tive thing that such poli­cies accom­plish. Can you? Please, tell me. I’m ALL EARS.

And what was it again, Mr. Sum­mers, about women’s bio­log­i­cal infe­ri­or­ity when it comes to things like eco­nom­ics? Because you’re not doing a hell of a job either.

Well the real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion, here in the Big Apple, is that that shows what an awful Mayor we have, and now are stuck with for ANOTHER FOUR MORE YEARS.

Oh goody.

Who doesn’t have a clue about eco­nom­ics, much less edu­ca­tion, poverty, dis­abil­ity, social equal­ity, or treat­ing any­one but his rich cor­po­rate cronies on Wall Street (oth­er­wise known as crooks who should be behind bars) as nat­u­rally infe­rior bugs to be squashed under that mas­sive ego of his.

Just like Obama in fact.

And that is an absolute dis­as­ter for this city. Because the health and wealth of the city, like any com­mu­nity, no mat­ter how big or how small, DEPENDS on well edu­cated work­ers, no mat­ter in what job they work, who have those skills. And those are the folks that need your help. Not your snooty banker friends.

The Res­i­dents

The res­i­dents of the com­plex are both the work­ing and non-working poor. These are the peo­ple who drowned in New Orleans. They never made it out.

The site has a kind of sad, deserted feel­ing to it. It’s clear that they all do the best they can with what they’ve got. It’s typ­i­cal of most pub­lic hous­ing. Run down, badly main­tained. Secu­rity cam­eras at the entrance. The place smells like roach dis­in­fec­tant. The build­ing has a his­tory of vio­la­tions, includ­ing bro­ken elevators.

Some­times they hold small par­ties and socials in the com­mon room that faces Bow­ery. It’s clearly a fam­ily ori­ented building.

When I asked the main­te­nance guy at the door, that first day, when I intro­duced myself to build­ing man­age­ment, what kind of city res­i­dence this was, he said sadly, “Oh, not every­one here is on wel­fare. It’s a lot of peo­ple with disabilities.”

There’s always a hol­low tone in people’s voices (those that do have a con­science but don’t know how to fix such injus­tices) when they say those words, at least in the social ser­vices com­mu­nity or those who work for them, from peo­ple who care but don’t know how to help or change the sys­tem. Although trag­i­cally those peo­ple are a rar­ity (most are sadists who break the law with impunity, and tor­ture the peo­ple they are sup­posed to serve).

What hav­ing a dis­abil­ity, of what­ever kind, usu­ally means you get called DISABLED (there’s a dif­fer­ence), means peo­ple think that you are auto­mat­i­cally use­less, a bur­den to soci­ety, and per­fectly worth­while in throw­ing away. Who cares about walk­ing garbage and door­mats, right? And who are so stu­pid and for whom there is no solu­tion for, that they are basi­cally a drain on soci­ety, who has no mercy (we are a hor­rif­i­cally bar­baric coun­try) and for whom there is, sup­pos­edly, no hope. And cer­tainly not worth “wast­ing” resources on. I mean you don’t “waste” money on garbage, right? You throw that trash away, or bet­ter, lock them up in clos­ets. Who cares how they live (in hor­rific con­di­tions). Who cares if they can’t get proper med­ical care. Or get enough to eat. They don’t count. We can just throw them away, and nobody will ever even notice.

Think I’m exag­ger­at­ing? Think again. That’s how the gov­ern­ment treats gimps. Not only do we have less con­trac­tual value (as in slav­ery) but we don’t even have affir­ma­tive action. And the feds, no mat­ter what they say, have still only hired 1% of their work­force with PWDs, who are employed on aver­age TWO GRADES BELOW their able bod­ied peers, at grade 8. Think that’s dis­crim­i­na­tion in action? You betcha. But appar­ently the only kind of dis­crim­i­na­tion that counts is when elit­ist, black male Har­vard pro­fes­sors who hap­pen to be per­sonal friends with the Pres­i­dent, get into lit­tle tiffs with the cops. Team Obama has no prob­lem beat­ing up gimps. Espe­cially if they are women. Just like Bloomberg.

The Build­ing Manager

Cyn­thia and I hit it off the first time we started talk­ing. She’s about my age. She’s very smart. She likes her job, I can tell, and is pro­tec­tive of the peo­ple she works for.

There are, and will be trust issues. There are bar­ri­ers that come with class and race and socioe­co­nomic issues that are always present in the projects.

I know. I was home­less once. As a child. Cyn­thia and I have begun the dif­fi­cult work required as ambas­sadors across gulfs that are not always obvi­ous to other peo­ple who I will bring in.

She is tough, prin­ci­pled, and could not be a bet­ter can­di­date for the job.

The Great Green Home Make Over Machine

Every­body gets the idea.

And loves it.

The site would be com­pletely greened.

Start­ing of course with the com­plete redo of the build­ing, includ­ing it’s weath­er­iza­tion. And since we’re on the topic of that, here a few tips for YOU to use asap, as well as a few prod­ucts you might use.

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to ovens.….

to refrig­er­a­tors that are as energy effi­cient and cheap and green as we can find (and trust me, all of the above are going to con­stantly change in a race to the bottom…of both price and car­bon free…so read­ers, if you have a tip, pass it on.…we want to cre­ate good old com­pe­ti­tion and cap­i­tal­ism, right?) We wouldn’t want any­one accus­ing any “greeny, lefty, tree­hug­gers (names we’ve NEVER HEARD BEFORE, RIGHT?) of a Com­mie in the Green wood­shed now, would we? Oh, and we do pre­fer to buy local in every loca­tion, although we do SHIP inter­na­tion­ally, so keep that in mind as well.

…but back to home appliances.…

and every­thing in between.

Work Fair starts NOW.

You see what I mean about cre­at­ing com­mu­nity, and affect­ing every­one? We need to imple­ment the pro­gram I have in mind, which will also help you long term, even if you are Joe Six­pack, or Plumber, or even Sarah Palin, whether she real­izes it or not, but do me a favor, and you for that mat­ter, and help me achieve my vision, while sav­ing your­self some bucks. What can you pos­si­bly find a down­side in THAT?

