Work Fair Executive Summary Part III

Big Ticket Pol­icy Issues

The busi­nesses listed herein are just that. Busi­nesses. They are not char­i­ties. How­ever, there are some press­ing pub­lic pol­icy issues that hap­pen to be addressed through the oper­a­tion of said busi­nesses that are par­tic­u­larly timely, given the pas­sage of the revi­sion of the ADA and its gov­ern­ment equiv­a­lent, the 1973 Rehab Act, the Equal Pay Act and the focus on the green energy pro­vi­sions, refur­bish­ing of pub­lic and gov­ern­ment hous­ing and mort­gage bailouts for con­sumers in the Obama Bailout Plan. These are:

1. Net Metering

A taxi sys­tem will pro­vide a far bet­ter “net meter­ing” stan­dard to be used nation­ally of solar/alternative elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion than any pri­vate vehi­cle or for that mat­ter any other method cur­rently pro­posed in the ongo­ing pub­lic pol­icy debate about such issues. For both busi­ness and gov­ern­ment this alter­na­tive pro­vides an instant, struc­tured, mon­e­tized income stream, tax base and con­stant met­ric. The cre­ation of this kind of met­ric will have far rang­ing pub­lic pol­icy impli­ca­tions and can be used to force util­i­ties to stan­dard­ize and lower rates nation­ally. High­way vs. city mileage can be cal­cu­lated in air­port run cal­cu­la­tions and of course, New York Har­bor (through the Ferry and water taxis). We are going to skip on air­plane and heli­copter demos for the moment. We’re still a lit­tle sen­si­tive about planes going into build­ings here in New York.

2. Green Mortgages

Pas­sive income from solar roofs in Amer­ica is about to hit its stride for the retail con­sumer. We would work on a pre­lim­i­nary model in the face of the com­plete absence of one right now.

We might even be able to help a few pri­vate home­own­ers save their homes through rev­enue streams gen­er­ated from the sales of elec­tric­ity from their roofs back to the grid and dras­ti­cally reduced energy costs. It shouldn’t be that dif­fi­cult. A web­site work­sheet will be a great place to start. With mort­gage defaults cur­rently at 840,000 nation­ally, and only on the rise, along with com­mer­cial mort­gages, and con­tin­ued job losses, this kind of reform is des­per­ately needed.

Every bank, finance and non-profit lender (out­side of HUD) I have talked to is sup­port­ive of this idea. They all want to keep their jobs. I have already engaged Fan­nie Mae in such dis­cus­sions as well as an insti­tu­tional investor who is inter­ested in urban renewal and green projects. FHA and the VA also have such plans in place, but all fed­eral agen­cies with green mort­gage plans have remained com­pletely under­uti­lized. Gei­th­ner, Dono­van, Sum­mers and Obama, not to men­tion Con­gress com­pletely for­got about these issues in the Mort­gage relief Act, which is appalling, sim­ply because it will imme­di­ately work to lower car­bon foot­prints nation­ally, cre­ate pas­sive income, cre­ate con­sumer demand, and start to cre­ate a domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing base.

It may also help “detox­ify” some of the assets every­one is play­ing hot potato with these days on Capi­tol Hill and Wall Street. A green home, even with­out a solar roof increases its value by 15%, accord­ing to HUD. That affects not only the home­owner, his/her pur­chases, man­u­fac­tur­ing of asso­ci­ated prod­ucts to green the retro­fit, but increases the value of the illiq­uid assets that are clog­ging the lend­ing sys­tem of the nation’s banks.

It is also a good way to put some guide­lines on TARP that force all funds to be used in green projects that con­vert Amer­i­can infra­struc­ture to clean­tech and car­bon free enter­prises. That’s not the only TARP reform that’s needed, but it’s a start.

3. Cap & Trade

The leg­isla­tive real­ity of the com­ing inter­na­tional effort to limit car­bon emis­sions means that a plan like Work Fair will enable every par­tic­i­pat­ing site (and even pri­vate home­own­ers through online tools) to par­tic­i­pate in the car­bon emis­sions auc­tions that are com­ing online to bring addi­tional rev­enue to cash strapped munic­i­pal­i­ties and ensure max­i­mum vis­i­bil­ity (with min­i­mal admin­is­tra­tive over­head) of where such pro­ceeds go. And democ­ra­tize the process and par­tic­i­pa­tion by the aver­age cit­i­zen that will help off­set the costs of tran­si­tion from a car­bon based econ­omy to a clean­tech one. That will alone com­pletely under­cut Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion to going green, and quickly. The green util­ity com­pa­nies atop each of the pub­lic hous­ing facil­i­ties men­tioned herein and on top of each Ferry, will have green cred­its to sell, bring­ing fur­ther income (in this sce­nario) into the state of New York and New Jer­sey to invest in clean tech. In New York, since New York City must gen­er­ate 80% of its elec­tric­ity in the city itself, the calls for car­bon free energy pro­duc­tion will ramp up expo­nen­tially as res­i­dents real­ize what the real impli­ca­tions of Cap and Trade are. Pay­ing to pol­lute is all very well if it’s not done in your backyard.

This abil­ity for the aver­age Joe to par­tic­i­pate in the car­bon auc­tions, even if its in a small way with PV on their roofs will democ­ra­tize the process, and put fur­ther pres­sure on the worst pol­luters to change their ways and drive the prices down in the auc­tions because there will be a lot of clean energy cred­its to sell. Wall Street won’t like it, because it democ­ra­tizes the process and low­ers the risk of speculation.

I couldn’t care less. They’ve got­ten enough cor­po­rate wel­fare. It’s time to spread the wealth around.

How­ever, it will ease the homeowner’s pock­et­book, lower util­ity costs for home­own­ers and cheapen the cost of tran­si­tion as green tax cred­its will off­set the tran­si­tions needed from home refit­tings to car repur­chases, weath­er­ize and insu­late their homes, and drop the nation’s car­bon foot­print dra­mat­i­cally. Fast.

Not to men­tion their util­ity bill. If not elim­i­nate it entirely. Check out these solar win­dow shades at Pre­mium Solar Shades.

