Right Action

Fundraising: Cries From The Flood Waters - Kinship Circle In Thailand For Animals

2011-11-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

Seven hours ago today, I received a final confirmation today that I will joining a team headed for Thailand to perform Disaster Recovery for Animals. There appear to be Tens of Thousands of animals, household pets, clinging to any dry patch they can scrabble onto. When

While the Kinship Circle is financing much of the operation, it would wonderful if we could raise enough money from my own contacts to offset related expenses that Kinship would otherwise have to pay.

I sprung for the flight as a starter!

Now I would like to ask you to lend a hand in whatever you are able and help this Mission succeed.

If you would like to donate, please visit: http://kinshipcircle.org/donation/#online

To clarify the intention of the donations:

1- Fill in the blanks on the donation page

2-Towards the bottom, there is a box titled Donation Focus

3- Insert into Donation Focus "Bryan Grant Thailand Deployment"

That should earmark the funds to offset my own expense for the mission!

Done and done!

Thank you so much for your interest!

Please do share this with your friends so more people will learn about the work that Kinship Circle does at home in the USA and abroad.

Thanks!!

Bryan "Beau" Grant, Director/Founder, SE Pet Rescue Railroad

Social Media posting, Flood Wading, Dog & Kitty Saving Disaster Responder for Kinship Circle

Mobile: +1.404.932.6399

Skype: Malacandra

Post your Pet Rescue Urgents to the SEPRR!

http://facebook.com/wagsmcgruff

http://facebook.com/seprr

http://twitter.com/seprr

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/SEPRR/

“If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

—St. Francis of Assisi

There is a press release below and a PDF Press Rlease for the AP/Media is here:

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE: USA nonprofit @kinshipcircle deploys overseas to save animals in Thailand's historic flood http://j.mp/kinpresskit

Read more about the mission in Thailand!

Animals Struggling As #thaifloods Deluges Bangkok Support Needed. Situation Dire. http://bit.ly/uyx6G9 #petrescue via @kinshipcircle & @seprr

For those who want to have a feel of the scope here are some preliminary numbers that have come in tonight, although not be taken as certain statistically:

1,000 monkeys stranded in one Buddhist temple
Another temple filled up with an estimated 1,000 dogs, when floods first accelerated.
A shelter in our forming coalition of Thai and international animal relief organizations had 400 dogs dropped off in a single “delivery”...on top of dogs, cats and monkeys already housed there.

For Immediate Release
Please share our Thailand field report & photos, using the share button at top of page:http://www.kinshipcircle.org/disasters/thailand_floods/notes1.html

Below (and attached) is our press release. If you are able to distribute this in any way, please do so. Kinship Circle’s Animal Disaster Aid Fund is depleted from Japan earthquake aid, which concluded as recently as September. We need significant support to help Thailand’s poor animals. Thank you for supporting Kinship Circle, which is an all volunteer organization with no paid staff -- likeminded people who hope for a less violent world, and a better home to all who share this planet.

Thank you!

###################

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Photo: Kinship Circle Disaster Animal Response Team, Thailand Flood 2011 / Ione Lexie Cataldo
Cries From The Water -- Kinship Circle In Thailand For AnimalsUSA nonprofit Kinship Circle deploys overseas to save animals in Thailand's historical flood.

Bangkok, Thailand -- It might take Noah's Ark to save them all. Dogs bark from rooftops. Animals are submerged chest deep. The skin rots, if underwater too long. Others paddle toward any surface taller than the water. Clinging to a tiny refuge, their howls and cries punctuate the night.

Kinship Circle Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) works with Thai NGO Save Elephant Foundation and various local groups and volunteers to run an emergency shelter in southern Bangkok. Teams from the U.S. and Canada are in Thailand for several months to also help with field rescue, food-water drops and animal transport.

Thailand floods accelerated shortly after Kinship Circle, a nonprofit that specializes in animal advocacy and disaster rescue, returned from Japan -- where animal relief lingered months beyond a mass earthquake and tsunami, due to deserted towns near Fukushima's damaged nuclear plant.

When the group's executive director, Brenda Shoss, learned about Thailand's worst flood in 75 years, she decided to activate. "We viewed satellite maps with a water mass that stretched from Ayutaya down across Bangkok, a city of millions. As one district pumps out flood waters, another fills. Some say the sewage-filled water won't recede for months. We saw 10 or 15 dogs perched on the same roof, marooned on porches, floating in cages... Monkeys, dogs, or other creatures crowded into Buddhist temples. They all want to live. The generous Thai people, including monks, feed them as best they can. But more help is needed for animal flood victims."

Kinship Circle seeks public support for critically needed supplies and to send disaster-trained volunteers to assist with emergency sheltering and field rescue.

DONATE TO THAILAND ANIMAL FLOOD RELIEF: www.kinshipcircle.org/donation

DROP OFF DONATED SUPPLIES AT BANGKOK EMERGENCY SHELTER: Thai Watana Panich Press
919 Bang Pu Industrial Estate
Soi 11B
Praek-sa rd. Muang District
Samut Prakan

DONATIONS ARE VITAL TO:Send disaster-trained volunteers for emergency
sheltering and field rescue.

Acquire key supplies such as:
    -   URGENT! LARGE & MEDIUM SIZE CAGES
    -   Fencing Materials
    -   Truck, 1-ton dually 6.6 litre 4-wheel drive
    -   Ball Hitch, to pull trailer and boat
    -   Catchpoles: 4 & 5 ft
    -   Slip Leads
    -   Human First Aid/Medic Kit (for boat rescue)
    -   Sturdy Work and/or Bite Gloves
    -   Muzzles, various sizes
    -   ID Collars, snap-on with write-on surface
    -   Veterinary Medicines
    -   etc...

TO VOLUNTEER FOR THAILAND ANIMAL FLOOD RELIEF:INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEERS ONLY*   REGISTER NOW for Kinship Circle Disaster Animal Aid:
    www.kinshipcircle.org/disasters/volunteer
*   Contact Bonnie Morrison, Disaster Management Director: dancnfeet1@hotmail.com

THAILAND RESIDENT VOLUNTEERS ONLY*   Volunteer Information Line: 087-186-3804
*   Paisaran ("Patty") Pholsomsuk: mawin_4@hotmail.com
*   Tim Gorski: timgorski@hotmail.com
###

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:Brenda Shoss, Executive Director, Kinship Circle
314-795-2646 / info@kinshipcircle.org

Patricia Jones
718-651-7187 / pellen325@yahoo.com

Field Notes & Photos About Animal Disaster Rescue In Thailand:http://www.kinshipcircle.org/disasters/thailand_floods/notes1.html

KINSHIP CIRCLE KINSHIP CIRCLE is a nonprofit that promotes animal protection and freedom by rallying voices worldwide to seek legislative, industry and societal reforms for animals. Our primary focus is investigative research and action campaigns to end cruel practices or enforce/enact animal laws. Kinship Circle advocates education as a pathway to change. We produce literature on over 50 topics for use in humane education settings, student projects, presentations, letters, articles, press kits...
KINSHIP CIRCLE DISASTER ANIMAL RESPONSE TEAM is is a specialized faction within Kinship Circle that activates for animal emergency aid. Our response teams reflect a wide range of training and certification in areas such as search and rescue, field first aid, veterinary care, crisis sheltering, fire and water rescue, large animal rescue, technical rescue, wildlife rehab...and more expert skills. Some disasters we've deployed teams to include: Thailand floods; Hurricane Irene; Japan earthquake-tsunami-radiation crisis; Brazil floods-mudslides; Chile earthquake-tsunami; Gulf oil disaster; Haiti earthquake; Iowa floods; Hurricanes Gustav and Ike; Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Outlook 2011 Another dead end for workforce productivity.

2010-12-24T15:36:00.001-05:00

For anyone hoping to use use Outlook on Mac, be warned. Sync does not exist unless you have an account on an Exchange server. Furthermore, they actually went so far as to remove sync functions for calendars that previously worked on mobile devices.

As of the date of this article, Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 for all intents and purposes does not sync to anything but Exchange accounts.

According to one thread, It appears that Microsoft’s own licensing constraints have barred developers from writing apps to connect to Outlook2011 for Mac, we have to wonder what fool is driving the bus over at Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit?

If you would like to read their excuses, Microsoft does provide a verbose and lengthy page full of excuses why they hyped a product, but left out a core functional component that very many users find critical to productivity. At least this time around, Microsoft tried to offer an explanation for their inept and mysterious ways.

Why in the world, when releasing a new Outlook would anybody every want to sync to a mobile device from Outlook without using Exchange? *Sarcasm*

Symbian, IPhone, Android, Windows Mobile (wow? really?), and Blackberry will not sync except in some cases to the contacts database. Tasks, Calendars, and Notes do not sync to any device or SaaS/Cloud Service like Gmail.

iPhone users appear to be out of luck. Michael Cook in Austraila commented, "I would have preferred that Microsoft had placed a large ORANGE sticker on the rather empty box say "Warning: This product will cripple your calendar synchronisation process with your iPhone."

Andriod users can use a kludge to sync contacts. Kludges that relates to Outlook2010 (WindozePC) and Google apps sync are here.

Symbian and even Windows Mobile will not sync to Outlook 2011.

Specifically, according to Microsoft, Calendars, Notes, and Tasks are not synced. No word on whether Categories are synced, but given the other lacking functionality, it is safe to assume they skipped the sync of categories as well.

If you wish to sync a Blackberry, it only allows sync between Contacts and you have to PURCHASE 3rd party software from PocketMac. “It’s here – BlackBerry owners can now synchronize data from Outlook 2011 to almost any model of BlackBerry,” Tim Goggin, VP of Sales & Marketing said.

Don't believe the hype. A related article states, "Be advised that synching capabilities are limited to only contacts because Microsoft has restricted which items software developers can access. Additional syncing capabilities such as calendars, tasks and notes have been promised to arrive soon. How soon? We do not know. Hopefully these details will be disclosed soon."

At least this time, we had the foresight to not install the software before doing a lot of research.

Who in their right mind perpetrates this on the users? Yet, Microsoft has never been known to deliver robust products with streamlined code base that will not bloat your system with each new update, updates which are required practically every other week to ward off bugs that Microsoft shipped as Gold release software.

The sad truth is that most users never know the difference since they do not usually have the savvy to try new and alternative software. And why should they be expected to have this savvy as users? Their job is not being an IT guru. They have other work they were hired to perform, and are usually stuck drumming their fingers on their desk while the Blue Wheel of Death spins around and around just perform basic tasks such as looking up a file on the hard drive. Typical users just accept a sluggish and insecure user environment as the norm and wonder why they can't get more done in a work day.

So as long as Microsoft is able to woo the CIO's of the world, we are all stuck in the mud with slick looking software that simply does not perform very well and costs a bundle to license and manage all those licenses.

Since the US Corporate workplace still turns on Microsoft's substandard productivity software and self-employed people must use mobile devices with sync capabilities to remain productive and responsive to their clients, no wonder we are in a recession.

Husky Ladder Stabilizers – Deadly design flaw!

2010-08-16T16:47:00.003-04:00

PLS RT to your loved ones. DONT BUY HUSKY LADDER STABILIZERS from Home DEPOT! http://ht.ly/2qoPd #deadly

If you have anyone you care about that works on a ladder, warn them about Husky Ladder Stabilizers. One nearly killed my uncle last week. [Home Depot Husky Ladder Stabilizer #479709]

Just over a week ago, my uncle Pat, his friend Eddie, and I were doing some work on my house while they were visiting me here in Atlanta. We went over to the Home Depot at Lindbergh Plaza to purchase all of our supplies and gear. We grabbed a 24’ Wenger Utility Ladder and a Husky
Brand Ladder Stabilizer, both rated for 300lbs.

That Saturday, my uncle was 15’-18’ up on the ladder, working on the house when the Stabilizer failed and broke. If Eddie had not been footing the ladder, Pat would have plunged into a plate glass window. Luckily, Eddie and Pat both spend much of their lives on Ladders since they are journeymen in the IBEW, the electrical workers union. Their years of experience probably saved his life.

If you look at the photos, you can see why this is a potentially deadly product. The unit is made of plastic.While rated to a 300lb weight specification, matching the ladder itself, the plastic split along the 90 degree angle of the sleeves which are designed to fit over the end of the ladder. Other Stabilizers are constructed of metal. They are usually designed to connect to the ladder with a tube that bisects the ladder struts in those holes you see on the side walls of a ladder. I always wondered what purpose was served by those holes, now I know.

In any case, now I know why my uncle was grumbling when I bought the unit. Tt was $15 cheaper, but really, why would Home depot have a product on the sales floor if it was not up to scratch? Well, they do, and you should avoid this one.

We are just lucky my uncle and Eddie were not physically injured. Whether or not one or both may have suffered mental trauma to the extent that they will not be able climb a ladder again, that is another matter. I hope not, since they have to use ladders for their livelihood as electricians!

Upon returning the failed unit to the Home depot the next day, August 8th, the Assistant Manager took pictures and moved to pull the product from the floor. Following up on this issue to determine to what extent Home Depot would respond to this, since all the other stores are selling this same product, I have been trying to get some form of verbal commitment from corporate HD to actively looking into this matter.

Getting Home Depot to take responsibility and pull the units from their stores until a review has been completed has actually been slow going. The Assistant Manager passed the info up the ladder, and that is all he could with it, having already done what he could at the store level.

Home Depot outsources Risk management to a company called Sedgwick CMS. At Sedgwick, I spoke with a Jonathan Brookes who was basically unhelpful. I not even sure what we accomplished on the call other than to iterate what happened. I asked him to suggest to Home Depot that the product be pulled until a proper testing on the unit could be performed, outlining the obvious liability implied by Home Depot if they were to continue to market this unit after knowing of a critical failure resulting from the unit’s design that is life threatening to their customers. He simply said he can’t tell that to Home Depot, since he does not work for Home Depot. I explained that outsourced companies do have communications channels with the company on whose behalf they operate. He said he would tell his boss, and maybe his boss would pass it along, but that is all he could do. He gave me Home Depot’s customer service number so I could tell them personally about the problem. Bear in mind, they should already be aware of it since Sedgwick was calling to assess the liability risks.

The call into Home Depot Customer service fared a little better. (Micaiah Holley (800) 654-0688 x76490 Ref#50054995) Mr. Holley listened to my position that 1000’s of other customers who bought this product are a time bomb ticking away until they go up on a ladder that one last, fatal time. If Home Depot would react quickly and decisively to pull the units off the floor until a through testing were performed, then it would go a long way to shielding Home Depot from subsequent claims. He said he would pass that along.

Meanwhile, I did check in with the Assistant Manager at the store level. The other stores still sell the unit, but his store does not. Tricam, the manufacturer of this Husky product for the Home Depot, contacted me. They claimed, of course, that the unit was thoroughly tested before it was ever sold to the public, and this is the "only" instance he has heard of it failing. Right. I calmly said, the only thing I want here is for the product to be pulled until a 3rd party testing and examination of the unit has been completed and to be updated on the status of the progress during the review process. Otherwise, it would necessary to engage the "Sharks", and yes there is sufficient grounds, and can you imagine how many other units are out there just waiting to fail, assuming they have not already failed?

Welcome to Corporatations where doing the right thing is never straightforward, logical, or even doable owing to all the legal implications of acting decisively to reduce further risk, since by doing so, you may be tacitly admitting your guilt by your action of removing/recalling the product.

Ed Norton's character in Fight Club perfectly sums up this mentality.

Sprint's HTC Evo: Give it a miss. A love hate relationship.

2010-07-26T22:43:00.000-04:00

They tried hard at Sprint, but the phone does NOT sync to Outlook reliably. They showed the very best in customer service, and even gave me a sizable credit to my bill for all the tribulation. I didn't even ask for it. So kudo's to them.

Now.. HTC. DONT buy their stock. I was told the TouchPro2 is so bad Sprint gets returns of them like a boomerang. The HTC Hera took me 15 minutes before it would actually call someone. I got all the way to the bar, before it called the person at the bar I was trying to let know I was on the way! Wow. Useless.

HTC Sync to outlook does not sync Notes or Tasks. REALLY?!!? After the HTC Sync update, the phone will not sync at all with Outlook. It just sits there, looking confused. Many hours and reboots later, I gave up, and tried a trial download of Markspace.com's MissingSync. they do Sync to Outlook Notes, but not Tasks. Wow. Really?!

After about a week of trial and error, I have about 10 error log files & a thread of about 20 emails trying to boil it all down. Want to keep us in a recession? Keep the workforce using broken garbage like this Android platform. To be fair, iPhone also does not sync to all the PIM databases (contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, and their associated categories. Nokia, Blackberry, Windoze Mobile, Sony Ericsson's, and yahoo.com all still do. By the way, this ability has been around since 1997. This is NOT new. What is new are these otherwise smartphones, that ignore the necessity in the workplace of these functions.

If you see a guy with an Android or iPhone, he is using a paper black book to keep his tasks in, probably his notes too!

High Tech Baby!

As for the EVO itself. It has a LOT of power. As opposed to the other Droids I tested, this one truly "Does". So. Why does it fall short of the mark? The battery gets soaked up in two hours unless you are a savvy user who loves constantly playing nursemaid to your phone, killing apps, toggling services, reducing screen brightness. It is a game unto itself keeping the power usage to a minimum. Then there is the fact that there are pre-installed apps that you cant uninstall, and they turn themselves on in the background whenever they feel like. All soaking up CPU cycles, and therefore draining your battery. I had to Root the phone to turn those off.

Contacts are a mess. gmail has it's own database, Exchange users will have another, and if you USB Sync to Outlook, still another. And you cant automatically connect them! It is kike herding cats keeping things synced! I have 1 gmail, 1 exchange, and 5 Google Apps domains. So.. I have at least 3 separate copies of every contact in my database. Instead of a mere 2500 contacts. I now have 7500, which will surely slow things down and chew up even more battery time! Fabulous! There is nothing like waiting about 20-30 seconds to find a frequently called contact. That makes a body feel gooood. mmm-hmm.

Calendars - Pick one calendar. That is all they let you use. I am pretty this was imposed by HTC, not Google, since screen shots of other Androids depict menu items that do not exist on the Evo, which would allow you to add all sorts of Calendars. You can create endless calendars in gmail calendars. You can even sync those to iCal on Mac (If you hack the prefs to fool into thinking you are something like an ipod), but just one in the Android on HTC! Wow. Lucky I know how to jerry rig that one gmail calendar thru the various Google Apps installations I have to use! I have daisy chained my gmail.com calendar thru 5 separate intranets I manage, so I can keep my calendar items all straight. Wow.

BlueTooth implementation on the phone is a joke. The phone's ringing doesn't pipe through your headset, it just rings loud and clear on the phone for everyone in the meeting to enjoy. Heaven forbid you hold both hands around the phone. It will drop your connection. That was a fun discovery. You can ONLY talk on the phone via BT. You cant listen to "new" voicemails on the BT headset. Or music. Or anything else.

"New" Voicemail leaves the old voicemails in the old system.. If you dont call in to the old system,sit there for 15 minutes, and manually deleting them one by one, your inbox will be full. This is a Sprint-Android thing, and they are looking into to it. Meanwhile, I dont get voicemails without cleaning house every few days. Like I need something extra to remember to do!

4G in ATL is a frakking MYTH. Don't believe a word of it. We were at the bar at Ted's on Peachtree near Piedmont hospital. Never able to get a 4G signal. Decatur? Nada. Piedmont Park? Nope. Lenox? 1 bar. Screachingly slow.
At home, I have stand in a yoga posture at my house to use 4g. At least I get a light work out while I surf.

I will miss some of the apps though. "English to Redneck SMS" for example. TimeCatcher is a real cool app. SMS export to email is neat for those stalkers that storm through our lives. Google Sky wows the kids and crumb-snatchers. Alas, apps dont pay the bills, all except TimeCatcher and the Mileage/Expenses app.. these will be sorely missed.

Keeping my handheld synced to Outlook pays the bills. End of story.

I dont like or even respect Outlook, but it is the ONLY affordable software out there that does what it does. I have spent a lot of time looking so I could leave, and there is a story behind each one that forces me to return to slow, blue-wheel of death, 10 minutes to check IMAP email, schlocky Outlook.

So back to the stinky, limited, stale-looking, cant-quite-surf-the-web-if-there-is-a-java-script-and-cant-read-it-anyway-if-it-does-load, apps-store-when-you-run-it-crashes-phone-50%-of-the-time, and stinks at social media (facebook): Blackberry 8330.

Whimper. Whine.

Howell Mill Hell, gridlocked eternity.

2010-05-07T14:39:00.002-04:00

Two years later the dust has settled on the controversial Howell Mill Hell Road improvement projects.

After hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, over one year of construction, repeated news coverage, and a small cottage industry of blogs following the story, here we are two years later. Traffic is as bad or worse than before the city "improved" the intersection at Howell Mill and Chattahoochee.

Why? The plan they invested in was based upon a design from the 1980's, that was later scaled down in the early 1990's, then mothballed. Instead of doing any new research for growth trends, they simply took the plan out of storage, dusted it off, and sent the boys to work tearing up the road.

I write this article because it is high time that we take our district in hand. It is currently choked by traffic, it's value reduced by the congestion, and the poor design of the corridor. Reference the Bank of America ATM machine... or the Einsteins and Wendy's.. all of which force you to access their businesses by crossing up to three lanes of busy traffic at a clogged intersection. They could have had access to the Howell Mill District Shopping Center, and thereby been able to use a traffic light. Reference the entrance to the Starbuck's and Verizon that is so narrow that you have to either stop traffic to make a right, or hit the curb to make the turn. How about the Firestone and Arby's? No light access, even though the new light is right there next to the property.

The City appears incapable of doing anything to remedy the situation even though we have the only SuperWalmart in the City limits and Piedmont Hospital West across the street.

Let's form our own Howell Mill Corridor TAD and Planning Unit to gain the ability to accomplish it's own projects using it's own funds raised from the property taxes. Perhaps we should form our own City? No, I am kidding, but seriously a TAD is very feasible.

As another example of engaging the public then simply burying the results, read the report "Upper Westside LCI Concept Prioritization Exercise" calling for "street car/trolley loop along Northside Drive/Marietta Street/Howell Mill Road and the Surrender of Atlanta Park at the intersection of Howell Mill Road and Marietta Street" as the resident's highest priority. This report was published in June 2005! Five years later, nothing has been done. How about a discussion of at least allowing a private trolley to operate? We do not necessary need the City to pay for all of this! So excuses about budget shortfalls are just shortsighted.

Yes, it does look a bit nicer with new paint, fresh asphalt, a slight change in the lanes, but in no way does this expenditure address the problem. It does amount to yet another example of poor planning and wasteful spending by our city officials.