The retool­ing and refur­bish­ing of the build­ing in ques­tion will include such things as energy effi­cient light­ing and bulbs.…that trust me save you a bun­dle now.

While teach­ing the res­i­dents (and hope­fully the watch­ers of the pro­gram­ming this project spawns) on how to live their lives green. Who­ever and wher­ever you are and live, and no mat­ter how much you make.

Once we are up and run­ning of course, the main­te­nance and other gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies would be com­pletely removed from gov­ern­ment rent rolls and paid for by rev­enue by onsite com­mer­cial activ­ity. The build­ing would be com­pletely mod­ern­ized and given a full black­wa­ter, solar/alternative energy treat­ment retro­fit to become an energy pos­i­tive build­ing, in what is in direct con­tra­ven­tion to con­ven­tional think­ing that peo­ple in pub­lic hous­ing only “deserve” weath­er­iza­tion help. Which is not only coun­ter­pro­duc­tive but fur­ther dis­em­pow­ers the very peo­ple it is sup­posed to help.

There are many tech­nolo­gies on the mar­ket today, par­tic­u­larly out of Hawaii and Israel that can cre­ate energy pos­i­tive build­ings with­out solar PV, includ­ing rooftop solar ther­mal solu­tions. But there are many oth­ers. And many other ideas about what to do with remod­el­ing pub­lic hous­ing. This is just one of them. But so far, the best one I’ve seen. For a lot of reasons.

But first and fore­most it starts out treat­ing peo­ple like equals. And to me, that’s always been the most impor­tant thing.

I have already begun to engage spon­sors and man­u­fac­tur­ers. GE has just announced its invest­ment in thin film solar (early June 2008) and I have reached out to the com­pany as a major cor­po­rate spon­sor both directly and through EPA.

I will engage local design­ers, crafts­peo­ple, and oth­ers in the Green Building/universal design/accessibility indus­tries to work with me on this project to insure a good mix of busi­ness types (i.e. small, medium and large). There is plenty to do, for lots of folks, and for many years into the future on just the pilot alone. Let alone state or even fed­eral roll­out. But that’s pre­cisely its beauty, its strate­gic and holis­tic impor­tance and why it is the soul of America’s sal­va­tion. How­ever arro­gant that might sound at the moment. Save the crit­i­cisms to the end.

In New York, espe­cially in the ini­tial pilot, par­tic­u­larly because of the loca­tion of the build­ing, I will engage the young design­ers in the area, who will have a per­fect show­room for their talent.

The US Green Build­ing Coun­cil is a per­fect trade group sponsor.

The ven­dors I have already begun to estab­lish con­tacts with through my work on the Green Fair (a yearly fair for green busi­nesses in the City) are direct fits for the site (such as Green Home Depot).

I would like to engage the local small busi­nesses in the area in the project. I am plan­ning some kind of inte­gra­tion with the home makeover chal­lenge. Details are still sketchy. Sug­ges­tions are always wel­come. This is a per­fect project for the Bravo Chan­nel. For many rea­sons, includ­ing a national edu­ca­tional pro­gram that shows peo­ple, even those with money, how to incor­po­rate sim­ple energy sav­ing and green­ing tech­niques into their own lives.

The idea is to make the site a pilot project and give peo­ple ideas about their own neigh­bor­hoods, and lives. And give them a stake in chang­ing them for the bet­ter on the cheap.

And if you don’t think the Bravo Chan­nel is actively look­ing for self pro­mo­tion, take a whirl at play­ing Top Chef, the video game, and one of their most pop­u­lar pro­grams. Work Fair fits right in.

The Green­ing of the Staten Island Ferry

A vital part of the plan is the con­cur­rent green­ing of the Staten Island Ferry. The bulk of the financ­ing will be fed­eral and state, com­ing from var­i­ous incen­tive pro­grams and the DOT, EPA, FEMA, NYSERDA and poten­tially some mil­i­tary fund­ing. DoE may also kick in some funding.

Addi­tional fund­ing may come from pri­vate sources.

The ferry itself presents a won­der­ful chal­lenge, from sev­eral dif­fer­ent fronts. Not only is it one of the most unusual “green build­ings” out there, but the oppor­tu­ni­ties for energy gen­er­a­tion are tremen­dous. Kinetic, solar, wind and other alter­na­tive energy gen­er­at­ing meth­ods will be employed to max­i­mize the energy gen­er­a­tion poten­tial of the ferries.

Work Fair has patentable designs for energy stor­age (bat­ter­ies) that it intends to uti­lize dur­ing this green­ing to facil­i­tate the City, state and fed­eral agen­cies’ res­cue work­ers abil­ity to use the ferry as an emer­gency energy plat­form in the Har­bor, should the lights go out, every­where else.

It is essen­tial to the plan because we intend to ask for a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion from the city to allow the dis­abil­ity taxis, dri­ven by our res­i­dents, to travel to and fro from the City to the Island, recharg­ing as they go (as well as spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion for air­port runs).

The pri­mary pur­pose would be to estab­lish a green sup­ply chain, pharma prod­ucts and local fresh food sup­ply for the region year round. Both through “tra­di­tional soil plant­ing tech­niques and through hydro. And in all sorts of loca­tions nobody is think­ing about.

And pro­vide a green eco­nomic devel­op­ment route for Staten Island that could also be used between all the Har­bor Islands and to the Jer­sey shore. Most of the Fer­ries sit idle any­way now. It could become a com­muter route from Staten Island to say Newark as well. Sec­on­dar­ily, of course, the infra­struc­ture would become a vital emer­gency response infra­struc­ture for the region, and of course a mobile “smart grid” com­po­nent that’s cheap to maintain.

After The Make Over is Over

The core of Work Fair is actu­ally an eco­nomic incu­ba­tor, financed by the cap­i­tal of the solar power and other alter­na­tive energy sources that are gen­er­ated by the site, above and beyond gen­er­at­ing the elec­tric­ity needed to run the build­ing. Plus of course the other rev­enue streams gen­er­ated by the small busi­nesses on site.