Thus under­min­ing any Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion to green­ing our econ­omy as “too expen­sive.” Plus it will insu­late the nation from mass ter­ror­ist attack on the energy sys­tem, thus evis­cer­at­ing the need to put national energy pol­icy under the NSA. If every home, or hous­ing com­plex is energy self suf­fi­cient, with a duel net­work com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem to boot, then there can be no mass attack on our nation’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion OR energy sys­tem. Com­pletely under­cut­ting The President’s legal argu­ments for expan­sion of FISA and plac­ing it, as well as the nation’s energy man­age­ment, (as it just did with hid­ing the coal dumps) under aegis of the NSA. And it will drive down spec­u­la­tion in the mar­ket because there will be lots of prod­uct to sell.

Trans­parency in gov­ern­ment any­one? Or was that an echo of a cam­paign promise?

4. Green Business

In New York, the loca­tion of the pilot build­ing allows us to qual­ify for the max­i­mum amount of tax cred­its avail­able in New York City for solar installs under new state law, as well as qual­ify for a decade of tax free oper­a­tions in place for all util­ity com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in New York City. And that’s just the begin­ning of the tax incen­tives and rebates we qual­ify for. The City may end up pay­ing us to do busi­ness, PLUS the profit from the busi­nesses we oper­ate. I’m not kidding.

The eco­nomic devel­op­ment zon­ing of the loca­tion is also incred­i­bly good for what we are proposing.

We are in Con­gress­woman Velasquez’ dis­trict – as in Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee in the House. The Green Rev­o­lu­tion will cer­tainly give fund­ing to big busi­ness, but many entre­pre­neurs will get their start under a “Green Energy” Grant that will be at least as effec­tive in grow­ing our new econ­omy. It will also go far in cre­at­ing mod­els that will help con­vince the busi­ness com­mu­nity, long resis­tant to hir­ing peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, that PWDs are not only good employ­ees, but great employers.

While ALL of the new administration’s top advi­sors have vested inter­ests in the clean tech indus­try, it makes no sense, nor is it fair, to give all or even the bulk of the green gov­ern­ment incen­tives in the Bailout Plan to big busi­ness in the clean tech space (includ­ing IT), which is what began to hap­pen towards the end of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion. And shows no sign of slowing.

Nor is it appro­pri­ate for all of the money promised by Obama’s bailout to go grad­u­ates of Ivy Leagues and estab­lished busi­nesses, and white men and cer­tainly not a lot of women or minori­ties. And plans, appar­ently to leave out the dis­abil­i­ties com­mu­nity alto­gether. Abra­ham Lin­coln never went to Har­vard and he made a very good pres­i­dent. Unlike the dot com move­ment, where all the pri­vate ven­ture cap­i­tal went to rich kids from pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties, this time, the Green Move­ment should spread the wealth around. Despite Mr. Obama’s predilec­tion for a Cab­i­net from his alma mater, and a pres­i­den­tial advi­sory board made up of big busi­ness, keep­ing green slated funds in the hands of the rich (and white, male run com­pa­nies) runs fun­da­men­tally counter to the stated goals of his cam­paign. Work Fair’s goals are to edu­cate those pop­u­la­tions long left out of tra­di­tional sci­ence and engi­neer­ing tracks and give such pop­u­la­tions such job train­ing and knowl­edge to not only improve their own lives, but make this coun­try more com­pet­i­tive, both in tra­di­tional school­room set­tings and out­side of them. Work Fair is designed to give kids the addi­tional help OUTSIDE of tra­di­tional school sys­tems, which won’t improve any­time soon, plus the added incen­tive of watch­ing par­ents involved in sci­en­tific businesses.

Plus of course we plan intern projects for high school kids to help them get bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lege, includ­ing schol­ar­ships. With lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties for say sci­en­tific exper­i­men­ta­tion and training.

DoE is par­tic­u­larly guilty of the ten­dency to award con­tracts to white, male com­pa­nies. Their “entre­pre­neur in res­i­dence” pro­gram basi­cally excludes any­one who isn’t rich, from par­tic­i­pat­ing in their pro­grams. That is more than self defeat­ing. To quote Langston Hughes, there are too many raisins in the sun. Work Fair aims at elim­i­nat­ing a lot of those raisins.

5. Green Build­ing Movement

Build­ings pol­lute more than cars, yet this real­ity has some­how remained out­side the main­stream of pub­lic aware­ness and pol­i­cy­mak­ers. Cer­tainly EPA is in the dark about it, rather unbe­liev­ably, based on a dis­cus­sion I had with Lisa Jackson’s direct report the day the agency released its long over­due report that CO₂ is harm­ful to human health about two months ago. Work Fair firmly unites the neces­sity of green­ing both much faster, align­ing poli­cies that do, and shows how well they can work together when these ener­gies are prop­erly focused.

We also rec­om­mend that any tax breaks given to home­own­ers require that all new or refi­nanc­ing home­buy­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in gov­ern­ment mort­gage pro­grams, are required to have green mortgages.

6. Sus­tain­able Liv­ing & Mass Casu­alty Research

We will work on a mov­ing basis with the res­i­dents of the com­plex so that no fam­ily or apart­ment is dis­placed for very long dur­ing the upgrades. We will reach out to orga­ni­za­tions who are used to mobile liv­ing con­di­tions, such as the National Guard, on how to facil­i­tate this tran­si­tion and make it as pain­less as pos­si­ble and even an adven­ture (okay, well maybe one par­ent may dis­agree), par­tic­u­larly for fam­i­lies with kids who might also be in school dur­ing the time the ren­o­va­tion is in progress. As was just announced in the news, although far less com­pre­hen­sive than ours, there is an urgent need for this kind of study. We have already antic­i­pated it and built it already.

Luck­ily, the close prox­im­ity of the Chi­na­town YMCA (right next door) for the New York pilot makes this project con­sid­er­ably eas­ier. We would do the same kind of plan­ning for every site we oper­ate with. I have a good rela­tion­ship with the direc­tor of the health pro­gram in the New York YMCA and can count on her close par­tic­i­pa­tion in this project on sev­eral fronts, includ­ing poten­tial tem­po­rary hous­ing exper­i­ments in their bas­ket­ball gym and other empty spaces. I also intend to uti­lize the Y for nutri­tion edu­ca­tion and other pro­grams. Many of the res­i­dents of the project already work out at the Y already. The many exist­ing children’s and fam­ily pro­grams help make the sus­tain­able lifestyle improve­ments we aim to build upon that much easier.

