By Bob Barancik
This might be an opportune moment to broach the subject of “Right Livelihood.” Presently, millions of American white collar and blue collar workers have lost their jobs or have been forced to accept shortened work weeks. Millions of gainfully employed citizens count themselves among “The Working Worried.” They live with the very real possibility of being sacked at a moment’s notice. Thousands of young college grads are forced to boomerang back to their parents’ homes and take marginal jobs.
Read the Full story at>>
http://www.creativeledge.com/blog/index.php

(A blog on the rising power of social media)

Jon Lebkowsky

I just turned my Twitter avatar green in a show of support for Iranian democracy, using a simple tool created by Arik Fraimovich of Topify.com, and this made me think of the 1996 campaign to turn web pages black to protest the passage and signing of the Communications Decency Act as part of the 1996 Omnibus Telecommunications Act. Orchestrated by activists Shabbir Safdar and Jonah Seiger, the black web page campaign created a perception – that the CDA was not about pornography (which the act was meant to suppress), but about censorship. It was a powerful campaign, thousands of people and sites signed up, including Yahoo and Netscape.

Read the full story at >> http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010013.html

Posted June 18, Re Think e-newsletter
Excerpts from Carol Coletta’s speech to the Congress for the New Urbanism

Cities, it turns out, have natural advantages. Cities naturally offer Variety, a wide range of valued choices. They naturally offer Convenience. In cities, there are more choices close at hand. Discovery is another city advantage. Cities offer people more chances to discover things they didn’t know they liked, things they didn’t know they wanted to know, and people they didn’t know they could make things with (including fun and babies). And cities naturally offer more Opportunity to their citizens in the form of access to jobs, education and smart people. But here’s the problem: We keep screwing it up. We keep undermining the city’s natural advantages.

Instead of building compact cities that magnify, amplify and intensify these city advantages, we’ve blown it.

Since its inception, CNU has dedicated itself to remedying this sad (and stupid) situation. Four cars in every garage may have once been the dream of Americans, but it’s now clear that not only is that time-consuming and isolating; not only does it undermine the natural advantages of cities – and God knows we need every advantage we can get these days – but it is also expensive.

Last November, CEOs for Cities recognized that if in the nation’s top 51 metro areas, we could make small performance improvements in three key areas, it could mean big money to local economies and to the national economy. One of those key areas is what we call “The Green Dividend.” The Green Dividend, worth $29 billion annually to the nation, is achieved by reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled by just one mile per person per day in the top 51 metro areas.

What if mayors and City Councils and planning boards really understood they are contributing to their own demise – and undermining their own tax base every time they approve another car-dependent development?

Do you think we could get their attention? I think so.

CEOs for Cities wants to partner with CNU and other organizations that can promote this important message. Together, we can make cities that deliver on the City Advantage, put more money into local economies through the Green Dividend, and help cities hold their real estate value through increased walkability.

Plus, we’ll make cities that are just a lot more fun to inhabit.

It’s been a rough year. But don’t tell that to the 50 fastest growing companies in Tampa Bay. They beat the odds and showed strong results in downward times. Name of the firms making the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s annual list are shown below in alphabetical order. As part of the process, event sponsor Tampa accounting firm Kirkland Russ Murphy & Tapp PA coordinates the data submitted by candidate firms to create a safe haven for potentially proprietary numbers. Among the criteria to make the list is a annual revenue threshold of $1 million or more since 2006 and consecutive annual growth since then. The ranking order, based on revenue growth for the past three years, will be revealed at TBBJ’s annual Fast 50 luncheon at the A La Carte Event Pavilion in Tampa July 23.
See the list here>> http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/06/15/daily8.html?page=1

Also check out the list of Not-for-Profits just honored at http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/06/15/daily63.html