The other busi­nesses, all of which are in some way asso­ci­ated with this sus­tain­able core, will hope­fully grow dynam­i­cally, start spon­ta­neously, be formed in part­ner­ship with exist­ing com­pa­nies, or become ideas that morph into some­thing else entirely. One of the endur­ing prob­lems with peo­ple stuck on wel­fare or on dis­abil­ity, is that they often are either not hired due to dis­crim­i­na­tion, lack of train­ing, or they can­not get hired in jobs that fully replace the ben­e­fits they lose (like gov­ern­ment healthcare).

Or in the case of TBI, offered jobs they can’t do. Much less get proper medicare for. If not are mis­di­ag­nosed completely.

The gov­ern­ment red­lines the entire dis­abil­i­ties com­mu­nity in almost every way. There is very lit­tle in the way of effec­tive gov­ern­ment train­ing for the tra­di­tion­ally dis­en­fran­chised, and com­mu­ni­ties that are. All the clean­tech dol­lars are flow­ing to the already rich. Work Fair intends to level the play­ing field. We have to. You can’t leave out the poor. Cur­rent pro­grams are hor­rif­i­cally waste­ful, badly man­aged, often highly ille­gal and delib­er­ately so and run by highly abu­sive staff, who don’t care about their clients and assume they can do what­ever they want, because this is all the power that they’ll ever have in their mis­er­able lit­tle lives, and assume their clients don’t know their rights.

And, as is obvi­ous from cur­rent con­di­tions, the sit­u­a­tion as it stands doesn’t work very well.

FOR ANYONE.

The point of this plan is to help sup­port a nascent and grow­ing green busi­ness com­mu­nity around each site, for starters, for many impor­tant goals down the road. While we would sup­port the fran­chise of some of these busi­nesses to other sites, like the power com­pany to stan­dard­ize train­ing and cre­ate bulk buy­ing dis­counts, we also firmly believe in site spe­cific development.

We do not sup­port cookie cut­ter solu­tions or fran­chises as a gen­eral rule.

Cre­ativ­ity will be encour­aged as will site,customer and com­mu­nity spe­cific devel­op­ment. We will of course include some of the larger com­pa­nies in the U.S. for retro­fits and nego­ti­ate bulk dis­counts from the larger ven­dors we will work with, par­tic­u­larly with some of the cor­po­rate play­ers we intend to include for the retro­fitting (i.e. GM and GE). Like some of these folks.….

While we are crit­i­cal of them, we hope to be a good influ­ence on their cor­po­rate cul­ture and even pro­vide a job entrance cor­ri­dor for some of the res­i­dents of the projects into these com­pa­nies. Hope­fully for the pilot we can get their sup­port as spon­sors for a dis­count or even for free if the pub­lic­ity is good enough. We do sup­port cre­ativ­ity, our com­pe­ti­tion, and above all, GO GREEN!

We do how­ever intend to include smaller com­pa­nies even in the retro­fitting on a local basis, wher­ever that is. And after the retro­fit is over, will cre­ate the job incu­ba­tors on site, which will all be small businesses.

1. Core Busi­ness — Pump It UP! A Green Util­ity Company

Sev­eral dif­fer­ent types of energy cre­ation devices will be installed on-site. (Most are plug and play estab­lished tech­nol­ogy, like solar ther­mal rooftop solu­tions and thin film solar). Oth­ers we have invented, patents pend­ing, includ­ing those hav­ing to do with kinet­ics, noise and other really cut­ting edge stuff that also stores and can con­trol feeds into the grid. We are also open to other ideas and will invite other ven­dors to participate.

A few will look like art exhibits. All will be inter­est­ing and advance the cause of green­ing our planet, the advance­ment of sci­ence, and the use of elec­tric­ity and alter­na­tive energy in com­merce and art.

Our the­o­ret­i­cal price mod­el­ing, based on air­space own­er­ship rights, cell phone rates and reg­u­la­tory pol­icy, show that with real com­pe­ti­tion, green util­i­ties should be able to charge con­sumers no more than $80–90 (per month) for all house­hold usage within five years. That includes gas for the car in pri­vate residences.

All of them.

And it could be less than that.

We’re not wed­ded to our num­bers and we’re open to sug­ges­tions and tweaking.

We have already approached the gurus as con­sul­tants for the project.

There will also be a schol­ar­ship fund set up to endow edu­ca­tion and train­ing in both trade and pro­fes­sional careers, for those who advance the green­ing of the planet. A strong IT edu­ca­tion for all res­i­dents and of all ages, able bod­ied or not, is going to be a manda­tory require­ment, auto­mat­i­cally. But also other nec­es­sary skills to sur­vive in an infor­ma­tion economy.

For­mal and informal.

Online and off.

This has never been done before. We open our arms to part­ners of all kinds and we have no desire to rein­vent the wheel.

Nor do we have to.

The tools are there. It’s just that the peo­ple who tra­di­tion­ally run these pro­grams are under­trained, under­e­d­u­cated, dis­crim­i­na­tory them­selves, or sim­ply do not care.

We intend to find the best pro­grams at the best prices and pass them not only to the folks we directly help from day one in the pilot, but those who sup­port our work by say read­ing our blog, and buy­ing the prod­ucts we rec­om­mend from our website.

Because I guar­an­tee you, we’ll be pass­ing the sav­ings on, rein­vest­ing them in the busi­ness, and sav­ing YOU a whole lot of time and has­sle. Not to men­tion greenbacks.

I think that sounds pretty rea­son­able, don’t you?

But whether you want to admit it or not, and our premise and whole busi­ness plan and model is based on not only that the premise the sys­tem is bro­ken. But is NEVER com­ing back.

How­ever, we can move on. And that we pro­vide a roadmap to do. It may not be the ONLY way to grandma’s house, but it sure as heck beats sit­ting in the mid­dle of the woods, wait­ing for those nasty wolves we know are there, going “Gee, what do we do?” Or worse, leav­ing it up to the polit­i­cal elite. They’re even worse.