There are also com­mon rooms within the hous­ing project, that could be used as tem­po­rary liv­ing space for dis­placed fam­i­lies dur­ing apart­ment upgrades and for busi­ness meet­ings dur­ing entre­pre­neur­ial train­ing and activities.

Despite the fact that our polit­i­cal lead­ers are not fac­ing these facts, nor fund­ing pro­grams effec­tively for them, much less rolling out coor­di­nated cam­paigns or urban plan­ning to deal with such things, we are fac­ing a world where nat­ural dis­as­ters and mass casu­al­ties will become more com­mon due to cli­mate change. The research gained here will help our dis­as­ter relief orga­ni­za­tions when respond­ing to future mass casu­al­ties that are bound to occur (such as hur­ri­canes) in a planet who’s cli­mate is rapidly dete­ri­o­rat­ing and in the face of global polit­i­cal lead­er­ship who is still bick­er­ing about which way to pro­ceed. We don’t have that lux­ury or the time any­more. We are at high noon now. With the polar ice­caps fore­casted to dis­ap­pear within six years, we need to get a move on. Kat­rina was, unfor­tu­nately, only the begin­ning. We will work, if pos­si­ble, on cre­at­ing a mobile ‘lifestyle’ if you will. This might include the part­ner­ship of a com­pany like The Con­tainer Store. It might also include the par­tic­i­pa­tion of data stor­age companies.

Depend­ing on where the pri­or­i­ties go, I may also reach out to the gov­ern­ment spon­sored med­ical school in Wash­ing­ton DC where I once did some work. USUHS was the only mil­i­tary med­ical school that gave young doc­tors any orga­nized instruc­tion in mass casu­alty train­ing back in the early 1990s. I helped save it from a mis­guided Con­gres­sional bud­get ax once. I think it might be a good fit here too.

7. GM’s Entre into New York Taxi Market

GM has all but been shut out of the New York taxi mar­ket. This niche mar­ket pres­ence (in the form of green dis­abil­ity taxis) will cre­ate a branded global com­mer­cial for inge­nu­ity in green trans­port solu­tions. The inte­rior of the taxi should also be con­sid­ered a “mobile run­way” for all kinds of adver­tis­ing, includ­ing fash­ion design­ers, par­tic­u­larly those who are already respon­sive to the dis­abil­i­ties com­mu­nity (like Ken­neth Cole). Given our expe­ri­ence with real­ity pro­gram­ming, we have even envi­sioned an episode of Top Chef, cook­ing and serv­ing a com­pletely organic meal, cooked on a solar pow­ered cooker, made from only items picked from the project organic gar­den, from the time it takes to drive in one of our dis­abil­ity taxis from Stan­ton Street to Newark air­port — in rush hour.

Or some­thing like that.

We won’t leave our day jobs.

But GM’s dis­abil­ity taxis are going to be very vis­i­ble in New York – and thus to a global mar­ket abroad. The first two export mar­kets, China and Spain, have strong solar mar­kets too. And wheel­chair bas­ket­ball in China is a grow­ing indus­try. They picked an Amer­i­can coach this year for the Wheel­chair Bas­ket­ball Olympics in China. We’ve been trad­ing emails. I have already got­ten the com­mit­ment of a per­sonal friend of many years who works for the gov­ern­ment run TV broad­cast­ing net­work of Spain, based in New York, to do a story once we get this up and run­ning. Once he heard the idea of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties dri­ving dis­abil­ity taxis, his first reac­tion was “instant global news coverage.”

8. Global Pro­mo­tion of Green Amer­i­can Products

This oppor­tu­nity presents a unique oppor­tu­nity for the pro­mo­tion of Amer­i­can ‘green’ prod­ucts abroad through many avenues.

All par­tic­i­pants will be encour­aged to use IT to record their expe­ri­ences (we plan on using the Helio phone).

Main­stream media will be encour­aged to par­tic­i­pate in the project.

Based on my expe­ri­ence in media, includ­ing many years as a doc­u­men­tary film­maker, this is tai­lor made for com­pelling edu­ca­tional and dra­matic view­ing. I am already plan­ning cross pro­mo­tion at the Tribecca Film Fes­ti­val and will tie every­thing into the Green Fair in lower Manhattan.

I am one of the organizers.

We are prob­a­bly going to make Greenopia from our very first year (Green From­mers). The first event, held in June 2008, was a huge suc­cess. The event is held on the longest day of the year, every sum­mer. I see it becom­ing the World’s Fair of Solar in Bat­tery Park City. Pun intended.

9. The Recharge­able Highway

This is also a crit­i­cal step to lit­er­ally mak­ing the Staten Island Ferry a “recharge­able high­way” for New York green taxis which would plug into the ferry’s solar, wind and other green power sources to recharge on the shut­tle back and forth between the two islands and poten­tially other loca­tions in the Har­bor as well as the Jer­sey shore, and uti­lize the unused fer­ries as com­muter lines where they do not oper­ate (i.e. Newark to New York). From an emer­gency man­age­ment stand­point alone, the time to act is now. They become float­ing power sta­tions in emer­gen­cies and a vital part of the Emer­gency Green Sup­ply Chain.

In emer­gen­cies, those big orange boats, vis­i­ble in all sorts of inclement weather, would cer­tainly be bet­ter ladies of the lamp, solar charged, than Lady Lib­erty, after the waters stopped rising.

From an eco­nomic devel­op­ment stand­point, the Staten Island-New York route has remained under­de­vel­oped as have the other islands in New York Har­bor, as well as the Newark-New York route and would link renew­able energy projects to the nascent efforts already under­way in Delaware. This would allow the Har­bor to become a more devel­oped trans­porta­tion and eco­nomic devel­op­ment oppor­tu­nity. It is a far more ‘green’ energy solu­tion (cou­pled with solar roofs on Staten Island) than any tra­di­tional power line or under­wa­ter cable solu­tion, and of course, far eas­ier infra­struc­ture to repair, upgrade and man­age. It is also a form of the “smart grid” that isn’t a power line. And cre­ates extra energy above and beyond the oper­a­tion of the ferry that will be used to oper­ate the taxis, as well as dis­charged on either end of the runs, into the grids on each end of the ferry runs. This solu­tion is far supe­rior than any other solu­tion because it is self suf­fi­cient. Rely­ing on a fuel source that must be imported is not only more expen­sive, but a dis­as­ter in an emer­gency, where the fer­ries become useless.

