Recently in Moral greening of Capitalism Category

AT&T to add 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles

In the York area, these vehicles would help service cell phone sites and the miles of fiber optics making up AT&T's massive telecom network.

• Largest U.S. corporate commitment to Compressed Natural Gas vehicles to date.
• Saves 49 million gallons of gasoline
• Reduces carbon emissions by 211,000 metric tons
• Removes the emissions fo 38,600 traditional passenger vehicles for a year

Source: AT&T

One of the primary benefactors of this expenditure will be Ford and other companies who choose to innovate.

The company will initially buy the trucks from Ford and have them converted by other firms to run on natural gas. It also plans to push for 40 new natural-gas fueling stations to be built in the states where it operates.

AT&T said it planned to replace 7,100 passenger cars over the next decade with hybrids or other advanced-technology vehicles, depending on when such technology becomes available.

Ford has said it would double its hybrid production this year, with the Fusion and Milan sedans joining the Escape and Mariner SUVs in its hybrid lineup.

Detroit Free Press

No one wants to touch the sacred "free market" concept that is no longer free in the face of a world controlled by aging monopolies.

Corporations like profit and consumers like cheap goods. We are all locked in step pending a tipping point.

There was worry about "Made in America" stipulations built into the new stimulus package. It was said that it would touch off "trade wars". How can we have a trade war if we make nothing. When was the last time other than food, that you saw "Made in U.S.A." on anything you purchased.

The current stimulus package is just continuing the cycle of large corporations borrowing wealth from the future of taxpayers. If anything, it's consolidating the banks and corporations into BIGGER ones that will need BIGGER stimulus as they hold us hostage with fear of failure.

It all has a feeling of paying off Frankie more every month so he doesn't come into your Deli on Avenue Q in Brooklyn to break your knuckles after he has already broken your nose.

What will have to happen as the course continues is that the standard of living in the U.S. will have to erode to a point where salaries can compete with China and then the transportation costs will exceed the benefit. That process hardly makes an economy grow.

So we borrow from our future and we continue to accept white collar crime that continues without meaningful prosecution. There is no deterrent in a society where capitalizing yourself is above all else. The stock market is proof that people don't trust investing in such a system.

Maybe it's time to look the depression in the eye, reset the free market, and hope the next generation of American business leaders born from poverty can rule the world with a sustainable moral order.

In a not so greenmesh observation for the day:

Triumph (Danskin) said in a letter made public Tuesday that it would permanently lay off 226 workers - 168 at its manufacturing plant in York and 58 at its distribution center in Springettsbury Township.

Triumph could not find an investor or secure a sufficient loan from its lender, Wells Fargo, according to CEO Carol Hochman's letter, which was sent to Pennsylvania's department of labor and industry and local government leaders. inyork.com/ydr

So what is Wells Fargo doing with taxpayer money if they are not using it to save taxpayer jobs? Wells Fargo's did grab Wachovia.

Bigger banks will need bigger taxpayer bailouts as they become a larger part of the economic picture.

Nothing concentrates the mind more than a death sentence, except when the sentencing is clouded with taxpayer money.

The automakers are back in Washington making their last ditch plea today.The more I listen to these exchanges, the more I realize that life is destined to change for all of us.

Both G.M. and Chrysler are racing to complete restructuring plans by Tuesday's deadline with the Treasury Department. After listening to this plea my mind is concentrating on how this can possibly work long-term.

Over capacity, too expensive, too much debt. Regardless of how you look at it; your opinion of the Detroit 3s products, your opinion of unions, and the obvious desire by all of us not to slip into a depression, it doesn't work.

The plan to bail out car companies is stalling what we have been avoiding all along by using debt to bolster an out of balance global economy that is employing cheaper labor costs (the jobs that gave people money to consume in the United States) and wealth to developing countries.

Some alarming highlights I heard during this discussion.

• Ford is valued at $3.4 billion, General Motors $1.8, and Chrysler $0.5. BMW, a small niche company, is valued at $14 billion. Detroit automakers are seeking about $60 billion total in bridge loans from taxpayers that in all likelihood will not be paid back because these companies are worth a fraction of the loan amount.

  Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, testified before Congress in December that it would cost between $75 billion and $125 billion to bailout the Big Three.



• Pennsylvania is home to 83,000 jobs associated with automotive part supply.

It's become an anticipated reality show on C-SPAN that I don't relish. A group of CEOs sit in front of Congress while they are pounded with questions. I listen to it because I am hoping to hear a hero step forward that is worthy of their compensation; to see if I might want to consider investing in their system again.