We know how to put this together, what the impli­ca­tions will be, and bet­ter yet, this isn’t rocket sci­ence. The tools, not to men­tion other finan­cial incen­tives, like tax breaks, are ALREADY there.

There are no more excuses and we aren’t tak­ing them. Or putting up with any more delays.

You can’t func­tion in this world being com­puter illit­er­ate, and we will give our res­i­dents and employ­ees no excuses, choices, and damn it, it might even be fun (of course it will, I was just jok­ing). Crammed down your throat edu­ca­tion sticks with you about as well as lessons on good nutri­tion when food is being shoved down your throat.

But nei­ther can you func­tion with­out other basic skills, often over­looked. Or access to basic ser­vices and goods. Like the abil­ity to write, express your­self and com­mu­ni­cate. Not to men­tion sci­en­tific knowl­edge, which we intend to give access to in for­mal learn­ing envi­ron­ments, in the lab, through appren­tice­ships on site, and of course actual jobs themselves.

Or even to find the right kind of footwear. That excuse the pun, doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. And cloth­ing we can actu­ally dress our­selves in and wear.

We are well aware of the chal­lenges fac­ing us, but we don’t think it’s going to be that hard. Alot of the pre­con­ceived “dif­fi­culty” is actu­ally dressed up prej­u­dice. Nobody likes to be poor with no oppor­tu­nity, for one thing. And this pro­gram, Work Fair, offers amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity that is even fun. Imag­ine that. No slav­ery, mis­treat­ment or tor­ture involved. How could that pos­si­bly be? Well among other things, I adopted my late uncle’s mantra, you know, The FATHER OF MANAGEMENT, who used to say, among other very famous quotes, “a company’s work­ers are its most valu­able assets.”

How far we’ve fallen. And we don’t intend to make the same stu­pid mis­takes as the rest of cor­po­rate Amer­ica, who chose to ignore that advice.

Unlike tra­di­tional approaches in this coun­try, this pro­gram is not puni­tive, although it does of course expect per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity. In my expe­ri­ence, give peo­ple hope and dreams, treat them equally, reward them for hard work, not to men­tion give them respect and a decent pay­check, and they out­per­form your expec­ta­tions and goals any day. No mat­ter where they went to school, how much money they or their par­ents have in their bank accounts, what color, gen­der, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, or gen­der, and whether or not they are able bod­ied or hap­pen to have disabilities.

Puts me in a dis­tinct minor­ity, but as a rather famous anthro­pol­o­gist once said (Ruth Bene­dict) all it takes to change the world, is a small group of com­mit­ted individuals.

Wanna jump on board? In how­ever way? And make his­tory in the process? Come right on in. The door is open. And we’re not in the busi­ness of turn­ing peo­ple away. Every­one has dig­nity in God’s eyes, what­ever name you put on your higher deity (or diet­ess, although that sounds like Jenny Craig on a ram­page, so I bet­ter stop there.) And most cer­tainly every­one deserves a good edu­ca­tion, a good job that pays the bills, oppor­tu­nity to suc­ceed if you work hard, and of course good health­care. That is what a com­mu­nity and a coun­try are all about. Oth­er­wise it might as well be the Wild Wild West.

This is going to be a fun startup. It will be, as all other busi­nesses on site will be, a pri­vate busi­ness, with an option of going IPO. All orig­i­nal res­i­dents of each pub­lic hous­ing com­plex we oper­ate in will be given shares they will own, wher­ever they go (we antic­i­pate that most peo­ple will stay in pub­lic hous­ing we rehab no more than five years after green­ing). It may not lift every­one out of poverty, but it will give many peo­ple sec­ond chances, or even a first chance that they never had, when we are all re-examining our roles in the fate of the planet.

2. Free­dom Rid­ers — A Green Taxi Service

The com­pany will oper­ate a dis­abil­ity taxi fleet of GM dis­abil­ity plug in taxis. DoE offered some last year and there are many grants now applic­a­ble for more. The park­ing lot on site will accom­mo­date about fifty taxis, but we antic­i­pate oper­at­ing these on a 24 hour basis, with first pref­er­ence going to res­i­dents on site, and as many of the dri­vers as pos­si­ble will be peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. If we have a smaller site to begin with, we will start smaller. Again, we are very flex­i­ble and scal­able up or down, but with the right team and polit­i­cal sup­port, there is no rea­son why this can­not be launched quickly. The money, both pri­vate and gov­ern­ment, is there.

There are at present very few dis­abil­ity taxis in New York, pos­ing trans­porta­tion chal­lenges not only for the City’s res­i­dents, but for its tourists. There are none in the sub­urbs. The vis­i­bil­ity of the vehi­cles in New York as well as sur­round­ing areas will also spark inter­est in other cities around the coun­try, as well as for­eign export to coun­tries where dis­abil­ity rights have been ele­vated to basic human rights for many years, while the US has refused to sign the UN char­ter on dis­abil­ity rights, which includes lan­guage mak­ing manda­tory access to the inter­net a basic human right, claim­ing that the ADA is suf­fi­cient (it’s a poor sub­sti­tute) and where solar is far more advanced (i.e. Spain and even China).

The park­ing lot will also be trans­formed into a ser­vice center/mechanic shop (clean­tech cars are easy to main­tain) and will become a “green” refu­el­ing infra­struc­ture site, open even to the gen­eral pub­lic with plug in cars, fueled directly from the gen­er­a­tor on top of the build­ing, thus gen­er­at­ing even more rev­enue, and of course jobs.