And they we're made well aware of this before they ever broke ground, even hosting townhall charettes complete with Georgia Tech and Georgia Conservancy planning pundits to give the dialogue some sense of credibility. At the end of the day, none of the results of the research and public input were used to forge a plan that would be sustain the coming growth. We are just lucky, in an ironic sense, that the economy fell on it's face, since the 3000+ zoned units that would use that intersection are now on-hold, pending the much-heralded economic recovery.

For my part, I took the time to develop a proposal, and shopped it around to various people such as Jim Borders at Navarre Properties, City of Atlanta Streets (Nursif Qadir), Jud Ready, Clair Muller, Feliciana Moore, Mayor Franklin, various NPU-D officials, and former Mayoral candidate Mary Norwood. Scott Taylor at Carter, the folks at Selig, and Winter Properties were all given a copy. Ask Selig what happened to their Development Impact Fees they paid to the City of Atlanta when they were approved for the Howell Mill District Project. Practically not one dime was spent to restructure the Howell Mill Corridor to accommodate one the largest developments in Atlanta besides Atlantic Station or the Georgia World Congress Center's expansion, the latter faces into a neighborhood overrun by crime and potentially endangers visitors to our city, since we have done nothing in the past four years to address this obvious problem. I digress, which is an all too easy thing to do in this City. There are just too many easy targets that are hard to ignore.

The concept of improvements included solutions for Howell Mill intersections from Collier to Chattahoochee Industrial. A major component features a traffic circle providing three lanes of continuous flow around the two blocks at the intersection of Howell Mill and Collier over to the Willie's, and giving direct access to Northbound 75 without the need for much of the volume to ever use Howell Mill.

The City officials confused this plan with a plan referred to as "the Howell Mill Bypass". I had not heard of that proposal when i draft the Howell Mill Traffic Circle, but there are only minor similarities.

The only one who was ardently opposed was Mr. Borders. He thought that retail would suffer unless two traffic was available. I wonder what he thinks these days, now that the traffic is parked both ways on the two way road? Now that Smyrna-Vinings residents clog our streets taking the back way home to Cobb County? Now that his company's properties are not suitable for so-called liveable development owing to the smog, noise, congestion, and gridlock that encircles Navarre's holdings at Howell Mill?

If you are interested in actively working on pulling together a Howell Mill TAD composed of residents, commercial property owners, and business owners, then please contact me at 678.389.9903 or bgrant@conviviagroup.com

twitter.com/bryangrant

"Brown Shirts" imagery over-reaching? Think again. We are better than that America. Far better.

2010-03-23T22:37:00.003-04:00

So the news is breaking, along with windows, right now that Democratic officials' offices in five separate locations over four days have been vandalized. Mike Vanderboegh's blog is calling for people across the nation to vandalize property as an act of civil disobedience.

For those of you who thought it was over-reaching to invoke rhetoric of brown shirts and KristallNacht imagery, I have unfortunately been vindicated. The news is now breaking that we had our very own tiny attempt at a KristallNacht. From Alabama, Mike Vanderboegh, has called upon people to break the windows of Dem officials' offices. 5 offices in 4 days have had bricks thrown through the windows. Congressman John Lewis was spat upon and racially heckled this morning as he walked in Washington DC. Sarah Palin has called upon the public to "reload", labeling locations with gunsites where elections should be "targeted". "If Brown can't do it, a Browning can" is on a billboard in Massachusetts. Others have received death threats.

Congressman Bart Stupack (D) labeled baby-killer by Neugebauer (R) during congressional session, today used his misbehavior as a fund-raising tool, after he publically apologized for his inappropriate comment. Hypocrite. If he is so passionate about his comment, then he should "grow a sack" and stand by what he said, instead of offering apology then taking an about face with his speech to supporters! He needs to sit down, take a Ciallis, and shut up.

Apparently MikeVanderboegh has not bothered to look the actual meaning of "Civil Disobedience":
" Refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation, characterized by the use of passive resistance or other nonviolent means." Dictionary-answers.com

Breaking windows happens to be an act of violent vandalism, not Civil Disobedience.

For those of you who did not manage to attend sixth grade, Kristallnacht was so named since it was "the night of broken glass" when Hitler incited German youth to break the windows of Jewish Shop Owners.
Different target. Different group of haters. Fewer windows. A far more impotent leader. Similar feelings. Similar hate. Similar, albeit far more weak, danger. The good news is that vandalism is still enforced by the rule of law as a crime! The good news is Mr.Vanderboegh remains in the fringe. Here is a sampling of his ranting:

"They do not, it is apparent after the past year of town halls and Tea Parties and nose-diving opinion polls, hear you SHOUT. They certainly do not hear the soft "snik-snik" of cleaning rods being used on millions of rifle barrels in this country by people who have decided that their backs are to the wall, politics and the courts no longer are sufficient to the task of defending their liberties, and they must make their own arrangements."

..."So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows.

Break them NOW.

Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats.

But BREAK THEM.

The time has come to take your life, your liberty and that of your children and grandchildren into your own two hands and ACT.

It is, after all, more humane than shooting them in self defense.

And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary." Vanderboeghs's Blog

So fine. The government no longer represents the people. This is news? This is different than when Bush or Clinton were in office? Remember Janet Reno's troops burning Waco, attacking Ruby Ridge, or pushing an MP5 machine gun into four year old Elian Gonzales' face? Name me a president you could trust.. how far back in time do you have to go? Yet, somehow our nation has endured without hateful, corporate funded fascists pointing fingers at their political opponents. We can handle commies and socialists without stooping to shameful behavior that is far less than we are as a nation.

Machiavelli's first rule of statecraft dictates that to rule a population the ruling class must manufacture differences within the population, and polarize the governed based upon these differences. Baby-killers v pro-life. Illegal immigrant v citizen. Rich v. Poor. Working voter v. welfare recipient. Pro-health care v. private health care. Global Warming v. denial of Global Warming. Fascist v. Free. Socialist v. Free. Communist v. Free. If you don;t like socialism, remove all the corporate incentives we give to businesses in the form of tax breaks! Remove all those farm subsidies! Freemarkets are wonderful, until it takes the pork off your own plate.

If all these people are so hell bent on a revolution, what do you propose to replace our system with? If you do not have a better plan, simply attacking what we do have with nothing to relace it with will make matters far worse than they are now.

Are we so weak and disempowered that we will guide crackpot extremists and corporate special interest funding groups guide our agenda with hate?

We are better than that America. Far better.

Brown Shirts infiltrate the Tea Parties? Hiel Freedomworks

2010-03-23T16:31:00.001-04:00

Share on Twitter: RT @bryangrant Brown Shirts infiltrate the Tea Parties? Hiel Freedomworks http://bit.ly/bqmC8p

"The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform," says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. "I'm certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they're there on their own — but they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests." - Rollingstone

While several dangers and shortcomings exist in the current HC Reform bill, the Health Care industry has made their bed and deserves this scourging. For several decades now, they have had every chance to correct their business models.

Most pernicious and the potential fountainhead of truly dangerous change in our nation whose agenda is to extinguish freedoms in the USA, will not herald from the so-called liberal-socialist agenda. This decadence into fascism will emanate from the far right. The Tea Party, which was a great idea to begin with, now serves as a co-opted Public Relations tool to promote division, hatred, fear-mongering, and abusive tactics in their strategy to disrupt the democratic process using people who love Freedom as duped pawns in this game.

Ask yourself this question- if Tea Partiers were trying to achieve an agenda that had merit, goals based on truth, free markets, and ideals of American Freedom, why would they need to use tactics that hearken back to the days when the Bundestag burned in Germany? Why would they need to resort to verbal assault during town meetings, calling people N**** and baby-killers, touting neo-socialist conspiracy theories, and then make your grandma think she is going to be euthanized?

These erstwhile Freedom fighters have been bought and paid for. One of FreedomWorks' main leaders, Richard Stephenson, owns the for-profit company, Cancer Treatment Centers of America. It's not hard to imagine why he is against health Care Reform! Dick Army, another leader of Freedomworks heavily involved with Tea Partiers, is a long time Republican activist, but had to quit his long-time job as a lobbyist with Piper last year. DLA Piper is a global legal and lobbying firm who represents "DLA Piper's clients range from multinational, Global 1,000 and Fortune 500 enterprises to emerging companies developing industry-leading technologies. DLA Piper represents more than 140 of the top 250 Fortune 500 clients and nearly half of the FTSE 350 or their subsidiaries."

Anonymous corporate donations have reinforced a shift in the Tea Party agenda from one that would bring America back to what our Forefathers envisioned to an agenda that will lead us all into a entirely different format of society with very little freedom for the People. Since 1/6 of the economy is related to the Health Care industry (+US$6trillion/yr), it is not hard to imagine why DLA Piper, and other firms like them, would be interested in keeping their clients happy by doing anything they can to prevent true reform.

Dick Army and his ilk had a good run with the Contract for America. Now, his komrades have sold out from their ideal of FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE; opting instead for "SCREW THE PEOPLE IF THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT".

Freedomworks? Ha. More like “Friendly-Corporate-Fascism-R-Us”; more like recruiting this generation's brown shirts and haters. Why do you think the Supreme Court just opened up campaign donations to unions and corporations without any caps on donation levels? Who has more money? You? or IBM? You? or Blackrock? Corporations (top 10 media conglomerates), using groups like Freedomworks as their PR arms, are the ones encouraging people to obstruct democratic discourse at town hall meetings with yelling, anger, pushing, shoving, and other generally violent behavior. They are the ones drowning out the thoughtful quiet voice with a clamor of hatred and fear. They are the ones preventing the Freedom of Expression and the Right to Associate.

If the far right believes they represent the majority of the people, they should do a head count of who is in office. They should revisit those voting results for the past four years. If they were doing a good job, explain, then, how the democrats have the largest congressional margin since 1923? The official Republican party is now a marginal party composed of rich people, religious zealots who abuse the religious labels they claim to support, and an angry, blameful, compassionless mob. :"Working in tandem with their pocketed politicians, the Christian right would rejoice at the FCC's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which gave rise to a slew of unchecked right-wing programs that hawked the myth of a vast "liberal media", even as markets narrowed and became dominated by a handful of corporations." (Source)

At the very least, the Republican Party is out of touch, lost, and dangerously close to losing sight of what America represents. In absence of good conservative leadership on the "red" side of the equation, Republicans and Tea Partiers have left the middle of the electorate to deal with a non-representative liberal agenda, and no way to slow it down. (Now I have to vote Libertarian! Go Bob Barr!! Harry Browne!!)

If nothing else, this entire affair demonstrates that the two party system is broken beyond repair and also demonstrates the People are still easily manipulated. It clearly shows that those Hulu commercials are not terribly far from reality, depicting people with “goo” for brains after consuming way too much television. It’s not without good cause, your television is called an idiot box!

Even with free access to 95% of the world’s news via aggregation tools like news.google.com, the People are still so apathetic that they will rely on broadcast news for the “voice of truth”. If for no other reason than this, our freedoms and the Light these represent are merely a hair's breadth away from being completely extinguished.

Finally, the Light of Freedom will not be blown out by some left-wing socialist agenda, drip-by-drip, law-by-law. American’s can diligently confront those threats as they arise. It only took a tiny minority of people in Germany to lead to the rise of Nazism. Think again if you naively believe it cannot rise here as well. Those Tea Partiers subverted by the Latter Day Brown Shirts (Sturmabteilung) will have their KristallNacht soon enough, and we live in an openly corporate fascist state that will not even bother with the PR "they" currently use to manage the seething masses.

Droid Doesn't. Neither do other "Smartphones The Global Recession, business PIM data, and not-so-SmartPhones.

2010-03-02T15:34:00.001-05:00

Droid Doesn't. Neither do the other "Smartphones"!

The Global Recession, business PIM data, and not-so-SmartPhones.

March 3, 2010- Professor Bryan Grant RSCH1203 Georgia Perimeter College

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"Global Recession, Business PIM data, and not-so-SmartPhones. Droid Doesn't. Neither do the others by @bryangrant http://bit.ly/c9DhLO"

Consider that we are in a recession. Recessions result from a cumulative effect of poor decisions, missteps, and inefficiencies spanning the global business communities, governments, and individuals.

The talk of economic stimulus has been hollow, the results insignificant, and the investment cost astronomical.

One way of gaining a lot of ground in turning around the current recession is to empower people everywhere with tools that actually work. Tools should use standards, empower effective collaboration, and minimize redundant tasks.

When your Windows system crashes, is slow, or does not sync reliably, the user waits. Waiting means you lose money, means less business, and depresses economic growth. When Microsoft Office Outlook on PC does not collaborate at all with Microsoft Office Entourage on a Mac, time and money is lost since those two participants have to redundantly find ways to collaborate.

Each time a user must manually re-enter information, such as contact information from a business card or an email, this is time and money lost. Each manual cut n paste to open a website or a map is money lost. VCards are now broken owing to lack of use and variant new implementations. Beaming does not exist any longer except between Nokia and Palm products. Blackberrys cant open vCards from other platforms. The standards for shared calendars amount to no standard at all. Calendars are not shareable unless you work in the same corporate environment. Office now uses .docx formats, breaking with standards used for nearly 20 years.

G20 nations should use their preeminence to development, establish, and adopt common business tools. Many of these standards have already been developed and been available for use by software vendors for the past 12 years. VCards, ical, ldap, are all jargon for standards that enable anyone anywhere to leverage the same data without having to retype it all in. These standards are sporadically used, and are endemic to inefficient economic development.

Adoption and enforcement of the use of common, open source based standards for business tools would truly stimulate economic growth since business operators would be able to quickly and easily collaborate using common tools such as categorized contacts, calendar items, notes, and tasks, all enabled with reminders and prioritization flags. Overlooking the use Categories is very much like having a huge pile of data and simply throwing it all in one box without any means of keeping it organized. Categories enable you to organize, and therefore actually use your data. It is a critical component of any PIM.

For all of Microsoft’s faults, bloated programs, and inherent risks to data loss, as well as proprietary licensing, Outlook is the ONLY game in town that provides a standard suite of personal information management (PIM) applets as well as email, and a way to categorize, thereby organize, all of it. It is the only platform that syncs to practically every handheld device in the market. It is the only tool that has dozens of conduits to services like Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc to make your data portable and shareable.

This is a straightforward issue, and the players consistently ignore any attempt at standards.

Why don’t more people complain? Most people aren’t aware of this issue until they run afoul of this.Most folks new to the environment are unaware that it used to actually work. Still others cannot express their complaint since they do not have the technical jargon/vocabulary to do so. The problem lingers and festers, hindering the workplace from leveraging their knowledge to create more opportunities for growth, innovation, and change.

The buzz of late has been about SmartPhones. The offerings in the market for the past several years are inherently broken. This article will look at the so-called SmartPhones, and their shortcomings. Going forward, “PIM” implies all four databases complete with reminders, flags, and categories. “Social Media” implies any tools that enable access to services like Plaxo, LinkedIn, Blogs, Facebook, share this article links, Twitter, MySpace, BaseCamp, Groove, etc.

Every last one of the competitive offerings are broken in way or another.

Blackberry- The most common Blackberry to small business people is the 8330 Curve. It is also the lowest common denominator in their product lines, being the cheapest and most widely available product. Storms, Tours, etc are better in terms of performance, but most people either don’t have them on their carriers or simply can’t afford them unless their company buys them.

While boasting to have three slots in the top 10 highest radiation (SARS) ratings on the market for any phone anywhere, Blackberry 8330 does all of the PIM functions, reliably and fully. Yet, 8330 is slow, cant access the BB App store without frequent crashes. Social Media access is useless being slow, unreliable, and very limited in use. Yet it sure does a good job of keeping your data synced with Outlook on PC. On Mac, until Sept of last year, there was no sync software for Blackberry, unless you rolled the dice and $60 to use Missing Sync, which is apt to mangle your data. Using a virtualPC on Mac was not possible since the USB cable would not stay connected to the VirtualPC.

The Blackberry User Interface is very poor, without logical links between new phone numbers and existing contacts in the address book, addresses in the address book and maps, graphics and scripts on web pages are just plain broken, you can’t set the default browser to another more functional browser like miniOpera. You have to use the Blackberry one unless you manually run Opera and cut n paste the URL into the browser. Can you say broken?

Windows Mobile. While it does sync to Outlook very well, the rest of the system is slow, crashes frequently, and is problematic when actually making phone calls. It has many similar issues to Blackberry. Social Media is also a non-starter at this point. Apps are few and far between, and most cost a pretty penny.

iPhone, while the bling factor is very high, it does NOT sync fully to Outlook. It does NOT provide a complete bridge between Mac and PC systems if that is your goal. Categories, Notes, Tasks do not travel well between platforms, and most these don’t sync to begin with. Mac does not have a Notes app that can sync anywhere, UNLESS you buy the data-mangling MissingSync. iPhone is good at linking all kinds of things together... An address can be viewed on a map without manually selecting the address text, and then pasting it into a map application. Websites look terrific and are fast to load. It is good as an entertainment device. There are very many useful apps; some are even good for business. Yet, it does not fully sync to Outlook, nor does MobileMe, the OTA sync solution.

Google's Android, arguably the only open source based cell phone OS platform on the market, does not handle PIM very well at all. Likely this stems from the dysfunctions of the Gmail development team. All these years Gmail has been up and running, do you think there is a tasks or notes feature in Gmail? No. Do you think there is bidirectional sync between any local PIM like Mac Address Book or Windows Outlook? No. One way via data export, not sync. Does Gmail handle Categories? Nope. They call them Groups. Which conflicts since Groups in outlooks are used to create Mail Lists? If you import from Outlook to Gmail, you will mangle your existing email list groups within Gmail unless you manually save them offline, then manually repopulate them after you bring in the latest contacts database. All of this is manual.

Therefore, the Android, being closely related to Gmail and Google apps, is also a non-starter. Oddly, Android is NOT closely integrated even with Google’s own applications! Google reader? Nope. You have to install a broken 3rd party app. Blogger.com? Good luck. Can you edit or cut n paste from an email in Gmail? Nope. You can only annotate an email to reply to or forward, and you can’t select the text from the original message. With Google docs it is only through the browser. You have to manually retype in your address, though you told the android your Gmail sign on info to begin with. YouTube? Hah. You have to type it manually. (Better hope it doesn’t forget what you typed a week later!) How about Picasa? Nope. 3rd party substandard apps only, so Android provides practically no interface to Picasa for web albums... opting to point people to Flickr instead... which is NOT tightly integrated to Gmail.

And Outlook... ah yes. The fundamental reason why a Smartphone is a Smartphone, at least IMHO, is the ability to use and update your PIM data on the road. All the stuff that is broken between Outlook and Gmail? Most of that is also true between Android and Outlook.
Android ONLY syncs Contacts and Calendar items, and then only from one data store. If you are using say Gmail locally in outlook, and have an exchange account for work, you will only be able to sync with one or the other. Not both. (Blackberry allows full sync to all, so does windows mobile)

Specific gripes for Android:
- The Quick office app did not display a small (1.8mb) PowerPoint presentation. Useless.
- Typing with your thumbs is pretty useful since your other fingers are holding the device in the air, and preventing it from landing on the concrete. I can only get the touch screen keyboard to accurately respond by using a smaller finger such an index finger. Using thumbs, I am all thumbs. poking with one hand and one finger while the other holds the phone, I am a 10word a minute typist. Whee.
- Unless you want duplicates, you must blow away one of the databases, either your Gmail data, or the Outlook data. The "sync" tool does not merge. You pick from Outlook or To Outlook, overwriting one way or the other. How is that Syncing? It’s not.
- The ONLY tool to remove duplicates from your PIM data is Plaxo. If you are use Gmail imap on Outlook, Plaxo has a bug which conflicts with Gmail IMAP. To remove Dup's you have to remove Gmail IMAP from Outlook, restart Outlook, install Plaxo's conduit, run the De-dup routine, remove the Plaxo conduit, re-install Gmail IMAP. Fun!

My conclusion, barring some unattended surprise from a test drive of the Palm Pre, is that I will have to remain a Blackberry customer for the foreseeable future. I will have to manage my Social Media assets on a real computer. I will have to sync with a cable to my real computer. I will have manually cut n paste text to get the job done.

Time testing those two phones, Samsung Moment and HTC Hero, amounts to 6 hours. Time writing up the results so the rest of us will know to give it a pass and use those6 hours to something actually useful? 3 hours.

Imagine all the other users attempting to improve their position by adapting new tools to increase access and usability of their data? Imagine all those out there who simply accept it, and just bang away without a complaint? Add up all those hours. Then look again, with a fresh eye, at the global recession. Broken tools lead to broken bank accounts.

QED.

545 Politician vs 300 Million Americans

2010-02-10T14:00:00.003-05:00

545 Politician vs 300 Million Americans

Go Viral: Share this article on social media by copying this line of text:

545 Politicians vs 300million Americans #teaparty #reform #freedom http://bit.ly/buySUz

(I hashed #teaparty since I figured those folks would be on board with the theme of this. Heck.. all Americans should be on board with this. )
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years..

545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If thepresident vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist....

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it.......... Is up to you.

The Final Push. Atlanta Mayor's Election Dec 1! Go Mary!

2009-11-30T16:00:00.005-05:00

Today is December 1st, arguably the most important day in many years for all of Atlanta. Our city's mayoral race is being watched by the entire nation. Even the Wall Street Journal covered the race last week on page 3!

The choice is whether we will reform our City and make it great, or whether we will have more of the same.

Norwood will bring reform. Norwood will bring ethics to the office. Norwood will get a handle on the accounting systems and our finances. Only then can we decide what we can afford and what we can't.

Mr. Reed will kick the can, maintain the machine, and ensure he has a fat private sector job after leaves the City in a shambles.

The mayor's race will come down to a 1-3 point race. So, your vote counts enormously. Your vote literally may be the one to put your candidate, Mary Norwood, over the line and into victory.

Please call at least five neighbors who are on the fence about either candidate, or about even voting.

If everyone who gets this message commits to calling just 5 people, sharing your thoughts about why Mary is the candidate who truly will bring positive changes to our abominable City Hall, if all of us reach out to just 5 people today and tomorrow morning, gently reminding people to vote and why it is so important this time around, we can literally garner over 2000 votes for Mary.

These votes WILL decide the election.

See you tomorrow at the polls, and at the Varsity!

Yours,

Bryan "Beau" Grant IV
Convivia Group, Commercial Real Estate Broker
American Fuel Vehicles, Business Development

Grant Park Conservancy, Board of Directors, Social Media
Friends of Bitsy Grant Tennis Center, Board of Directors, Social Media
Georgia Rugby Union, Executive Committee - Secretary
Atlantans for Affordable Water Services - Founder
Southeast Pet Rescue Rail Road - Founder

Over the weekend, I compiled the following talking points, that represent the fundamental differences between Norwood and Reed.

- Fundraising Sources
ajc.com Mayoral hopefuls play to strengths for money
http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/10/05/story1.html
"Norwood raised more than three-fourths of her campaign cash from INSIDE the city limits during three reporting periods ending June 30. More than 72 percent of Borders’ money during that time came from the counties just outside of Atlanta."

