Gloria Ferris

One of our neighbors in Brooklyn Centre is hosting a Valentine’s Weekend Benefit for Big Brothers Big Sisters at his establishment, mlang clothing & cocktails, located at 1275 Euclid Avenue in the heart of Playhouse Square. Mr. Lang is giving us plenty of opportunity to visit his establishment by holding the event not one day but two days!

I LOVE the flier don’t you?

Here is my comment on the Crain’s Investment News article which addresses the suit my friend Alan Mooney has filed with FINRA against FSC.

I know Alan Mooney personally, and feel that there is a need for some amplification of the situation surrounding him. Alan wrote the contract he used with FSC and did not sign or use FSC contracts. Alan wrote The Money Foundation contract which governs the down line reps who have Alan Mooney as their OSJ. Alan’s contract had language far beyond anything in the industry outlining ownership in regards to client information and intellectual property rights of reps. Alan also had a special contract as a Super OSJ meant to protect him from FSC recruiting his down line. A provision in the contract included a one year separation clause before FSC could recruit or retain any of Alan’s down lines. These unique 1997 contracts had been announced in national phone calls with over 600 reps listening when Jim Wisner signed the contract. 20,000 reps have learned about the signing of the contracts through seminar mailings and talks by Alan. Thousands of reps all over the United States who have attended Alan’s seminars have heard Alan talk about true independence.

That contract was honored by FSC for over 11 years until Mark Schlafly arrived on the scene, and for sure, Joby Gruber, Jim Wisner & John Bell Keeble would flip over how rotten things are at FSC today! FSC not only solicited Alan’s down lines but offered big bucks to top producers in Alan’s group to sell Alan out. In fact, in a phone call September 3, 2009, Mr. Schlafly promised Alan this would not happen anymore. Within 5 minutes of Mr. Schlafly’s disconnecting with Alan, he called Alan’s biggest producing rep. He not only solicited the rep but offered to backdate the money offer by 7 months.

There were hundreds of OSJ managers present when Alan offered to buy FSC in October 2008. Over a hundred OSJ’s had given Alan a Letter of Intent (LOI) to help buy out FSC. Within days after that meeting in Atlanta lots of rep’s with FSC were threatened by an AIG New York attorney to stop or else. The threats were in writing. Mr. Schlafly then had a national phone call with all FSC reps and threatened reps could not leave FSC because FSC owned their client information. Alan then posted on an FSC MFA ONLY blog a copy of AIG attorney Noah Sorkin’s letter to the SEC stating that at AIG the reps own that information. This exposed Mr. Schlafly and outted him as either dishonest or incompetent, and no matter what is correct, he was wrong in his threats.

Only Alan Mooney had the courage to stand and tell the truth on these issues–the guts to try and defend all the reps at FSC. There was no financial advantage for him. He could have stayed silent and shared the information only with his down line think tank- the Money Foundation. Most of the people following Alan are deeply moral and very spiritual people (many are Ordained Ministers). Some people jokingly have called us his apostles. We the so- called apostles of doing what is right, being independent and part of his think-tank, know the truth and know Alan tells it like it is! We know Alan as a Christian man of deep faith who has written books on Ethics for Success for stock brokers; a man knighted Sir Alan Mooney by order of the Pope for his work with inner city kids and street people.

The following week after Mr. Schlafly’s call, Schlafly clumsily had to retract saying “he didn’t know about the AIG attorney’s letter to the SEC”, but he still threatened “the use of negative response letters and months of holding reps up if they try to move”.

Alan is a holy man who stood up alone for the independent reps at FSC and those he stood up for should show their support for him now. Unfortunately, not all people are warriors, but those of us who value independence and ethical behavior know that now is the time to stand with this man. He personally paid for and brought his attorney to that meeting in the fall of 2008 for the benefit of all the other OSJ’s in what he believed was the beginning of how together they could help FSC remain a beacon for independent reps in the financial world.

Further, the person calling only OSJ’s (not their downlines) at FSC is an attorney’s son and is conducting a survey, and nothing more. Those who claim otherwise are not being truthful. People who are threatened by truly moral leaders always try to defame them. Alan is a man who freely shares knowledge, expertise, and best practices to make the financial world a better place. Simply, Alan is a good man done very wrong.

Independent Reps everywhere should take heed of this lawsuit because who owns the relationship with your clients, who owns your intellectual property, who has duties to whom, and who calls the shots in your business, in your professional practice—it is all at stake.