There are sev­eral rea­sons for uti­liza­tion of this ser­vice and why taxis should be included in this program:

• Using plug in elec­tric taxis over pri­vate cars as a form of net meter­ing is a far more effi­cient way of mon­e­tiz­ing, meter­ing, and stan­dard­iz­ing alter­na­tive energy rates, imme­di­ately than any other model cur­rently pro­posed. These rates can be used across a range of indus­tries, from con­sumer elec­tric­ity use to of course transportation.
• GM’s dis­abil­ity taxis are man­u­fac­tured at the Hum­mer plant which is the cen­tral engi­neer­ing plant for all of GM’s heavy vehi­cles (i.e. “bad” GM. A core retool­ing here will speed up the con­ver­sion of all GM and of course dras­ti­cally cut down on gov­ern­ment spend­ing on dirty trans­porta­tion (i.e. mil­i­tary and other gov­ern­ment pur­chases of spe­cialty vehi­cles such as fire trucks and ambu­lances, and of course all mil­i­tary vehi­cles pur­chased from the com­pany). My late uncle, Peter Drucker, the so-called Father of Man­age­ment, was the first con­sul­tant to reor­ga­nize GM in the late 1940’s so I do know a few things about both cars, and GM infrastructure.
• GM is almost com­pletely shut out of the New York taxi mar­ket. This will pro­vide entre into a high pro­file niche mar­ket, that will also pro­vide a won­der­ful global show­case for Amer­i­can prod­ucts to over­seas vis­i­tors and exports (i.e. China and Spain, both with grow­ing solar markets).
• Pro­mote female and dis­abled taxi dri­vers. There are almost no female dri­vers today. Dis­abil­ity cabs are safer to drive as well.
• Use the cabs as a truly green land transport-to-ferry sys­tem in the emer­gency response sys­tem of the City.
• The severe dis­lo­ca­tion of vet­er­ans, and for that mat­ter civil­ians, with dis­abil­i­ties, par­tic­u­larly those with TBI, is a pub­lic pol­icy issue that is so dis­as­trous that it goes almost unad­dressed. We intend to ask for spe­cial exemp­tions for air­port runs to all regional air­ports (Newark, Kennedy, etc. plus the Ferry, for these taxis not only to help build the met­rics we need, but to help build sup­port for more of the cars to brought into the mar­ket). For a Newark spe­cific Work Fair project, many of these taxis could also be housed in such devel­op­ments, also cre­at­ing an alt energy refu­el­ing infra­struc­ture imme­di­ately on a regional basis. Because there is no med­ical sys­tem or social ser­vices infra­struc­ture to sup­port TBI for either the civil­ian or vet­eran pop­u­la­tion, this is a per­fect job for a vet or a civil­ian with TBI, but par­tic­u­larly vet­er­ans who drove the mil­i­tary ver­sions of such vehi­cles dur­ing their com­bat tours. They are famil­iar with the inside of the car, thereby low­er­ing stress, and rife with oppor­tu­ni­ties for the kinds of adap­tive tech­nol­ogy that helps peo­ple with TBI func­tion effec­tively at work. I know. I have TBI. It is my belief that a per­son with TBI and adap­tive tech­nol­ogy, in a GM dis­abil­ity taxi, is in an envi­ron­ment that is ‘safe’ and one that could in fact pro­vide the ulti­mate adap­ta­tion, per the ADA. One of the issues of TBI is mem­ory loss and panic in unfa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tions. What bet­ter job could a return­ing vet hope for than a job where their famil­iar­ity with the equip­ment ame­lio­rates those obsta­cles? It may not be an ideal long term occu­pa­tion, but cer­tainly it’s a decent job, pays the rent, pays the gov­ern­ment money (I know, for­eign con­cept for a PWD, accord­ing to con­ven­tional wis­dom), sup­ports Amer­i­can busi­ness, cre­ates jobs in man­u­fac­tur­ing (another amaz­ing idea) and is a ter­rific “feel good” project.That GM will par­tic­i­pate in it, in a heart­beat is a no brainer. I’m hop­ing even as a cor­po­rate spon­sor for the pilot so I won’t even have to buy the cars for the pilot itself, and cut great dis­count bulk deals for the roll­out is a no brainer.The TBI Cen­ters of Excel­lence at DoD have already also expressed inter­est in this project, and even told me I am far, far ahead of them as AN AGENCY. DoD has also expressed great inter­est in my ideas for green­ing GM because they under great pres­sure to green their own fleet, and are under increas­ing scrutiny, along with the VA, for hor­rific treat­ment of vet­er­ans. The New York State Com­mis­sioner on Dis­abil­ity has said the same thing and is review­ing the pro­posal now. These are also poten­tial fund­ing sources of course. As is the New York State Depart­ment of Labor Commissioner.

If these folks can’t drive my taxis, they can prob­a­bly work the organic gar­den on site. Or in one of the other businesses.

3. Kitty in the City

The world’s first man­aged bios­phere, indoor/outdoor green dog­gie day spa and cat run. What else has New York always needed? It may work in Newark too, although the demo­graph­ics for the New York site are per­fect for this. A cor­ner of the site will be devel­oped for this pur­pose – an eye catch­ing show and tell piece that will attract a lot of atten­tion and I fore­see, given the area’s demo­graph­ics, should be pretty popular.

Dur­ing the week it func­tions as ultra high end Green dog­gie day­care, pet sit­ting and dog walk­ing cen­tral for a hefty pre­mium. Not to men­tion a per­fect site for train­ing pets for spe­cial pur­poses, such as guide dogs or com­pan­ions for PWDS. Or even as valu­able aids in help­ing their own­ers escape the city in an emer­gency. I’ve included the game below to break this up and make you laugh, but it’s time to put our think­ing caps on, not men­tion some creativity.

If Huskies can drag sleds, why can’t big dogs drag wheel­chairs, espe­cially aided with solar backup bat­ter­ies to help? Espe­cially if trained, just like men­tal health pets, or say police dogs, or those used in emer­gen­cies at agen­cies like FEMA, for that pur­pose. Or to help kids with dis­abil­i­ties learn how to com­mu­ni­cate, nav­i­gate, and function.

Those are just hints to get your cre­ative juices flow­ing. And games are very good at stim­u­lat­ing that, not to men­tion, when designed right with healthy psy­chol­ogy and learn­ing experts behind the dri­ving wheel, EXCELLENT teach­ing tools.

Unless of course you believe that Michelle Obama teach­ing the Mup­pets how to do HAZMAT exper­i­ments even passes the laugh test, if not than the idiot exam. But that’s TV and Sesame Street, so not really the same thing at all.