"To a lesser extent, former state Sen. Kasim Reed and attorney Jesse Spikes are relying on contributors from a third geographic pool: outside of Georgia."

"Spikes and Reed raised 38.6 percent and 36.1 percent of their campaign funds, respectively, from out-of-state donors, dwarfing contributions to Norwood and Borders from outside of Georgia, according to the analysis."

http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0533.html
"The 1051 donations came in small packages, with many ranging from $50 to $200. An impressive 143 donations are $25 or less." -

..implying that the residents, not the "machine", feel that she is best choice.

- Non-Partisan.
As of May 2009, Mr. Reed's website still had Democrat Party references on the home page. He has enrolled various and notorious affiliated politicians and supporters DNC. Roy Barnes, Jesse Jackson, David Plouffe. I would have the same problem if Kasim were using RNC connections like Karl Rove. Why? The mayors race is non-partisan.

Using partisan rhetoric and leveraging partisan resources is unethical.

Mary Norwood has served for the past 8 years in a non-partisan office, City Council At Large. As for her vote for president, even if she voted for the Dubya/Shrub, who really cares? She publicaly claims she has voted for Perot, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, & Obama, in that order.

Focusing on who she voted for for President has absolutely no bearing on her ability to lead our city.

Mary's Statement on non-partisan status
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReJh4E81ig&feature=player_embedded

Experience

Mr. Reed is an outsider when it comes to personal knowledge and experience of the City of the Atlanta as an entity. He may be the youngest state senator at 39 years old, but that does not mean he knows where all the snakes in the grass lie when it is time to heal the woes of our City!

Ms Norwood has been in the trenches for the past 8 yrs. Prior to that, she won her office by heavy and active involvement as a private citizen in various issues with the city as one of us private citizens who had also felt the sting of unfairness and waste by the City during Mayor Bill Campbell's shameful administration.

Straight shooter

Last week, Mr. Reed's henchman were filmed pulling up campaign signs, collecting bounty for the signs from a Reed Campaign operative, and then chased the state official, Robert Long, who was filming it, beating on Mr. Long's car. When Mr. Long broke the story to WXIA, he expressed strong concerns for his personal safety.
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_story.aspx?storyid=137927&catid=40

When asked to justify these allegations, Mr. Reed's spokesperson accused Mary Norwood of staging the entire affair, including the violent attack on a state official.

In short, this is an example of the sort of thuggery and lies we can expect from Mr. Reed when he is mayor. It will reek of the same smell that Mayor Campbell left behind.

As for Ms. Norwood, here is a person who will not even allow you buy her an $8 breakfast at Waffle House. She always pays her way, documents every single instance where money or lobbying may be in question, and makes herself transparent and available to anyone who bothers to inquire.

Race

Mr. Reed insists and bringing race into the the election. Prior to his office as State Senator, he defending companies like Cracker Barrel against discrimination and labor claims. http://bit.ly/86B0Sr

Meanwhile, political operatives like Turpau who Jackson and Franklin in years past, were allowed to run free, and then after the race card was played, put on a leash by Reed. Turpau would not have been acting independently of the Reed Campaign.
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2009/08/27/the-mayoral-machine-goes-haywire-reed-fires-back/

Norwood has served City wide for 8 years and has proven for 8 years that race is never a factor when you contact her office in need of assistance with the City. Ask your neighbors who know her, and ask them if Mary has ever referenced race in your position as City Council woman.

Mary is the "post-racial" candidate that believes she can unify all Atlantans into coming together in a conversation about Atlanta's future that is not dependent upon racial bias or prejudice. Perhaps this position is naive, but it is far more visionary and positive than Kasim's strategy of seeding racial fears into his campaign. A post-racial Atlanta is a strong atlanta.

Time Magazine - http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1921686,00.html

Floods, Bread, and Circuses. The wealthy remodel. The real victims are overlooked.

2009-11-05T12:47:00.002-05:00

Anyone who suffers any form of perceived loss, such as what has resulted from the recent floods in Atlanta, deserves compassion. Especially so for those in counties like Douglas and in North Georgia where they were taken by surprise.

What I do not understand is why anyone living along Peachtree Creek or the Chattahoochee River is surprised they have been flooded? This is isn't global warming. This is not new. This is not even a 100 year flood, much less a 20 year flood.

Though reported as the "Worst in Recorded History", the flooding which made all the headlines around Buckhead & Vinings occurs every 6-8 years. The event is appropriately deemed the "worst" owing to the flooding in the outlying counties which was widespread and unanticipated. People actually died in the outlying areas. People in Buckhead got to remodel.

For ITP ATL, the flooding is a result of inadequate infrastructure to offset for the impermeable ground cover generated by development. Point the fingers at developers and you would be wrong. They build detention ponds according to code. They are shaken down for exorbitant impact fees in City of Atlanta. Those impact fees get funnelled into a general fund. The funds do not usually end up building infrastructure to offset the increased run off. Point the fingers at the municipal authorities. They have the inadequate codes. They misallocated the money. It is their responsibility to manage "proper" growth in their jurisdiction.

As for my fellow ITP residents, they already know the drill. Researching a given property using FEMA's website or interflood.com will demonstrate the frequency and severity of flooding. The FEMA insurance rating should be a BOLD type hint. The main reason ITP houses were on national news is that it makes a much better photo opp to show a 1 million plus home 10 feet deep in chocolate soup. Meanwhile, the areas where people died lies 25 miles to the west of the homes on the news.

Filming a flooded field where the livestock were swept away does not show well in a film. It is just a flooded field. They could not capture the action of the animals drowning, or the farmers attempting to save them. Showing the tail lights of a car that was swept away does not convey the action. They missed the chance to film the action of a person and their child dying. What is left? An enormous mansion covered in muck for days. That is action. Someone lost their stuff in the first floor of their McMansion.

These are the linkely choices news editors made when picking mansions for the news, instead of depicting the tragedy of real loss. That would be too much like work? The public wants action and drama. Given them "Bread and Circuses". "Let them eat cake".

I have heard it said from joggers at Memorial Park, "People who live here must see it as a way to redecorate their houses at least once over 10 years, at the insurance company's expense."

The insurance companies & FEMA Flood Insurance enable these people to rebuild, in the very same location, over and over again.

Intown residents chose their own hell. Call the contractor and decorators! Reserve a suite at the Four Seasons! We are remodeling the house with insurance money! Whee! Chaaarge It!

Our ITP neighbors enjoyed all the headlines. The outlying county residents suffered huge losses, and some lost their lives. Those are the ones who really are in hell. We don't see pictures of their "Gates of Hell", just the fancy mansions that are well-insured.

From my memory, these are the large recent floods for Buckhead over the last 20 years: 1990, 1994 (opel, 2004 (Ivan?), 2009

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/floodtracking/chattahoochee/pdf/floodtrack_chatt_back.pdf

City of Atlanta Parks and examining the role of Conservancies and City Responsbilities

2009-06-29T14:56:00.002-04:00

Piedmont Park conservancy group pays off

While well-written and informative from a historical perspective, this article barely hints at the challenges that smaller conservancy and sports organizations face when dealing with the city itself; scratching the surface on the implications of universal use of the Conservancy model in a given municipal environment.

The model of a non-profit conservancy is ubiquitous. Thereby the model holds a large degree of credibility. Simply because a given model is prevalent, does not necessarily imply that it is without serious drawbacks.

City parks are an amenity to any city. The original management model of public parks was that city tax dollars and staffing support the maintenance, improvement, and operation of the parks within the municipality's domain. However, when budget cut backs are needed, the funding of the parks is usually the first in line to have their budget reduced. Over time, cutbacks degrade parks, thus creating an environment suitable for the creation of Conservancies by grassroots organizing citizens form together to raise funds to repair otherwise untended and deteriorating parks.

The Conservancy model has gained widespread popularity, with even small neighborhood parks taking over the city's management responsibilities. The benefits of the conservancy model are fairly obvious. The leading benefit is that an organization dedicated to the mission of a given park's restoration, expansion, and operation can better pursue execute it's projects since they will have the latitude and focus to direct their budgets with a large degree of autonomy, once a master plan is established.

Within the Conservancy model, there is a spectrum of specificity of the model's application. You have sports teams appropriating fields from a park such as Frankie Allan's baseball (BYO) facility on Pharr Road, improving the fields, and leaving the remainder of the park literally to rack and ruin. You have well run groups, such as Grant Park, that have generated enormous visible improvements to a park, with very little actual money raised to accomplish the goal. You have other groups that leverage revenue generating facilities within a park charging park users for various access and park activities, such as Piedmont Park. What is consistently true among these applications is that Conservancy activities relieve the City of cost and responsibility. The ongoing existential problem is that the City, as the erstwhile trustee of these public assets, generally does a poor job of interacting with 3rd parties who have been delegated the City's own responsibilities.

The parks administration regularly displays sudden changes of mood and attitude when interpreting MOU's with Conservancy's. I have personally witnessed the City's capricious disregard for fairness time and again. There are several examples. Grant Park must rent it's own Pavilions from the City, though they use these properties for a park raise funding event. Bitsy Grant must rent it's own bathrooms for the gala fundraiser, as well as pay the city staff, instead of allowing volunteer docents to staff the event. Bitsy Grant, after investing $2m for new courts which more than exceed the water usage regulation codes, could not use water on the brand new clay courts since they are lumped in with all the other courts that have not been improved. To prevent the $2m investment from literally drying up and blowing away in a dust cloud, Friends of Bitsy had to raise another $25,000 to install well equipment to water the courts, never mind what impacts widespread use of wells in an urban environment may have on ground water. This past January, rugby teams were kicked off fields en masse, while paying tens of thousands of dollars per year in field rentals, being labeled as field destroyers, when unscheduled field users actually destroyed the fields, leaving them as the only ones to be reached when blame must be assigned, since they were the only ones paying rent on the fields. The Parks Department was given ongoing photographic documentation of the usage by the rugby teams, but this information was not taken into account when the four teams were expelled.

Suffice it to say, unless you are the 800lb gorilla, your organization will face inconsistency and adversity in your interactions with the City. I can only conclude that until an organization achieves a financial stature that elicits respectful and consistent treatment, they will continue to have to struggle to assert the tenets of an MOU with the City.

Another important shortcoming implied by the Conservancy model is that the proliferation of the model has produced a negative pressure on the competing conservancies ability to raise funds to the particular detriment of non-tax funded charities.

- The first movers have enjoyed a majority of the capital donations and attract/retain the more qualified staff. For example, Piedmont Park is a first mover. Being well situated and visible to nearby corporate funding sources, they have generated a long standing relationship of trust. This creates a very difficult climate for other conservancy's in which to compete, since the donors are already committed to one park versus another. In the City managed model, all the revenue generated by the park would have benefited other parks within the Parks Dept. Now, this is funnelled only to the park generating the income. Whether this is appropriate or not is a subject to lengthy debate. The essence is that the other parks without similar revenue generating properties, will inevitably be at a disadvantage.

- Once the management and funding of a given park has been delegated to a conservancy, the City can then depend upon the efforts of the Conservancy's for finances instead of lobbying for adequate internal funding from the City's annual budget to perform the activities their department is otherwise charged with. The public, in effect, does not get what it is paying for, and now is called upon to donate even more funds to a Conservancy to enjoy services that should have otherwise been made available by virtue of taxpayer contributions.

- To subsidize parks with charitable funds when tax payers are otherwise supposed to provide those funds negatively impacts other charitable organizations that are not deemed "city services". Parks are "city services" and therefore entitle to share in the proceeds of tax revenue collections.

Therefore, the overall effect is that several conservancy's compete for limited resources, also pulling funding resources from other charitable organizations that may have no means to make claims upon municipal budget resources.

One solution requires reformatting how City Hall and it's Parks Dept serve the public properties for which they entrusted. Any Conservancy's political strategy should call for active lobbying for the prioritization of tax funding for parks. However, the funding will support an Parks organization that has very many operational shortcomings and only have marginal, durable impact. The city itself, as we well know, has very many operational shortcomings. In order for the parks to be effectively managed by the city, it implies that literally all the other broken facets of city operations also need to be repaired.

Therefore, the way forward is to maintain the Conservancy mission as status quo, all the while to present a unified front requiring the reform of city operations, hiring & contracting practices, the balance of power between the mayor and city council, and implementation of formal accounting controls in conjunction with ongoing 3rd party audits for oversight.

The focal point of this political front would logically be Park Pride, since they span the ecosystem of Conservancy's in our region and espouse missions statements in alignment with the conservancies they service.

If we can organize this message to the City under Parkpride's banner, voicing the need for reform of city financial controls, hiring practices, and balancing of power, then one day we may just be able to hand much of this responsibility back to the where it should have been maintained all along. Then, a Conservancy could provide active oversight and input into the future care of a given park, but utilize tax payer funds that have already been raised to achieve the goal, rather than absorbing charitable donations from missions that do not qualify for tax payer funding as a component of a qualified City service.

If these efforts do succeed, the reality is that Conservancy organizations will not likely abdicate their authority to the City, even if it would be more effective for the overarching park conservation mission.

As a rule of thumb, any organization will entrench itself, even to the peril of the mission, since this is the natural response and function of the organizational collective's ego; the identity of the organization will want to survive, no matter the cost.

When the citizens and groups such as conservancies do succeed in reforming City of Atlanta, we will have an interesting, perhaps painful, challenge to reorganize our organizations to ensure the most effective strategy in the new environment.

Therefore, Conservancies are here to stay! ;-)

Atlanta's Casino - Atlanta devolves into Pottersville?

2009-04-02T17:10:00.006-04:00

We are one step away from having a casino in the middle of downtown Atlanta.

"The Atlanta City Council and Mayor Shirley Franklin have endorsed the project. The casino development could help to relieve the city of an estimated $56 million balance on roughly $85 million in bonds issued for redevelopment of the site in the 1980s. "
Read the full article here

All of this brings to mind Yeats -

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? "-Yeats - The Second Coming

Will we allow Atlanta to devolve into Pottersville ? We should demand a referendum on this issue, and demand it straight away before we lose our ability to participate in the process.

Is this the best idea our city and state's business and political leadership can conceive of for this prime real estate? Real estate situated in the middle of our downtown area, across the street from the Capitol building (full of erstwhile "Conservatives"), and adjacent to the largest University student body (GSU) in the Atlanta metro region.. ALL THEY CAN COME UP WITH IS A CASINO?!

Georgia State University, "Founded in 1913 in Atlanta, Georgia State University is the second-largest and one of four research institutions in the University System of Georgia."

Atlanta is a premier national city! We have a strong business community. We have so many great things about our region and the city itself.

Atlanta is not a resort destination.

Atlanta is by no means a flagging metro area desperately stooping to anything in the name of economic development.

This initiative displays a lack of vision, a lack of transparent representative government processes, and exemplifies the power the "machine" has to override the general disposition of the public.

The casino increase law enforcement costs by the increase in organized crime and vice related activity. We can not afford our current law enforcement budget as it is!

There are demonstrable negative impacts that a casino will bring upon our community. These are well researched and documented. Our tax dollars will have to offset these impacts.

Please download this document from University of Chicago as an example. The University of Chicago is home to economic luminaries such as Milton Friedman. Perhaps they understand how to research economic impacts of a given initiative?

Refi the USA, in lieu of Stimulus

2009-02-09T18:08:00.010-05:00

Monday, February 09, 2009
Last updated: Thursday, March 12, 2009

Refi the USA, in lieu of Stimulus

Friends,

Please review the following as an alternative to the Federal Stimulus bill. Please assert your commentary in the comment fields below this proposal.

This document proposes a clear alternative approach to the Stimulus bills.

The tenets of this proposal will quickly deliver the desired effect of market stabilization, restoring confidence in the markets, and thereby enabling access to credit. This proposal will have a swift impact, without the need for ongoing government spending.

The government incentives requiring banks to extend loans to "underqualified" borrowers, as well as the investment banks pushing the limits in vast numbers of loans of what is a reasonable risk, collude to form what amounts to a Ponzi scheme, with the distinction of involving so many various parties in government, mortgage lending, real estate services, and other investment banking, that prosecution in an efficiently and swift time frame is not possible for the near term to create any positive impact upon the confidence levels in the markets.

With relatively minor government expenditure, banks, and local administrative services, a strong and deep keel will set into the deep waters of our economy, stabilizing markets and restoring confidence.

Confidence in values will increase, credit resources will open, the inventory of homes will decrease, demand for new home starts will then increase, and jobs will spawn throughout the entire cycle owing to the 90 days hiatus from payments restoring ability to pay and decrease interest liabilities by individuals and businesses allowing for expansion of business.

Therefore, it is proposed:

Immediately Stabilize the Underlying Asset Values.
For any home sales in the next Two years, the minimum sales price allowable by law shall be determined as the lesser of the last mortgage property appraisal or the last Tax Assessor’s valuation prior to January 1, 2007. Arguably, the last time the market can be said to have been functioning was prior to January 1, 2007.

Since individual States will likely refuse to waive the associated Intangible Taxes for each loan refinance, it could be possible to use Stimulus funds to reimburse States for the associated Taxes.

After Two years expire, the minimum allowable sales price shall decrease by Ten Per Cent per year annually over Five years. After the Seventh year, the open market shall dictate pricing.

Refinance Every Home Loan in the USA.
Once home values are stabilized by law, every homeowner in the USA shall be refinanced to a Thirty year Fixed Conventional Mortgage Loan at the preferred borrower’s market-based interest rate, currently 5.1%. Each homeowner shall enjoy 90 days hiatus from payments.

Restore Consumers Confidence in the ongoing Cost of Credit.
For all inhabitants, including aliens resident legal or otherwise, of the United States holding credit cards and other unsecured consumer related credit card debts, all outstanding balances of credit card debt shall be assigned no more than an 8% interest rate, and debtors shall enjoy 90 days hiatus from payments. For a period of two years from the date of the bills enactment, credit card interest rates shall not exceed 8%.

Restore all Home Equity Lines that the homeowner had prior to January 1, 2007. Affix a maximum interest rate of 3.5%, which shall endure for as long as the current homeowner remains in the property.

Directly Fund Access to Education. For EVERYONE.
All outstanding college loans and any subsequent college loans for the following Five Years shall enjoy a maximum interest rate of 3.5% and no origination fees shall apply.

Students shall not be required to make payments during periods when they are earning less that 50% of the Average Household Income in their Metropolitan Statistical Area or County, which ever is smaller.

Enable Businesses to Invest and Expand.
For all businesses, any outstanding balances of debt shall be reassigned an interest rate not to exceed 8%. Any subsequent borrowings shall be assigned a rate of more than 8% for a period of Two years.

Acknowledge Lending Practices Have Been Basically Unfair, Possibly Illegal.
We must admit meaningfully that a wrong has occurred, and these people damaged deserve meaningful

The members of this category shall enjoy the aforementioned refinancing if they are able to retake their home.

Dispossessed homeowners shall be restored financially to their status before dispossession.

Where the home has already been resold, the disposed homeowner shall be reimbursed the lost equity in the property existing as of January 1, 2007. In either case, all dispossessed homeowners shall be reimbursed for any expenses related to the dispossession such as storage of personal effects, health care, loss of wages, or other provable expenses and damages. and swift redress.

The source of reimbursement funds shall be: TARP funds where the mortgage bank made no attempt to perform a workout with the homeowner OR Stimulus funds where a good faith workout was attempted by the lending bank.

Where the home was purchased by speculatively, by non-property occupying owners, the property shall revert to the original owners. The investors made whole during the transaction. Investors were behaving in a lawful manner, and therefore should not be damaged.

Reform the Banks and the Real Estate Transaction Cycle. (1st draft)
Where possible and provable, criminal proceedings should be brought forth against any parties clearly stepping outside the law at that time.

Penalties for fraud activities such as collusion to perpetrate mortgage fraud shall be increased significantly and shall have federal jurisdiction.

Require Multiple Listing Services to provide Open, Affordable, and Full to the General Public.
This will weed out the dead wood of incompetent agents, and allow real agents to provide better services.

Illegal Immigration, End It. Collect Tax Revenue from the Workers. (1st draft)
Those currently in the United States under illegal circumstances could be paying their full share of Tax Revenues if we simply assign Tax Payer ID Numbers to each migrant worker.

There is no law that necessarily connects Citizenship or immigration status with the ability or responsibility to pay Taxes. Therefore, taxes can be collected from anyone in our nation, if they simply had an Account Number and access to Identification.

Currently Illegal immigrants would be allowed to stay in the USA, provided they begin paying taxes and register themselves. They would not be eligible for Citizenship owing to the illegal nature of their entry to the country.

To reinstate eligibility to apply for citizenship, currently illegal immigrants shall have to perform community service duties of Five to Ten hours a month for a period of Five years.

This would integrate the immigrants into their new communities by given them opportunities for volunteer service, thereby improving the community in which they now live.

Rationale:
Whereas, previous attempts to direct funding to "bail out" the economy have been misused, subverted, or at the very least experienced far less success than what was generally expected.

Whereas, the current stimulus package will likely amount to an ineffectual misdirection of our nations resources. There are no discernible areas in the economy that can be improved by direct inject of capital. Even if there were areas where investment could make a significant impact, the government is not capable to execute the appropriate spending regime, and, furthermore, the long term financial impact upon our economy, could actually send our nation further into economic decline for an even longer period of time.

Whereas, the mortgage servicing industry faces financial penalties for performing loan "work outs" with mortgagee. The loan investor pools build these penalties into the loan servicing engagement contracts. Individuals with the loan investor pools can also sue the Servicing companies for performing "work-outs".

Whereas, if only failing homeowners are given benefits, the ones who are actually paying are in effect penalized for being financially responsible, since there are no provisions being discussed for those who are in good standing.

Whereas, the manner under which lenders have extended loans during the past decade has proven to have contributed significantly towards undermining our nation's, and in turn the world's, economy.

Whereas, these loans extended by the financial industry amounts collectively to an enormous Ponzi scheme, since the extension of loans to underqualified borrowers directly impacts the investment of the owners who were qualified and depends upon ongoing demand of buyers to maintain the valuations underlying the loans.

Whereas, any prosecution of the perpetrators of the Ponzi Scheme is impractible owing to the diminished responsbility of all the parties involved.

Whereas any relief of homeowners still residing their homes would be unfair to those who, owing to timing of the relief, were unable to enjoy any relief since they no longer have their home.

Sincerely,

Bryan “Beau” Grant, BSM, MSMoT
Convivia Group (http://conviviagroup.com)
Commercial Real Estate Brokers
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bryangrant

Home Equity Lines reduced or terminated.

2008-10-17T16:26:00.001-04:00

Friends,

You may want to take this into account when you next look at your budgeting. Across the board for Suntrust, Washington Mutual, and probably other banks as well, they have imposed a rather strict criteria for the amount of home equity credit they will make available to homeowners.

