One of the most important thing you can do to influence society is to make sure your shopping habits fit your personal philosophy. Some companies are particularly bad or particularly good in their environmental policies, labor policies, charitable giving, scandals, etc. The money you spend should, to the best of your ability, go to support your ideals and companies that aren't violating your ideals. This is not easy, unless you have a resource that can give you the information you need to make these decisions.

That resource can be found at Co-op America. It is called "Responsible Shopper." I have been using this resource for some 15 years, back when it was a little boolket called "Shopping for a Better World." From their site:

Co-op America's Responsible Shopper provides you with the real story about abuses by well-known companies, gives you actions to promote corporate responsibility, and helps you green your life and world.

I have been doing carbon offsets of various sorts for 2 years now, trying to make sure my family is carbon neutral or better. I do it for my kids because unless things change radically in terms of carbon emissions, all our kids will have definitively lower standards of living than we had. I encourage you to do the same. I recommend either Carbonfund.org or Native Energy.

But it occurs to me that another way to be green is to patronize companies that do carbon offsets. So I want to direct your attention to the list of business and organizational partners that these two offset programs work with to offset the carbon use of those businesses.

Here are some of the companies that do offsets through Native Energy:

Ben and Jerry's ice cream (YUM!)
Cliff Bar
Dave Matthews Band
Aveda
Green Mountain Coffee
Annie's Homegrown Foods
Stoneyfield Farms
Seventh Generation (we buy lots of their paper and cleaning products)

Workers sitting-in at Republic Windows in Chicago won their demands for back-pay, vacation and severance late Wednesday night . The workers have left the building.

In the end, about $1.75 million was brokered to accommodate the workers' demand for 60 days severance wages, vacation pay and a two-month extension of health insurance.

Workers had argued they were owed the pay after Republic Windows shut down the Goose Island plant last Friday on only three days' notice, rather than the two months' notice required by federal law.

$1.35 million was extended by Bank of America as a loan to Republic management, and $400,000 was contributed by JP Morgan & Chase, Co., who own a 40 percent stake in the company. Workers will receive checks within a week representing two months' pay and unpaid vacation time -- about $6000 per worker, said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who moderated the negotiations. (Chicago Tribune)

Bank of America was brought to the bargaining table by a boycott threat from Illinois Gov. Rob Blagovisch one day before his corruption arrest. In a perfect confluence of the power elite, JP Morgan-Chase, a minority owner, came to the table represented by its regional president, the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

UE News report is here

What did the Republic Windows workers lose: their jobs and their health insurance. Yes, yes, the workers retain their COBRA-rights to buy their own insurance but who can afford to do that with no job?

The Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) website lists, just in time for the holidays, all the businesses that have been supportive of their efforts to preserve Brooklyn. Here's that list below:

RESTAURANTS AND BARS:

7th Avenue Donuts Luncheonette (Park Slope)
Diner fare and fresh baked donuts.
324 Seventh Avenue (between Eighth and Ninth Street)
(718) 768-0748

Al Di La Trattoria (Park Slope)
Park Slope’s perpetually packed, widely-acclaimed Venetian institution.
248 Fifth Avenue (Near Carroll Street)
(718) 852-1572
www.aldilatrattoria.com
(I can personally vouch for this one. Absolutely excellent! The sage butter gnocchi and the saltamboca (sp?) are among the best as is their frozen cappuccino).

Antonio's Pizzeria (Park Slope)
Pizza since 1950.
318 Flatbush Avenue (between Park & Sterling Place)
(718) 398-2300

Bacchus Bistro (Boerum Hill/Cobble Hill)
French bistro.
409 Atlantic Avenue (between Bond & Nevins Street)
(718) 852-1572
www.bacchusbistro.com

Beast Bar (Prospect Heights)
A unique take on Spanish tapas, and bar.
638 Bergen Street (at Vanderbilt Avenue)
(718) 399-6855

At last night's Independent Neighborhood Democrats meeting Assemblywoman Joan Millman gave us a grim outlook for next year's state budget. I hear the same issue was discussed at Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats as well. This comes the same day the MTA forcasts an equally grim picture (but in their case we always have to question the numbers of an agency that keeps two sets of books depending on whether they want to show a surplus or a deficit). And from Governor Paterson we are hearing ideas like raising CUNY and SUNY fees and cutting education and health programs (our biggest outlays).