We need to do for most of Lower Man­hat­tan and the Har­bor with solar and other renew­able energy what India and Africa did with cell phones. In other words, dump the expen­sive infra­struc­ture and focus on light infra­struc­ture and small business.

Because New York Har­bor is state prop­erty, said con­ver­sions would of course be eli­gi­ble for fed­eral, state and city fund­ing for green tech installs. Hope­fully, some of the peo­ple trained in the Bow­ery project, for exam­ple, could tran­si­tion to a new home in Staten Island or even Newark, and use their new job skills to become for exam­ple, the CPA for a solar con­trac­tor work­ing on a ferry green­ing con­ver­sion project. Or find work as a water taxi dri­ver based on Staten Island or Newark. Or per­haps even start an organic green­house for high value phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal crops.

Every effort will be made to help peo­ple do so. Home based jobs, par­tic­u­larly those that can be com­pleted with assis­tive tech­nol­ogy, have the poten­tial to lift many peo­ple out of poverty. They also of course, cut down on com­mute time, traf­fic jams and elim­i­nate the con­sump­tion of energy. It’s also an exam­ple of what a “smart grid” looks like that is both really smart, cheap to main­tain, and envi­ron­men­tally friendly.

10. Bench­marked Labor Rates

It is widely acknowl­edged that the labor rates in our new econ­omy (and not only Wall Street Exec­u­tives’ pay) are going to have to be recal­cu­lated in light of chang­ing mate­ri­als, infra­struc­tures, and build­ing codes, not to men­tion a sus­tain­able economy.

Thank­fully, New York’s build­ing codes and pro­ce­dures may now be reformed every three years as opposed to every 20. I’ve been keep­ing a list and check­ing it twice.

“Green­ing” will have impacts on labor rates from other indus­tries too, as they come into the mix. It’s inevitable. The trick is to start to pre­pare for it. Nation­wide. Work Fair presents a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to start to cre­ate such a matrix.

11. Local Food Sup­ply and Green Sup­ply Chain

It is absolutely crit­i­cal that these infra­struc­tures are estab­lished nationally.

12. Alter­na­tive Refu­el­ing Infrastructure

Work Fair’s plan cre­ates a cheap and easy way to imple­ment this, within exist­ing infra­struc­ture, in a way that is BCP/FEMA com­pli­ant. The taxi park­ing lot onsite will also func­tion as a “green” mechanic sta­tion and “gas” sta­tion for the pub­lic. Cre­at­ing even more jobs.

13. Cen­tral Dis­patch and Control

The cen­tral dis­patch sys­tem being imple­mented by the City will enable cen­tral track­ing and con­trol as well as increase secu­rity for all employ­ees of the taxi com­pany. Mobile web tech­nol­ogy, as well as state of the art elec­tron­ics, will be deployed with every per­son who is employed by a busi­ness on site and every employee will be given job train­ing in their usage.

This is not com­pli­cated. The Helio phone, the IT part­ner of choice for mobile tech because of its dual net­work reli­a­bil­ity, was prod­uct tested by a seven year old friend not too long ago in about half an hour. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, low income peo­ple are not IT pho­bic, even with lit­tle access to for­mal edu­ca­tion. It all depends on the approach. Deliv­ery peo­ple at Fedex and UPS have used mobile apps for years and both com­pa­nies know all about the ADA, and its accom­pa­ny­ing gov­ern­ment statute, the 1973 Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Act so I don’t think it’s unrea­son­able to assume that the City of New York might take basic refresher classes. But New York is not the only cul­prit. Dis­abil­ity dis­crim­i­na­tion is ram­pant nation­wide, no mat­ter what the idiot Dale thinks. There is also grow­ing evi­dence that low income peo­ple, and even the mid­dle class, in our tank­ing econ­omy, are invest­ing in fancier phones and ditch­ing phys­i­cal broad­band and in the process, sav­ing money on monthly Telco charges over­all. It will save a great deal of fed­eral money to invest in mobile tech­nol­ogy and appli­ca­tions than phys­i­cal broad­band pipes for the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion – both in the short term and in the long run for pur­poses of upkeep and main­te­nance. Even the tele­phone com­pa­nies real­ize this.

The “dan­ger” fac­tor that so many peo­ple cite that keeps women and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in par­tic­u­lar out of taxi jobs (sup­pos­edly) could eas­ily be solved by an employ­ment com­mis­sion that has enough money and staff to pros­e­cute claims in a timely man­ner, and of course, cabs that uti­lize a mobile cam­era and secu­rity systems.

Inte­gra­tion of GPS and the cen­tral dis­patch of the yel­low cab taxi ser­vice will also facil­i­tate core FEMA train­ing and inte­gra­tion in that they will allow the ongo­ing test­ing and cre­ation of com­mer­cially deploy­able, retail BCP services.

I worked at one of the first com­put­er­ized cen­tral dis­patch cab com­pa­nies in the world, in Lon­don, in the late 1980’s. I have at least a work­ing knowl­edge of what is necessary.

14. Dual Networks

Helio is a dual net­work ser­vice based on a Sprint and Ver­i­zon national wire­less net­works, and just bought by Sprint domes­ti­cally from Vir­gin, so there is a pos­si­bil­ity of inter­na­tional expan­sion and cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship, par­tic­u­larly since Richard Bran­son also has a dis­abil­ity (ADHD), and the com­pany has already expressed inter­est in doing so. If one net­work goes down, there is latency. It is the only mobile phone com­pany in the coun­try that I’m aware of with such capacity.

It is a robust device that allows unlim­ited web brows­ing and good video cap­ture. It has been prod­uct tested and is highly sat­is­fac­tory. There are some bugs in the new Ocean soft­ware release, but I intend to work with the ven­dor to work some of these kinks out. I also have expe­ri­ence work­ing with com­bined hardware/software ven­dors such as Avaya, to cre­ate spe­cial­ized product.

Obvi­ously with a recharge­able solar device, you are rarely out of power.