The new criteria will only allow credit to be extended up to 80% Loan to Value of your home. So, if you are in a loan that is 100% or 90% financed, and your appraisal comes back reduced, your home equity line may actually disappear altogether. Mine was reduced by 72.7% based upon an unfavorable assessment of my homes value. You can appeal by paying for the bank to perform an actual appraisal. The price is around $240 for Suntrust, and it is refunded if your value is restored as a result of the appraisal.

Nonetheless, Christmas is fast approaching, and all that home equity credit many people count on for holiday spending will simply not be present.

Bryan Grant

House of Reps votes to support Bail Out..

2008-10-03T13:17:00.001-04:00

If you tune into C-Span.. "The risk of NOT acting is just to great to bear." They will vote for anything, even this bill which has the potential to be death nail to Our economy, to look like they are doing "Something". They then claim that if this does not work out, in the words of Rep. Pickering of Mississippi (R), we will come back NEXT YEAR, to do major surgery on our financial system.. implying MORE regulation, MORE government direction of the markets instead of free markets..

Passing this act as it stands is nothing more than highway robbery of the worst sort. If your elected official proves to be weak, succumbing to the fear, or the special interest donors who fund their presence in Washington, we should all rise up and remove each and every last one of them.

The current version has been modified to include the results of the usual horsetrading, so we now have a codicil to provide for mental health care of certain demographic segments. Wow. That directly addresses the banking issues. These officials really have no shame.

If you are doubtful of this strongly expressed opinion, please consider the following.

The whole reason we are here, if you had to pick just one thing, is the Community Reinvestment Act. Read a full history here, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act] and particularly note the sections about Carter's, Bush Sr., and Clinton's revisionist changes to the CRA act and how banks CRA Ratings are determined.

Congress forced via the CRA and the method by which a CRA RAting is determined to open the floodgates for extending mortgages to under qualified borrowers.

"The CRA was passed by the 95th United States Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 as a result of national pressure for affordable housing, and despite considerable opposition from the mainstream banking community.[2] The CRA mandates that each banking institution be evaluated to determine if it has met the credit needs of its entire community. That record is taken into account when the federal government considers an institution's application for deposit facilities."

The S&L meltdown was solved with $1.2b when congress was clamouring for $100b. The FDIC basically stabilized the system at the time without the need for the $100b blank check, and saved everyone of us $98b, four months of our current war budget.

Bush's Bill asked for $700b for Paulson. The current bill is basically the same, just reduces the amount to $250b.

-Allows a $250 BILLION blank check to Paulson.

-There has been no deliberation of the alternative plans.

- There are no amendments allowed to the bill as it stands.

- There are no other bills under consideration.

- Criminal Investigation. This is merely recommended, not required.

- The bill allows for nearly 50% of the proceed to go to foreign banks, not our own.

- The taxpayer's exit strategy in our investment in these banks is not clear, nor required. It is still up for negotiation, but before that occurs, we are giving the other side of the table the money. That is a certain way to be robbed.

The bill does not do anything directly to preserve pensions NOR access to credit for small and medium sized businesses. Only large businesses will be able to afford the credit that is now and will be available after the act. This means your jobs, such as they are in the context of a global trade imbalance, will will evaporate unless you work for a large company. If you work for a large company, the company will be able to reduce your compensation and benefits since the job market will so constrained, you will have nowhere else to go.

- The bill does nothing at all to address access for homeowners to stay foreclosure and and reset loans to current 30yr fixed mortgage rats.

- The bill does nothing to preserve access to student loans.

- The bill has very very little oversight since the first $250billion is a blank check to the Fed.

[The Fed can buy ANY type of securities at the price of their choosing.. and since we are the investors, we are going to be stuck with securities that will have been bought far above market value, so there is no hope of profiting off these debts we are buying. ]

- Executive Compensation - The warrants and stock options may or may not be extinguished. It is merely a recommendation at is stands. The limit of $500k/yr salary is whitewash since many executives have real salaries not far above that amount, but make their real money on bonuses paid in options and warrants. Even still, $500k/yr is 4 times higher than the highest average household income of North Fulton County in Atlanta GA, a very affluent and top 2% demographic in our Metropolitan Statistical Area. These exec's should be fired, and I mean sacked. They should be investigated for criminal negligence and/or fraud. And if they are able to keep their jobs, the salary and ALL compensation to which they are entitled, including any benefits, perks, and options, should be limited to a pre-tax amount of $125,000/year, the average income for an affluent neighborhood in a major city in the South East.

This bill is an awful mistake driven by fear, impatience, special interest goading our officials to a rash response. There is no current catastrophe that giving banks a free ride will fix. We must directly save homeowners, business loans, and student loans. This bill does NONE of this. It just rewards the ranks of the status quo for their failures.

Thank you.

Respectfully submitted,

Bryan Grant, Atlanta GA
BSM, MSM of Technology
Commercial Broker, President, Convivia Group Real Estate

Bailout and why the current bill stinks

2008-10-03T01:02:00.001-04:00

This was forwarded to all three US Federal officials serving my precinct.

Dear Mr. Chambliss,

Thank you for your response.

These are comments to your responses concerning the bail out.

I am very content that the House shot down this poorly designed and dangerous Bail Out bill. I think the House Republicans did the right thing to vote down this bill. I was also impressed that nearly 40% of those against were Democrats. Today, I think the Senate did the wrong thing by supporting and adding extra pork to it. Clearly, the bailout is a nonpartisan matter, but horse swapping ensued, and thus business as usual.

My stance is not one of revenge against the bankers, which is what the press would lead the uninformed public to believe. My stance emanates from the perspective that we solved a far greater meltdown by using only $1.2b and the FDIC to solve a $100b problem 18-20 years ago, back when nearly all the S&L's caved in (3000+ banks).

The world was far worse, darker, and more dangerous than it is today.. 19-22% interest rates, spiraling violent crime rates, poor job growth, widely fluctuating currency values from the highest to the lowest and back again over 10 years, commercial property development failures, Japanese investors overheating market values, junk bonds, Soviet Russians with nukes, red china with nukes, Central American drug cartels, proliferation of heroine spurred by Afghanistan's need to buy arms to fend off the soviets, conflict in Israel and Lebanon, bombings by the IRA in the UK, bombings all over France by Muslims and Corsican separatists ( I narrowly missed one in Paris at St. Michel RER Station), skin heads torching residential buildings in Germany, a very corrupt Mexico, the spread of AIDS, apartheid, and not to mention widespread warfare, poverty, and fascism all over south and central America,.. did I miss anything?

By contrast, these days are far brighter, with one main exception. Our government seems bent upon compromising our freedoms and our economic stability. The media clearly has a parallel agenda to ruin the reasons this country has been long held up as the last best hope for so many millions of our immigrant ancestors. Despite congress's and the wall street's blunderings, market leveled interest rates are attractively low. We have greatly narrowed the long list of warring nations, though we ourselves are still engulfed in a never ending and far flung war with no achievable goals. How can you successfully win a war against a world full of crack pots like Timothy McVie, Weather Underground, and the list of crazed Jihadists? One way would be to reinforce democratic institutions through real reforms in the house and senate, increase the access to and quality of education, here and abroad. Those two things alone would go miles to debunking the vitriol these Imams and Mullas spout.

If taxes are down, and illegal immigrants are a problem, simply allow them to obtain a worker's ID number so people they have to pay taxes, do not allow them any access to citizenship unless they perform over 5 years 10 hours per month of bona fide community service and speak English sufficient to score the median marks on the TOEFL exams. They do not need to be citizens to be liable to pay taxes. Allow them to remain and work as taxpayers, but also require them to return home for at least two weeks of every 4 months, so those families they left behind are no longer shattered by their absence. We would not need to build the wall, we would increase revenues, and those workers living here would pay their way for the services they use. Win, win, win, win. Yet we are building walls, we are criminalizing business owners, we are destroying families in Latin America, and we are creating a shadow population that is basically untraceable and outside the purview of due process and law enforcement.

As for the bail out...The problem lies with the securitized paper banks traded based upon poorly vetted mortgages. Both the sellers and the buyers knew this was based upon shaky grounds. Are the banks really to blame? Probably in the sense they lobbied for the legislation to allow this to occur. Yet, most people have ignored the fact that the Community Reinvestment Act forced banks, at the liability of huge penalties, to extend as many loans as possible, including to sub-prime borrowers. Rather than a take a known penalty from the government for not making the loans, the bankers must have figured at least there is a chance this sub-prime borrower may just repay the loan. The alternative to NOT lending to these under-qualified borrowers was a sure fire fine against the bank and all the associated legal expense defending the issue.

Homeowners and small businesses are where the bail out funds and policy should be focused. Before spending one penny of bail out money, consider this approach. Mandate that every single ARM, at least the ones that "qualify" as "toxic", out there be locked in at a 30 year fixed rate at 1% over LIBOR at the date the bill goes into effect, giving every homeowner in danger of foreclosure 120 days grace period to reset their ability to pay the note or sell their house, and current foreclosures be alleviated/relieved to access this new policy, would buoy the drop in home values, flatten the touted L-shaped explosion of foreclosures, restore value into the toxic securities taking out the banks, stabilize jittery markets, and reinitiate the job growth cycles.

However, as the Bail Out currently stands..

It is a rash and insufficient response to a situation that has been building for some time now, but for misguided reasons the American taxpayer is being led to believe if we don't do something, anything now, the "sky will fall".

As for the the large drop in the Dow, this happens in the markets from time to time, and educated investors know better than to sell off, but know to hold on, as markets will find equilibrium and start growing.. if the governments keep their hands off the steering wheel. Most of the drop related to bank stocks which is no surprise, and those banks basically deserve it. Imagine what would have happened to pensions if we had allowed unsavvy investors to manage their own plans? They would likely have sold off when there was merely a prolonged dip, and not be preset to benefit by the coming resurgence of value in the market. Then we would have to bail them out as well with welfare policies. It is a vicious cycle, and congress should, after artificially stabilizing these toxic loans, set forth as policy that the free markets should be preserved and legislation undermining the existence of the free market should be struck down.

Yet, who would benefit from the current Bail Out bill? Take AIG as an example. Who in their right mind extends securities guarantees with no capital reserves to buffer the claims, especially when guaranteeing sub prime debt, a note that is already, by it's very name, consider to be "sub" or lower grade securities? It is like guaranteeing junk bonds with no money in the bank to pay the claims! AIG does not deserve one red cent. They should know better as savvy financial specialists. Their incompetence is criminal, and we taxpayers do not owe them a living.

The current Bail Out bill allows $250b to be freely spent. This is a large blank check all by itself, never mind a $700b check. There is not anywhere near the oversite needed over this enormous sum of money. This bill can direct funds to foreign banks and it is estimated over 50% of the cash would go to foreign banks, not our own, do nothing for homeowners, and not restore credit availability to American business owners. It does nothing to stem the tide of foreclosures, thus necessitating the need for a subsequent bail out.

The bill allows Paulson to do and spend as he sees fit. The way it is written today, Paulson can literally buy Pawn Shop loan paper with this act. Paulson's company, the Federal Reserve, is NOT a government entity anymore than Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but a private banking entity, and as such, the private sector should rescue it. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, and this sour pill will instill far more conservative values in management for the next 20 years, a medicine of which we are in dire need. Such a pill would ensure the banks reform themselves without the need for bulky new regulations.

The bill does not nearly go far enough to limit executive pay. $500k/year is still more than triple the average household income of the richest neighborhoods in Atlanta, GA never mind the middle class average income levels. The existing warrants and stock options should be extinguished and rendered null and void. Options are a form of pay for performance. The executives and directors should never have a chance of cashing in on the performance benefits the Bail Out will deliver to them. The taxpayer should have those warrants and options, as we will be the investors. We should profit by our investment.

The bill does not adequate discuss requirements for the investigation of criminal liabilities for negligence. The bill merely suggests we "should" investigate, but falls short of requiring it. It must set up a special investigative mission with the Judicial branch to investigate the possibility of fraud. It should also investigate the creators of the Community Reform Act, including those who ushered in the act as elected officials, and their ties to the beneficiaries of this scam.

The bill does not reform the Community Reinvestment Act. The act and its siblings should be extinguished immediately. Perhaps a new act should mandate that no further similar acts seeking to force banks into this position should be prohibited. It is amazing this would even need to be created ,but since the CRA is in force, it appears to be necessary.

I strongly advise you to vote upon a course of action only after careful consideration of ALL the alternatives available to us. This will take time, thoughtful effort, and patience.

This is what I will judge my elected officials upon. If the official behaves rashly and impatiently, taking whatever is on the table as an easy way to get press coverage that they did "something"; if they throw other congressmen under the bus for being thoughtful and deliberate in resolving this matter...If they behave in this manner, I will see to it that I campaign loud, far, and wide to ensure those individuals do not see another term for their negligence and incompetence.

I applaud the effort the entire congress appears to have devoted in responding to the call of this crisis. I applaud your personal efforts thus far for taking this matter so seriously and working with all due diligence to arrive at a reasonable response to the matter before our nation. I merely wish to reaffirm my position about the bill and my feelings about the actions of my own elected officials.

Thank you.

Respectfully submitted,

Bryan Grant, Atlanta GA
BSM, MSM of Technology
Commercial Broker, President, Convivia Group Real Estate
Boardmember, Grant Park Conservancy
Board Member Friends of Bitsy Grant Tennis Center.
Treasurer, Assistant Coach Atlanta Renegades RFC
Secretary, Georgia Rugby Union

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Saxby Chambliss <saxby_chambliss@chambliss.senate.gov> wrote:

Dear Mr. Grant :

Thank you for contacting me regarding the turmoil in our financial markets and the actions taken by the United States Treasury as they pertain to several leading financial institutions. It is good to hear from you.

           This is the most serious and critical domestic issue I have dealt with in my 14 years in Congress. We have been betrayed by many people and by abuse of the system. Now we have two significant choices to make - do nothing or take action.

           I strongly believe that doing nothing will destroy the financial security of millions of Americans and possibly lead us into a depression. I just as strongly believe the bill as now negotiated will arrest the crisis and begin to turn our economy around.

           The bill that I voted for is not a bailout. H.R. 1424, "The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act," is crafted to address the crisis; restore security for the American taxpayer; and return our nation to the strongest economic power in the world. And in the process this bill enables us to root out and punish those who cheated us all.

           I know that my vote in favor of this package was not the politically popular thing to do, but this is not a popularity contest. This is about the future of our country and the future that my children and grandchildren will inherit. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind or my heart that my vote in support of this measure was the right thing for our economy, for Georgians, and for our country.

My first reaction was one of anger and frustration. How could this happen in the strongest economy in the world? How could the best financial system in the world fail? After calming down, I realized the seriousness of the situation and the consequences of Congress failing to act.

The Treasury Department submitted a proposal to Congress requesting authority to purchase troubled assets from financial institutions. This program was intended to address the root cause of the market stresses by removing these assets from the financial system.

I did not support the original proposal submitted by the Administration because it did not address the critical needs of the American taxpayer, community banks, retirees, and small businesses and it concentrated too much power in a small group to administer the plan.

As the conversations in Washington and across the nation continued over how to address the challenge before us and as the details of the problems in our financial sector were revealed daily, I became convinced that something had to be done and done soon.

Moreover, when the House rejected the plan, the economy suffered a $1.2 trillion dollar blow in the stock market, which only made more apparent the impact this credit crunch is having on Main Street . Specifically, in some cases, Georgia community banks are unable to make auto loans.

Below are details of the legislation:

           TAXPAYERS ARE PROTECTED. In its current form, the legislation before the Senate protects taxpayers in many ways. Accountability, safeguards, and oversight measures are numerous. There will be transparency, public reports, and triggers to end the program if, for some reason, it is not effective or end the program early if it is more successful. Moreover, I worked to negotiate a mechanism to stop all transfers of taxpayer funds if necessary. That said , I believe this legislation will be effective.

           NOT A BLANK CHECK. I opposed the President's initial request to simply give a blank check to Secretary Paulson. I also opposed the second version submitted by the President and Congressional Democrats that would have given taxpayer money to liberal groups such as ACORN. Let me be clear - this current bill, the bill in the Senate, is not a blank check for anyone. First, it allows the release of $250 billion to purchase these toxic loans. Then, Congress can release another $100 billion but only with Presidential involvement and certification that it is necessary. And only if absolutely necessary and again with Presidential certification and Congressional approval, the remaining $350 billion could be released. However, I do not believe the entire $700 billion authorized will be necessary or used.

           NO GOLDEN PARACHUTES. CEOs and other executive officers who drove their companies into the ground will not be able to walk away with millions leaving taxpayers holding the bill. Those companies that choose to participate in the program will be subject to strict compensation limits.

           NO NEW GOVERNMENT SPENDING. The language is clear - all revenue generated through the repayment of any assets purchased and any sold must be used to pay down the national debt. No money will go to pork projects, new government spending, or liberal groups such as ACORN.

           HELP FOR MAIN STREET . As this crisis continues, community banks are being affected more and more. Car loans and home loans, even to those with good credit, are drying up. People are losing their retirement savings. Small businesses are now having difficulty getting loans to make payroll or grow their business to create new jobs. If we allow this to continue, jobs will be lost, more retirement accounts will be impacted, and credit will get even tighter.

           PUNISH CRIMINALS. The Federal Government is actively investigating cases of fraud and abuse. Where wrongdoing is found, the perpetrators, including, if implicated, members of Congress will be brought to justice. We have already seen subpoenas issued for records at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This bill demands cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and I expect we will see more subpoenas and criminal prosecution.

           ADDRESS THE UNDERLYING CAUSE WHILE WE TREAT THE SYMPTOMS. We are seeing the symptoms now - lack of trust in the banking industry, daily tightening of the credit markets, losses in personal retirement accounts - and while this legislation addresses those issues, it also goes further to treat the cancer that got us here. This legislation authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to modify the 'mark to market' accounting procedures that magnified this crisis by forcing banks to mark down the value of assets they had no intention of selling in the near future. This mark down of value caused a corresponding loss of value to the institutions. The SEC has already begun the process to modify this procedure.

           RETURN TRUST IN THE BANKS. By increasing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protection on bank accounts from the current $100,000 to $250,000, taxpayers and bank customers can once again trust that their money is safe in the bank of their choice.

            DEBT REPAYMENT. Toxic loans will be purchased at a discount and 100% of the monies repaid to the government will go to reduce the debt we incur in this process. While we shouldn't expect full repayment, it is possible that all of the money expended will be repaid.

           PROTECT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY. If we do not act and this crisis spreads like a cancer to every segment of our economy, it will destroy not only taxpayer savings but it will erode our ability to fund our military, supply our troops with the resources they need, and protect our homeland.

           NO TIME FOR POLITICAL FINGER POINTING. There is plenty of blame to go around but now is not the time to throw stones, now is the time to address this crisis and get our economy moving again.

            FOR THE COUNTRY; NOT POLITICAL POPULARITY. This is not a popularity contest, this is a crisis. And since this crisis began, I have had numerous conversations with economists, community bankers, small business owners, and taxpayers. I have weighed the costs of inaction versus the costs of unpopular action. I support this bill because it is good for the country, it is the right thing to do today for taxpayers and tomorrow for my children and grandchildren, and it is necessary to get our economy moving again.

            Strong capital markets are vital to a prosperous U.S. economy and given the renewed focus of our regulators and market participants, I remain confident in our financial markets and our overall economy.

However, history warns us against inaction by hard lessons learned. Delaying to act would be a repeat of the mistakes of the 1920s, when thousands of banks failed before significant confidence was restored to our financial markets.

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov . Please let me know whenever I may be of assistance.

--
Bryan "Beau" Grant
Convivia Group (http://conviviagroup.com)
Commercial Real Estate Brokers

Office: US - +1 (404) 348-4759 x701
Direct: US- +1 (678) 389-9903
Office: UK - +44 (20) 8144 7750
Mobile: US +1 (404) 932-6399
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bryangrant
Skype: malacandra
Google Chat: bgrantenator

The information in this e-mail and any attached documents is strictly confidential and may be legally privileged. Any unauthorized use or disclosure of this communication is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not read, use or disseminate the information. If you believe that you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your system. Further, this e-mail does not constitute an offer to sell securities or property or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities or property, and may not be used for such purposes.

Grandpa McCarthy had a heartattack last night

2008-09-12T14:04:00.001-04:00

Robert C. McCarthy Jr, my grandfather, suffered a heart attack this morning around 8am. He is currently being catheterized.. for what seems like all morning and part of the afternoon. So we don't know the extent or scope of the problem.. Healing a heart attack can always be helped by strong prayer. If anyone deserves a prayer after years of hard work and service, it is this man.

The Lord must have been pushing me to go visit him , since the trip was a last minute "grab-and-go affair", and I coincidentally arrived in Asheville last night to visit the Gran's. Last night, we watched the usual dose of Fox News, loud commercials, political speeches, and local news... and then the usual intrafamily panel analysis and discussion about national politics, complete with printed articles in hand from all parties.. grandma too. Calm thoughtful banter about issues that we can all have direct impact upon. ;-)

[Sample Fun Topics: Obamarama and the Care Bears Vs Blood n Guts McCain and Caribou Barbie. Discuss. Topic: Oil V Renewables, domestic or foreign still destabilizes our country. Foreign for obvious reasons. Domestic since Oil Companies manipulate the political process and easily corrupt our officials and legal systems. Discuss. Topic: Where is Osama and how did he get a dialysis machine into a high altitude cave? etc..]

A great but humble man, Grandpa was a Korean war hero who fought at the Frozen Chosin (2 purple hearts) in Marine Fox Company defending against an advance of 9 Chinese Divisions in the withdrawal from North Korea at the beginning of the war. He has 4 children, 9 Grandchildren, 1 great-grandchild, 2 dogs.. He is a first degree black belt green thumbed gardener. He surfs the Internet at 84 years old, still drives his mini-van with Drill Baby Drill, "W", and Marine Corps stickers on the back, helps promote longevity through holistic remedies. Obviously, he is a staunch Republican, but wondering from time to time about the last 7 years. Still, he keeps his signed photo of W and the 1st lady prominently displayed right next to the signed photo from the Gipper (Reagan for you kids out there). Grandpa is incisive, very intelligent, the best husband any gal could hope for, dog lover, patriot, healer, the best grandparent, and a heck of a Scottish Country dancer.

I guess last night was one "Fox News evening" too many. He went to bed an was awaken by a pain in his shoulder. Grandma quickly deduced this indication as symptomatic of heart attack, and high tailed it to the VA hospital.

Your prayers are welcome and needed. Thanks for your healing thoughts that many of you have already expressed. Y'all are the best!

Tibetan Olympic Team

2008-08-06T13:34:00.001-04:00

For many years, I have admired the philosophies taught by Tibetan Bhuddist monks. I have admired the endurance of the refugees, and known for a long while the atrocities they suffered at the hand of the Chinese. They are not the only ones to suffer this ruthless intolerance of cultural and religious diversity, instead forcing cultural unification and homogeniety at the point of a gun.