Bumped. MB

As Sarah Palin enjoys being able to weather the affects of the financial crisis through shopping sprees that are large enough to be considered economic stimuli in themselves, many women (who still on average only make 79 cents for every 1 dollar their male counterparts earn) are suffering. This issue is not a rant, its not a movement, it is a disparity in our country that still has not been dealt with. People should be rewarded for their work not their gender. Its not just the $150,000 dollar wardrobe, the fact that she bases her foreign policy on being able to see a foreign nation from her window or that she couldn’t name any of the major newspapers that she reads. Instead the biggest problem is that she was selected by the McCain camp in a rushed attempt to secure potential dissenting Democrat women who saw their dreams of President Hillary Clinton vanish after the primary elections. Bad move. They banked on exploiting the female vote without really taking a stance on issues important to women.

The whole Bloomberg Putsch whereby term limits are arbitrarily set aside just this once was predicated on the belief by some (mainly Bloomberg) that Bloomberg, and ONLY Bloomberg, can save us all from economic collapse.

Bloomberg's Messianic delusions aside, the world pretty much doesn't care whether Bloomberg is made Tsar of New York or not. Far from being reassured by the green light given by City Council Lap Dogs to a third Bloomberg term, world markets plunged today:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5% in the first minutes of trading, while the hi-tech Nasdaq index plunged as much as 6% at one point.

On European markets, London was down 6% in afternoon trading, Frankfurt fell 8% and Paris was 6% lower.

So why was it that Bloomberg and the City Council spit on the will of the people?

In what is a potentially lethal line of attack, Democrat Rick Dollinger is calling out his republican opponent Joe Robach for his ties to the companies now being bailed out by the Federal government.

Rochester, NY – October 14, 2008 – Today, Democratic State Senate candidate Rick Dollinger criticized Republican Joe Robach and State Senate Republicans for accepting nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from the Wall Street corporations that had to be bailed out from their reckless investments. Dollinger pointed out that Republicans also lavished billions of dollars in tax breaks to these same corporations that taxpayers are now being forced to save. Republicans handed out these breaks in conjunction with loosened regulations and safeguards, allowing Wall Street to run rampant with "golden parachutes" and to gamble away billions of Main Street's dollars.

"Over the past eight years Republicans in the State Senate have enabled the fallacious practices of Wall Street banks and corporations by granting billions in tax breaks and passing bills that eliminated government oversight and accountability to taxpayers," said Dollinger. "These practices have dominated the agenda of the Republican controlled State Senate, and mirror the careless policies of the Bush administration."

"We can no longer afford the Republican model of leadership that favors the needs of big businesses on Wall Street over the economic crisis facing struggling taxpayers on Main Street," continued Dollinger. "Now taxpayers are being told that they must provide a $700 billion crutch to Wall Street, a burden inflicted upon New Yorkers as a direct result of the corruption within the Republican-controlled State Senate."

For the past 10 years, State Senate Republicans have lavished tax breaks equivalent to $2.5 billion, and another $1.5 billion in incentives upon Wall Street, while also passing legislation that dismantled measures requiring accountability and transparency within these corporations.

Dollinger concluded, "For years, New Yorkers have suffered from a weakening economy, crippling property taxes, and as a result, young people leaving the state in record numbers. In the face of all that, Republican Joe Robach decided it more important to help out the Wall Street barons bankrolling his campaign than protect the Monroe County taxpayers who voted him into office."

With Goldman Sachs and - or so scuttlebutt has it - Morgan Stanley applying for New York banking charters, do you really want republicans in charge of regulating them? How'd that work out up until now?

When George Bush slithered into office due to the unconstitutional power grab of his daddy's Supreme Court cronies, the Dow stood at 10,643.

Now, it's at 8,918, after falling all the way to 8,859.78. Measured from its 52-week high, 14,198.10, the market has lost over 5,000 points.

Here's the good news: while the stock market has lost over a third of its value in the last year, that's not as abysmal a performance as the value of the dollar put in. This because the vaunted greenback has lost over half its value against the Euro since Bush came in.

So yeah, yay republicans!

Reuters published a handy summary of Paulson's bail out proposal along with the counterproposals by Democrats :

• Would allow up to $700 billion in mortgage assets to be held by Treasury at any one time.
• Allows the Treasury to buy any mortgage-related assets, both residential and commercial, for a two-year period. The plan does not detail the types of mortgage assets this could cover and or how long the government could hold them, and does not establish how they would be valued. However, if deemed needed to promote financial market stability, any type of financial instrument could be bought.
• Assets must have been originated or issued before September 17, 2008, by a financial institution having "significant operations" in the United States. This provision could also be waived if deemed needed to promote financial stability.