The com­pany will install a cell phone tower on the strate­gic sites for FEMA pur­poses to insure that there will never be out­ages, again DECENTRALIZING both energy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and insur­ing that the national energy sup­ply and com­mu­ni­ca­tions are free from mass attack on a com­mu­nity by com­mu­nity basis. This is pre­cisely the dan­ger of cloud com­put­ing that Google is so eager for the gov­ern­ment to adopt. Hack the net­work and you bring it down. But if there is no cen­tral­ized net­work, you can’t do that. A linked sys­tem of smaller dis­trib­uted net­works is much harder to attack than a data cloud.

15. Inte­gra­tion of Voice & Data Net­works Into Energy Policy

The inte­gra­tion of the voice and data net­works (includ­ing vir­tual net­works) into energy pol­icy is also a huge mat­ter of pub­lic pol­icy debate that this project will attempt to address. We won’t even begin to solve it, but we have to start somewhere.

Free speech online and gov­ern­ment trans­parency are good places to start. The auc­tion­ing of pub­lic air­waves is a not unre­lated issue. Where FCC and air­space energy regs inter­sect is an area that needs healthy pub­lic debate before Google (or any other large cor­po­rate entity) buys up all the rights to any new auc­tion of the spec­trum. The green rev­o­lu­tion rep­re­sents a real chance for the lit­tle guy to reclaim a piece of the Amer­i­can Dream. It should not be sold to the high­est bid­der before the aver­age Joe knows what’s going on, let alone have the abil­ity to par­tic­i­pate. It should cer­tainly not become over­shad­owed by FISA and expan­sion of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege. And putting the NSA in charge of energy and cyber secu­rity, with no way to FOIA the agency or the White House is a recipe for dis­as­ter. No offense to the President.

16. Data Storage/Trademark & Patent Pro­tec­tion & Intel­lec­tual Property

There is also an asso­ci­ated dis­cus­sion about data stor­age (where it done, who does it, and how it is accessed), pri­vacy law and copy­right and trade­mark pro­tec­tion. Who dis­cussed the remap­ping of the Inter­net in 2008? Who autho­rized it? Why was it done? And what is its impact on my phone bill? Not to men­tion my pri­vacy. The impact on gov­ern­ment web­sites has been extra­or­di­nar­ily dis­rup­tive, par­tic­u­larly in commerce.

17. The Next Dirty Industry

IT is rapidly becom­ing the next “dirty” indus­try and the Green Build­ing indus­try is increas­ingly reliant on IT solu­tions, par­tic­u­larly in areas like tem­per­a­ture and energy management/load con­trol. There is a rea­son this site is green. And in case you didn’t check out the home page, bot­tom left, and click on the green plant you find there. It’s still not per­fect, but a start, and the clos­est alter­na­tive I can find so far, not to men­tion the only exam­ple of some­thing sim­il­iar, ANYWHERE in the blo­gos­phere, includ­ing the lefty orga­ni­za­tions, espe­cially the green ones, who are equally sex­ist as the White House. Despite creds on MY part that kick their asses too. You see I’m no stranger to dis­crim­i­na­tion. And despite the fact that these days I’m called “gimp” and the results of said dis­crim­i­na­tion are far worse, trust me, in the end, the ulti­mate result is the same. To which I am no stranger to fight­ing against.

And win­ning BIG vic­to­ries for, excuse the gen­der ques­tion­able pun, the Davids of this world against Goliaths. Consistently.

But, back to the sub­ject of my ISP, and their pro­vi­sion of “green-ish” and for an unfor­tu­nate although very afford­able pre­mium and their under­stand­ing why this is impor­tant, (Work Fair drops the price) why I pro­mote THEIR web­ser­vice on this site as well. See the HOMEPAGE.

There is no adver­tiser on this site that is not, as far as I know, eth­i­cal, pro­vides qual­ity prod­ucts at dis­counted prices (read dirt cheap), but are com­pa­nies that also pay their work­ers well, treat them well, are green, organic, pro­duce organic prod­ucts, and are com­mit­ted to the same cor­po­rate goals and mis­sion of Work Fair. Includ­ing soft­ware ven­dors, like the one adver­tised on the front of this site, that is com­pletely 508 compliant.

And who knows, if I get this project off the ground may be ven­dors or dis­trib­u­tors or even cus­tomers of Work Fair.

That is the def­i­n­i­tion of cre­at­ing a com­mu­nity. A moral minded entre­pre­neur­ial, eth­i­cal, clean­tech (or green) BUSINESS ONE. Crit­ics keep your Karl Mark mut­ter­ings under the bed, along with the stripy ‘jam­mies granny sent last Christ­mas, along with Teddy Bear you hide when tricks come over. PULEEZE. Or fail­ing that, check out a padded room somewhere.

Unlike some peo­ple, we have ethics, morals and prin­ci­ples. Not to men­tion eco­nomic busi­ness sense. And real life eco­nomic shoe-hits-the road, as well as for­mal train­ing in the sub­ject, not to men­tion home school­ing BY THE BEST, entre­pre­neur­ial and For­tune 500 busi­ness experience.

And again, unlike most, stick to those guns, not to just raise money to say start a busi­ness, that also has pol­icy impli­ca­tions to it’s cor­po­rate mis­sion that absolutely need to be addressed. And ain’t. Not to men­tion are remark­ably like some things that sounded like a cam­paign stump of a cer­tain can­di­date for pres­i­dent last year (or was I dream­ing that, because that’s what I’ve always believed, fought and worked for). And still ain’t being addressed (rather the reverse) now that he’s in office.

Or per­haps my actions to dump, as in a con­crete block off a rocket ship headed for orbit, might be com­pared as the direct oppo­site of per­haps, to that same can­di­date, now in office.

For which there is NO EXCUSE.

Because, despite the fancy edu­ca­tional pedi­gree, which means absolutely noth­ing to some one like me (and read around the tabs and you’ll under­stand why), but in short­hand, I’m damned aca­d­e­mic and artis­tic roy­alty. Not to men­tion don’t mean squat to begin with in the first place, and even in Obama’s. Legacy entrances auto­mat­i­cally clue admission’s offi­cers VIP ENTRANCE. So that’s the first advan­tage he had, which is very sig­nif­i­cant. As in FIRST IN LINE. Plus of course would also have queued them that he was BLACK. So the Har­vard thing is about as impres­sive as admis­sion to Podunk U. And if he’s the lying bas­tard then as is now, I’m not sur­prised he won law review. So that doesn’t mean much either. BFD. See from the tabs next door what I had already done at that age any­way. I’m even LESS impressed.

