i'm trying to see if i can put together a "corporation of the poor" to try to take advantage of some of the extraordinary subsidies and giveaways from local, state, and federal governments. ...
can i get some suggestions of the possible goodies that Po' Co. should go after?
Alex Lantsberg, Project Coordinator Southeast Alliance for Environmental Justice
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(Sorry. I forgot the original Subject thread)
First off Alex, get rid of whatever you use for e-mail. It produces a bunch of html at the end of your messages (microsuck outhouse?) and doesn't bode well for internet alliance building. And you have to change your title too. Project coordinator has no ring. Think big. Executive Director. Chief Financial Officer. Whatever, but not coordinator. Trust me I've been a project coordinator--its like saying you work in the tolite.
Po'Inc needs lawyers, right off to help structure it so as to milk the government and other corporations in all the style they are accustomed to. Excuse my old speak. Start over. We wish to make such a corporate entity more efficient and productive. The best place to look for lawyers is of course in the ER at San Francisco General Hospital. Oh, yeah and over at Hastings, night school.
But lets talk a general business model. I think you can get money immediately for developing these plans for those tragic inner city neighborhoods called enterprise zones. Hopefully you live near one. Do like Hilary, visit and start talking it up with the natives.
But, let's get down to brass tacks. I would tend to favor a diversified, de-centralized and interlocking system of multiple entities with a variety of aliases and alibis. Say, a foundation arm that is a cover for generating vast quantities of pro- Po'inc advertising and general purpose propaganda like press releases, think-tank reports, executive summaries, and such. Make sure the foundation board members are absolutely sterling, but completely isolated from any knowledge of the nitty gritty. After all that is not what they do best. Of course any money you can swindle out of the real corporate bigwigs, goes straight into your foundation. All of which is invested in whatever is the currently favored Wall Street money machine. In this regard, I would also seek real estate donations, maybe a burned out hotel, bank, flop house or sweat shop warehouse, so you can become a slum lord and developer. This track will get you into city hall, down in the basement where all the records are kept and where most of micro and some of the macro swindles over property take place.
In addition to the foundation, then I would also favor a non-profit general do-gooder arm with some kind of educational or religious flavor. Substitute ethnicities of choice if the religion thing sounds too far Right. Lets say an R&D mill that mines all those mysteries of poverty that have some flashy cultural ring. This is a good way to get the staff circulating through the local higher education back doors. The neat thing about these back doors is, if you can write, then you can get all the project grants you can bully out of the better certified swindlers of academia. These quarterly project checks of course pay for your own staff. Since you're in San Francisco, I would suggest SFSU because they are down and out enough to drop overhead to absolutely delirious levels below 30%. Also, since they are selling out a public institution, they need to make it look like a good ethnic and multi-cultural thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I would suggest the more prestigious sell outs, UCSF or UCB, but they are too greedy and their overheads are astronomical. And, they are after big money in drugs, medicine and agribusiness. Local city projects are not worth the paperwork.
I know, I know. This sounds too much like work. But wait, we're getting to the good part.
Now, for the hard core swindling corporate entity proper, the greed machine itself. I am not as at home in this branch. But I'll give it a go.
Let's try a high tech spin for Po'Inc. Well, Po'Inc is a certified, local, enterprise zone, multi-ethnic/racial business right? Well, lets hope those ambulance cashing lawyers wrote it up that way and if it says so on paper, that's all that counts. Now, the City subcontracts all sorts of its proper functions out as a dodge to keep budgets down, escape union contracts, health benies and so on. So, here is Po'Inc and we just happen to have a complete computer, network, accounting system (solicited through the foundation arm, from Microsuck, and then immediately sold in a contract to one of our corporate sponsors and then replaced with a free throw away system, donated by the school district for the community of course. It runs free software, and patches for the latest Sun commercial accounting systems, courtesy of Sun, Wells Fargo and B of A--also through the foundation arm--thank you notes to the board member involved).
Well, it just so happens Po'Inc bids for the City contract to do all those building code, zoning, deed, variance, plan checking bullshit record keeping that used to done down stairs by lifetime civil servants on fat salaries and guaranteed pensions who actually knew what they were doing--remember? So we offer to put SF on the fast track to privatized cyberheaven for practically nothing. We give the City officials the tour, with some of those sterling foundation board members hosting the catered lunch and transportation--off site. Nobody wants to actually see the office. So, the board gets to chum it up to city hall, city hall gets to feel like it's tying the knot with big business and poverty at the same time, and we get a free lunch and lots of press.
Ah, you ask where the hell is the fucking work? What a cynical jerk. Of course its being done. It's just that, it's not right here, right now. See, that's the miracle of cyberspace--everything is always happening somewhere else.
Fine, so show me the fucking work! Okay, okay. Well, as part of our R&D arm with intimate ties to higher education and a variety of grants from the Department of Justice (the war on drugs is after all a growth industry) and the ever faithful Office of Education, we developed contacts with the State level criminal justice system and department of corrections--a work fare program to cut the recidivism rate and tragic cycle of poverty, see?
The work, damnnitall, where's the work! Just a minute. I am getting there. Be patient. It turns out that many of the folks in our enterprise zone, are not actually living there any more, because they are all in prison. Okay. So, we have the city contract to do the record keeping, accounts, and document archives, and the prisoners do all the work--for nothing. They are giving themselves back to the community they abused--see the moral angle there? Cool, huh? And they are learning computers, as they say these days. By the way, we also collect tuition (which is quite high for this sort of training), from the State Department of Rehabilitation, which as it turns out also pays the wages, which are of course invested for the future benefit of our enrollees. We are always on the look out for third strike lifers with no relatives and illegal aliens, but your run of the mill thug with do.
You look, sceptical. Listen, our research team assures us that it will take years to demonstrate none of this has any effect at all on crime, poverty, or prison populations. No matter. All we are interested here, in this part of the corporate entity is keeping the cash flow growing. Besides the R&D boys (and girls) are already working on developing alternative strategies for the future, under another research contract.
I sense you are disappointed. You were expecting cold hard cash on the barrel head. Hmm. The only place I know with any cash is over at the Federal Reserve Depository--downtown somewhere near the Old Mint. I think they have about 8 billion. They move it around with fork lifts into different pallet stacks on the floor that represent different banks. Unfortunately, they are tied into some kind of Air Force early warning system, so you'll need F-16's to fly cover. It could get messy. Better forget those blue collar approaches like just taking the money, and stick to the white collar version instead.
Okay, so I misunderstood. You were interested in actually improving conditions? Well, there's no money in that. They're poor or in jail, get it?
Chuck Grimes