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October 5, 2003
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 You can do
something to help the local economy and stop the free-fall of North
American employment (real
employment, not the fictional government statistics that ignore the
severely underemployed, struggling part-time and temporary contract
workers with no benefits, and the millions that have just given up
looking for work). Take the Pledge to
Buy Local:
- Never buy anything imported if there's an affordable
locally-made alternative.
- When you're shopping for gifts, buy only domestically-made
goods, especially local, quality, hand-crafted goods. Or give gift
certificates to local restaurants (owned and managed by local people)
or other local services.
- Find out which businesses in your community have won awards
for being excellent employers, or recognized as especially socially or
environmentally conscious. Send them a note of congratulations, and go
out of your way to give them your business.
- If you can't find a reasonable locally-made alternative:
- complain to the store, especially if you know that a
locally-made alternative is available but not carried by the store,
- try to put off buying the imported item if it's
non-essential -- a huge proportion of imported products we buy are
'impulse' purchases -- stuff so cheap we buy it because we can't resist
the deal -- stuff we don't really need and which usually doesn't last
and ends up in the landfill,
- identify and call local companies that might be able to
produce the item locally -- or consider starting a business to produce
it yourself!
- If you can't tell where something is made, assume it's
imported. Beware of misleading 'assembled in..' and 'printed in...'
labels that make imported goods that are repackaged domestically look
like domestic goods.
- Boycott stores that sell mostly imported goods. Let them
know that they are costing local people jobs. If they say the local
goods are too expensive, remind them that you get what you pay for --
in more ways than one.
- Find out whether the major companies in your community have
outsourced or exported jobs to other countries. If they have, complain
to them, to the local newspaper, and to the Chamber of Commerce.
- Tell your local politicians you want tax laws and
regulations changed to reward local employment and penalize the export
of local jobs to other countries. If they support so-called 'free'
trade agreements, work to defeat them -- these agreements escalate job
dislocation.
- Talk to the purchasing department of your organization and
encourage them to Pledge to Buy Local
too.
- And while you're reading the labels to see where stuff was
made, you can help the world at the same time by buying cruelty-free
products (no animal testing) and (thanks Ted Ritzer for this link) fair-trade
products.
The whole issue is finally starting to get some much-needed press. The
NYT today reports on how the job exports are increasingly in high-skill,
high-tech areas. Intel's CEO Barrett offers the usual shameless excuse
for lining executive pockets by depriving Americans of work:
Intel itself has
maintained a fairly steady 60 percent of its employees in the United
States. But in the past year or so, it has added 1,000 software
engineers in China and India, doing work that in the past might have
been done by people hired in the United States. "To be competitive, we
have to move up the skill chain overseas," Mr. Barrett said.
The
other, equally flimsy, well-rehearsed excuses from mega-corporations
are also being increasingly heard: that the export is 'to allow us to
offer 24-hour-a-day service' or because 'Americans don't want to work
in call centres'. These are pathetic arguments and the media and
consumers must challenge them. A million American jobs have already
been exported since Bush took office, and Forrester predicts that this will accelerate, with 3.3 million service jobs alone being exported by 2018.
We must not allow this to happen. It's time to fight back against the
new robber barons in the Fortune 500 who are sacrificing American jobs
and launching a new wave of global wage slavery under the transparently
fraudulent pretext of efficiency and competitiveness. Don't let them do
it. Pledge to buy local.
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1:54:55 PM 
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 The
following
chart shows (a) in red,
the ranking among Salon Blogs in number of
hits
in the past month (to October 4th) and (b) in black,
the
ranking
among Salon Blogs in number of inbound blogs (per
Technorati ) at October 4th, followed by the number of hits during
the month and the current number of
inbound
blogs. Blogs are listed in order of combined (a) + (b) rank.
Last month's combined rank is shown in brackets.
It was a very troubling month for Salon blogs. Of the 2000 Salon blogs
in existence, only about 200 were active in the last
month, a big drop from the previous month. Two of the most popular
bloggers, Reverse Cowgirl and Iraq Democracy Watch, called it quits
this month. A significant number of Salon bloggers are either already
using a tool other than Userland for their blog (using Salon as a
'mirror' site because they like the politically active Salon community)
or are planning to migrate to another tool. The Julie/Julia Project is
complete so the future of the #3 remaining Salon blog is also up in the
air.
Salon blogs received an aggregate 950,000 hits during the month, a drop of over 20%
from last month. The
aggregrate number of inbound links was steady at about 3,000.
There is some good news, however. There are some excellent new blogs
since June, some of which have a prolific amount of content and are
getting some external attention, and being blogrolled by many readers.
An increasing number of the more veteran Salon bloggers are browsing
the Salon Updates list and giving some of the newbies some
encouragement to continue, which is critical since the Power Law
continues to prevail (the top 50 blogs account for 88% of all inbound
blogs and 92% of the hits of the entire Salon community).
Notable new bloggers in the top 50:
- Drug War Rant
-- Pete Guither's plea for a more humane and intelligent solution to
drug abuse than the long-term incarceration of tens of thousands of
Americans for mere possession.
- Life in L.A. -- Claire Smith's moving account of the unexpected death of her father, and her new life in California.
- World O'Crap -- An anonymous female blogger's astute and hilarious deconstruction of the right's most notable wingnuts.
- Glutter -- An astounding portrait of life in Hong Kong after the handover of political control to China by the British.
- World According to Chuck
-- Entertaining and very professionally written stories by a family man
coping with the questions and struggles of everyday life.
Name and location of each blog's 'owner', when known, is shown below
the blog name. The Salon blog # links to the blog's home page.
Apologies in advance for any errors or omissions. Corrections
gratefully accepted. If you're listed and your location is not, please
drop me a line and tell me where you blog from.
Just under: Asia
Business Intelligence, Robert's
Virtual Soapbox,
readme.blog, Maxine 's
Radio Weblog, Reflections
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12:51:04 PM
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© Copyright 2004
Dave Pollard.
Last update:
19/02/2004; 2:54:59 PM. |
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