But games, includ­ing the fact that they are inter­ac­tive, and the best ones strate­gic, are a whole other ket­tle of fish. As of course I should know. My dad was one of the lead­ing game strate­gists and inven­tors of his day. You can read about him on one of the tabs next door.

In the mean­time, have some fun with the game below, and get your cre­ative juices think­ing. There is alot of money out there for this, I need good man­agers, and some help in fundrais­ing and grant writ­ing, and how cool, right? Because I have a cou­ple of other ideas and jobs, not to men­tion projects for that site. That will fur­ther both cre­ate jobs and save animals.

Instead of exter­mi­nat­ing how many unwanted pets a year, at the taxpayer’s expense, we give them jobs.

I think that’s pretty cool too, don’t you? Espe­cially after the heart­break­ing tragedy of their destruc­tion too, in the after­math of New Orleans.

Crazy idea? Well, it’s been tried, tested, and it works. Proof is in the pud­ding and on paper. You might also want to check out my mom’s children’s book, called The Post Office Cat, fea­tured here

and avail­able on Alib­ris too (but hope­fully you’ll sup­port me and this project by buy­ing it from this website…just click and go).

Both for its enter­tain­ment value and for backup on this idea and that it works, on the idea of work­ing cats, how­ever crazy it might sound, paid a salary for per­form­ing a valu­able ser­vice, and a book named win­ner of the best children’s book of the year in the U.K., (The Kate Green­away Award) so this is hardly a new or nutty con­cept. And rec­og­nized as a major accom­plish­ment both for uncov­er­ing the story, long for­got­ten about, and the beauty of the art itself.

Plus, you know, I got to do really cool things too. Like I got to meet Wilber­force, the work­ing cat at the door of 10 Down­ing Street, home of the British Prime Min­is­ter. Even the bob­bies (police­men) on site have stand­ing orders to let the Big Guy in, ID be damned, for his reg­u­lar fish and chips, cat style. No ques­tions asked. How cool is that? And how come us bril­liant entre­pre­neuri­al­ist Amer­i­cans, haven’t thought of THAT?

Until now that is. But of course it would be a woman to do it.

Despite the opin­ions of us, by say, oh Larry Sum­mers. But I won’t go into THAT.

In the mean­time here’s the game to stim­u­late YOUR cre­ative juices about what other rev­enue cre­at­ing jobs ani­mals could do, plus of course the jobs that this would also cre­ate for those who would train them and take care of them. Start think­ing emer­gency man­age­ment, police depart­ments, you know, that kind of thing.

But all bets are off. No limit on cre­ativ­ity. I’m open to every­thing, as long as it makes sense, is not nuts, and does in fact make eco­nomic sense. We are after all, set­ting up a BUSINESS. Actu­ally many of them. But ALL OF THEM have to be self suf­fi­cient eco­nom­i­cally. Oth­er­wise, what is the point?

Give it a whirl and drop me a line. I’m always open to new ideas. And look­ing for part­ners to get this project really cook­ing. Since appar­ently the gov­ern­ment doesn’t give a shit.

The neigh­bors will love it and the demo­graph­ics of the area will sup­port it. Dur­ing the week­ends, this pre­mium will spon­sor the true con­ver­sa­tion piece, the City’s first cat run (there’s noth­ing like it).

Own­ers can bring their cats to a free, fully secure cat run so that Sofie can feel the grass under her paws for a lit­tle while.

Lit­er­a­ture and vol­un­teers from the City’s Adopt-a-Pet and ani­mal shel­ters will be encour­aged to attend.

National spon­sors of course will be encour­aged to participate.

And most impor­tantly, local green pet shops will also be encour­aged to sell their prod­ucts at this venue, to cre­ate an initi­mate, unique, neigh­bor­hood social event that pro­motes good ani­mal health and care, and pet ori­ented green busi­ness that is self sus­tain­able and sup­ports its res­i­dents. Two and four legged. And every­one in between.

The name was inspired by a home­less fam­ily of kit­ties who used to live on that corner.

If this seems like a silly idea to those out­side the Big Apple, its not.

Dog walk­ers ALONE, not to men­tion skilled train­ers for say ser­vice dogs in both emer­gency man­age­ment and for PWDs, in New York City, can actu­ally make respectable incomes. Some even make as much as $120K per year. I’d like to see grad­u­ates of my pro­gram earn those salaries.

And many men­tal health­care and spir­i­tual orga­ni­za­tions are increas­ingly par­tic­i­pat­ing in holis­tic ani­mal par­tic­i­pa­tion in ordi­nary life for both health and spir­i­tual reasons.

USDA has funds avail­able for this kind of activ­ity and has expressed inter­est in fund­ing this kind of holis­tic pilot helmed by some­one with this kind of expe­ri­ence, part through their “back­yard wildlife” pro­grams – even under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. HHS should have a buck or two too.

4. Organic Farm/Catering Company/Hydro Pharma Com­pany & Green Sup­ply Chain Energy Companies

There are at least four dif­fer­ent busi­nesses that can be started on site for these pur­poses. Each site, depend­ing on its lay­out will be used to grow organic crops of some kind which res­i­dents can both eat and sell (in the New York pilot to Whole Foods, right around the block).

Even in sit­u­a­tions where res­i­dents can­not sell pro­duce, which was not my first inten­tion in the first place, espe­cially for the organic food grown on site, they can use it to sup­ple­ment their own diets. Which was my first inspi­ra­tion. You can’t sur­vive on a healthy diet on food stamps.

Site spe­cific analy­sis remains to be done, but out­reach to the soil spe­cial­ists in the Staten Island Dis­trict has already been estab­lished (dur­ing the Sum­mer of 2008) and USDA has already expressed inter­est in pro­vid­ing fund­ing for organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion through its Brown­field funds. As an agency they are very sup­port­ive of this project and have been way before Michelle Obama started her White House gar­den. Um, I mean HAZMAT site, with­out even get­ting soil tested first. How stu­pid was that? But it’s one of the rea­sons I’m so absolutely crit­i­cal. Because her staff also kept turn­ing me down. I guess it’s bet­ter to pro­tect an idi­otic hyp­ocrite than to solve the nation’s prob­lems. Right?