So that can­cels that edu­ca­tional and supe­ri­or­ity crap out. Not to men­tion check my U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice recog­ni­tion of Con­sti­tu­tional Law, with­out even going to law school, much less Har­vard, at an age con­sid­er­ably younger than Obama ever set foot in Cam­bridge. Also on this site.

Beyond that, let’s see. He’s five years older. Okay, boy’s mature later than girls. We all know that. Minor excuse. And no cause for crim­i­nal bat­tery and assault. Which, yes, despite all the flour­ish­ing of that Pres­i­den­tial pen, his goons just did to me, and which the Jus­tice Depart­ment keeps on hang­ing up on me, let alone is refus­ing to investigate.

And the White House legal counsel’s office, includ­ing one of my under­grad­u­ate anti apartheid col­leagues, now Deputy White House coun­sel? Won’t even have HER SECRETARY HAVE HER ANSWERING MACHINE TAKE MY CALLS.

Next.

One of the most tragic things of all, and why I’m men­tion­ing this at all, is that in one of my favorite paint­ings of my self (I have almost no photo pic­tures of me as a child. I grew up in the pages, with my own spe­cial hand painted por­traits of myself, illus­trated by my mom.) In the pages of her glob­ally known and award win­ning children’s books.

In that, yes, I have been touched by the gods/G-d/Goddess/Higher Power/Allah/Mohammed, etc. In other words what­ever you, the reader con­sider the high­est and most blessed, sacred honor bestowed by that or it, or the entity you con­sider your sacred entity. And con­sider it a great honor, and gift.

And in one of my favorite pic­tures, in one of my favorite books (also one of the ear­li­est com­mer­cially pub­lished books on envi­ron­men­tal­ism for chil­dren, called Noah’s Ark, there’s a lit­tle pic­ture that’s going to blow your mind.

And as I used to joke, before the elec­tion, was my mom’s pre­science of me and Obama hav­ing a pol­icy lunch as Noah and fam­ily sell every­thing they own, buy an ark, and sail off to Africa to save two of every ani­mal on the planet before they all went extinct.

You see, my mom is remark­able pre­scient. Along with being both a mis­un­der­stood, but out of this world tal­ented does not come close to describ­ing her tal­ent as just an artist, a pain in the ass, some­one who came close to destroy­ing me because of her dis­abil­ity. But there were no seg­re­gated lunch coun­ters in our house. And alot of the things she pre­dicted in “silly” children’s books, have come true. Right down to our age dif­fer­ence. Sadly, I over­es­ti­mated the man. But here’s the dream.

Every girl has the right to believe in fairy tales though, right? Espe­cially told to her, by her mom? And based on a work alot of peo­ple is mighty sacred? You might have heard of it. Who knows.

It’s called The BIBLE. But the tale of Noah, along with many other sto­ries found in both Old and New Tes­ta­ment, can also be found in reli­gious cul­tures, texts and beliefs in EVERY RELIGION AND CULTURE GLOBALLY.

Google has been a major envi­ron­men­tal pol­luter in the past, build­ing envi­ron­men­tally unfriendly solu­tions in envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive areas to power its server farms out West. As usual, they’ve cov­ered their tracks, and are buy­ing as much green PR as pos­si­ble these days, but they’re not the only cul­prit. And their sup­posed “solu­tion” of cloud com­put­ing was just given a major kick in the keis­ter by the pre­dictable fail­ure of Side­kick. Our plan addresses that too.

We need to make sure that we’re not build­ing another bio­fuel solution.

18. Util­ity, Phone & the Large IT Com­pa­nies are the Com­pe­ti­tion too

One of the hid­den “ene­mies” of the green­ing of the econ­omy comes from not just the util­ity com­pa­nies, but the phone com­pa­nies too. There is a huge inter­sec­tion of clean tech and IT that has yet to be truly tapped, and the award­ing of lucra­tive green gov­ern­ment con­tracts should not just go to one or two giants (run by the usual ros­ter of white male CEOs), par­tic­u­larly the larger phone com­pa­nies (like AT&T, Sprint and Ver­i­zon) who have lousy cus­tomer ser­vice records and even worse prob­lems when it comes to things like col­lu­sion with dubi­ous “national secu­rity” war­rant­less wire­tap­ping and treat­ment of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. I am appalled at Obama’s expan­sion of FISA and under­min­ing of FOIA. He should know better.

It is also the case that, despite Obama’s com­ments about a need for “Google for Gov­ern­ment” which was a com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate plug by at that time a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date (but he’s done equally inap­pro­pri­ate and pos­si­bly ille­gal plugs as an elected offi­cial) of a cor­po­rate entity and IT monop­oly, includ­ing the use of You Tube on the White House web­site and the prod­uct pro­mo­tion of the com­pany and their brand name on the site as well, not to men­tion allow­ing them to col­lect cook­ies for their own pri­vate use, or even col­lect­ing cook­ies at all by the gov­ern­ment, which is trou­ble­some, given both the gen­eral public’s gen­eral tech­no­log­i­cal igno­rance, and the fact that the White House web­site is not com­pli­ant with dis­abil­ity law, no mat­ter what the White House Coun­sel thinks about sus­pend­ing civil rights, not to men­tion Con­sti­tu­tional ones, just because White House per­son­nel are too lazy to find another ven­dor, and Obama loves Google.

Most peo­ple don’t know that their per­sonal infor­ma­tion is being gath­ered by a pri­vate com­pany when they visit a gov­ern­ment web­site for pri­vate cor­po­rate gain. This bor­ders on uneth­i­cal behav­ior (at a min­i­mum) by the White House, if not more seri­ous law break­ing activ­ity. The role of the gov­ern­ment is to pro­tect the peo­ple it rep­re­sents, not to exploit them, no mat­ter how con­ve­nient it is for the White House to use You Tube.