Read the full article here.

Here’s an important announcement, in its totality, from our neighbor Bill Callahan.

Open-Mesh wifi on my block

Today is the big twice-a-year Street Sale on Archwood Avenue, where I live.  (Tomorrow, too.)  I’m currently sitting on my front porch watching the shoppers go by and showing those who ask how our new “Free Archwood WiFi” works.

Yes, we now have a free public wifi mesh serving our block.  It currently covers a 500-foot stretch of the street going east from West 33rd.  As far as I can tell the access is reasonably good indoors as well as outdoors, but our user sample is still pretty small. (I know of six users so far other than me, and they all seem to be inside their homes.)

Free Archwood WiFi currently consists of Open-Mesh minrouters on three front porches as well as in two windows, all getting bandwidth from another minirouter attached to a standard DSL router and serving as the gateway. Each minirouter cost only $29.  (Well, actually, they cost us nothing so far… we borrowed them from One Community, which is “sponsoring” our experiment in viral networking).  Total equipment cost to date: Less than $200.

Most of the nodes have been operating together for the past 48 hours or so, with zero problems or downtime.

Open-Mesh is a nonprofit open-source “fork” from the more corporate Meraki viral mesh system, best known for its Free The Net project in San Francisco.  Both trace their pedigree and personnel to the venerable RoofNet initiative at MIT.

For the geeks, here’s the current Free Archwood network diagram from our online dashboard provided by Open-Mesh. (The outer lines around the nodes are current users).

Pretty cool, huh?

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary » Blog Archive » Open-Mesh wifi on my block

We received the following letter from our U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. I feel a whole lot better knowing some of  his thought process on the $700 Billion “bailout”.  I am sure that he shared the same thoughts with all of his constituents who wrote him concerning this issue so I am sharing it here.

Thank you for expressing your concerns with the problems in the financial sector and how we address them.

A lot of Ohioans, including me, are angry at the thought of bailing out people who made a lot of money making bad business decisions that created problems in neighborhoods across Ohio. I agree that we need to avoid rewarding excessive risk taking. These institutions made unwise decisions, and taxpayers should not be expected to simply cover their losses.

On September 20th, Treasury Secretary Paulson sent a proposal to Congress that would have given him almost unfettered authority to spend $700 billion purchasing troubled assets from financial institutions. A few days later, my colleagues on the Banking Committee and I held a hearing at which Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and others testified.

They made a strong case for the need to act quickly to prevent further damage to our economy. The turmoil in the credit markets has the potential to do great damage to a lot of innocent bystanders. I am afraid that if we do not act, the economic instability could affect thousands of American jobs and the savings of countless middle class families.

But Secretary Paulson’s proposal was not the right answer. No Secretary should be given a $700 billion blank check. Taxpayers must be given an opportunity to recover their money, and assurances their tax dollars will not fund lavish pay and golden parachutes. We need strong rules to guard against abuse and we need to ensure that Ohio is helped and not just Wall Street. The legislation adopted by the Senate, with my support, makes each of these changes.

This was a difficult vote. But Ohio has already lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs over the past seven years as our unemployment rate has spiked. Retirement and college savings accounts have shriveled. Credit is becoming more expensive for small businesses. We cannot gamble on even greater economic dislocation.

This week’s vote was not the end of our work on this issue. In the months ahead we need to enact tough rules to govern our financial markets to ensure we never find ourselves in this situation again.
Sincerely,
Sherrod Brown

I will post U.S. Senator George Voinovich’s reply when received.

Warren Buffett knows if you are going to take on great risk, be sure to negotiate a hard bargain and at least have the option to make millions.  I just received my latest edition of The Economist where I learned this. 

I haven’t seen anything on line about the $700 Billion Bailout of the banking industry.  Personally, I like the idea of loaning them the money.  You see, when they get behind on their loans because they haven’t the money to pay back the American taxpayer, we can have our servicing agent, the government, tell them that their “client” has informed them that they can no longer work with them and that they are in default.  We, the taxpayers, will then own the banks.  In other words, we can foreclose on them. Turnabout is fair play.

Why in the world would we the American Taxpayer give the money to the banks without getting something in return?  Shouldn’t we let the free market decide which banks would survive and which would become part of the collateral owned by the United States?  After all, I believe that is what U.S. Treasurer Hank Paulson recommended not so long ago when told that the housing bubble had burst and that the walls were crumbling down.

