Gloria Ferris

Last week I posted about our friend and neighbor’s Valentine’s Weekend Benefit for Big Brothers Big Sisters at his store mlangclothing&cocktails.

This week I am posting a bit more about the event and some of the artists whose work is for sale at Mike’s store.  Three of the artists like Mike are neighbors as well as friends and the fourth artist is a gal who has worked with us in the Brooklyn Centre neighborhood at some of our events.  All four women are incredibly talented and produce quality pieces again and again.

Deby Cowdin. You can see examples of Deby’s work at her website from the blue bag. The Civic Innovation Lab recently awarded Deby and her partners one of their grants to use in promoting the recyclable aspect of the artwork she produces and promotes at her gallery/studio.

Denise Donaldson. Denise is planning a very special necklace set for Valentine’s Day.  It will be displayed on Saturday, and as with all her pieces, she will make only one.  She uses mostly semi-precious stones, the more unusual the better. She does her own designing and welcomes custom orders.

Sharon Martyn. Sharon’s stained glass  designs are original and unique and the glass is hand cut and hand ground.. Her handmade wire work adds flow and beauty to each piece she crafts.  The addition of crystals  to her sun catchers adds a dimension of light and sparkle not often seen.  Sharon has created fan lights, fireplace panels and other custom windows for our neighbors. The pieces shown here are her donations to Mike’s raffle to benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters.  The heart on the left is light pink and the one on the right is dark purple.

Marge Pauls.  Marge creates original artwork that appeals to the romantic in each of us.  She paints fairies, angels, society moguls and a myriad of other subjects. She incorporates pen and ink in her work which gives it a sharpness and edge that adds “pop” to her work.  Her artwork is available as prints, matted or unmatted, and as note cards. We eagerly await her yearly Christmas card and the party invitation for New Year Eve’s because it will be a new, never seen mpauls original.  She also crafts unique jewelry which will also be at mlangclothing&cocktails. 

Mike tells me that the raffle this weekend will include theater and sporting event  tickets. There may be restaurant gift cards and Mike has thrown in a few items from the store as well.  Besides, the custom shirt deal for a $49 donation BBBS, there will be a pair of $95 pants raffled.   Did I say  that there is no minimum donation? Come buy raffle tickets, donate and get a shirt, buy a few drinks, and sample a few of the appetizers from area restaurants.

This Saturday—everybody’s welcome. Judge Pianka will be there.

The Cleveland Housing Court is offering an informational meeting on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 10:00 AM at the Justice Center, 13 Floor, Courtroom 13-B. Please plan on attending this event to learn more about the Cleveland Housing Court.

Information presented will include the following:

• the role of the Housing Court in criminal and civil cases;
• how cases are filed in the Housing Court;
• the role of the City of Cleveland Prosecutor’s Office in Housing cases;
• the duties of the City Inspectors in Housing cases;
• search warrants;
• Housing Court programs and initiatives;
• the role of Housing Court Specialists, Magistrates and Bailiffs; and
• the outlook for 2010.

Please RSVP the number of attendees to: mooredi@clevelandmunicipalcourt.org.

Cleveland Housing Court Informational Meeting

Just finished reading  The Weekend Interview with Hank Greenberg by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Can AIG Be Saved? in the Wall Street Journal.

The questions Mr. Greenberg raises in his interview with Mr. Jenkins are very disturbing.  His two suspects for the changes made by the ISDA of Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank does not surprise me.  Ever since I read Never Enough by Joe McGinnis , a Holy Cross Alumnus and the research done by my friend Bill Callahan showing the overwhelming numbers of foreclosures in Cuyahoga County brought by Deutsche Bank or their servicers I have felt that these two firms are not to be trusted.

We should listen to what Mr. Greenberg has to say about the machinations of Goldman Sachs during the New York Federal Reserve’s meeting before the collapse of AIG. This article in Issue 1075 0f The Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi is a wonderful resource concerning the backroom dealings that weekend before the Monday announcement.  Accessing the full article to get a clearer picture is a good idea.