The banking CEOs believe that this moment will exonerate them in my eyes.

This time Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo are scheduled to testify about if had any clue as to the condition of the economy before it fell apart and what they did with the TARP funds.

The questions by Congress take on a form of an exasperated parent with an out of control adolescent past the verge of intervention.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) asks why they need a bonus on top of a generous salary that they give themselves. Why they need to be bribed to do their job. Would you not come to work on a Wednesday if you didn't get your bonus, questions Frank. A CEO insists that he loves his job and would do it without a bonus.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) who refers to CEOs as "captains of the universe" asks if any of the CEOs have increased interest rates to card holders after receiving TARP funds. Some hands go up.

Waters then asks if any of the banks lowered their interest rates to consumers who shop at select stores. No hands go up.

Forget trickle down economics, these people were handed a bucket of water taken from the dehydrated masses and continued guzzling on their water intoxication plan.

Ok, the Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis gets a few marketing points for taking an eight-hour train ride home to his bank's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In previous recessions, we weren't quite making everything in China yet so there was something to recover; and yet we are still told today that we can't demand "Made in America", because it's bad for the "free market" and it will start a trade war.

I would counter that the trade war has been won. Everything is outsourced.

Chart - The Gavel - What 3.6 Million Jobs Lost Over 13 Months Looks Like

There I stood looking at two packs of GU10 bulbs at my local huge box building supply store trying to decide which purchase would give the entire population of the United States a better future.

On the right, is a bulb marketed General Electric, a grand old American company that began when Thomas Edison invented light bulbs about 130 years ago. It is the tenth largest company in the world. The bulb package says "Made in China" and retails for $14.98

On the left is a bulb brought to us by L G Sourcing of N. Wilkesboro, NC. a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lowe's Companies. The bulb package says "Made in China" and retails for $6.98.

Both bulbs are Chinese made with American distributor networks. So what more am I getting and what do my fellow American workers get when I pay double for the GE bulb?

When I first started my career in journalism 24 years ago, companies didn't provide diversity training.

During the mid-1990's diversity training became a mandatory element of office life, but it always centered on a black/white, male/female balance.

Dr. Bill Hunter, president of Global Competence Consulting out of Nazareth, Pa. takes a global approach with a goal of making participants "the others". Hunter ran a program this week at Northeastern Senior High School in Manchester, Pa.

The goal today is to make you feel as though you are "the other". "The other" for every one of you is different. You each fit into your own cultural box in some way.

Your kids, my kids need to be ready for the global workforce. And in doing that they're not going to be living in that bubble I grew up in. They're are going to be working in a multi-national, multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-linguistic workforce and if they can't thrive and in fact succeed in that environment they're going to be lost.

--- Dr. Bill Hunter

I was just pondering huge government stimulus packages while hanging up laundry to help cut my gas bill.

I don't think a stimulus package will work. Once that new bridge is built, the road paved and the workers head home. What happens next?

There will be great pressure on government types; taxpayer supported civil and teacher unions as this thing progresses to take the cuts that that have occurred in the rest of the labor force that supports them. All which leads to less spending and less potential for economic recovery.

Things started going wrong in about 1914 when we went off the gold standard and started printing money. Now $1 is worth about 3 cents.

We traded, outsourced, "stayed the course", and deceived ourselves into a standard of living that wasn't sustainable. And then the world caught up with the plan offering continuously merging companies a huge labor pool working for pennies an hour.

The "free market" is a loosing proposition unless you are the person (the country) where the capital is flowing. China has the upper hand at the moment rolling in a 9% growth, while we wring our hands, throwing taxpayer money at the problem in the last hour and perpetuate ideas already not working.

I followed a retired York police officer (1968-91) and his daughter on a 17 hour odyssey through the millions who gathered to welcome President Barack Obama.

Although they had tickets, their efforts fell short of the grand theater.

As we walked away, a group gathered around a car with open doors. White people, black people, a soldier, a lady sat on the cold granite curb with her dog - some seated, some leaning into the car to get closer.

The muted reverberation of amplified reality bouncing from ancient granite buildings mixed with the soft tinniness of the Ford's dashboard radio.

A melting pot with the flavor of an FDR radio moment listening to President Obama say,

"...of our prosperity, on the ability extent opportunity to every willing heart, not out of charity but because it is the surest route to our common good..."

Let me see if i have this straight.