The excuse that “you don’t have to click on the video” or “Google can’t fix the cookie issue” is not a valid one, par­tic­u­larly as pol­icy mak­ers know per­fectly well how tech­no­log­i­cally une­d­u­cated the vast major­ity of the Amer­i­can pub­lic are. And that is the least of the issues involved. If Google can’t fix the cookie prob­lem, the White House can find another ven­dor. I have a whole list. In fact, I started the first You Tube back in 1998.

But boys being boys, they didn’t fund a girl with exactly the same idea, in Wash­ing­ton DC, the first city in the coun­try with broad­band, thanks to Darpanet. TEN YEARS AGO. And home to AOL. Despite gen­er­at­ing overnight, record break­ing crowds to the onsite forum we asso­ci­ated with it, the first inde­pen­dent screen­ing venue in the coun­try, which beat Via­com for mar­ket share in DC and Sun­dance by two years in the uti­liza­tion of dig­i­tal screen­ing. I guess, like Larry Sum­mers, they too thought girls don’t “get” that eco­nomic and sci­en­tific thing either.

19. Cre­ate Proper Stan­dards for EIS Oversight

The abuse and mis­use of EIS data, both out West, but also in urban areas, like here in New York, but is a nation­wide phe­nom­e­non, par­tic­u­larly in lower income areas, both rural and urban (like the Bronx, which is the garbage dump of the New York) must end with a green economy.

Nuclear waste has been stored in Indian reser­va­tions for years, with tribes accept­ing fed­eral pay­offs for nuclear waste dumps and ura­nium min­ing in lieu of real eco­nomic devel­op­ment fund­ing, with tragic results.

Yucca Moun­tain glows in the dark and can­cer rates among Amer­i­can Indi­ans who mined ura­nium is tragic.

Envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice is just as much a part of the Green New Deal as Clean Tech.

There needs to be much bet­ter coor­di­nated over­sight and imple­men­ta­tion of EIS data at Fed­eral agen­cies in the green econ­omy, par­tic­u­larly because of the kinds of devel­op­ment work that is going to be done both on pri­vate and pub­lic land (includ­ing air­space), and those agen­cies that reg­u­late it or delib­er­ately ignore it (from USDA, HUD, BIA, Depart­ment of the Inte­rior and DoE, not to men­tion DoD) should work together bet­ter in the future. Unfor­tu­nately with fund­ing in the bailout for things like nuclear reac­tors and damming the rivers out west, not to men­tion Salazar’s “for­get­ful­ness” in includ­ing air qual­ity in an EIS study before approv­ing a recent drilling project on pub­lic lands for nat­ural gas, an inex­cus­able deci­sion, given that he’s from Col­orado where air qual­ity is a major issue, it appears that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is going to have to be pushed.

In fact the first law­suits have already been filed against the Depart­ment of the Inte­rior, while Obama just announced that the chief cor­po­rate coun­sel from GE, the nation’s sec­ond largest pol­luter, after the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, is going to head up envi­ron­men­tal affairs at Jus­tice. Not a good sign. In New York, the Rezon­ing of the Lower East Side was equally ille­gal, but went unno­ticed, with no legal action, even though it was equally ille­gal for the same rea­sons. It is not just the vast­ness of the West that needs to be protected.

Our cities are on the front lines of cli­mate change, and if EIS data is ignored at the expense of pow­er­ful devel­op­ers and cor­po­rate play­ers with close ties to the gov­ern­ment, we will ulti­mately all be the losers.

Par­tic­u­larly with Cap and Trade as the modus operandi of cli­mate change reg­u­la­tion. Wind farms dam­age vul­ner­a­ble ecosys­tems and dec­i­mate bird pop­u­la­tions. Solar arrays dam­age pris­tine ecosys­tems. Power lines are known to cause health prob­lems, no mat­ter where the elec­tric­ity they carry was generated.

Clean­tech needs to be envi­ron­men­tally friendly, which means that smart grids need to be really smart, not just string­ing up more power lines across the coun­try to meet our grow­ing energy needs, and there are many indi­ca­tions already in the green gold rush that the gov­ern­ment plans to skip the green part. Or doesn’t have the knowl­edge to imple­ment reg­u­la­tions to enforce it. Or is going to ignore them because it is beholden to cor­po­rate inter­ests who don’t care.

There is no excuse, because I do have the answers. Plus the coor­di­nated roadmap to get there. And Con­gres­sional expe­ri­ence that I guar­an­tee you will be bipartisan.

Tax cuts, jobs, cuts in enti­tle­ments, reduc­tion in the national debt, ANNUALLY (even the 2.0 ver­sion, which is even higher) PLUS extra money for the gov­ern­ment? I dou­ble dare you to find a SINGLE Repub­li­can on Capi­tol Hill to oppose this on fis­cal grounds alone.

And it’s what we all voted for, even if Obama doesn’t have the answers, he said he wanted to change things, so he should be open to other voices. So far, all we’ve got­ten is the same damned thing. Which is going to result in the same damned thing we got under the last dis­as­trous administration.

Last time I checked, that was called the def­i­n­i­tion of insan­ity. And last time I checked, THIS admin­is­tra­tion promised change we could believe in. I’m still wait­ing to see it, while being threat­ened, blown off, and treated like an idiot, a gimp, beaten up, or, per Sum­mers, the President’s clos­est eco­nomic advi­sor, because of my gen­der, some­one who doesn’t “get that eco­nomic or sci­en­tific thing.”

Mean­while Sum­mers is busy stock­ing the Pres­i­den­tial advi­sory panel with cor­po­rate inter­ests and his for­mer employ­ers who have absolutely no inter­est in any­thing green, except the kind that you put in your bank account. Much less spread­ing the wealth around. They all want first dibs on those lucra­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts for themselves.

And that includes Mr. Envi­ron­men­tal­ist him­self, Mr. Gore, who hasn’t even greened his own man­sion yet, but is per­fectly lined up to make a for­tune in the great green gold rush through his own hedge fund. Along with Google, Microsoft, DE Shaw, and a whole list of com­pa­nies whose gov­ern­ment con­tract­ing records of abuse and waste are so bad that I can’t believe they’re get­ting any more funds from the gov­ern­ment, while Amer­ica keeps shed­ding jobs at 500K per month, unem­ploy­ment is expected to hit at least 11% for the next TWO YEARS (accord­ing to offi­cial sources which don’t count peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, peo­ple who are partly employed, or are so dis­cour­aged they are not look­ing, so I would say we are eas­ily already at 30%) and mort­gage defaults are now at 840,000 nation­ally. And expected to hit ten mil­lion next year. While Wall Street is mak­ing record profits.