WRONG.

In New York, Whole Foods will be involved in the pilot, both for direct sale and for the organic cater­ing com­pany. The Flag­ship store for the entire coun­try is right next door where they even hold cook­ing classes and live prod­uct demos sev­eral days a week. It would be a per­fect fit for the right team. That is the kind of suc­cess story that every­one would be proud of sup­port­ing. And it would be easy to do it. We would give coun­sel­ing, advice, and wish them bon voyage.

Early indi­ca­tions are that hydro­pon­ics may be uti­lized on the roof or even inside, depend­ing on how prof­itable it is and what we grow. The soil sci­en­tists in Staten Island will con­nect us to the spe­cial­ists in that area locally. Prob­a­bly Cor­nell. There is huge poten­tial here locally but also again, I encour­age the New York State audi­ence to start think­ing about how to tie upstate into this, includ­ing the research uni­ver­si­ties and re-invigorate the econ­omy there too. Includ­ing reach­ing out to the Oneida’s. I have good Mojo with the tribes. I am the only film­maker to have ever filmed real Native Amer­i­can reli­gious rit­u­als. Now THAT’S pol­i­tics that’s tricky. In New Jer­sey, where med­ical mar­i­juana is prob­a­bly going to pass soon, this is a no-brainer.

Endo­cannabi­noid research is in its infancy, and is slated to become the next hot and most prof­itable niche mar­ket in pain and anti spasc­ity drugs on the mar­ket. Study after study in Europe demon­strates its effi­cacy and even sev­eral in Canada and the U.S. at the moment, funded by the U.S. gov­ern­ment are look­ing at how it affects numer­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions, includ­ing mul­ti­ple schlero­sis and dys­to­nia, of course along with chronic pain, apart from just those suf­fer­ing from can­cer and AIDS. Par­tic­u­larly with the dis­sec­tion and recom­bi­na­tion of the over 300 chem­i­cals in the mar­i­juana plant that remove the hal­lu­cino­genic prop­er­ties of the drug, but retain its pain reduc­tion and other valu­able properties.

Mari­nol, a fake THC drug, which I take for dys­to­nia, that has devel­oped as an out­growth of my TBI and a for­mer employer’s ille­gal fail­ure to accom­mo­date, is both a poor sub­sti­tute and enor­mously expen­sive (my script cost alone on this drug costs the gov­ern­ment $6,000 per month which is ridicu­lous). But it’s far safer than the antipsy­chotic that my doc­tors orig­i­nally wanted to pre­scribe, and I’m aller­gic to every other treat­ment. I don’t get high, and it works. I’m even get­ting bet­ter, to the amaze­ment of my doc­tors. Mar­i­juana, or recom­bi­na­tions of the chem­i­cals in it, would be even cheaper, and cost the gov­ern­ment far less, despite the President’s dis­dain­ful dis­missal of it, even as a med­ical option.

You will find mul­ti­ple blog arti­cles on this site on the topic based on the sci­en­tific argu­ments. There are also other out of patent med­ica­tions that, with the right over­sight, could be man­u­fac­tured on site at such loca­tions, par­tic­u­larly with the involve­ment of research uni­ver­si­ties. It will dras­ti­cally lower the cost of health­care, even though big pharma will hate us. How­ever even big pharma is dis­cov­er­ing that out of patent drugs are use­ful in treat­ing off label dis­eases now. And how­ever con­tro­ver­sial, see U.S. and FDA funded gov­ern­ment tri­als on treat­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases with both Mari­nol, the fake and very expen­sive ver­sion of mar­i­juana for dys­to­nia and can­nibis for mul­ti­ple schlero­sis.

While this may not be legal fed­er­ally yet, it just missed becom­ing legal in New York City last time it came up for a vote by one vote because they didn’t know where to grow it. I of course do. Israel also has a drug on the mar­ket now, based on the chem­i­cals in the mar­i­juana plant that is THE most effec­tive in stem­ming the swelling of brain tis­sue after injury, the most dam­ag­ing after effect of TBI, which the gov­ern­ment cur­rently has no pro­gram for of any kind, thereby effec­tively being out of com­pli­ance and ripe for a class action law­suit as in Jane Doe et al. vs. the U.S. Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment in being out of com­pli­ance with the 1973 Rehab Act. Which this pro­gram hand­ily solves.

The Bravo con­nec­tion is an obvi­ous fit of course.

We will also make efforts to con­nect with and coor­di­nate efforts with other green food efforts afoot in the cities where we oper­ate, many of which are in their infancy. It is our hope that pub­lic hous­ing rep­re­sents an orga­nized dis­tri­b­u­tion orga­ni­za­tion for locally grown crops, pro­vid­ing both food for res­i­dents and jobs for res­i­dents of all kinds, con­nected to high cash, organic crops. And I’ve just scratched the surface.

5. An On-Site Mechanic/Taxi Main­te­nance Service/Alt Refu­el­ing Site

There is a sign today in the site’s park­ing lot that says that cars may not be ser­viced on-site. In the new econ­omy, this will rep­re­sent at least sev­eral green jobs that will uti­lize the prod­ucts of green auto sup­ply com­pa­nies in main­tain­ing the taxis. The site will also serve as the first of a series of a grow­ing infra­struc­ture of easy alt refu­el­ing sites for any plug in car that needs a fill up.

6. Green ‘Gator — A Green Mobile Apps Company

As every native New Yorker knows, the fairy tale of alli­ga­tors in the sew­ers is an urban myth. Not deduct­ing green tax cred­its, how­ever, will bite small busi­nesses (and large ones) in the @#@.

A soft­ware pro­gram that does that is the kind of thing that we would be look­ing for, and if it doesn’t exist, fund.