I bailout Bank of America because I am told they are so large my future is threatened if they fail. They take my money and pay some people $20mil for bad advice and buy more bad investments and then I have to give them more money so they don't fail.

It sounds like the time I pulled my account from Merrill and they charged me $75 to fire them.

Chemotherapy for banks: Taking my chances with a depression is starting to sound like a more fruitful investment decision to stop these people from bleeding taxpayers.

Bank of America's reported plea for more federal help has dealt another black eye to both the banking sector and the badly bruised financial advisory business.

Shares of Charlotte-based Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) plunged 15% Thursday after earlier hitting a 14-year low. According to several news reports, the government is likely to be forced to provide BofA with a new round of taxpayer funding - including billions of dollars in loan guarantees - to stem losses tied to the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.

BofA already has received $25 billion, including $10 billion as part of the Merrill Deal, from the Treasury Department via the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

What's more, the bank's shareholders paid the advisers $20 million for the opinions - which the firms formulated after investigating Merrill Lynch's condition over a single, hectic weekend. (Fortune.com - 1/15)

I keep looking at the turnpike leasing deal in retrospect and try to envision where the deal would be if it had fallen into the Citi money machine.
(The process - greenmesh 6/2008-10/2008)

Our choice was a blind, one-track business model designed to make money or government inefficiency.

Even with tolls recently rising on the turnpike, the consumer got the better deal with keeping things status quo for now.

Tolls would have gone up anyway. Citi recently sent out interest rate increases to consumer card holders after receiving federal money designed to help ease credit. (greenmesh 12/14)

News on Citigroup, one of the investors courting the turnpike last fall...

Vikram Pandit may soon be forced to carve up Citi to plug the hole in its balance sheet from what could be as much as $150 billion in toxic assets.

The changes now afoot contradict what CEO Vikram Pandit has been telling the market for months--that he wouldn't split up Citi. But as the economic and credit climate has deteriorated, the government--Citi's largest shareholder, with a 7% stake--is likely nudging Pandit to shift his strategy and raise more capital. And the 52-year-old executive has little choice but to follow orders. businessweek.com (1/14)

Turning over the turnpike to private investment was supposed to turn profit potential into quick cash for government. How quickly did that turn around into government giving Citi taxpayer money after Citi failed to make sound long-term business decisions. We were then told that these banks owned so much that it sentenced the taxpayer to doom if they failed.

Citi has been told by government to raise cash by selling pieces of it's vast holdings.

You have to wonder what kind of decisions Citi would have made concerning the turnpike's long-term lease... bridge repairs, safety concerns; retaining the value of the investment in the final years of the lease deal.

The irony of all this is that doing business like this has poisoned the trust of the same consumers (investors) who brought these businesses great wealth and is the fuel that will burn them away along with my 401-K.

Group of us in my home town started the Emigsville Heritage Project as a way to touch base with the roots that made a small town work.

The same fibers that are gradually tearing away with the blur of regionalization, consolidation and globalization. The responsibilities that linked people together as they would strive to build better lives and that made them accountable to each other and themselves.

An excerpt from a recent Emigsville Story night with Sterling Krout. emigsville.org

It was very, very nice coming to Emigsville because in 1942 dad went to an auction to buy a house on Main Street (North George Street) and I was with him that day. It was a two story house, it had four bedrooms, it had a bath, and running water. Dad had $2,500 in his pocket.

Well the bidding didn't last longer than 10 minutes and dad was off the bidding already, but there was a man standing right next to dad and he whispered to him and to this day I have no idea who that man was, but he said, "Albert if you want the house, I will give you the money for the rest of the house above the $2500. Well, the house went for $4000 and dad bought the house.

We were out of bed at 5 o'clock in the morning to bring the newspapers to everyone in Emigsville..no fear of walking the streets at 5 Gary will tell you a few that he had. I didn't even think of fear at that time, but nevertheless it was dark it was 5 o'clock in the morning, no street lights, no sidewalks, no cars. Actually the road was 22 feet across, from North York to Emigsville not much for cars to pass.

Every morning six days a week we would wait for the truck to bring the papers from York that were delivered to Emigsville, Manchester, Mount Wolf and I guess York Haven. It was a precious cargo it could not get wet. There were 90 newspapers brother Gary and I had to deliver every morning and we were happy to do that.

I wasn't aware that we were bringing the news of the world to Emigsville because everyone relied on the newspaper and the guys that were going to work in York they wanted their newspaper early and they wanted to read it before they went to work.