It is clear to me that Goldman Sachs is not God and Lloyd Blankfein is not Jesus and neither are doing God’s work. Goldman Sachs does not work from the premise of abundance but rather deals in scarcity and fear.  As Mr. Greenberg states in the article it is up to the American public to demand transparency and accountability for the debacle Wall Street has become.  The average American Taxpayer does not reap the benefits of obscene bonuses or the lobbying efforts of banks “too big to fail” or corporations seen in the same light,  but we will be paying the bills for generations to come.   

There are two kinds of people.  Those that believe that once a year on the eve of December 25th a short, fat old man dressed in loud red pajamas, is flown all over the world by a bunch of wingless reindeer in order to stuff a wild assortment of presents into carefully hung stockings and under overly ornamented evergreen trees…and those that don’t believe all that.

There’s also a third kind of people made up of a strange collection of the first two kinds of people.  Those that believe in truly impossible.  Those that believe in the real miracle of miracles.  Those that still believe it’s possible to have…..

Peace on Earth and Good Will to All.

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.

Today, we transitioned to a new domain name for my favorite neighborhood group: http://www.BrooklynCentreNaturalists.net. We understand that using the B-C-N capitalizations makes no difference one way or the other when it comes to functionality, but we think it makes it all more readable.

The old domain, http://www.act3.typepad.com/brooklyn_centre_national_/, will still work, but the new domain should be simpler and easier for everybody to remember, not to mention easier to type.

For those of you who don’t follow our really local, everyday activities, the blog title and tag line are–

Brooklyn Centre National Wildlife Community

a natural-habitat-aware park neighborhood where everything comes together, brought to you by the Brooklyn Centre Naturalists

Read the speech at the link below and please then let me know what all the ruckus was about, if you have an inkling.

White House releases text of Obama’s speech to nation’s schoolchildren – cleveland.com

There’s a good thread running here after the PD article, in the comments. Reader-riders are saying what they would like to see, and as those of us who serve the public know, the consumer-customer is always right. It is nearly impossible to get this basic precept through the thick skulls of the bureaucrats who continue to make such a mess of a decent public-transit infrastructure.

Once a week. Incredible. Nearly unbelievable.

Let’s do a little soul-searching, on the way to providing people in northeast Ohio public transit the same way and for the same reasons we provide public education:

"…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped. " ~ Last Speech of Hubert H. Humphrey

"A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi

"Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members — the last, the least, the littlest."
~Cardinal Roger Mahony, In a 1998 letter, Creating a Culture of Life

RTA proposes once-a-week bus service to replace community circulators – cleveland.com

And, when the government intervenes into healthcare and rations care, the Goldman Sachs index becomes more predictable; the shorter the holding period, the more profitable the instrument becomes because cash appears and premium costs cease.

These people at Goldman Sachs and in our government  have drained the equity from the real-estate markets, and now they’re trying to suck the profits from the legal reserve system, as their federal reserve system is bankrupt and on life support itself.

They are probably truly evil. See http://www.goldmansachs666.com/ for Mike Morgan’s take on Goldman Sachs and their cohort.

With $26 trillion of life insurance policies in force in the U.S., the market for these "life settlements" bonds could be immense, the Times said.

Investment banks stand to profit from the creation, sale and trading of the bonds.

Wall Street has been searching for a product to replace the once-lucrative mortgage business, and life settlements policies are being seen as the answer, the Times said.

The article cited industry predictions that the market for the bonds could reach $500 billion. It noted that Credit Suisse Group (CS 49.97, +1.11, +2.27%) , for example, bought a firm that originates life settlements and has dedicated efforts to structuring deals and selling the bonds.

In addition, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS 162.97, +1.31, +0.81%) has developed a tradable index of life settlements, allowing investors to bet on whether people will live longer than expected or die sooner than planned, the Times said, adding that spokesmen for Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

The report said that investment banks are following the model used with the packaging of subprime mortgages, which were supposed to be high-quality and less risky, but proved otherwise.

‘Life settlements’ could be Wall Street’s next act – MarketWatch