Green ‘Gator Con­glom­er­a­tor, how­ever, while it will encour­age cre­ativ­ity, star­tups and coders of every stripe (par­tic­u­larly of the open source vari­ety) will work as more of an aggre­ga­tor, work­ing with estab­lished soft­ware ven­dors, ser­vice providers and hope­fully an intra-governmental agency coali­tion to cre­ate a green mobile appli­ca­tion core that will facil­i­tate green mobile busi­ness applications.

This will include, for exam­ple a green ver­sion of Quick­books (or the applic­a­ble soft­ware) that will allow green busi­ness own­ers to deduct all solar and other green tax cred­its easily.

It will also include infor­ma­tion and vital links to rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment sites.

Tech train­ing and train­ers will be brought in to teach com­puter lit­er­acy to all res­i­dents, which will be one of the require­ments of all res­i­dents.

But since this is a basic skill to have in today’s soci­ety and will be done gen­tly and even in fun ways, it won’t be threat­en­ing. Most of the kids have wran­gled G3 phones already.

7. A Green Dry Cleaner

Green Apple Clean­ers is the City’s first com­pletely green dry clean­ing ser­vice. They are based in New Jer­sey. It is a young busi­ness, the epit­ome of the kind of sus­tain­able small busi­ness that should be encour­aged in a green econ­omy. They have done a great deal to sup­port their com­mu­nity. They would be a per­fect fran­chise for this loca­tion. There is a great demand for their ser­vice in the New York site and the rel­a­tively low skill level of counter per­son­nel would facil­i­tate a great part time or tran­si­tion employ­ment oppor­tu­nity if the right fit was found for a few of the res­i­dents or other local neigh­bors (such as one of the res­i­dents of the his­toric Bow­ery Mis­sion located right down the block). While say fin­ish­ing a degree or train­ing pro­gram to move on to the next level of oppor­tu­nity and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment or aca­d­e­mic achievement.

We encour­age both and/or either.

While this is not the kind of employ­ment I want to encour­age, there is a cer­tain level on which peo­ple who have not worked at all, who have severe lim­i­ta­tions to work­ing, or need a tran­si­tion back into the work­force, need this kind of tran­si­tional, albeit, low skills tran­si­tional oppor­tu­nity. To last for no more than six months. Manda­tory. And then move on to some­thing else.

There appears to be room on site for such an oppor­tu­nity. The young pro­fes­sion­als in the new high rises imme­di­ately adja­cent to the project would be instant clients. The term line out the door is not an unrea­son­able image. In other sites we would look for this kind of oppor­tu­nity for a low skill fran­chise to rent space, if the oppor­tu­nity and infra­struc­ture is there, not to men­tion mar­ket for ser­vice, but again, this is only pro­vided as a tran­si­tional step and not seen as a per­ma­nent job for any­body unless they are so restricted because of dis­abil­ity that they can do noth­ing else.

You see, when you have a dis­abil­ity, every­thing in your life is affected. It’s liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent world, beyond the look­ing glass, in 3-D. Until you’ve expe­ri­enced it, noth­ing can describe it. And hav­ing a dis­abil­ity affects every­thing in your life.

Which is why dig­nity and not dis­crim­i­na­tion is what we need now. And no mat­ter how “lowly” the most bat­tered and dirty entrance to this pro­gram, they have rights. And even if they start in a low end job, like say counter clerk at the dry clean­ers, even then, I would rather have them in the open air in the organic gar­den. Work cre­ates dig­nity, free­dom, and self sufficiency.

I already have estab­lished con­tact with the dry clean­ing com­pany through my work at the Green Fair.

The com­pany is in the mid­dle of attempt­ing an IPO. It would be a very syn­er­gis­tic fit.

8. Com­pli­men­tary Businesses

There are also sev­eral other small busi­nesses that would be started and incu­bated dur­ing this period, in part­ner­ship with exist­ing green com­pa­nies in New York – rang­ing from build­ing and con­struc­tion firms to pr and finance companies.

This oppor­tu­nity presents a unique “Big Brother/Big Sis­ter” oppor­tu­nity for many of these exist­ing firms, who can also par­tic­i­pate in a show­case project of global sig­nif­i­cance and begin recruit­ing trainees for appren­tice­ship pro­grams (such as the Carpenter’s and Builder’s Unions) in a far cheaper, less bureau­cratic sys­tem than cur­rently exists now and insures diver­sity in things like LEED train­ing through voca­tional train­ing, along with the par­tic­i­pa­tion, where appro­pri­ate, with national pro­grams like Ameri­corps and Habi­tat For Human­ity and other groups, such as The Fuller Cen­ter which takes a slightly more inter­est­ing and inter­na­tional per­spec­tive, which is why I am so inter­ested in them (although eli­gi­ble res­i­dents at all rehabbed sites always get first pri­or­ity) that is cur­rently the purview of a still mostly white, male con­struc­tion world.

This project would be designed to be inclu­sive rather than exclu­sive and grow the clean­tech mar­ket in New York and every city we oper­ate in. And hope­fully nation­ally. It would also, I would hope, help the third world it needs to quickly trans­form to car­bon free economies in large, cost effi­cient man­ners. Again, the great­est threats to the envi­ron­ment come from both over con­sump­tion, and the very poor.

These busi­nesses include:

• The solar/greening retro­fit & instal­la­tion company
• A green real estate company
• A green land­scap­ing company
• A green plumbing/solar upgrade company,
• A green adver­tis­ing con­sult­ing com­pany tar­get­ing small
  companies
• A green inte­rior design firm
• A green account­ing firm
• A green legal company
• A green cloth­ing design firm



• A green flower deliv­ery ser­vice (that only deliv­ers flow­ers bought from a local grower). But could also become a provider for say an inter­na­tional distributor.…say like this one?



SAVE 15 % ON ALL FLOWERS & GIFTS !
Enter code YAWOFF15 at the pay­ment page for
imme­di­ate credit.

Expires: Decem­ber 31st, 2009.
Fleurop.com — Flow­ers and Gifts worldwide.

• A bicy­cle repair service
• A green hair salon/wax/nails and beauty parlor



• A green beauty prod­ucts company

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