Of course, no one knew just how far the rolling stones would fall and now that retirement and pension funds, local and state governments will be affected by this debacle, something should be done.  But I ask you, why should we give them this money with no strings attached so that they can again “play the game” with no repercussions for the reckless way they played “the game” this time?

Could that be the problem with this whole scenario?  It wasn’t a game, it was people’s lives, it was people’s savings, it was America’s way of life.  It was only a game to those who saw only the numbers and never the faces behind those numbers.

I see no reason that we the American Taxpayer should bail out the financial industry without receiving something in return.  After all, according to the investment gurus, our world revolves on ROI (Return on Investment).  Maybe not so much.

At times, I have lamented the reporting at our local newspaper, The Plain Dealer.  Today, on the business pages is a Q & A about AIG where Theresa Dixon Murray gives more facts in a few column inches than any of the other news reports I have read so far.  So today, I tip my hat to the Plain Dealer and this business reporter.

“Far-reaching consequences” is the right take on this situation.  Cash-flow problems within a company that has $1 trillion in assets is almost beyond comprehension.  But, if you read the second reason  of why this help by the Federal Reserve was imperative for global financial stability, you get a bit more of the picture than what the national papers have said about the “risky loans” that AIG underwrites.

AIG underwrites the banking industry.  The domino effect would be devastating.  By approving this short term loan, the Federal Reserve has given the financial industry some breathing room to continue to “make right what went wrong”. 

Earlier this month,  an article from The Economist  about Paulson’s nationalization of the housing sector illuminated  how the housing market has caused a big bit of the financial markets uncertainty.  We truly are in a global marketplace.

Late last year, in a comment on Brewed Fresh Daily, I said that the subprime mess would have global implications. I was soundly chastised by another BFD reader.  At that time, I stated that part of the problem was the short term thinking overtaking the corporate world and that everything was transaction based–moving numbers around on a balance sheet.    My hope is that everyone remembers that peoples’ jobs, retirement savings, and our way of life depend on a stable monetary system when making the decisions that will affect our future.   Transition should happen in a deliberate thinking environment with the human factor being considered.

If ever there was a time that our government officials should act in a cohesive bipartisan way it is now.  We need leaders that can effectively govern by best practices and not by the latest polls.  Deregulation may have gotten us where we are today, but regulation for regulation’s sake may not get us to where we need to go.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk of what occupation better prepares one to be President of the United States or what set of experiences makes one the more likely choice for president or even the importance of how much experience one has at a certain occupation.  It got me to wondering about past presidents and what there previous occupations were and how those occupations may or may not have had a direct correlation to the presidency.

After this cursory bit of research, I realized that maybe occupation and experience are not the criteria we should use to select our next  president.  Maybe, we should be looking at what kind of leader the candidate would be.  Now, there are many types of leaders so maybe the first order of business would be to choose the type of leader that would make you more comfortable.  Then, it would be important to choose the attributes that you would find important in a leader of your nation. So for now, here is what I am looking for in the next president of the United States:

-the ability to speak coherently and intelligently about a myriad of subjects.  This attribute is necessary so that he does not embarrass us at home or abroad by misspeaking or miscommunicating our policies as a nation.

-the ability to listen.  I want someone who will listen to other viewpoints and weigh consequences before making decisions.  

-the ability to know that it is not about him but about US.  The president of the United States should make every decision based on how it will affect our nation not only today but seven generations from now.

-the ability to surround himself with people more talented than him so he gets the best advice possible.  This attribute will become EXTREMELY important when choosing a cabinet to guide us.     

-the ability to talk to the American public like we have a brain.  I am SO tired of elected officials acting like “they know what is best for the masses”.  We are, after all, on the ground and know better than those who live within the beltway the pulse of our economy, our educational system, our banking system., our social services safety net.

-the ability to step away from sound bites and ACTUALLY tell it like it is.  If the next president doesn’t do this, a huge opportunity will be lost.  

-the ability to embrace the idea that we are in the 21st century and old models will no longer work to make our nation as a whole more prosperous.  Time is shifting and we need to shift as well if we are going to be where we should be.  

Five out of seven will probably make it for me because if one of the candidates has that many abilities, there will definitely be hope.  Oh yeah,  did I mention hope.  Hope is a big one for me because actually, the American people have the ability to do a whole hell of a lot on their own, but only if they have hope.