What was that rumor about change we could believe in? I swear I heard a man who won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Novem­ber 2008 say­ing some­thing about that. I just haven’t seen much of it in action. And Biden has the nerve to say “Gee, we under­es­ti­mated the problem.”

I almost slapped the man’s face on my com­puter. It’s easy to be insu­lated from real­ity when you’re rich and have your health­care paid for, for free. Not to men­tion housing.

But instead of admit­ting that they were WRONG, despite all those fancy degrees, and maybe a dif­fer­ent approach is required, I still can’t get a call back from the White House, despite the fact that I started chang­ing state pol­icy at age 19 and national pol­icy, in Con­gress at 23. Even though I am a girl. And don’t have an Ivy League degree. And rec­og­nize, unlike the sex­ist chief eco­nom­ics guru in the White House that it was a WOMAN, Flo­rence Nightin­gale, who invented the key tool of econ­o­mists, sta­tis­tics, while dras­ti­cally improv­ing health­care at army hos­pi­tals in the Crimea. She was also called upon by Pres­i­dent Lin­coln to do the same thing for Union troops dur­ing the Civil War, but many of her pro­pos­als were dis­missed as “too expen­sive”, (sound famil­iar) caus­ing untold casu­alty rates that were totally unnecessary.

Sound famil­iar to those at the VA in light of the recent colonoscopy dis­as­ter? Or per­haps Fort Hood? Or even DoD in the face of sui­cide rates and even worse events over­seas that they have man­aged to cover up and sweep under the rug in that time hon­ored tra­di­tion over there at DoD called FUBAR, stamp it clas­si­fied, and sweep it under the rug.

That Obama cov­ered up and just described the agency as pro­vid­ing “excel­lent care” for our vets, while giv­ing the same perps who exposed if not infected over 20,000 vets to both HIV and Hepati­tis C, a deadly com­bi­na­tion, a $14 mil­lion dol­lar bonus, while hold­ing up dis­abil­ity ben­e­fits for wounded sol­diers. Not cool, dude, to quote the immor­tal Garth.

Not to men­tion his atti­tude towards Med­ic­aid, which to put it politely sucks. I can’t get the proper treat­ment I need, from doc­tors who rou­tinely have never heard of my con­di­tions. And Med­ic­aid won’t cover mas­sage for con­stantly con­tract­ing mus­cles, the main symp­tom of dys­to­nia, an absolute must and relief, because they con­sider it a “lux­ury item.” Like many other things for far more com­mon dis­abil­i­ties than mine, and just as expen­sive to treat. Why do you think there are so many adverts on this site, for com­pa­nies who are actu­ally giv­ing dis­counts on things that PWDs really need, are expen­sive, and hard to find?

You try liv­ing with uncon­trolled mus­cle cramps, 24 hours a day, thanks to the ille­gal actions of a bank that just got bailed out twice in the bil­lions of dol­lars, and I think you’ll change your tune “right quick” as my great grand­mother Ethel used to say.

Of course if I could get a job, this wouldn’t even be an issue. I could pay for health insur­ance and my own damned masseuse.

But I can’t. So I get to suf­fer in agony. While the perps who did this just got two bil­lion dol­lar bailouts for screw­ing the econ­omy, have got­ten no pun­ish­ment to date, we still don’t know how much they really got, and no reg­u­la­tion is in sight.

Isn’t that TERRIFIC pub­lic policy?

And where’s MY BAILOUT?

20. Entre­pre­neur­ial Train­ing and Job Support

The com­pany will work with social ser­vices, con­sul­tants, job train­ing ser­vices and non-profits to pro­vide job train­ing and entre­pre­neur­ial sup­port for the res­i­dents on an ongo­ing basis. Like this com­pany for example.

We antic­i­pate that over time, sev­eral apart­ments will open up. We will use these as a ‘busi­ness’ office to keep a cen­tral hub for such activ­ity within easy reach of res­i­dents, to keep them going, and to keep them moti­vated in their search for a bet­ter life up and out. While giv­ing them access to the best deals there are, just for the basic neces­si­ties of liv­ing on the appallingly small bud­gets they are given by a gov­ern­ment who has no prob­lem with cor­po­rate wel­fare, but for some rea­son has real prob­lems with help­ing the poor.

We think that’s pretty stu­pid pub­lic pol­icy, and intend to reverse just ideas at Work Fair. And intend not only to help our clients MAKE money on their way to bet­ter edu­ca­tion, train­ing and jobs, but also to help them save it. For say, a down pay­ment on a house, when they are ready. Which these days include com­puter and finan­cial lit­er­acy. Oth­er­wise, they wouldn’t find deals like this one, for exam­ple. Which sound pretty darned good to me. Even if you DON’T live in the projects. You see, Work Fair is for EVERYONE and from DAY 1.

That is the ulti­mate goal.

While this plan focuses on the unem­ployed or under­em­ployed, at its heart is a Green New Deal for all Amer­i­cans. The Green New Deal is designed to give every­one a chance. The entire Amer­i­can econ­omy has become displaced.

21. Com­mu­nity Build­ing and Organizing

There is, within the spir­i­tual com­mu­nity, a new aware­ness of the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment called the “Green Sanc­tu­ary Move­ment.” While this plan is of course, com­pletely sec­u­lar in nature and would not espouse a link to any reli­gion, part of the appeal of start­ing with a sus­tain­able com­mu­nity, like a hous­ing project, is the abil­ity to help re-create and strengthen fam­ily and com­mu­nity bonds while help­ing to save the planet. I have already reached out to the UN through my church, the USDA and directly, and they are very inter­ested too. I’m sure the VA, the White House’s office on spir­i­tu­al­ity, HHS, the Depart­ment of Labor, the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, the Depart­ment of Energy and many other agen­cies, non-profits and other enti­ties will join us. We are built to be scal­able, inclu­sive and build community.

Work­flow

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