GDP of Haiti: $8.5 billion.

“We chose this location, IMIX Bookstore in Eagle Rock, because it just kind of fits the mood of the song. The running theme of “Paper Cuts” is gentrification, budget cuts, that’s why it’s titled “Paper Cuts.” This is a perfect example of a Mom and Pop business trying to stay afloat.”

~Willie Stark, “All the King’s Men”

Props to the state of Oregon for approving Measures 66 and 67 on Tuesday, which will slightly increase taxes on corporations and households earning more than $250,000 a year. The state is facing a $733 million budget deficit this year, so the passage of these measures ensures that key funding for health care, education  and public safety remains. The campaign to pass the measures was apparently spearheaded by the organization Vote Yes for Oregon, a coalition of community organizations, labor unions and businesses. “Oregon voters said ‘no’ to more 4-day school weeks and bulging class sizes and ‘yes’ to corporations and the wealthy paying their fair share,” said one of the coalition’s members.

It seems like we’re always looking for new solutions to our problems, but I’m realizing more and more that old solutions are actually still pretty solid, like taxing the rich, “soaking the fat boys.” We don’t tax the richest 1-2% enough, and especially not the corporations that they control. Going a step further, if we moved away from focusing solely on income and started taxing actual wealth, like they do in a lot of other countries, some economists project that the United States could raise up to an extra $450 billion a year. That extra money could go a long way towards investing in education, health care and alternative energy.

I hope that other states, as well as the federal government, look to Oregon as a model and try to pass similar measures.

“[Eariler this month] the Iraqi government awarded Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell the right to develop a large field in the southern part of the country. Earlier in the week, the government awarded contracts to BP, China National Petroleum, Eni (the Italian firm), and Occidental. One thing stands out on first glance: only two of the six oil companies I just listed are based in the U.S. But it gets even more interesting on second glance. These are just service contracts—the companies don’t get title to the oil, and therefore can’t add the billions of barrels involved to their own reported reserves. And the Iraqi government isn’t offering the most generous of deals. For example, the Exxon Mobil team had originally rejected the government’s offer of a $1.90 a barrel payment (which is only about 2.5% of the price of a barrel of oil). Exxon had originally asked for twice that rate, but the government held its ground. It’s quite surprising how the Iraqi government hasn’t quite acted like the puppet regime that one might have expected.”

With a lot of people over the years saying that the whole purpose of the US invasion of Iraq was so that giant US companies could steal Iraqi oil, Henwood raises some pretty interesting points. Economists and money types always try to make predictions about the future. However, the thing that always screws them up is the simple fact that people are unpredictable, and when folks are being oppressed, they don’t like to stay that way for long.

In addition to the recent post on Blue Scholars, SleptOn Magazine did a write up on the progressive Seattle hip-hop crew that again highlights the unique nature of their recent business moves.

The typical schematic record deal is one where the terms are dictated to the artist. If you don’t like it, you hit the road. “In that agreement, the label ends up—because of costs of production and ownership of the means of production and all that jazz—having a very dominating role in the relationship. If we were to sign the deals that we were being offered by some of these labels, we would have to turn over certain control.”

Ceding control to a major label can have wide repercussions past the music itself. “The kind of control I want in a music deal, for example, is to approve spending on—and distribution of—promo materials. This is an important issue if the person in charge is culturally removed from the communities they’re promoting to—which is usually the case.”

It’s not for sure that the Scholars’ unwavering, independent spirit would be smothered under the weight of a big imprint. But why take the chance? Distribution of the limited-edition CD version of OOF! will be taken on by Duck Down Entaprizez, though as the group’s press release points out the group didn’t sign to Duck Down. Rather, the Blue Scholars brought the terms to Duck Down, and Duck Down signed to them. Much of the record’s support is also coming from Caffé Vita, a Seattle-based coffeehouse well-known in the area for its progressive business practices. In the end, though, the buck in this unique deal stops with the artists themselves.

Wow, the arrogance of these guys continues to amaze me.

Here’s some advice from the SF Chronicle:

If you’re fed up with your credit card company, consider one of the three following strategies:

First, shop around for a new card. Cardratings.com lets you search for cards based on rewards still offered, frequent-flyer miles, low interest or balance transfers.

Second, cancel your credit cards and live without them. Since one of the side effects of the pending Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act has been a reduced number of premiums on credit cards (i.e. fewer “points,” lower rebates on balances, a more difficult time cashing in frequent-flyer miles) and since deadbeats are now fair game for the fee racket, it might make sense to go all-cash, all the time. Most bank debit cards are associated with Visa or Mastercard, so you’ll be able to use them for e-commerce. And yeah, credit cards can be convenient for travel, but you don’t necessarily need a credit card to rent a car.

Third, realize that credit history is largely based on your behavior as a borrower — i.e. the length of time banks have been extending credit to you, how timely your payback history is, and how much you’ve borrowed versus how much you could borrow. So you can always work to build up your credit using a) a checking and savings account that you keep in good standing (no overdrafts!), and b) a small consumer loan that you pay back regularly and on-time. An example of this type of loan: a car loan, a student loan, or a consumer loan through your bank.

Now, I’m not one of those people who screams that “Credit cards are the devil!” because I realize that having a good credit history is really important in life under capitalism, and getting in the habit of routinely paying off a credit card balance in full and on time is a great way to boost your credit score and get a little something back if your card offers rewards. However, these latest moves by the industry are just ridiculous, and I think the author above makes a good argument for why, in these crazy economic times, it might be better to just scrap the credit cards if you can, or at least aggressively try to pay off any balances you have.