Many who read this will find this simplistic but maybe it is.  Could we have made it way too hard recently?  Could we be so intent on what keeps us apart that we have failed to see what keeps us together?  Is that the function of a president?  Is he the one who helps us stay focused leaving it up to the rest of us to make it better?  After all, if we truly wanted a manager wouldn’t we be looking somewhere else? 

I believe that our forefathers set up a great government way back when.  How could they have known how important the checks and balances of a judicial, executive, and legislative branch would be?  How would they know that in the coming years that those checks and balances would be used again and again to keep our country alive and strong?  And most of all, how would they have known how important it would be to guard against presidents who would be king or presidents who just weren’t up to snuff or that others who really had never shone in any other occupation would become giants among men? And, although, the media and the political parties would have us think that who we choose for our next president will make us or break us,  I seriously doubt it.  Does that mean I don’t want to make a fair and balanced choice when I cast my ballot?  No, but I sure think it brings some things into perspective.   I hold the cards just like every other voter who will cast a vote in November.  Let’s make them work for our vote.     

I wrote what appears below as a comment over on RealNEO in response to a great post about the value of community organizing by Kevin Cronin.  When I previewed the comment before posting, I decided that I wanted to crosspost it here at my site because I believe that we need to make sure that at every turn our elected government officials know that they are public servants and that the public they serve is us.

I think the disparaging remarks about community organizing shows that these politicians are very out of touch with the reality of the world.  Community organizing and community engagement will be the future of government in our nation.  Those leaders that understand the immense value of the knowledge that people on the ground and in the neighborhoods bring to what is needed and how to provide it will be key in our government moving into the 21st century.  Although some would have you believe that people want hand outs and a free ride, the exact opposite is true.  The vast majority want the chance, sometimes the second chance, to make it on their own.  Unlike some who strive for wealth they instead know that health, education, and opportunity is what is important. 

Instead of looking down their noses at community organizing, they should understand that the dismissing of the community by those offhand remarks will probably in the end be their undoing.

I just posted this over at Midtown Brews.  I think the topic, the speaker, and the opportunities at this event are so important and timely that I have decided to post this everywhere.

“Give me land lots of land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don’t Fence Me In”, the Cole Porter song sung by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters as well as a host of others.  On the other hand, Will Rogers said “buy land, they aren’t making any more of it”.

Our topic for the June 5^th Brews is LAND.  County Treasurer Jim Rokakis will lead our discussion of the proposed land bank legislation that Ohio will tackle in November.  The passage of this legislation is only the beginning of what will be a transformative change in our region and Ohio.  How the land bank advisory board, the disposition of properties, and the decision-making process for local communities are shaped provides a huge opportunity to “get it right”.

Civic engagement and the public process will be critical elements of a “land bank” that will be a deciding factor in a new form of economic development.  How can the land bank be used to draw new businesses to our region?  How will it retain the businesses we now have?  How could it be used to draw in a skilled workforce?  Which communities will find new ways to use this tool to enhance the attractiveness of the live, work and play potential inherent in that community?  What is the potential to use the land bank to strategically plan for shrinking our footprint?  How will we balance quantity with quality?

This brews has the potential to give us an opportunity to start the conversation to begin thinking in new ways and bringing together the best practices of Open Source Economic Development. 

This month’s Brews explored a topic that is fast approaching D-Day- the new  AMP Ohio “clean coal” contract that Cleveland City Council will sign or reject on March 1.  There will be a public hearing held this Friday, February 22 which will provide the last discussion before a vote is taken.

I grew up in rural Ohio and I am puzzled by the expression “clean coal”.  In my book, there is no such thing, but that is the tag line, so I went wanting to know the answer to that question.  I also wanted to know how it could economically benefit our city to sign a FIFTY year contract with a private company.

The format of this conversation was different than the usual Midtown Brews  Thanks to Stefani Spear of Earthwatch Ohio we had a well-versed panel on the subject.  Go here to see the panelists.   We also had approximately 100 people in the room who were extremely interested in the subject.  A lot of things were different about this Brews-we were in a new place, there was live streaming video, Andy Halko, founder of Insivia, our host monitered an ongoing chat so that people watching could enter in the conversation.  Despite all those changes, one thing remained the same.  I departed with a different perspective than when I arrived. 