To mark the games, I have procured a Tibetan Flag, and plan to hang it out in the front of my home during the games, along with an American flag to show my support fo our athletes and my support for all those ground under the boot by China and similar governments. Those of you who know personally, have seen my Free Tibet sticker on my old car for many years. Yet, it is not as if a sticker really amounts to much more than than visual clutter, unless people ask questions about the sticker.

Also, I wanted to remind folks that we enjoy the presence of a real Tibetan Monastery here in Atlanta, the Drepung-Loseling Institute. They have established, over the past few years a strong relationship with Emory University. I invite people to visit on Tuesday's for the public teachings, which are discussions of philosophy and relate to human development and "Right Action". You will not bump into radical protesters waving flags and hopping about. If you do want to hang a Tibetan flag, they have some in the book shop. Just remember to take your shoes off when you enter the sanctuary!

It greatly pleases me to see the exposure of their plight to the world. It is my hope that with this exposure, the Chinese government to find better ways to deal with it's citizens and the world at large, ways beyond using brutal force, torture, censorship, and misinformation. (The China-Dalai Lama Dialogue: Prospects for Progress)

It is a hard question, whether to boycott Chinese products, as if that were actually possible since we no longer produce anything for the retail consumer, or whether to pursue the Dalia Lama's approach of Active Engagement, striving to raise awareness within Chinese leadership that they are connected with everyone, and that both our ends and their ends share, and therefore there is no victor, but simply, we all progress and move forward humanity in an enlightened and peaceful manner.

I tend towards the boycott side, but I simply have not found the faith within me to go along with the better approach of Active Engagement. I agree with the idea, but simply must mature enough to support this approach by my own actions.

The US infrastructure is failing. I simply see that every dollar I spend on Chinese goods build their schools, their roads, and their high speed rail. Our money supports their military and puts their citizens further under the boot of a ravenous central government that Orwell envisioned. Our funds prop up a government that really is one of the most powerful and oppressive the Earth has known since World War II. We are just lucky they halted their militarily aggressive foreign policy with Tibet. Now,China's strategy seems to be, "Rope up the commodities and supply routes, and then command the terms of engagement", as they are now doing.

China is rising to super power and economic status largely thanks to our purchasing habits and failure to enforce productions standards on their producers. Shirking these same business legal standards would land you in jail here in the United States. Somehow, it is OK for our retailers to source products from a market where human rights, labor laws, the rule of law, environmental standards, and living standards are all ignored, at least as demonstrated by their actions, by the Chinese central government, as well as local and regional officials. You want proof? 320 million Chinese have cancers that are directly attributable to environmental hazards such as cadmium and lead in the water. The entire problem with pet food from last year stemmed from this cause, and killed thousands of pets. (Geopolitics, China, and poisoned pet food)

So raise your awareness towards the idea of the world economic agenda, and therefore geopolitical security (Engaging China: The Political Economy and Geopolitical Approaches of the United States, Japan and the European Union) , being largely influenced, if not dictated, by a China empowered with our own consumptive inability to establish a true free market economic environment here or abroad.

Instead, the world trading community has invited a player to our game of open markets and allowed this player several trump cards the others are not allowed to use. How could China fail to rise to prominence, taking the entire pot of winnings? The trump cards - human rights, labor laws, the rule of law, environmental standards, living standards, and unilateral pricing of the Yuan - all give any business an strong incentive to ignore moral issues, and source production in China. Since "everyone is doing it", it would be suicide not to follow suit.

Please urge your politicians during this election cycle to take a good hard stand on trade imbalances. We are as a nation, unwittingly or not, supporting a communist regime that fundamentally contradicts our constitution and what America, under the Bill of Rights, is founded upon. Call upon the politicians to wake up to this fact and take significant action.

Thanks for your interest and enjoy supporting your nation's games in the upcoming Olympics!

Warm Regards,

Bryan Grant

City of Atlanta: Water and Sewer Rates potentially up 56% ??

2008-06-11T14:28:00.000-04:00

Solar uses 225x less water.
Solar saves 40 million gallons annually per MegaWatt versus Coal.
Coal produces 248x the carbon footprint

So.. if we passed along the actual costs associated with all that water and all the Carbon, Solar would easily reach parity in $/kw hour. These are the changes in policy that must be affected. Remove all the subsidies, let the open market set the pricing, and smart money says that sustainable sources like Solar will quickly become the affordable energy sources. For a more rapid change, add a temporary (3-5 year max) subsidy to solar, while removing subsidies for Coal and Natural Gas, and we can shift.

If Solar initiatives were legislated in our state, or if the water subsidies were removed from Southern Company's operation cycle, the price differential between Solar and Coal fired power would quickly reach a parity. In other words, the cost of all that water for power production is already rolling up onto every citizen's and every municipalities balance sheet. The cheap energy is not really cheap, we pay for it elsewhere. All that water would be saved and made available for sustainable economic growth. All those solar panels would stabilize energy costs for the 30 year life cycle of the panels to anyone who bought and installed them. All those panels would reduce the need for dirty/toxic energy production such as coal, the leading source of electricity in Georgia. And all those panels would reduce demand for NG and Coal, thereby making energy more affordable to those who can't afford to install Solar. It starts a positive cycle and curtails this vicious cycle that is rapidly leading to an economic and social meltdown in our region, let alone the world in general. We need lending vehicles, thirty year notes, from the banks to install the systems to our homes and warehouses. We need Georgia Power to cooperate meaningfully and to recongize they are a public utility, and therefore have a duty to abide by public policy as levied by the Public Utilities Commission. The shareholders will not be happy, to be sure. Yet, it is not as if they did not know they were buying a public utility and were desirous of a stabilized investment. If they want a high growth stock, look to small caps, China, or perhaps the NASDAQ.. where there is risk there is reward. Only corruption delivers high returns in a low risk model.

While residential consumers are literally having to choose between taking a shower, buying healthy groceries, or purchasing gas for their cars, in a local economy where the last quarter's job growth rate has dropped to .05% and vacancies in commercial space inside I285 in Atlanta have reached levels higher than before 2001, 24.8%, we are being asked to pay MORE for water, when it is Georgia Power that is soaking up the lion's share of the surface water. Meanwhile, Georgia Power has effectively no alternative energy agenda. What they do have, which is a farce, at best, is here on their site. http://www.georgiapower.com/green/home.asp

How many people in these hard economic times are going to be pushed out of their homes over a water bill because the Mayor's office has failed to provide proper leadership for the sewer project? A project which has the potential to break the city's coffers once and for all? How many people statewide can't afford to water crops because the state government coddles the power industry, allowing them to exist without innovation, change, or sustainable growth?

We all have a lot of work to do to change all this. It can be done, and Atlanta can lead the way for the region. Truly, since we are the center of the regions economy, and since we have great institutions such as Georgia Tech researching the cutting edge of these technologies, it is our responsibility to lead this change. In the upcoming elections in 08 and 09, let your voice be heard at all levels of government, but in particular locally and in our state where we can shape the laws that direct our utility company's agenda and pricing strategy.

Best regards,

Bryan Grant
=============================================================
-Forwarded message written by: Michael W Hoover <mhoover@wilsonmaclean.com>

Not to continue to dump on the city, but did anyone else see this article in today's AJC?

"Two proposals to raise Atlanta's water and sewer rates moved forward Tuesday. One would boost rates 27.5% this year followed by three consecutive rate hikes at about 12.5% . The other would impose a 15 percent water penalty for make up for the water revenue the city has lost through conservation during the drought."

"Both moved forward without a formal recommendation of support, but will be considered by the council over the next 20 days as the panel tries to wrap up the fiscal year 2009 budget"

If the first proposal goes through, an average monthly bill of $30 will become a monthly bill of $38.25 or an overall annual increase of $99. By the time the three consecutive rates hikes are factored in, that same $30 bill would become $53.74 at the end of this four year rate hike – an annual increase of $284.88 per household. This is insane…a 56% compounded increase?

The city council has not voted on this as of yet, so if you have problems with these scenarios, make your voice heard. Email your city council member's at the following addresses:

Felicia Moore fmoore@atlantaga.gov

Kwanza Hall khall@atlantaga.gov

Carla Smith csmith@atlantaga.gov

Ivory Young iyoung@atlantaga.gov

Cleta WilsonMaclean cwilson@atlantaga.gov

Natalyn Archibong narchibong@atlantaga.gov

Anne Fauver afauver@atlantaga.gov

Howard Shook hshook@atlantaga.gov

Clair Muller cmuller@atlantaga.gov

C.T. Martin cmartin@atlantaga.gov

Jim Maddox jmaddox@atlantaga.gov

Joyce Sheppard jsheppard@atlantaga.gov

Ceasar Mitchell cmitchell@atlantaga.gov

Lamar Willis lwillis@atlantaga.gov

Mary Norwood mnorwood@atlantaga.gov

Lisa Borders lborders@atlantaga.gov

From: uhna-discuss@yahoogroups.com [mailto:uhna-discuss@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Bryan Grant
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 6:32 PM
Subject: [uhna-discuss] Whats happening on Peachtree? "Tearing up Peachtree"

This article is a bit specific to commercial real estate, but since we are now surrounded by development and need visibility of the commercial market for various reasons...

this is a good article to guide your understanding of what is moving in our town, and nearby on .. Peachtree.

It makes one wonder just how much of an effect on our local business city hall's poor government has had, since the vacancy rates are double Intown than OTP.

http://nreionline.com/mag/real_estate_tearing_peachtree_0501/

"It is primarily the intown markets that suffer from high vacancy. While downtown Class-A vacancy rates were an unhealthy 24.8% at the end of last year, suburban markets outside the I-285 perimeter were 14.6%."

"The slowing job growth, high vacancy rates and new space combined with the ailing financial services sector, has some office owners working overtime to keep tenants in place."

City of Atlanta: Water and Sewer Rates potentially up 56% ??

2008-06-11T13:53:00.001-04:00

Thanks Michael for sending your updates.

Really how can this be justifiable?!? These changes will simply force people into foreclosure, since one can be forced into a form of tax foreclosure over a water bill. A park near my home through it's renovations has reduced it's water consumption by 80%, yet is now forced to construct a well, at it's own expense, in order to remain open, as the City does not recognize the 80% water savings the park already invested in.

There are endless examples of how these short sighted policies hinder our economy and our lives. These policies do nothing more than prop up the current flawed and broken policies by raising prices to capitalize their existence, to the detriment of everyone. We must change these policies.

One thing many people do not realize is that 68% of surface water is used by utilities for power production. 1100kw/hours translates into 27,000 ga/month for a coal fired plant, which Atlanta is mainly serviced by coal fired plants. (Stats from Suniva Inc's presentation at the ATDC)

If Solar initiatives were legislated in our state, or if the water subsidies were removed from Southern Company's operation cycle, the price differential between Solar and Coal fired power would quickly reach a parity. In other words, the cost of all that water for power production is already rolling up onto every citizen's and every municipalities balance sheet if it is not directly paid for in the power bills. All that water would be saved and made available for sustainable economic growth. All those solar panels would stabilize energy costs for the 30 year life cycle of the panels to anyone who bought and installed them. All those panels would reduce the need for dirty/toxic energy production such as coal, the leading source of electricity in Georgia. And all those panels would reduce demand for NG and Coal, thereby making energy more affordable to those who can't afford to install Solar. It starts a positive cycle and curtails this vicious cycle that is rapidly leading to an economic and social meltdown in our region, let alone the world in general.

While all the residential consumers are literally having to choose between taking a shower, buying healthy groceries, or purchasing gas for their cars, in a local economy where the last quarter's job growth rate has dropped to .05% and vacancies in commercial space in the City of Atlanta have reach levels higher than before 2001, 28.4%, we are being asked to pay MORE for water, when it is Georgia Power that is soaking up the lion's share of the surface water. Meanwhile, Georgia Power has effectively no alternative energy agenda. What they do have, which is a farce, at best, is here on their site. http://www.georgiapower.com/green/home.asp

How many people in these hard economic times are going to be pushed out of their homes over a water bill because the Mayor's office has failed to provide proper leadership for a project that has the potential to literally break the city's coffers once and for all? How many people statewide can't afford to water crops because the state government coddles the power industry, allowing them to exist without innovation, change, or sustainable growth?

We all have a lot of work to do to change all this. It can be done, and Atlanta can lead the way for the region. Truly, since we are the center of the regions economy, it is our responsibility to lead this change. In the upcoming elections in 08 and 09, let your voice be heard at all levels of government, but in particular locally and in our state where we can shape the laws that direct our utility company's agenda and pricing strategy.

Best regards,

Bryan Grant
=============================================================
-Forwarded message written by: Michael W Hoover <mhoover@wilsonmaclean.com>

Not to continue to dump on the city, but did anyone else see this article in today's AJC?

"Both moved forward without a formal recommendation of support, but will be considered by the council over the next 20 days as the panel tries to wrap up the fiscal year 2009 budget"

The city council has not voted on this as of yet, so if you have problems with these scenarios, make your voice heard. Email your city council member's at the following addresses:

Felicia Moore fmoore@atlantaga.gov

Kwanza Hall khall@atlantaga.gov

Carla Smith csmith@atlantaga.gov

Ivory Young iyoung@atlantaga.gov

Cleta WilsonMaclean cwilson@atlantaga.gov

Natalyn Archibong narchibong@atlantaga.gov

Anne Fauver afauver@atlantaga.gov

Howard Shook hshook@atlantaga.gov

Clair Muller cmuller@atlantaga.gov

C.T. Martin cmartin@atlantaga.gov

Jim Maddox jmaddox@atlantaga.gov

Joyce Sheppard jsheppard@atlantaga.gov

Ceasar Mitchell cmitchell@atlantaga.gov

Lamar Willis lwillis@atlantaga.gov

Mary Norwood mnorwood@atlantaga.gov

Lisa Borders lborders@atlantaga.gov

"The slowing job growth, high vacancy rates and new space combined with the ailing financial services sector, has some office owners working overtime to keep tenants in place."

Press Release: Big Rugby Tournament in Atlanta this Saturday!

2008-06-07T01:33:00.001-04:00

If you are looking to have some fun tomorrow, come out to the brand new Georgia Soccer Park and watch over 300 rugby players from all over the South bang it out for victory in the highlight of summer Rugby in Atlanta:

Atlanta Summer 7's Rugby Tournament.

Learn more about the sport at USARugby.org, or check out the attached Spectator Guide.

Interested in playing rugby??? There loads of men's and women's teams all around the South, and metro Atlanta, Athens, and Augusta now hosts over 30 high school club teams.. That is the Haka chant you hear on their site, stepping up.

Ā, upane! ka upane!
A step upward, another step upward!

Also.. about our rugby teams new bar, was shouted out all the way from NYC!
http://www.dailycandy.com/atlanta/article/37020/A+Tall+Order
Stout's in Buckhead, the former McDuffs..

Thanks for everyone's support!

Bryan "Beau" Grant
Treasurer
Atlanta Renegades RFC

State of the homes in Atlanta

2008-05-21T01:20:00.001-04:00

Homeowners here are a little nervous about the downward turn. However, Atlanta has been weathering the storm rather well by comparison to the West Coast or Florida, all except for condos. Though well paying jobs do seem to be growing scarce here.

Congress has done little to turn all of this around. The economic stimulus tax rebate checks will translate into us paying that money back in more taxes or inflation. The money is going to come from somewhere. They just get good political mileage out of this gambit.

Meanwhile, the banks are getting away with murder by being able to turn down offers for homes going into foreclosure, then once the house is foreclosed, the bank allows the buyers to bid up the price. The homeowner loses all their equity, the bank gets restored for the loan by the new buyer, and gets a nice tidy profit for their "troubles". Though it is technically illegal for banks to "broker" property, they are effectively doing so by turning down bona fide offers and allowing the value to bid up.

Meanwhile, the lax regulations for lending practices that has led us down this old and familiar road have not been dealt with by anyone. This lax environment allowed banks to dangle tempting fruits to home buyers by allowing most folks to buy more than they probably should have. While closing the deal, the banks, Realtors, and mortgage brokers downplayed the realities of re-financing when things go badly for the homeowners credit. All them, for the short term returns, earn more buy selling a bigger home than not. Once they are paid, there is no further recourse against any of them. Now the banks want us to bail out their loans? Ha. One of the rare good things Bush has done is threaten to veto congress's attempts to bail out the banks.

The banks know which loans are in danger of foreclosure. Unless they want to hold bad debt, those loans should be allowed to refinance to a 30 year fixed at a reasonable rate for a 725 FICO score, as a standard, and then given 2 or 3 months of grace period to re-stabilize the buyer's payment budgets. All of this should be at no expense to the homeowner. The banks set up this mess, they promoted the products, and they allowed marginal loans to be underwritten. They should eat the losses, or work in good faith to transition these loans into more serviceable accounts. And since their actions have led to an artificial run up in values, they have endangered the financial well being of every home owner.

This would go a great distance towards stabilizing the credit markets, both here and abroad.

The alternatives to this course of action are few. If we stay on the road we are now on, in terms of the Fed and Congress's quick fixes, we will drag the markets further down, and delay recovery.

Hmm. Maybe they want this to happen so we will vote in the new Amero to replace the Dollar, and usher in the North American Union to extinguish the flame of liberty knows as the USA.

In regards to the Supreme Courts treatment of gun control rights

2008-03-19T00:19:00.001-04:00

-- Recently, I visited the UK for Rugby World Cup. I heard many stories of home invasions and random stabbings. Both of these are practically non-existent in areas of the US where citizens are allowed to own legal arms, particularly handguns. In the Atlanta area, Marietta and Kennesaw are next door to one another. Marietta has one of the highest crime rates in the region. Kennesaw, which requires citizens to keep and bear arms by city ordinance, has practically zero crime. The criminals know better, so they go to the neighboring town without an "ethic" of self-defense.

Gun control advocates fail to recognize one fundamental distinction. Citizens legally owning weapons is what is at stake. Criminals will continue to find sources of illegal weapons, regardless of whether the law allows weapons. This is why they are considered criminals. In DC, how easy is it to simply go to a nieghboring state, and drive back with a gun, legal or otherwise? The only people the law helps are the criminals operating in DC!

There should be licensing requirements, perhaps, to attend training courses before the the first weapon a of a given type is purchased. Rifle & Shotgun training for hunters, pistol training for self-defense, etc. But then, there should also be training for using tazers and mace products.

As for the trite comparisons of the US and Canada.. US and Europe.. Canadians own statistically as many weapons as we do in the US. The difference is that they are no so inclined to to kill each other. This has little do with gun control legislation, and is something far deeper that is culturally based, which can be fostered in the public through direct legislative process. AS for Europe.. the Swiss get to keep their weapons from military service, automatic weapons. Perhaps that is why they have been to maintain neutrality for so long, that and their banking facilities.

At then end of the day, I feel far safer knowing my 80 year grandparents in Asheville can defend themselves as needed from home invaders, than the opposite scenario if they lived in the DC area where they would not be able to use sufficient force to defend themselves. My mother lives by herself in the country near Augusta. Noone would ever know anything happened to her. I sleep better knowing she can also defend herself.

The world may become a place where we can live together without all the mistrust. However, that day has not yet arrived.

City related agenda items

2008-03-17T13:32:00.001-04:00

Dear Mary-

Several items. Some are simply for your visibility (Labeled "FYI"). Others need a contact or assistance from your office to proceed ( "HELP:" )

1. FYI: Someone in my hood was billed over $2000 for Water last month. They did a credit, but how does that happen in the first place?? What is it going to take to straighten those people out over there so they run a fair and reliable service? Personally, I had to file a 3rd audit request in 18 months, as you may recall. This is even after I made the 6 o'clock news with a two other neighbors last summer for the water billing problems. The water dept. eventually made some adjustments, but NOT based upon measured results, just arbitrary decisions made by lower level employees, as if they were giving me "hush-money". They even made me promise I would not tell anyone about it. How shady is that?! The related message for the $2000 credit is below. I just woner whose bill they will push that credit onto to offset the foregone revenue?

From: <jeanetteanderson1815@comcast.net>
Date: Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 6:57 AMMy bill for the month of the leak was $2239.00 - this has been credited by the city - Hurrah!!!

2. HELP: The dumptrucks are back on Howell Mill/Defoors though BPNA gained a resolution from the City to re-route. The City has now just decided to ignore the commitment, and is now sending the dump trucks along the old route again. The city has not stated pretty clearly that nothing will done. A long and frustrated, but well composed complaint is here. I also attached it in case you cant get into the BPNA group list site. What should we do to get the City to honor it's previous commitments? How can we enhance this agreement over time? As it is, we will have to fight this battle over and over again since the City will not honor it's agreements over any length of time.

3. My traffic calming project has reached a dead end. I gained approvals for the project from the city. I then gathered more than 75% of the property owners signed consents (50+ addresses), and have not heard anything back about scheduling. Can someone over there reach out to Cedrick Shipman, Adolphus Ofur and Daniel Ephraim to see where the the blockage exists?

4. FYI" Why is it that it takes engaging the city council's resources to get any form of effective and substantive response from city services? It is not as if I don't pay my tax bills. I REALLY appreciate every bit of assistance your office has afforded over the years. However, I can only imagine what better use your office's could be be put to if you did not have to run around and force the City dept's to do their jobs.

5. FYI/rant: The suggestions at the FCTA about the alleged $70m deficit seem to be a great approach. Personally, I think who ever wins the Mayor's office should ask for for the resignation of every city employee at the management level, along with a job description justifying their employment with the city, and then keep the ones on board who are justified. If they cant bother to write the justification, then that sort of speaks to their worth, yes? I just thank the Lord every day that the actions of City Hall only directly affect 10-15% of metro Atlanta's residents. It limits that extent of the collateral damage the city can create, and allows our region to grow despite a City Hall that is frequently compared to New Orleans City Hall in terms of inefficiencies, nepotism, crony-ism, corruption, and waste. (See #6 for related commentary)

6. HELP: I am showing the Armour drive district to developers who have expressed strong interest. I have cautioned them that the City has discussed putting a road thru to Peachtree from Monroe, but that does not mean it will ever actually get built in the next 10 years. Can you point me to the right person to obtain a status/update on that effort? It is great for location, and would do well for a residential live/work center.

Also, on this end, who is the right resource in the City to communicate design ideas with for a given site? I have lined several well financed operators that are interested in the Atlanta region. DeKalb and City of Atlanta are the two most difficult to contact meaningfully to clarify design considerations. This delays project time lines and increases operating costs. Thus, I tend to steer clients into the other municipalities that are more responsive. As a native Atlantan, it pains me to do takes clients elsewhere, but when selecting sites I have to put their interests first. I ask so I can renew efforts to bring business into the City itself.