In terms of the third point–about building your credit through things like keeping a checking or savings account in good standing with no overdrafts, or taking out a small car, education or consumer loan–why not do all those things through a credit union or community bank? The numbers show that across the board, credit unions have the best interest rates for loans. On top of that, parking your money in a credit union is the easiest way to start investing it in a socially responsible way, as credit unions and community banks do a lot to contribute to the well-being of your local community.

“It wasn’t LBJ who brought civil rights to the United States. It was organized people being persistent in their demands. It was not Woodrow Wilson who gave women the right to vote. It was women demanding the right to vote that gave them the right to vote. And it will not be President Obama that gives us single payer health care. It will be us that gives us single payer health care.”

In the midst of the current push for health care reform on the national level, Pennsylvania now has a shot at becoming the first state to approve a single-payer system of health care that will provide health insurance for all its residents. PA Governor Edward Rendell has publicly promised to sign a bill mandating a single-payer health care system if it passes the legislature and gets to his desk. He is the first governor in the country who has made that promise.

While the United States is clearly in need of a better health care system, seeing as how over 40 million people here are uninsured and our infant-mortality rate is pretty bad compared to how much we spend on health care, the sad fact is that the current federal bills being proposed by Congress and the Senate that have the best shot at passing are not going to get everyone insured. Even worse, they are going to require everyone to buy insurance from the insurance companies, essentially handing over millions of new customers to the corporations.

While these bills aren’t completely terrible and do include some much needed reforms (like requiring the insurance companies to not reject people with pre-existing health conditions), the best solution, both ethically and economically, is a single-payer system. It’s a simple system that keeps costs down while insuring everyone.

What seems to get lost in these political debates is the fact that we are talking about people’s lives here. While the politicians and health industry people debate the issue, there’s blood on their hands, as people are dying everyday from not having access to health care and medicine.

Congressman John Conyers has introduced a bill currently that would create a single-payer system on the national level, HR 676, but this bill has been introduced every year since 2003 and has never passed.

Instead, it looks like individual states have a better shot at passing this type of legislation, and the people of Pennsylvania seem pretty fired up. California has passed single-payer legislation twice in the last several years, but both times the bills were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, so the fact that the PA Gov has pledged to sign the legislation into law if it passes is huge. Good luck to them.

Although filmmaker Michael Moore is not perfect by any means, I’ve always appreciated the influential space in the media he has managed to carve out for himself because, as Bambu says: “this very non-threatening caucasian is asking his people to try and check their shit at the door.”

His latest work, Capitalism: A Love Story, is no different and, as a scathing critique of the American capitalist system, could quite possibly be his most relevant and important film yet.

Moore walks us through his upbringing in middle America during the 1950s and ’60s, the supposed “Golden Age” of American prosperity due to wealth being more evenly distributed amongst the population (labor unions were strong and the super-rich top 1% of this time were taxed almost 90%, Moore says). As the film continues on through history, we see Reagan’s gutting of the public safety net, the massive rolling back of our tax structure to benefit the rich, and corporate America’s near total takeover of the economy and political system, all culminating in the 2008 global financial collapse and the publicly subsidized bailout of the corporate banking and financial industry by the George W. Bush Administration just as they are about to leave the White House. Pretty bleak stuff, but Moore manages to still infuse his trademark humor and everyman-insights to highlight the absurdity of the situation we now find ourselves in.

Although today’s Great Recession would seem to be putting the problems of the capitalist system on full display, people definitely do not seem to be ditching it for other ideologies. So, what kind of alternatives should we be pushing for? Moore doesn’t spell out exactly the kind of reforms or system he thinks should replace our current one, but he does highlight some interesting acts of resistance that have or are happening currently, such as the workers of Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors company taking over their factory after it is shut down by management, or the highly profitable, productive and democratically structured Alvarado Street Bakery cooperative in Petaluma, CA.

While the film does go off into a lot of directions at times, mostly due to the huge amount of information being packed into its 2+hours, if at the very least people walk away with the idea that maybe it’s not so bad to strongly regulate capitalism and tax the super rich more, I think it will have done its job. Recommended.

I’ve been a fan of Seattle hip-hop duo, Blue Scholars, for awhile now, and what continually impresses me about them is not only the music they create and the shows that they rock, but also the innovative, progressive business models they continue to create in a rapidly changing (and very corporate controlled, often exploitative) music industry.

Recently, they formed an interesting collaborative business relationship with Duck Down Records and independent Seattle coffee company, Caffe Vita, effectively turning the traditional corporate record deal on its head. The economic and financial details of the arrangement are explained a little better here.

Now, a deal with an independent record company like Duck Down makes sense…but a coffee company too? It’s all part of what rapper Geologic calls “A changing marketplace ready for new self-sustaining business models” and partnering with “Financial backers who share the same vision of creative and economic independence.”

Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

Realities what they are, we–a hip-hop group from the slept-on capital, Seattle–couldn’t let the opportunity to work with Duck Down Records and Caffe Vita pass by. They’ve both retained their independence and thrived on it in a marketplace filled with big business trying to stomp em out. I think they heard us and our audacious plan out because, in essence, they share the same philosophy towards their ventures that we do with our music.

I don’t even like the how word “independent” is used these days but I still f***s with the idea behind the word, which remains relevant from now until the marketplace gets its past-due clean slate. Until then, our best look as independent musicians is to not just support each other, but to support independent entities–whether it be the local mom’s and pop’s store or a family-owned restaurant to independent films and media to grassroots organizations and your kids’ martial arts classes.

The Scholars are a progressive group in all aspects, from their politics to the content of their art. Clearly, this also translates to the way they conduct their business, and provides another model when thinking creatively about how to retain progressive principles in the marketplace.

“HI-808″ Video from their new EP, OOF!