My first question in regards to “clean Coal” is coal isn’t clean, but what is different about this coal plant will be the requirement for stringent scrubbing and something called CO2 Carbon Recapture Technology .  Those of us who live in Cleveland are well aware of the hows and why and if scrubbing is done.  But then, we found out that the reality of Meigs County is this.  Meigs County is the ONLY county in Ohio that does not NOW have EPA monitors in place.  The Ohio EPA is working feverishly to change this, but the legislation and the paperwork is still not in place.  Meigs County presently has more coal plants than any other county in Ohio.  I also believe it is very high on the scale nationally.  Why does this situation exist?

Councilman Zone then stated that IF Cleveland signs the contract that it will give us a 10% stake (I am paraphrasing here and I may not be stating this exactly, but this would give Cleveland a place at the table where we could then monitor the company and make sure that EPA standards are followed and enhanced) Go to Meet The Bloggers for the whole story.  I believe that the three young men at that table believe that it is better to be involved than to simply say NO, and I agree with that philosophy.  I also believe that we have three very capable advocates for “green” issues.  However, I know firsthand, promises made, and not kept by coal companies. 

I grew up on the border of Wayne and Holmes Counties where strip mining in the late sixties and early seventies was ”big business” .  Promises that said land would be reclaimed, damage from blasting would be reimbursed, “when we leave you won’t know we were here”.  Thirty years later,  the forest on the hills has been replaced by what my father always called scrub brush, structures that were once homes remain abandoned and vacant because of blasting damage to foundations or because wells dried up because of a shift in the water table.  An area never wealthy in money, but an area rich in tradition, rural pride and beautiful scenery is much poorer today than it was when I was growing up.  Promises were made and not kept, and therefore, I believe that these young men who believe that they can make a difference need to proceed with eyes wide open.   

We never really talked much about the economic feasibilty of a fifty year contract or why it is in the best interest of our city except to bring in the CPP (Cleveland Public Power) piece which I understand is quite fragile at this point in time because it cannot expand unless there is a place to buy coal reasonably.  CPP is often brought up as the reason that our rates here in Cleveland are what they are, but I don’t see the advantage.  CPP and CEI rates are comparable.  We have  some of the highest rates if not the highest rates in Ohio.  Bill Callahan often posts on this issue.  Here, here, and here are examples of the questions Bill posits.  And then there is this post about the issue that includes  the independent study paid for by Ohio Citizens For Action that made me really sit up and take notice. 

From what I can glean from this study, the place at the table for those municipalities that sign the contract is on a participartory committee with no real authority.  The authority remains with the company’s board of directors but what I really found troubling was the ability of the company based on “market rates” to set price.  Why would we enter into a deal that does not set some limits to price?  Also, there appears to be no back door.  What if our need for coal dwindles because of new technologies, new ways of conservation, and who knows why else our need for coal may decrease?  If more stringent Federal EPA guidelines are introduced and passed, where will we be holding a contract that ties us to a dying industry for how many more years? How come I keep thinking of the story about Daniel Webster and the Devil?

I am still finding it hard to see the economic benefit for us to sign this fifty year contract.  As many of the people said at the meeting, with or without Cleveland the deal goes forward.  But then, the really, really hard thing for me to get my head around is how do we in Cleveland justify being part of adding one more coal plant to an area inundated with coal plants?

The accompanying air and water pollution, the health issues of breathing dirty air, the fouling of the Ohio River which is one of the largest sources of fresh water which eventually flows into the Mississippi and the possibility of mountaintop mining changing the skyline in are beautiful state  are probably the more troubling issues.  How can we here in Northeast Ohio move forward economically knowing that by so doing, we have sentenced our neighbors in Meigs County to a continuation of a quality of life that consists of dirty air and fouled water? 

If any group of people should understand the moral issue that is staring us in the face, it should be those of us who have lived in sight of the steel mills for generations.  Our economy here took a huge hit when the steel mills began to shrink, but the water quality of the Cuyahoga River bounced back.  Although our air quality is still not anything to put in the plus column it certainly is better than when I moved here in the 70’s.  And no one, in the discussion that night, mentioned the coal miners who depend on these mining jobs.  There will be two coal plants that will close.  Will those miners go to the new plant?  Will there be as many jobs as now?  

Councilman Brian Cummins in one simple statement said it all.  “I worked in the Peace Corps for three years during those years, I had no TV, I could do that I am not sure that everyone else would.” So how do we balance the need for electricty with the health of our planet?