7.FYI: Chattahoochee/Howell Mill/ Collier Traffic.
We are on the news again. Gee. Wunderbar. I am sure it does wonders for our property values and insurance rates. "Hey honey! Look at all that traffic! Let's go and look at homes in those neighborhoods!" lol.
"Maureen Finneran Hetrick" maureenfh@mindspring.com Sat Mar 15, 2008 6:59 am (PDT)
"It looks like channel 46 listened to Deborah's pleas for help with the Howell Mill Road traffic problem. They didn't mention the added stress of Northside Dr. being a detour route for 14th St. but at least we got a mention! Check out the video at: http://www.cbs46.com/video/15599322/index.html"

The "improvement" has done nothing but blow $$$ and slow up traffic for a project that will not any difference. Is there a way to improve how the Traffic/Streets people manage their operations? Selig, Carter, and our prop tax $$ paid for better than what is being delivered. As it is, it is a 3' widening that will not make any ounce of difference. The trucks still route thru Howell Mill. The turn is still a traffic light instead of a much needed thru left from Chattahoochee to Howell Mill (and Vice versa with a thru Right). Traffic on Collier backs up well past the I75 overpass for 4+ hours a day as they wait to make a turn onto Howell Mill from Collier. The Howell Mill Corridor is simply choked, and does not move at all. etc etc. The old plan is attached. Please suggest who should be presented with this plan that can actually make decisions and execute. As it stands, the folks I shopped with in Wildwoode, BPNA, UHNA, Kilgore, etc all thought it was a good idea on the surface, just in dire need of legitimate engineering review. Jim Borders still needs some convincing but he is in the conversation.

8. HELP: I tried to reach the Athletic Director of the APS. The board member tried to put me in touch, claiming the person tried to reach me. They did not, and I let her know that. then the conversation ended. I really need to reach the AD of APS on behalf of the Ga High School Rugby Association. We are now in the 10th month of trying to contact them. Thanks. www. GHSRA.org (The site was down today, so please forgive if the link is bad.)

Thank you for all the hard work, the responsiveness your office consistently shows, and all the consideration you have for the wide ranging list of issues that beset all of th City's residents.

Kind regards,

--
Bryan "Beau" Grant
Underwood Hills resident
home: 404.351.0905

Urban legend: Obama is a Muslim.. as if.

2008-02-28T17:13:00.004-05:00

Before I tee off, I wish to couch this commentary with the fact that any candidate for president who I may have thought was suitable have withdrawn from the race.

Fore!

It is now time to tee off on those losers out there who have nothing better to do than disabuse the facts, twist religions into hating one another, and generally mislead the public. There ought to be a law.. but that would mean Free Speech would suffer, so here we are.. defending against horrendous and hateful diatribes.

The muslim-american irony letter is found on a low-grade site, The Black Vault Forums, and even there it is easily shot down. The Obama letter is debunked rather well on the Urbanlegends site.

Please visit these sites if you read the source text, as I do not wish to perpetuate the searchability of such garbage by reposting it here.

In essence, the draft is a poorly written and inaccruately referenced diatribe that has one mission, to perpetuate hatred. Unbalanced, it actually goes much further than an outright lie, it deftly mangles the facts so you have to actually read and prove your case, statement by statement, to debunk their position.

Machiavelli said, loosely, that the first rule of statecraft is to create a perceived difference among the governed populace. Then fan the flames of animosity that further divide the populace. Then you can more easily govern and direct as you wish.

If one "intellectually" views the Christian Bible, the books call for similar commitments from Jews, and later Paul advises that Christians also proceed along such "exclusive" discernment policies such as ostracizing women from public speaking, preaching, and teaching in schools.

I Corinthians 14:34 "let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law. 35 And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church."

I Timothy 2:11 Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. 12 But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness. 13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression: 15 but she shall be saved through her child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.

Yet.. As Americans, we allow our women to teach, to pray unveiled, and to actually have dominion over their men in many relationships. Yet these common standards of our society directly conflict with the New & Old Testament teachings. Following the rationale of the diatribe against Muslims, how can we be truly Americans, if we are Christians? Gender is protected under the Constitution. A good fictional account of what the USA Would look like should Neo-Con's run wild and change things so women's rights are abolished is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It should be required reading in 7th grade in my opinion.

Jesus, who basically stated that we need to come to the Father by truly loving one another; that he is an expression of perfect love and the perfect sacrifice, he offered himself as the conduit for us to come to the Father.. All the references to the Kingdom of Heaven when Jesus was being interrogated by Pilate and also Herod were considered to be seditious both under Mosaic (Jewish) and Roman law.

The US constitution is written under the tone of enlightenment, not under a specifically Christian theme. Ben Franklin & Thomas Jefferson, key contributors to the document, are well known enlightenment philosophers. If anything, the constitution's theme would map closely with Gnosticism than purely dogmatic and canonized Christian religious precepts, beyond the ethic of love and tolerance taught by Christ.

As for not being friends with adherents of other religions, the Koran is not specific about ostracizing other faiths. The Old Testament is rather specific about doing just that. Remember that every animal man, woman, and child was slain before the Chosen could enter Israel, the promised land? The New Testament puts an end to it, unless you start digging it what Paul may be construed to be saying, but you would to have be stretching it a bit. In sum, Judeo-Christian religions have many such "exclusivity's" that could equally be construed by non-Christians to be prejudiced.

We have a democracy whose laws clearly protect religious freedom.

I suggest we uphold the standards of our society and scrutinize such poorly contrived scribblings as being incendiary, divisive, and an attack at the very fabric of American society that allows for tolerant and just representative government.

Not doing so only gives those errant Mullah's an axe to grind, and makes it all the easier for them to brainwash students into demonizing a country that has long sought to preserve the freedoms of its people. Our country has sought to do so longer than anywhere else on the planet.

The part that has me rattled is that we are now at a time when these freedoms are increasingly challenged by a government that is overly corrupt, bought and sold by corporate interests, and engaged in activities that the average American disagrees with, if we can be so bold as to establish the "average American". It is a gross over-generalization to be sure, but the problem is NOT with the Muslims. The problem is with a self-destroying domestic and foreign policy that has placed our nation in peril, leading our markets and natural resources into rocky straights, and does little to increase the quality of education, but spends billions on pork barrel projects with legislative earmarks, we are all too near to becoming a modern version of the Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Western Civilization.

BMG

Re: [uhna-discuss] FW: ACTION ALERT: ATLANTA NEIGHBORHOODS CALL TO ACTION

2008-02-27T15:19:00.001-05:00

Dear Neighbor,

Thanks for being proactive in making positive changes to the tax collection processes for our property.

Recently the President & CEO of Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc., John O'Callaghan, has conducted a grassroots email campaign, included below, and also submitted an op-ed article to the AJC "Property tax relief will keep city vital" to support an initiative to more than triple the homestead exemption. On the surface, this sounds like a good plan. However, it warrants more scrutiny.

The ANDP's message contradicts directly what is stated in the ANDP's own Fact Sheet. The email heralds this measure as a quick solution to keep homeowners in their homes. It is not. The fact sheet states, "To minimize the financial impact on local governments, their bill will phase increases over a five year period through 2013. Starting in 2014, the homestead exemption will automatically increase with annual rises in the consumer price index."

The ANDP's proposal will not help anyone currently facing a foreclosure nor will it meaningfully make inroads towards supporting current property value levels in the marketplace. Furthermore, if we implement this, it will decrease tax revenues at a time when foreclosures are the highest in history, Thus, the revenues that were ordinarily expected are simply not going to be present. You can't collect taxes on a home that is foreclosed.

This proposes to increase the Exemption to from $15,000 to $50,000, slightly more than triple the current rate. So, if you own a $200,000 house, 25% of your tax bill would be covered, a difference of 17.5% over the previous 7.5% which is already covered.

Since it will take until 2013 to realize the total 17.5% difference, how can a meager 3.5% per year decrease in property tax liability achieve anything beyond marginally tightening municipal budgets at a time when they are going to be experiencing constriction in collections arguably at least until 2009. The ANDP plan does not position a way to collect the revenues that would otherwise be cash shortfalls if their scheme were enacted.

"The figures came as the chief economist of the mortgage finance company Freddie Mac warned of falling house prices and rising foreclosures for the next two years.'2008 is not going to be a pretty year,' Frank Nothaft said. 'We'll see some improvement in 2009, but not for house prices.'" -BBC Feb 26, 2008. US foreclosures up 57% in January

Also, does the ANDP's effort unnecessarily compete with the efforts underway in the state house and senate to revolutionize property tax collections statewide ?

Richardson's bill has successfully passed a key sub-committee. This legislation claims it would cut 2 million Ga homeowners property taxes by 50% by 2010. It would offset the revenues by increasing state sales tax. The "poor" would be being allowed to deduct certain sales taxes from their income taxes. Statewide relief of 25% per year with offsetting revenue sources, versus 3.5% per year with budget shortfalls. I will choose Richardson's plan all day long.

On personal note and sidebar, I have never understood why the US taxpayers have never successfully challenge the legality of disallowing the deduction of sales tax from income tax, since the practice is effectively double taxation. If the sales tax is 5% and your effective tax rate is 32%, you effectively pay 6.6% sales tax because you are being taxed twice.

--
Bryan "Beau" Grant

--
Original email
        I appreciate the leadership you provide to Atlanta's neighborhoods. As you know, our city neighborhoods are at-risk. Rampant foreclosures and increased property reassessments are threatening to destroy many Atlanta neighborhoods. We must take action to turn the tide of foreclosures and keep families in their homes.

        The quickest and simplest way to offer relief to struggling homeowners is to increase the Homestead Exemption for property-tax assessments. Legislation being offered in the Georgia General Assembly by Representatives Margaret Kaiser, Kathy Ashe and "Able" Mable Thomas will catch Atlanta's homestead exemption up with 15 years of inflation and lower property taxes by $1,400 a year, lowering monthly payments for homeowners by more than $100. For many families, this savings could be the difference between keeping and losing their home.

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 10:10 AM, Danny Moore <volberg@hotmail.com> wrote:

If anyone is interested in posting a yard sign, please reply to this message. I have 20 to get out in our neighborhood. Hopefully we can get them out in heavily traffic spots. Thanks, Danny Moore

Dear Danny,

I appreciate the leadership you provide to Atlanta's neighborhoods. As you know, our city neighborhoods are at-risk. Rampant foreclosures and increased property reassessments are threatening to destroy many Atlanta neighborhoods. We must take action to turn the tide of foreclosures and keep families in their homes.

The quickest and simplest way to offer relief to struggling homeowners is to increase the Homestead Exemption for property-tax assessments. Legislation being offered in the Georgia General Assembly by Representatives Margaret Kaiser, Kathy Ashe and "Able" Mable Thomas will catch Atlanta's homestead exemption up with 15 years of inflation and lower property taxes by $1,400 a year, lowering monthly payments for homeowners by more than $100. For many families, this savings could be the difference between keeping and losing their home.

Please reply directly to this message for more information on how your neighborhood association can make a difference by simply putting up yard signs or making calls to your district representative. Your action is critical to protecting our city neighborhoods.

Thank you for your support. Please also reply to me directly if I can answer questions or provide you with more information.

John O'Callaghan
President & CEO

Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc

Our mission is to promote the concept and implement the development of mixed income communities that result in the equitable distribution of affordable housing throughout the metropolitan Atlanta region.

Fwd: GOOD NEWS UPDATE: Rottie is rescued

2008-02-21T17:42:00.001-05:00

All,

So this thing of sending legible and actionable messages seems to working VERY well. The beagles are adopted and paid for 12 dogs in Elberton were rescued, the poor rottie was rescue and vetted, and several of these have adopted permanently.

Now all we need to do is draft a law requiring owner spay and neuter, and we would not have to rescue nearly as many.

In addition to my two fosters, one of the people in my network has some good ones she is fostering. The photoalbums are awesome.

Have a look and crosspost to those who may want to adopt.

============
Forwarded from "Jamie Sprague" <jsprague@allconnect.com>,
Direct all inquiries to Jamie!
+++++++++++++

BG-

I am home-seeking as well -- for four!

Erin and Liza, Two female lab-hound mixes:
http://picasaweb.google.com/helpshelterdogs/NothingLikeAHome

Charlie, male lab-pit mix that was fully-trained and
board at Man's Best Friend training facility -- he is
a perfect gentleman. Best manners of any dog I know!
http://picasaweb.google.com/helpshelterdogs/Charlie

Thanks!
Jamie

New Howell Mill neighborhood businesses to check out: Crossfit, Haircuts, Coffee, Beer, and Empanadas

2008-02-15T12:08:00.001-05:00

Hi all,

I have been meaning to get around to this. We have a some new businesses in our neighborhood, and you would enjoy checking them out.

1. Crossfit North Atlanta - in the old PRTC fitness space behind the Chick-Fil-A and the new Latin Restaurant.

Travis Harley, his wife Elizabeth, and two kids have lived in Underwood Hills for sometime now. He opened the gym up last Fall, and it is now "Officially" open. It is the training used to get those pudgy men into beefcake shape for the movie 300. My rugby team uses it for nights when the field is too wet for actual training. You get RIPPED.

Trav has made a point of making it kid and lady friendly, downplaying the testosterone angle. His partner, Kathy Knox, is in awesome shape. She redefines old school, archaic, patriarchal notions about women and athletic. Kath blows away literally every other gym member including the guys.

Trav's 2 little girls have a blast hanging out at the gym with their dad!

Also, Trav's dad,a former NY Jet, leads a coaching and sportsmanship non-profit which has transformed many lives of players and their families. The Coach's Corner mindset is apparent when you visit the gym and part of the DNA.

Give them a try. It is a great workout, and it is only two blocks from the 'hood!

2. West's Barber Shop. Kevin, who used to work for Tommy at the West Paces Ferry Barber Shop, saved up his money and took over West's. West's has been around forever. My grandfather, Bitsy Grant, used to get his hair cut there back in the 70's!

Kevin has vastly improved the service and the design of the place. Hardwoods, ferns, and fine touches greet the barbing customer. It is like a day spa for men. Shaves, steaming hot towels, the old school electric massage gadget, the scalp massage gadget. The guys are dressed up in bow ties. It really does take you bake to an era where you might catch your barbers singing or Andy Griffith might stroll through the front door.

3. Cha Clio (Spelling?) I really need to scribble down the name, as I can never quite remember it. This is the new restaurant in the old Misto location next to Chik-Fil-A. It is a pan-latin menu encompassing all sorts of favoridas from the Americas. the staff is pan-latin and has moved up here from Miami, all of them.

A friendly bunch, the fare is really is good, and the lunch pricing is super cheap with most items at $7/entree. The evening pricing is a bit erratic, but the food is good, and there are lots of affordable options.

They will need our support to survive, as they are still awaiting approval for their liquor license. I have heard from other restaurant owners, particularly in the Grant Park/Glenwood Green area, that the City of Atlanta dragged their feet for 5-6 months, practically obliterating one restaurant concept, now out of business, and crippling two others.

[Liquor sales is a key component of restaurant cash flow and makes or breaks a business. Even if the service, atmosphere, and the food quality is superb, missing beverage sales cash flow will slaughter an otherwise great place.]

4. Octane- Now a new business, but worth mentioning since the only gourmet coffee alternative is Starbuck's. Free Wi-Fi, a real food menu, night life with great Belgian beers, groovy employees, and .. the best cappuccino in the city except, maybe, for Meskerem's Ethiopian restaurant at Briarcliff and Clairmont.

The barrista's literally have a SIX month training program before they are certified for Octane. This certification is ONLY for octane, so these people are wild eyed zealots for the perfect coffee beverage. It shows in the drink. If you have ever been to a Cafe in Rome or Florence, this is comparable, if not actually slightly BETTER. Hard to imagine, but true.

So, I bring up this one as a reminder that it is still there and still awesome.

5. 5 Seasons at the Brickyard - Dennis Lange and his wife are opening their 3rd location right in our backyard. It is a micro brewery with a great selection of mostly German styled beers, as well as a full menu with some Asian flairs. His wife is Japanese, as I recall, and you will see Edaname, Seared Tuna, etc on the menu with her influence.

The location at the The Prado has always been a great hang out, and Lange makes a point of supporting local non-profits like the Atlanta Bicycling League, to host meetings and events. I look forward to becoming a "regular", since the Fox n Hound has fallen so far over the past 5 years.

6. West Egg is still open, somehow. That they are thriving while all of the construction is surrounding them, is testament to how "off the charts" great they are.

They will stay in the building as it is developed into Knoll's new showroom and a condo residence. Good food, good coffee, and free WiFi! But you knew all that.

7. Epitaph - Pangea is now closed. The owners stated that a combination of things led them to throw in the towel. Dealing with the City was at the top of the list, right along with the landlord having unrealistic notions of what the market should pay for rent in a warehouse district with no visibility, and bumpy roads. An end to a good sandwich joint, I will miss them. I hope they will reconsider shutting their doors to the world forever and will hope they find a new home that will allow them to succeed.

IHT.com Article: On the cusp of economic history

2008-01-22T15:14:00.000-05:00

This IHT.com article has been sent to you by: bgrant@conviviagroup.com
A very important article to read. Most average people focus on G8 summits to focus their attention, never realizing that Davos is where the the deals are struck and policy between big business and big government is established.
------------------------------------------------------

On the cusp of economic history
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Is economic history about to change course? Among the chieftains of politics and industry gathering in Davos for the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, a consensus appears to be building that the capitalist system is in for one of those rare and tempestuous mutations that give rise to a new set of economic policies.

As the prospect of a U.S. recession overshadows a tense and drawn-out election campaign in the world's most emblematic market economy, a corrosive cocktail of factors is eating away at old certainties: Power is steadily leaking from West to East. Income inequalities are rising in rich countries.

And signs of a protectionist backlash are multiplying as worries about climate change, the rise of state-run investment funds and the bursting of the recent credit bubble give novel ammunition to those in the West who question free markets and clamor for more shelter from globalization.

What exactly will emerge when the dust settles is hard to predict, economists and executives say. But this much seems clear: With the frontier between state and market once again up for grabs, the era of easy globalization is over - and big government in one form or another is back.

"The pendulum between market and state is swinging back," Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, said by telephone before traveling to Davos. "The year 2008 is a crucial year that could end up setting the tone for some time to come. What we need is an ideological mutation without falling into the trap of protectionism."

One such mutation in mainstream economic policy took place after the Depression of 1929, which led to a protectionist interlude and then gave rise to Keynesian demand-side policies and eventually the welfare state. Another took place following the oil price shocks in the 1970s, which refocused policy makers' attention to supply-side measures and strengthened those pushing for privatization and free markets as the best way to stimulate growth.

When students of economics open their history books in 2030, they might read about 2008 as the year when the groundwork was laid for a re-regulation of certain markets, a more redistributive tax system and new forms of international policy coordination, economists say.

"We are seeing the seeds of a new paradigm," said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who will be at Davos this year. "Whoever wins the U.S. election will have to pay more attention to equity. And whatever comes out of the next climate change agreement will be international economic cooperation on a scale never seen before."

According to Stephen Roach, chief economist for Asia at Morgan Stanley, who will also be among the 2,400 participants in Davos to ponder what forum organizers have labeled "The Power of Collaborative Innovation," some basic notions guiding economic thinking in recent decades have been challenged by ever-faster globalization.

In theory, Roach said, wages increase with productivity growth and all economies have a comparative advantage in the production of something. But real wage stagnation in some of the richest economies and increasing fears that China and India combined will eventually be able to make just about everything the West can, only cheaper, were turning that theory on its head, he said.

Weekly earnings for full-time American workers in the second quarter last year were unchanged from their 2000 levels - even though productivity grew by 18 percent in the same period.

Fifty-four percent of Western Europeans and 43 percent of Americans now believe their children will be worse off than they are in economic terms, according to a Gallup International poll in the last quarter of 2007 across 60 countries.

"Economic theory tells us that globalization is a win-win, but it isn't, at least not in the West," Roach said. "The theory was written for another era. We have to ask some hard questions about unfettered capitalism. We need a new script."

The risk is that Western governments, mindful of the growing backlash among voters, will be tempted to rewrite the script by engaging in old and new forms of protectionism.

Roach counted more than 20 anti-China bills in the U.S. Congress last year. In 2006, when the number of such initiatives was already high, it never resulted in action, he said. But with presidential candidates from both parties vowing to take a tough stance on China, there is a greater than 60 percent chance, Roach predicted, that some of the pending bills will become law in coming months with bipartisan majorities big enough to avoid a presidential veto.

And suddenly there are a lot of broadly acceptable concerns that can help disguise protectionist tendencies.

The most prominent one is the environment. Since climate change was catapulted onto the global agenda, European and American officials have looked into ways of making importers - like China and India - pay, since they do not adhere to the same greenhouse emission standards.

Another concern is financial markets. The credit bubble associated with U.S. subprime loans was the latest in a series of asset bubbles, from equities to housing, to burst in recent years and has further shaken confidence in markets.

There has also been an outcry against state-run investment funds from places like China, Kuwait and soon Russia buying stakes in Western companies. The noise has subsided somewhat as American banks, squeezed by the subprime crisis, are in desperate need of capital.

But as these so-called sovereign wealth funds grow, and the shift in savings from West to East and from private to public sector accelerates, complaints are bound to flare anew, said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Boston and the author of "Commanding Heights," a history of the world economy.

"This is new, it's big and it's only going to get bigger," Yergin said. "People are really going to struggle with the issue of capital flows. The question is: will there be international norms and rules or is the focus going to be on protection?"

The same question could be asked about the growing number of takeovers of Western companies by a new breed of cash-rich and technology-hungry multinationals from emerging economies. By 2006, the slice of cross-border mergers and acquisitions from emerging economies had reached a record 14 percent. Companies like Mittal Steel of India and Lenovo of China spent $123 billion in more than 1,000 deals, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. K.V. Kamath, chief executive of ICICI Bank of India, recalled a workshop he attended three years ago in Davos, at which participants unanimously agreed that despite globalization, no non-Western banks would crack the ranks of the world's largest banks by market capitalization anytime soon. Today, 3 Chinese banks are in the top 10. "I didn't see it coming either, but the same thing will happen in other sectors," Kamath said. His bank, the biggest private bank in India, calculates that Chinese and In!
dian companies on average double in size every three years. "Investment is increasingly flowing from east to west," he said.

So far there has been more talk of protectionism than action, but that could change, said Lamy, the WTO chief. This year might prove crucial for finalizing the Doha trade round, stalemated by sparring over agricultural subsidies in the developed world, and tariffs and market access in developing countries. "It is perhaps the last chance we have," Lamy said.

Part of the battle has to be fought at home, where Western governments are feeling the need to address the growing malaise voters feel toward globalization. More equitable tax systems are one response; Rogoff, the Harvard professor, argues that a flat rate tax in the United States would be less regressive than the current system. Others say an even deeper review might be called for. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, this month commissioned two Nobel economists, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, to help devise a more holistic indicator of economic progress than growth in gross domestic product, which fails to account for issues like income inequality that have been at the heart of the globalization debate.

"Economics is not just politics," Sen said. "There is more to human progress than aggregate statistics of growth. We have to ask the right questions and concentrate on what matters to people."

