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H.I.R.E. MN and Van Jones

Last week Jenna Garland helped Eric Utne put together an amazing event at Ted Mann Hall at the University of Minnesota featuring Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy. Today Van Jones has been named by Obama as the Green Jobs Czar.

The event last Thursday March 5 was hosted by the Center for Spirituality and Healing (csh.umn.edu) and featured Van Jones who announced during the speaking engagement last Thursday that he 'may not be doing so many public speaking engagements.'

HIRE MN is THE connect between small organizations and businesses and federal dollars coming into Minneaoplis. They're motto: Be Prepared! Be Heard!

Mission
HIRE Minnesota seeks to secure major commitments for business development and job training for emerging green-collar jobs. The vision is to secure jobs in current and emerging industries that provide livable wages, and to expand vocational curriculums so that communities of color and unemployed persons are educated and trained with skills for the emerging green practices and technology. HIRE Minnesota not only aims to advocate for government investment in these initiatives, but also to organize members of the community to take charge of the effort.

www.hiremn.org

OBAMA'S STRATEGY NOT WORKING

Here's an email appeal from Barack to rally progressives behind his plan. It's not a bad idea to send this out, but all-in-all this is a strategy that is doomed to failure.

Why? Because the movement doesn't want to be told what to do by Barack, that's not what the movement is about.

The movement to get Barack elected needs to be GIVEN BACK TO US BY BARACK so that we may create a CASE FOR REBUILDING AMERICA based on the ability for us to begin to become visible to each other.

That is how his agenda will get pushed through - right now he's stalled at Barack - and if he doesn't give some push, some direction, and some promise of funding the stories about US that need to be made to make his Progressive Agenda get grassroots legs strong enough to overcome Repubican talk radio - then YOU'RE DEAD IN THE WATER BARACK: The Clintonian ghetto of cutting deals with better organized (as in MASS MEDIA, not this 2 million strong internet movement), financed-at-all, right wing media.

GET US SOME JOBS TO TELL THESE STORIES>YOU HVE A MOVEMENT

Just do it.

Voice of San Diego; MinnPost; the Rise of Online Dailies

As paper news media is getting gutted by decreased ad sales and withering budgets, there is a significant rise in media funded by angel donors - and working on ad budgets from the internet.

To be certain these operations are much smaller than their paper counterparts, but a recent NYT article discusses how these sites, such as VoiceofSanDiego.com and the relative behemoth here in Minnesota - MinnPost.com, are breaking stories that print media are following.

The budgets are far smaller and there is no where near the comprehensive coverage found in print media (one more reason to Rebuild the Media - as this Publisher continues to propose to the Obama administration) yet these small operations are showing sustainability.

I feel I should also note the impressive news aggregator, TCDailyPlanet.net, which pulls content from a huge array of local newspapers - much of it non-white in origin.

Creditland continues to look at funding models - and the long tail plan is still in effect. In the meantime? The weak-knee world of traffic advertising will have to do.

Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and Club House Jager - here we come!

SCREENSHOTS NOT PAPER

Need proof of something you purchased online? Need to remember a chat? Need to bookmark a webpage or have an exact image of what you are seeing at a website - or have an exact image of what you are witnessing online at any time?

Welcome to the world of Screenshots. I keep a folder just of screenshots in my generative folder (called Creation___(year). These screenshots, if backed up like any other file, serve as much proof as I need when the time comes to refresh the memory of many a delinquent and unaccountable corporation - don't believe the deal your getting when signing up for a cell phone? Take a screenshot of the page showing the outrageous sales pitch.

When push comes to shove with the company in question - trying to externalize legalities and generally shirk on their accountability to customer service post sale - well then, you send over the damn SCREENSHOT of their very own B.S. ! How cool is that?

I use a PC for surfing and admin, so I just go to the freeware program site www.tucows.com, search "screenshot" for a small program that doesn't use up tons of computer headspace, download the program (mine is Gadwin Printscreen and I like it much).

When installing the pgm, I set up the hotkeys for the screen shot - Alt+Printscreen is my preferred - and a folder in my Creation folder for them to be automatically delivered to - in the automatic numerical sequence that gives you a chronological order.

Having set up screenshot as such - everytime I want proof or see something I want to capture as an image from my screen - BAM - Alt+Printscreen - WHAM - and SLAM > the screenshot is delivered to my folder.

This is one of the easiest, best, most useful documenting tips I have ever seen. And if it appears on lifehacker in the next year I'm suing.

PS> Screenshots are great for chats from sales reps - this is why I prefer to do chats now if possible - it's all on paper. And don't trust the 'print this chat' with sales - the last pdf I got looked like cyrillic.

My sister is getting debt collection calls

One strategy of debt collection agencies is to 'accidentally' call family with the same last name and ask for you.

This is apparently happening with my sister. I don't know who the party looking for money is, but it is not within their rights to call anyone about me about my business if they have my contact information.

So I will need to call them with my contact info. If I had pre-paid legal I'd probably have a lawyer send a cease and desist as I do not know the exact laws that say they should not be calling me.

Likewise - if you register yourself with the national do not call registy it is illegal for unsolicited phone calls to be made to your phone number. If you get telemarketers, just let them know you are on the registry and will report them to the federal government as violators of the law.

That should get a little more than the usual 'I don't have the authority to get you off a list' BS telemarketers usually spew.

WONKS ON FILM: CHANGE.GOV

Holy transparency! The announcements coming through Change.gov - Obama's transition website have been amazing, but none more amazing than the fact I now have a Google homepage that has an RSS feed of every meeting Obama is conducting with special interest groups and a link to notes from those meetings as a basic website component?

No way. It's Bush on it's head.

But then again - it's WONKY AS HELL! I do listen. I want to listen. I want to 'Be part of the conversation." But Tom Daschle in a heart to heart is not as engaging as you'd think... Got to love it though - the pure unvarnished talking heads - the people who are inside the walls - letting you know how it really is making this stuff happen. Even the boring parts.

that IS something great, in it's own way.

(but Obama still needs a hella lot of media outside the beltway - the content from on the ground is better - and he knows that.)