The newspaper to brother Gary and I were special because the newspaper went between the screen door and the regular door. The first thing you learned was that you did not slam the screen door at 5 O'clock in the morning. (laughing from audience) If you did you can bet someone would tell dad and dad would be right back to you.

The newspapers were used for everything...sometimes you shared them with the person next door. Can anybody help me with the price of the newspaper? (Voice from audience) Five cents.

I started to think about it. The newspaper was used for everything. Geraldine will tell me for sure. Mom lined the cupboards with newspaper. Newspapers were put in your peach basket, to put the things up in the attic. Mom used the newspapers in the pantry because when she had the canned items and the peaches and vegetables, you would put them on the newspaper with that date on it and then those were the ones that you would use first, the oldest date.

Mom would wash up the linoleum floor and then she would put newspaper on the floor after it was washed. It was just a ritual that everybody did. It kept the floor clean a day or two longer and then you would pick it up and so on.

During the Great Depression, the Miles Bank in Delta, Pennsylvania collapsed and closed. People lost their jobs. Times were lean. The bank had been in existence since 1890.

The building again saw jobs and prosperity as an early "tech center".

Operators working for The Delta Telephone Exchange and later under the York Telephone and Telegraph Company were busy switching calls for the thriving quarry industry in the area.

Delta was famous for it's decorative green marble and hard slate that lasted on roofs for a century.

Manually placed calls and people pushing jacks into a control board gave way to the rotary dial and eventually the push button phone with computerized central switching. Jobs were lost and an industry changed.

The inventive minds that created technology that gave new life to the building also took it away.

Today, ReConnect, a cafe', gallery & spa, calls the building home. It's a place where locals and curious visitors can experience an independent Main Street eatery with healthy food and good conversation for the same price as a burger combo at a chain store.

The old bank building tells an ongoing story of transition between success, devastation and rebirth.

Businesses like ReConnect hold a key to rebuilding the U.S. economy.

Small Main Street businesses, with faces that you can see in your community that you can make a judgment to trust or not to trust; giving you a service you can see, invest in, nurture, care about and watch your money work in your community.

The consumer is given the opportunity to endorse a Main Street business based on first hand knowledge of their practices and not be held hostage by a huge monopoly that fixes prices and then needs taxpayer bailout money because it has become so large it's failure will doom our existence.

Globalism, monopolies and people without morals grabbing money will always be part of a free market landscape and so will consumers with the potential to change that landscape with the choices they make.

ReConnect is on my short list for a motorcycle ride through the rolling farmland of southern York County.

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The organizers of "Be a Santa to a Senior" were worried this year after not receiving a healthy response to their giving trees. The trees were hung with names and placed in a few public locations. Sarah Hevner, office manager at Home Instead, though that the response was due to a sluggish economy.

After an article in the York Daily Record in November, the gifts started pouring in. Today the gifts were presented to the seniors.

Having grown up in a time when people had to do more with less, these historic faces beamed with very simple tokens of Christmas.

A pin, a bottle of body wash, even just a box of tissues wrapped in holiday paper brought shouts of joy and tears of appreciation.

It reminded me of how far our economy has deteriorated. Making more out of less has evolved into making more out of credit and trying to make more out of speculation, fraud and a ballooning federal deficit. Making more out of capitalizing on cheaper labor markets while making less to buy those products at home.

Making more out of less has morphed into less and less out of investing more and more.

Hope came today from the anonymous people who capitalized on those small dreams from the wish trees placed in Boscovs.

Noreen Freeland tells her kids to "pay it forward".

Almost two years ago, Freeland started a youth group for her neighborhood kids on South Hartley Street in York. This year her kids raised money to help bring Christmas to their peers in the York County Youth Development Center who won't be in a home of their own this Christmas.

Freeland says, "The unique thing that the kids are doing is that some of these kids will be getting few items themselves for Christmas... and this is their way they pay it forward to others...in the community who won't be able to go home for the holidays"

Perhaps the Hartley Street Youth Group can provide training sessions to the CEO's of major U.S. corporations who are seeking taxpayer bailouts while engineering their own bonuses. And maybe bring in the AIG execs in who recently gave themselves huge retention bonuses with taxpayer money for running the company into the ground.

Maybe they can visit Bernard L. Madoff in prison and teach him that a decade old multi-billion dollar ponzi scheme that has bankrupt charities and destroyed savings is self destructive.

Paying forward: People investing in a positive future of individuals who share their community.