These ideas are becoming more mainstream. I hope through French initiative they will become more widely accepted in Europe and beyond."

A year and a half ago, researchers at Yergin's group drew up a number of scenarios for the world economy in 2030. One of them, "Asian Phoenix," saw a world in which protectionism was kept at bay and Asian economies kept underpinning swift global growth. The other, "Global Fissure," was a troubled world economy with widespread economic nationalism and a backlash against globalization.

At the time, the latter scenario seemed to be the more remote. But that may be changing, Yergin said. "What seemed highly unlikely," he said, "could become rather more likely."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/22/business/dprotect.php

Bank of America - Fees, Cheats and 'Gotcha Capitalism' up to no good on Howell Mill.

2008-01-09T18:32:00.001-05:00

Another example of Gotcha Capitalism.. Read/hear a great article about all of this nickle and dime shake down of the consumers from NPR..
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17898418

Today I tried to cash a small check at the Howell Mill Bank of America. They tried to charge me a $5.00 fee as I don't have an account there myself. Meanwhile, another check I wanted to cash, was not assessed the fee. It appears that if it is a personal check, there is no fee. If it is a business check, the $5.00 fee applies.

Please read the following summary of what transpired. If you are a BnA business checking account holder or if you need to cash a check from a BNA business checking account holder, you should pay special attention.

If this has happened to any of you, please do write to me directly. I intend to pursue this matter vigorously.

Trying to be of service..

--
Bryan "Beau" Grant

Affadvit

On January 9th, 2008, I visited the Bank of America branch location at 1775 Howell Mill Rd NW, Atlanta, GA.

I attempted to cash a check issued to me from a business who uses Bank of America as their checking account. The check written for $50.64 was assessed a $5.00 cashing fee because I do not hold an account at the bank myself and because the check was written from a business checking account at their bank. Meanwhile, the other check I wanted to cash, written from a Bank of America personal account, was not assessed a fee though the check was for $735.00. The only difference was that the one check was a personal check, the other, smaller, check was a business check.

I spoke with the branch manager, Eva. She stated this is a common practice in the banking industry. Furthermore, she stated that BnA have upheld this policy for several years.

I called my CPA to double check. He has never heard of this particular racket, but had run across other nefarious fee schemes levied by BnA, and was unsurprised. He agreed that is likely an illegal practice.

I visited my own bank, Suntrust, and spoke with an assistant manager. He tried to reach a colleague within BnA to verify this practice, but was unable to reach anyone and committed to give me a call after they connected with one another. Meanwhile, he confirmed that Suntrust does not ever asses this type of fee. He also speculated that it could actually be illegal. He also speculated that the BnA branch manager may have the ability to create these types of schemes at BnA so that it will boost their branch performance metrics for fee collection volumes.

I spoke with a tort litigation attorney. She also agreed this is very likely violation of several basic principles involving commercial paper. She is discussing the case with one of her colleagues who deals with this specific type of tort.

3 Beagles: Updates

2008-01-03T18:33:00.001-05:00

Hey all,

I still have the 3 Beagles referenced in the other email and need to get them placed into "Forever homes". There are some new photos - webalbum.

They are all on Petfinder, which will be the most likely source of a lead, but .. it is always good to work the friends and family social network when placing dogs.

They are now being sponsored with fund from Atlanta Beagle Rescue, but I am fostering for the interim. Bobbie, one of my neighbors, has volunteered to foster Jake, but the other two are here with me.

The female, "Lucy", is pretty much ready to go and is vetted/spayed. The young male, " Bart", is up for neutering next week. The oldest one, "Jake" we are going to do two weeks from now, as he has a cold right now.

Thanks for your support, and definitely keep forwarding the leads to me if you have them.

Beau

PS: If you any of you know anyone in the press or legal professions, please have a look at this case, and lend a hand. Someone brought it to my attention tonight. How the rescuer is being is arrested for saving a dying dog, but the owner is not being arrested for gross negligence and cruelty to animals, I will never know or choose to accept. The incident is up in Pennsylvania, so pass it along to folks up there to help as well.

Tha

This is from Bayard Snowden in TN and that is his son on the couch with the dog....

    An old tired-looking dog wandered into the yard. I could tell from his collar and well fed belly that he had a home. He followed me into the house, into the kitchen, and on a couch.

    An hour later he went to the door, and I let him out. The next day he was back, resumed his position on the couch, and slept for an hour. This continued for several weeks. Curious, I pinned a note to his collar, "Every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap."
    The next day he arrived with a different note pinned to his collar, "He lives in a home with ten children. He's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?"

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--
Bill Penn
The Letitia House Gazette

--
Bryan "Beau" Grant
Convivia Group
Commercial Real Estate Broker

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time." -Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Office: US - +1 (404) 351-0905
Office: UK - +44 (20) 8144 7750
Mobile: US +1 (404) 932-6399
Skype: malacandra
SecondLife: Jebediah Raymaker
Google Chat: bgrantenator

The information in this e-mail and any attached documents is strictly confidential and may be legally privileged. Any unauthorized use or disclosure of this communication is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not read, use or disseminate the information. If you believe that you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your system. Further, this e-mail does not constitute an offer to sell securities or property or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities or property, and may not be used for such purposes.

3 Wise Beagles found on Christmas Eve..

2007-12-27T18:02:00.000-05:00

(Please do CROSS POST to your own lists.)

View their photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bgrantenator/BeaglesXMAS2007

The short story:

On Christmas Eve, I found 3 pure bred Beagles on the side of the road.. 2 male and one female, all unfixed/unspayed. One of the males is quite old, but is gentle and bright. The other two are are 2-6 years old, behave like siblings, and are clever and gentle. The younger male likes to assert himself as the Alpha dog, but he is manageable and can be trained pretty easily with more time.

They curl up together to sleep. The two males sleep on top of one another, despite the apparent rivalry.

They appear to be seasoned hunting dogs, very friendly even affectionate dispositions, and really clever. They also get along with cats. My cat was not put off them, snoozing about a foot away from one of them.

They seem to be housebroken, having only one or two accidents. Given their emotional state, this is pretty normal to have an accident.

Anybody who knows anyone with a penchant or knowledge of Beagles, please call me to get these three into fostering or adoption. -404.932.6399 cell.

Thanks!!

Beau Grant

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress
can be measured by the way its animals are treated"

Mahatma Gandhi

PS: If you want to adopt them directly, please fill out on adoption form on the Ga Humane Society website. I will work with them to get them spayed/neutered BEFORE they are adopted, and the adopting family can reimburse for the expenses. Under no circumstances will these be released before being spayed/neutered.. for obvious reasons.

The Long Story - I just returned form visiting my family in Augusta. They live out on the Savannah River just over the border into South Carolina. It is the first nice neighborhood on that route. It appears that shrewd McCormick County, SC red necks dump their pets on the road into the neighborhood.

This year on Christmas Eve, I drove past 3 beagles who were sniffing around a spot on the road. I passed them on my errands about 3 times. They never left the spot, so I when I was heading back up to Atlanta, and it was getting dark, I decided these must be abandoned. They appeared to be waiting for their owners return. They would inspect each car as it made the turn onto the road, making sure if it was the right one. Sooner or later, someone would carelessly run them over by talking on their cellphone, so there was no choice but to round them up.

I flagged down a car with a couple of guys who helped me put them into my car. The Beagles were very cooperative, the problem was that I already had my three labs in the car. Popping the rear hatch window, we found that if inserted them backwards, then they would not snarl at each other. I suppose this worked because the new Beagles showed submission to the labs by presenting their backsides first.

Barely making my Christmas eve dinner plans back in Atlanta that evening, I managed to install the Beagles in the sunroom under the Christmas tree, where they drank all the water, ate all the food, and curled up on the dog beds. I decided to forgo the stand up-sit down-kneel Christmas church service routine, opting instead return home after dinner to give them all a good cleansing, stem to stern. After a thorough scrubbing with gentle topical disinfectants, endless q-tips soiled with ear goo, and organic soaps and conditioners to remove the caked on dirt, sludge, brambles, fleas, and ticks, they emerged clean and vibrant. All the cuts and tears on the ears were dressed, and all in all, they emerged shiny and presentable for Santa Claus.

2007 Holiday year end wrap up!

2007-12-12T21:34:00.000-05:00

2007 Bulletin!

Well the Christmas tree is up and looking good. All the ornaments are hanging in there, as the dogs know realize these are not toys for them to play fetch with. Last year, the first several feet of the tree were denuded by Cami pulling off the ornaments and presenting them to me.

As the year wraps up, it is time to look back on all of it. This past year has been packed with all sorts of events and happenings.

Aside from continuing as ever my commercial real estate brokerage business, I have been up to all sorts of other things.

My great aunt, Hattie, has been doing well since she went to the nursing home, Budd Terrace. Emory Healthcare does a great job, and with the added support of 24 hour sitters, we have some peace of mind that she will not have much opportunity to fall for a 5th time. She fell last November in 2006. Piedmont admitted her into the hospital on a fishing trip. She was livid, and so the nurses drugged her without our permission with Haldol. This sent her into a 15 hour seizure where she squeezed the blood out of my hand for hours. The floor had contagion protocol signs on the other doors, so it was not long before she caught eColi, in addition to pneumonia. The Haldol "burnt" her brain up, so she was transferred for special care. So.. after 2 weeks of intensive care at Emory Wesley Woods neuropsyche.. she managed to regain her faculties, as well as fight off the illnesses. Amazing.

She was dropped by her sitters on the floor, so she had to go into the hospital this past summer. Emory did a great job. The ER, the OR, the hospital care, all of it was top notch. She received 3 pins and a plate in her hip, and she is back up and at them these days. I have to say, Emory's service and level of care was superb, and a welcome change from the careless and rude manner of the staff at Piedmont Hospital.

As for day-to-day stuff, I try to stop by to see her every 2-3 days. We are encouraging her to use a Nintendo Wii. The director of nursing agreed that it would be good for her exercise as well as maintaining her mental sharpness. She likes watching us, not actually playing herself, play golf and tennis. She seems to enjoy the Brian Age game. I hope she will get up the pluck to try playing the tennis and bowling.

In any case, between bingo, Turner Classic Movies, smuggled in Chik-Fil-A nuggets, frequent, nearly daily, visits from all of us, including the dogs, daily activities at the home, and the constant presence of sitters and other staff, she has a reasonably busy life. Ironically, she has a busier life now, than before she fell and broke her hip to begin with 2 years ago. Turner Classic Movies has been a huge thing for her, as she is calm and entertained by the old movies they offer for free and without commercials. She really likes the classics with Jimmy Stewart, Claude Rains, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, etc. She always makes me look up all the details about the movie on the internet to remind her of all the actors names and the other movies they were in.

My brother, Drew, just passed the bar as well as earned his JD degree from Ga State Magna Cum Laude. He threw a big dinner party near Grant Park in Cabbage Town at Jack Sobel's restaurant, Agave. It was a lot of fun. The food and service could not have been better.

About the same time Drew graduated, I finished up a new degree from Georgia Tech, an Executive Masters of Science of Management of Technology, a modern day MBA program involving Venture Capital finance, entrepreneurship, technology change management, globalization trends, marketing, and best practices. I hope to put it to good use by pursuing business plans I have been working on involving Hydrogen fuel energy systems and another that is closer to home in real estate.

A professor from the program encouraged me to pursue a PhD in Economics. I am very interested in Free Market economics, and have several ideas that I have been researching that may offset some of the consequences we are facing with China, outsourcing, and the decimation our country has faced in terms of all of our production going off-shore. We are just now starting to feel these consequences, and I felt it was time to really consider how to go forward. The article is further down in this blog if you want to have a look.

Back in February, I resumed playing rugby with the Atlanta Renegades. I do not know how so many years got away from me, but it will not happen again. It is like having the most favorite thing in your life return and to find it even more fun than the last time around.

This past May, the Old Boys traveled to the Bahamas to play the Freeport Pendragons. In September, we went to Newport, Wales to watch the Rugby World Cup matches in Cardiff. Our team is twinned with the Newport Saracens. Rugby is the Welsh national sport, and World Cup is a very big deal there.

Since the mayor of the city and the chief of the police are both former Saracens.. we had a "fun" time. They threw a huge party at Terra Nova on the wharf in Cardiff. The interior was decked out as a 3 story high frigate ship. To give some idea as to how cool this was, this would be like being hosted at at the nicest and largest place on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.

While visiting, we also played against Caerleon RFC and Newport Saracens RFC on the Roman drilling fields in Caerleon, King Arthur's true backyard and the original site of Camelot. King Arthur's round table was supposedly across the street from the pitch, in a roman amphitheater.

We also watched the Newport Dragons practice, a professional level team.I became pretty badly injured when I decided to pick up the ball in front of a 300 lb. man, who leveled me. However, the good news is the British National Health System, which is grossly under-rated, did a great job. It is just going to take time to heal.

After the lads returned home, I hired a car and drove up to Thirsk, Yorkshire.

As if I stepped through the looking glass, I literaly stepped into the world of James Herriot, author of All Creatures Great and Small, the basis for the popular TV show on the BBC. The people would not let me buy my own pints, replacing mine so quickly, I was never without a full and fresh pint of Yorkshire Bitters. The landscape is unchanged from the TV series, and I can well imagine little has changed much since the 1930's when the books was set. The characters in the books still live in the area, as do Tristan and Sigfried Farnon's real life counter parts. I was regailed with tales from the books from the children of the characters or the characters themselves. What a trip!

So.. in lieu of being able to actually play.. I underwent training as a Rugby coach, and am now certified by USA Rugby as a coach. I have been helping out at Kennesaw State, Lassiter HS, and Ga Tech.

On other fronts, I rescued about 10 or so dogs by working as a foster with the Georgia Humane Society. I now have 3 dogs, Chip Conner and Cami.. 2 black labs and a half pint version of a Golden Retriever. They are great, get along with each other, and seem to make a great pack.

After banging on it for about 3 years, I was thrilled to receive an approval from the City of Atlanta qualifying our street for speed humps. You imagine that I was thrilled. Now, we have to get 75% of the property owners to sign the petition, and we will have some measure of safety. Personally, I can't stand speed humps, but they are really the only thing to get people to stop doing around 50-mph in front of our houses, especially since all the traffic tries to use our street as a cut thru. To give some idea, 3 of the 10 worst intersections in Atlanta are next to our neighborhood. We have had one house on the 5 o'clock traffic report, as it was hit by a car.

On the topic of cars.. Last month, I bought a new car, trading in the Volvo.. the Volvo has lived at the shop, so this time I went for something foolproof, a Toyota. I wanted the Subaru Outback, but I test drove the FJ Cruiser, which is a totally different sort of car, and did not look back! the dogs love it, and it is a great off-road vehicle. Check out the video on the Toyota homepage where the FJ literally crawls over huge boulders. It is a descendant of the first car to ever summit Mt. Fuji, so appropriately named "FJ", the modern version of the old Land Cruisers. It is a blast to drive. I named it "Yona".. Cherokee for Little Bear.

On other fronts, I have been trying to help at the Bitsy Grant Tennis Center, serving on their board to help raise funds ($2m) for the renovation project. Also, I've been busy serving on the board of directors for the Grant Park Conservancy (donate) with similar goals and where we have secured a Memorandum of Understanding from the City to manage and fulfill the goals of the Master Plan which hopes to restore the park to its original beauty.

Last year, after the Master's program residency in Europe concluded, I went over to London to help my friend with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (Donate). The happy news, in a truly tale of ruthless extinguishment of the animals in the name of palm oil and biofuels, is that the new TV program, Orangutan Island, has been critically acclaimed and generated loads of awareness here at home in the US. The rest of the world has been hard at owkr helping for a few years now, so we here are behind the curve. The best thing you can do to help is to send them some cash, avoid food products containing Palm Oil (10% of the products on the shelves), write some letters to the Indonesian government if you are really plucky, and not wear Patchouli.. the hippies will love that! (The plant this oil is harvested from is also grown on plantations that cause forest fragmentation.)

I have also cooked up a plan to transform a 14 acre area, otherwise known as the Gulch, into the Atlanta International Sports Gateway. I could use a hand this whale of a project, so let me know if you want to help! The project basically involves the following..

• Professional venues would be inserted
into a parking deck that extends from the current
facility under the surface park at the dome.
• The parking deck would hide beneath a park that would entirely cover the top level of the deck structure, similar to the park between the Dome, Philips Arena, and the Ga World Congress Center.
• Each venue would rise 2-3 stories above the level of the
surface park.
• Tennis for Davis Cup, Track & Field by the AUC,
Football-Soccer-Rugby-Lacrosse multi-use venue- host
to future GSU Football team, Atlanta Silver-backs
Soccer, Georgia’s Div. 1 National rugby teams, and
college lacrosse tournaments.
• The deck would house covered basketball courts, tennis
courts, velodrome, criterium track, and a ground level skate/bmx park.
• Visually, it would blend with Centennial Park as well as
the existing park at the Dome.
• Connect to GSU via underground viaduct following
Wall St. Connect to Centennial by redevelopment
of Spring-Marietta-Techwood garage -
the Gateway to the site. Wide pedestrian footbridges
connect to the AUC.

I was also trying to get a better solution implented for our traffic problems. They have been using, literally, designs from the mid1980's to the early 1990's to alleviate the snarl we exist in. I am pitching a two block "round about" that would completely improve the gridlock in our nieghborhood. Here is a diagram.

Besides that I have been doing CrossFit at my friends new gym, reading some books, and trying to stay on top of my life!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

All the best..

Beau..

aka.. Samwise “Lizard” Gamghee, el mosquito bandito del pescadors..
Sam really was the only reliable Hobbit.

Cheney in 1994 on Iraq

2007-08-15T16:58:00.001-04:00

Cheney clearly stating why the US has no business invading Iraq. Amazing how 10 years can change one's mind.

A proposal to foster free markets and what to do with China.

2007-08-13T20:25:00.001-04:00

Folks who know me have been hearing me talking about this for at least three years.. So now, it is finally taking shape.

China dumping their Treasury bond holdings in response to our requests for tariffs.
(http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/08/13/china-us-dollar-markets-currency-cx_jc_0813markets1.html?feed=rss_popstories )

The important thing ignored by this article is that the US Treasury bonds held by China , represent about 1/4 of China's budget surplus. If China dumped a small portion, say one eight of the position, it would send the dollar into the $2-$3 per Euro range, yet this amount is minuscule to China. It would reduce our ability to buy from China, force the vlaue of the Yuan to increase, and reduce the value of China's dollar currency reserves.

While some argue that a $2.50 -$3 Euro is coming in the next 24 months, and if introduced over that period of time, it could be an advantage to level our trade imbalance, people also ignore another factor, what exactly do we export these days besides know-how and services? The old model of devaluing our currency can't be nearly as effective as it once was, when we had the commanding heights of the economy running strongly, when our exported goods and our own commodities were in high demand and were not produced elsewhere; when the world believed that our way was mostly the right way, versus the Soviets. This is NOT the case in today's free markets.

Another factor, the imbalanced labor laws, environmental controls, and democratic processes in China all incentivize our own business leaders to ride this Rickshaw wagon til the wheels fall off. We have had a few US CEO's already indicted for lobbying against labor in reforms in China. China, if they are tired of buying oil, can simply put the entire country onto bicycles in a matter of days, at the point of a gun. They have, if you combine N. Korea, 3.4 million troops, not engaged in an active war, and possess long range nuclear capabilities. China does have its own viable space aeronautics program.

We are no position to dilly dally with tariffs. However, there is another solution.

In the current free trade environment, there are two losers. The less obvious losers are those from developed economies who have the most restrictive laws. The obvious losers are the 3rd world poor who have no access to the free markets. The poor in developing nations have no access to the markets because they have few if any instruments of legal trust such as title rights to property, credit instruments, or savings security. Meanwhile, the 1st world nations must buy from nations like China who undersell our own labor and production lines owing to our highly evolved regulatory laws and the fact that China and countries like them can all but ignore these rules to benefit their bottom line. China can use conscripted slave labor to produce questionable products with methods which foul the planet's ecology, all at a bargain rate so that average consumers can't afford NOT to buy the goods. Sure, they will execute a government official that is so negligent that the entire world complains about the products, but beyond that public outcry, there is little oversight beyond what cash the communist government can rake in off our dependencies.

WHAT IF... we try another approach. It is in the business leaders' and government's best interest to alleviate a growing poor population's pains, and not through the misguided altruism of aid packages, but rather let's allow the "poor" full access to the capital markets for their own betterment. Given them the chance to improve their own status. It is also in our business leaders best interest to maintain a strong working middle class in developed nations.

In order to do we should pursue two courses of action:

In developing nations, we should provide clear means for the establishment of titles to property, credit access, and other basic laws that enable a trust based free market to occur.

In developed nations, instead of using misguided and poorly designed tariffs, we could instead target the companies in those countries. Any company selling into our own markets, for example, would have to demonstrate they make good faith attempts to match our own domestic legal standards. Since they are able to benefit by the lax regulatory environment in the countries in which they operate, and since the governments are unable or unwilling to change legislation so that the laws governing business and production reach a level in parity with developed nations, why not start a program modeled loosely after what Wal-Mart does with it's vendors? Wal-Mart has the power to compel it's vendors to make expensive and radical changes just to sell into the stores.

Is the USA less powerful than Wal-Mart? The US and the EU are the most lucrative consumer markets on the planet. The developed nations are the most lucrative markets for these goods, offering the highest retail prices. Anyone should be so honored as to be able to sell on these shelves. We should no longer maintain laws which allow for our own laws to be circumvented by outsourcing and imports. Our middle class is at risk. Our way of life is dying. Democracy will fade when the markets are not balanced and stable.

In order to be allowed access to these top end markets, a company would have to agree to a pre-determined code of corporate standards whereby they agree to end several practices that allow the disequilibrium to exist. These could range from putting a halt to child labor, installing smokestack scrubbers, or other similar policies that a business in the other country would have had to obey. Market's will correct themselves, either financially, or through wars, famine, and other negative social means.

The goals is to convince these companies to act in parity with the laws of the markets they are selling into. These measures can be introduced over a period of time, say 5 to 7 years. At the end of each year, the company would offer a report on it's website as to the progress achieved to reach these goals. At the end of the transitional period, if the goal is not achieved, then the company can not sell into the market without accomplishing the transition to parity. Given that their own government may at times prevent the company from achieving these goals, there would be the opportunity to appeal for one-two years provided Good Faith efforts are clearly demonstrable. In any event, these efforts would easily discernible by any auditor or investor, much less a regulatory official with a shiny badge.

These two courses of action would have two effects. The poor could participate. They would be enabled to actually sell among themselves and translate that value into the wider markets at their discretion. The countries that undercutting developed nations through what amounts to shirking the law in the other country, these countries would eventually find traction and direction for the legislative process to move towards a parity of basic set of interchangeable laws that the trading community agree must be in place to preserve stability of the trading markets.

In the absence of another economic policy solution, such as Socialism, Capitalism is the only remaining system available to the world. The question is not whether we are going to be capitalists, it is whether or not we want to ignite the remaining 80% of humanity with access to the markets. Be forewarned if we do not, those left out will find myriad ways to ruin the market system such as what we have been seeing these past 15 years. Without stability, the disenfranchised will find a locus of power to leverage to make their point known. When they do, the markets will be at risk.

A great resource I found is "The Commanding Heights- the Fight for the Global Economy", an amazing comprehensive view of the history of modern economics as it has evolved into the current era of free market initiatives. Everyone is in the series. Finance Ministers, Presidents, economists, protest leaders, union leaders, and whoever else has been battling on either side of the efforts. It is a must for anyone living in the global economy, which means all of us.

IHT.com Article: A weak dollar and the Fed

2007-08-08T15:07:00.001-04:00

A weak dollar and the Fed
The New York Times
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Despite the Federal Reserve's latest stay-the-course message, investors are betting on at least one interest-rate cut by January, intended to quell turmoil in the markets and to juice the slow economy. But with the dollar also weak - recently hitting its lowest point in 15 years against an index of other major currencies - the Fed may be reluctant to oblige.

A declining dollar is a source of inflationary pressure because it can boost the cost of imports. So if the Fed tried to rev up the economy with a rate cut at the same time the dollar is falling, it could end up provoking even more inflation. That would be a drag on economic growth rather than a boost. In an extreme case, it could result in a toxic combination of weak growth and high prices that is a central banker's nightmare.

How did the Fed lose room to maneuver? The answer is rooted in the Bush administration's misguided economic policies.

Over the last several years, America's imbalances in trade and other global transactions have worsened dramatically, requiring the United States to borrow billions of dollars a day from abroad just to balance its books.

The only lasting way to fix the imbalances - and reduce that borrowing - is to increase America's savings. But the administration has rejected that responsible approach since it would require rolling back excessive tax cuts and engaging in government-led health care reform - both anathema to President George W. Bush. It would also require revamping the nation's tax incentives so that they create new savings by typical families, instead of new shelters for the existing wealth of affluent families - another nonstarter for this White House.

Stymied by what it won't do, the administration has gone for a quicker fix - letting the dollar slide. A weaker dollar helps to ease the nation's imbalances by making American exports more affordable, thus narrowing the trade deficit.

But to be truly effective, a weaker dollar must be paired with higher domestic savings. Otherwise, the need to borrow from abroad remains large, even as a weakening currency makes dollar-based debt less attractive. That's the trap the United States is slipping into today.

Among other ills, it could lead to a deterioration in American living standards as money flows abroad to pay foreign creditors, leaving less to spend at home on critical needs. Or, it could lead to abrupt spikes in interest rates as American debtors are forced to pay whatever it takes to get the loans they need.

In volatile economic times like now, leadership is crucial - and notably absent with this administration. Officials have made no effort to orchestrate a more coordinated and comprehensive realignment of the world's currencies, in part, it seems, because the administration is unwilling to have America do its part by saving more.

Until the administration - either this one or the next - is willing to acknowledge the source of the economy's imbalances, and starts addressing them seriously, the dollar is likely to remain weak. And the Fed's ability to maneuver will be constrained.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/08/opinion/eddollar.php

Pet the dog, eat the cow: Our confused relationship with animals

2007-07-28T13:29:00.001-04:00

My brother sent this article from The Philadelphia Inquirer. The article touches upon an interesting idiosyncrasy of humans and the animals we have stewardship over. Personally, I struggled with this issue about 7 years ago. After fouling up my system by following a poorly designed vegan diet, I concluded, for better or worse, that I am beef eater that somehow likes animals as well.

At the time, my uncle hunted. I asked him to teach me to hunt.Since I am to be a carnivore, I should at least appreciate what it takes to personally track, kill, prepare, and then eat the animal. It is an odd way of being able to look in the mirror and say "I now have more integrity because I don't simply consume factory produced flesh from a plastic bag." At least the animal I consumed had the luxury of living free and naturally until it crossed paths with my dinner plans. It should be mentioned that hunting, if performed in accordance with DNR regulations, is NOT shooting ducks in a barrel. It requires tons of time in the off-season tracking and studying the movement of the game you wish to hunt. One does not simply climb a tree one cold morning and expect a herd of deer to come by on schedule 30 minutes later and go home. You can spend days in the woods sitting quietly, having tracked your quarry, and they never emerge. As for poachers, which is basically anything that falls outside of the DNR regulations, there are enormous penalties and sentences. So you anti-hunters, rest assured the DNR is hell on enforcement and people go to jail all the time for violations. The game animals are far batter protected than the animals who provide the meat available in your grocery store. And since our ancestors exterminated all the predators, culling the herds are now our job.

It takes about 5 minutes of googling to find enough reliable information about factory farmed animals to nauseate and revile any normal person.
We have cruel testing practices on dogs happening right here in Atlanta in labs at Georgia Tech. When attempting to make a few changes with their circumstance, not even the local media batted an eye. Still, we bend over backwards to save one dog, while 3-4 million a year are euthanized because someone didn't bother to neuter/spay along the way, or someone was making a living running an awful puppy mill or raising dogs to fight.

Yet, we don't see volunteer groups rescuing a sow who has not touched the ground since being trussed up after having its first litter, being repeatedly re-impregnated and jacked up with every imaginable medication to speed the production cycle and enhance growth of the offspring. We do not see people turning their heads in disgust at the prospect of eating a lamb, which play organized games among themselves. Most people relish veal, the production of which is just a horrific practice. Would you lock your puppy up for 2-3 months in a pen with no light, then slaughter and eat it? No, but is is OK if it is a cow.

Then, one has to consider the inefficiency of the meat production cycle. A majority of effluent sewage contaminants and chemicals in the water supply result from all the run off from the treated fields, and the untreated sewage of the meat industry. The amount of grain required to raise on cow could feed somewhere around ten x the number of people with the grain as opposed to the resulting slaughtered meat.

The reality is these products taste good, fan our egos, and provide needed nutrition. Yet, as responsible people, it is good to consider where all of the bounty comes from, and what it had to endure to provide for our tables. For me, it means simply not overeating when it comes to meat, dairy, poultry, and fish. It means purchasing products from farms that respect the animals and not from corporate producers.

It means remembering to take full appreciation of the sentient entity that gave its life to give me sustenance and culinary enjoyment. It means learning how to prepare food to a higher level. After all if it died, one should make the very best of it possible. It is remembering to pray and thank the animal. Many native Americans do this.

Cherokees, when building a sweat lodge, would cut saplings for the lodge's construction. On the remaining stump, they would place a portion of tobacco, and thank the tree for giving of itself. Imagine a lumber company doing that!

Nonetheless, all living things are imbued with Spirit. When one fails to respect and honor Spirit, that can serve no good purpose.

Here is the article.

Bryan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Benjamin Lynch <ben.lynch@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 28, 2007 9:33 AM
Subject: Pet the dog, eat the cow: Our confused relationship with animals
To: Bryan Grant <bgrantenator@gmail.com>

Pet the dog, eat the cow: Our confused relationship with animals

By Crispin Sartwell
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Article Last Updated: 07/27/2007 09:11:29 PM MDT

The Michael Vick dogfighting case, and all of the attention on dogfighting and its attendant practices, show one thing very clearly: As a society, we have no idea what we think about animals. We don't know how much we ought to take them into account, morally. We don't even know how to figure it out.
I watched cable news recently, and almost every anchor interviewed an official of the Humane Society, and all expressed horror, especially that Vick's indictment had accused him and his fellow defendants of executing dogs in ways apparently designed to be as cruel as possible: drowning, strangling, electrocution. One official compared the practice to child pornography.
Then I went into town for some lunch, driving past all of the franchises peddling ground cow for human consumption - the same ones you'll find on every American highway exit.
If killing dogs is the equivalent of child pornography, while eating cows is simply a way to put off mowing the lawn, we seem to be conflicted - or reeking with hypocrisy and confusion.
We have a set of intuitions, driven partly by our interactions with pets, that many animals can experience pain in a morally significant way, that they can suffer, or be used and degraded. Perhaps they have somewhat less of a claim on us than human beings do, but they make a claim.
But another set of intuitions is driven by our dietary habits or our experience of thumping squirrels and armadillos on the road: that an animal is little more than an inanimate object, and can be used in whatever way a human being sees fit.
Our moral evaluation of animals seems to vary with their proximity to ourselves - both their everyday interactions with us and their perceived similarity to us - so that by the time you're done attributing love, loyalty and inferential reasoning to your dog, you have recognized her as a de facto human being, a member of the family. It works both ways, and your dog recognizes you as leader of the pack.
Cows have big, sad eyes, but less personality of the sort that arouses our recognition. And these days, unless you're directly involved in the farming and food industry, your interaction with cows is limited to, let's say, the drive-through lane.
In practice, the moral claims of animals vary by species and track our sense of the animal's proximity - cognitive, emotional, physical - to ourselves. We become truly sentimental: We write memoirs with our dogs, talk baby-talk to them, let them lick our faces. But about other species we are as hard-nosed as possible. Essentially, we do whatever we feel like to them whenever we want.
But there is no rational justification for this distinction. Pigs aren't more stupid, or less emotionally complex or less capable of experiencing pain than dogs, but they seem to lack that certain something (well, all except Charlotte's Wilbur).
One might simply rest the problem with dogfighting on its effects on human beings - as in, "Dogfighting is debasing not to the pit bull but to the quarterback who participates."
But if we really believed cruelty to animals debased humans who participate, we'd have to accept that our massive, industrial-scale systems of cruelty to cows deeply debase all humanity.
If there were an argument for dogfighting, I suspect it would go like this: The dog is bred to fight; we admire its violence and participate in it; it is a primal and even noble enactment of our life here on Earth. Perhaps the dog would rather die than lose, like the world's greatest athletes or businessmen.
This resembles the animal-rights argument: It reads a dog's motivations as though they were human. But it has a different sense of what it means to be human.
We need to decide: (a) Do animals count? and (b) How, exactly, not as dwarfish, or four-legged, or stupid people, but as real things whose existence is, though connected to ours, profoundly external and different?
Until we grapple with these questions, our condemnation of Vick and our tender treatment of Beau the miniature dachshund are equally irrational.

---
CRISPIN SARTWELL teaches philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. He wrote this for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Senator Saxby Chambliss: Oil exploration along the Ga Coast

2007-06-05T18:48:00.001-04:00

Dear Senator Chamblis,

Thank you for your response to our letters about the exploration and extraction of oil along the Georgia Coast, the Outer Shelf being the chief parcel of my personal concerns.

Unfortunately, your position only focuses on the national energy security strategy as related to Oil and Natural Gas. Furthermore, this particular tactic represents little more than a reactionary short-term stop gap measure, rather than a well conceived plan to stabilize our nation. As I wrote to President Bush seven years ago concerning ANWR, I would have less of a problem with prospecting for oil in these sensitive areas so long as we are putting forth significant efforts to reduce our dependency on non-renewable fuels. Practically nothing has been done towards finding alternative ways to keep our country's energy supplies viable besides actually in creasing our consumption of oil by incentives consumers to purchase gas guzzling vehicles. Once an area like ANWR is exploited, we have to keep looking for our next fix like some mendicant drug addict, yet we have not invested in other means to alleviate our needs. We find ourselves back at square one, over and over again, compelle to make war to secure our economic interests.

As a nation, we have consistently failed to foster these alternative means to power our economy. Electric cars were removed from the roads (EV1), despite high levels of customer satisfaction, good vehicle performance, and very low emmissions from the actual vehicle. Hybrids cost more than regular cars to maintain and purchase, the hybrid credit falling far short of the price differential it was designed to offset. The farm vehicle credit was reduced, but you still get a hefty credit for buying a huge vehicle if you are an LLC. The farm vehicle credit is several time larger than the hybrid credit. The gas guzzler tax was completely repealed in 2005. The failure to regulate building material energy efficiencies and allowing a mushrooming housing market to build cheaply has over burdened our already over taxed utilities wasting our energy both in the time it takes to work long enough to pay the bills and in terms of the overall energy consumption. Our failure to secure global commodities agreements has left the door wide open; allowing China to pin down the resources we need, has placed our entire economic future in peril. This has lead to a $1.36/Euro from a $.83/Euro in 2001. We have all lost in real dollars about 39% of our former purchasing power. ( read why here) Meanwhile, the government has distracted us with an agonizing war that only benefits the companies who have the contracts to rebuild what is destroyed. Meanwhile, oil prices have significantly INCREASED since President Bush from the deck of the carrier declared, "Mission Accomplished". We have not necessarily reduced our exposure to terror. If buying fuel from countries who sponsor terror increases the threat of terror, then we are cutting our nose to spite our face.

Related to this matter, four years ago I wrote and submitted to the Icelandic Parliament a road map to a hydrogen economy based on their access to geothermal resources. They are well along into the actual deployment of this proposal and are reaping the benefits . Currently, I am working with a Utah based company that has already developed fuels systems that supplement fuel with Hydrogen to gain 20-30% mileage performance improvements, quad fuel vehicles (H2, Ethanol, NG, Unleaded), and the founder, Tai Robinson, is the first American to successfully drive round trip on Hydrogen only.This was accomplished nearly 4 years ago. (published Press Releases & Coverage)

The crucial mission for our nation involves energy security and economic sustainability. Your plan would only serve as a knee jerk addictive reaction which only make certain companies that sponsored certain political campaigns a little bit more profitable, yield minuscule amounts of crude to the national supply, and would certainly endanger our state and national treasures for the short term goal of energy exploration.

We have in our state of Georgia one of the leading think tanks for energy security. Mr. John Endicott is the Director for the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy at Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College. The center hosts a regular series of presentations which are attended by the military as well as private sector individuals. You would find establishing a dialogue with this resource to be formative and provocative.

In closing, your position lacks the foresight necessary to stabilize the energy security of our nation. I call upon you to expand your view of what is possible and the economic growth our state and nation can experience by truly pursuing these alternatives. These alternatives are already proven to be functionally sound. We must, as with most public service related initiatives, legislate the adoption of these technologies on a wide scale so the investors can see fit to patronize this effort.

I invite you to explore these possibilities and deploy the power of your chair as a senator to building a stronger America.

Sincerely,

Bryan "Beau" Grant
Convivia Group
Commercial Real Estate Broker
Skype: malacandra
SecondLife: Jebediah Raymaker
Google Chat: bgrantenator

Letter from Senator Chambliss:

Dear Mr. Grant :

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Department of Interior's initiative to boost oil and natural gas production on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska . I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

High energy costs are hitting Americans in their pocketbooks due to supply problems with oil and natural gas. This plan will begin to alleviate our supply problems and provide us with greater independence from foreign sources of energy by opening up millions of acres for energy exploration.

According to the Department, the program could produce 10 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over 40 years, generating almost $170 billion, in today's dollars, in net benefits for the Nation. The OCS is a vital source of domestic oil and natural gas for America , especially in light of sharply rising energy prices and increasing demand for these resources. This energy production will create jobs, provide greater economic and energy security for America and can be accomplished in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

I will continue to support an energy policy that will make our country less vulnerable to fluctuating gas prices by promoting renewable energy sources, developing alternative sources of energy like hydrogen, encouraging greater use of ethanol and biodiesels, and increasing domestic refinery capacity and domestic sources of fuel.

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov . Please let me know whenever I may be of assistance.

Geopolitics, China, and poisoned pet food.

2007-03-27T16:46:00.001-04:00

In comment to Susan's thoughtful letter, a raw diet (www.brighteyespet.com ) is great for those who have the time and income to manage it. It really does result in a very healthy pet. For those without the resources to undertake such an effort, Innova (below) makes a good alternative. Often overlooked are acupuncture and chiropractic for pets. Both are very useful, especially for athletic and/or arthritic pets.

The pet food tragedy takes home the point that global trade requires careful management and stewardship. eColi in spinach, bird flu, mad cow, rabbits in Australia.. this is not a new story, but this time it results from a country that has been granted every license to bend the rules for nigh on 30 years. It is time to revisit this relationship, assess the consequences or benefits experienced thus far, and speculate on the future fall out should we carry on the current course of trade policy.

Today in China, a bright ray of hope emanated to the world press. From China, where a student was run over by the tank in Tienanmen Square, where riots are quelled with real bullets, where labor issues are resolved with torture, jail time, and executions, I was simply amazed to hear the news. It was like the Dr. Seuss book where the highways were built over the two immovable protagonists (reference please?). A lone woman has protected her home from demolition for two years now.. in China. Hard to believe. I bring this to the fore, as the rest of this article would seem a bit grim without the inspiration of what can be done in the face of terrible odds.

While this tragedy has happened to our best friends, our pets, people may also wish to concern themselves about our trade involvement with China in general. There is not much stopping this same effect from happening to our human friends. The fact that our government allows China to sell products into our country while China artificially lowers its currency versus our own, is killing us. To further discount their Costs of Good Sold into our own markets, China gets huge breaks compared to the USA and Europe with the poor labor, legal, banking, and environmental controls. The Feb 27th market plummet is directly related to the poor framework for investments and reporting in China. Adding fuel to the bonfire, our own CEO's have even been identified as lobbying against improving labor standards in China, which directly contradicts the spiel we were being given last year in executive management school about globalization improving the status of workers and societies. Yes, the source is a bit liberal for my liking, but this is not about left or right spins on rolling pork barrels, it is about national security and global economic stability in the context of a "free" world. In many ways, I am optimistic about the result of outsourcing with India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and perhaps even Vietnam. China is another animal altogether from many perspectives.

One quickly sees why we are able to buy are Chinese goodies from places like Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot so cheaply. After all, China is the same country which sent between 7 and 9 divisions of troops over the frozen Chosin, where my grandpa McCarthy, being there shot twice, with Marine Fox company held the pass for the Marines retreat to the sea . Thousands of Chinese men and boys were sent to their deaths. The much smaller Marine force took heavy casualties, but held the pass owing to two main factors.. pure guts, and the Chinese sent their own in under equipped. For the Chinese, attrition is a fact of life. A few years ago, China relocated up to 1 .9 million people from their homes and obliterated the 3 Gorges, the cradle of their 5000 year heritage along with 11100 unstudied archaeological sites, for a power dam.

Invading Tibet, they forced pacifist monks to shoot each other, razed over 1800 monasteries, and raped whoever they could get their hands on. Anytime you think the US has "moral issues", just spend 5 minutes with google and read about China. You will feel a lot better about our own "quality". The "Great Wall" was built on 100% slave labor, and is a monument to human suffering, though that point appears lost to most visitors. China could easily, if it suited their national interests, and they are truly totalitarian communists, put their entire nation back onto bicycles within two weeks at the point of a gun.

China has the world's largest standing military at 2,840,000 soldiers, double our own, the second largest, at 1,200,000. We tend to publicly downplay North Korea's power, China's erstwhile ally. Yet North Korea, maintains the 5th largest at 1,055,000 troops and our troops actively engage them from our forward base at the 38th. Simple math shows us that a simple agreement between these two politically aligned neighbors would create a military 3.24x our own. As if they are not already large enough, they are taking all the money from the stuff we buy at "Wal-Mart/Target" and upgrading their infrastructure and have increased spending and have in effect destabilized the Asia-Pacific region as a result. Furthermore, they do not have to put up with a congress that can rein in the executive branch, much less parents and veterans that can sue the pentagon or camp at the president's ranch with TV reporters.

In other words, China has free reign to do whatever they please ( Index of Economic Freedom assessment) compared to our own free society. Never mistake that the bright lights you seeon CNNi in Shanghai are a baroque potempkin village that we have fostered for the past 30 years, in hopes that capitalism would win over communist ideology. Instead, we have financed the communist reinforcement of thier military powerbase, created a veneer of Chinese capitalism that is bankrupting industries in the US and Europe, have handed over the Panama Canal (security is managed by ex-Chinese military employer Hutchinson Wampoa LTD (the firm which congress tried to implicate with the Clinton Chinese campaign funds scandal), our shipping, energy, and materials rates have skyrocketed, and we with the UK gave them Hong Kong, one of the world's largest economies, on a silver platter. We even built them a $4b new airport and highway bridge as a parting gift.

We (the US as well as the free world) will be paying the piper and soon, given that in 2001 the Euro cost us $.83, and now it is around $1.47 for 1 Euro. To date, the Euro has gained 92% since 2001. Why haven't we felt the sting in terms of inflation? China has kept its currency pegged lower artificially and unilaterally. Our government, the politicians, has been well aware of this fact for at least 4 to 5 years. "so long as China maintains controls on capital outflows, runs surpluses on both the overall current and capital accounts in its balance of payments, and accumulates international reserves in large amounts, there is a compelling case that the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB), is significantly undervalued. Our preliminary estimates suggest that the undervaluation of the RMB is on the order of 15 to 25 percent...." China's Exchange Rate Regime Testimony before the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology Committee on Financial Services US House of Representatives Washington, DC October 1, 2003

We allow this to persist because according to the International Herald Tribune, "The slip in inflationary concerns can be traced, in part, to China, according to some analysts. A few months ago, investors were worried that a surge in commodity prices, reflecting demand from China's booming economy, would stoke inflation. Now the recent plunge in the prices of industrial commodities and China's ability to make low-cost goods that Americans like is seen as downward pressure on prices. " China has the bull by the horns and by the tail, and we are just waiting for the coup de grace.

China, as of 2002, became the second largest bond holder of US treasury Bonds. While contemporary thought comforts itself with the idea that China would never do anything to put its own investment at risk, that amount in 2002 was 1/4 of China's foreign exchange reserve. alone would wreck the US, and take Europe down with us shortly thereafter. Enter China to rebuild the world economy with its own version of the Marshall plan. Well if you want an example of how they rebuild economies, read up on how they "integrated" their brother Tibet in the 1950 and 1960's.

So, it is sad our fine and loyal friends had to be the first ones to catch the fallout of this imbalance of trade policy enforcement, but I am sure it is only the first round of events.

...back to the topic..
Meanwhile, a good alternative if you cant afford the raw diet, which is a great way to go otherwise, is Innova Evo. Nothing but good meat in it, and some good veggies. Costs about the same as Eukanuba but is a whole lot better for them.

Moisture 10.0 %
Protein 42.0 %
Fat 22.0 %
Fiber 2.5 %
Calories 1929 Kcal/lb
Calories 4243 Kcal/Kg
Calories 537 KCals/Cup
Ingredients:
Turkey
Chicken
Turkey Meal
Chicken Meal
Potatoes
Herring Meal
Chicken Fat
Natural Flavors
Egg
Garlic
Apples
Carrots
Tomatoes
Cottage Cheese
Alfalfa Sprouts
Dried Chicory Root
Taurine
Lecithin
Rosemary Extract
Vitamins/Minerals
Viable Naturally Occurring Microorgani sms

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