Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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Collectively, humanity is using 70 percent more resources than the Earth can naturally renew each year. Living beyond our means, which is what we are doing, is inherently unsustainable: Pollution, natural disasters, and generally reduced quality of life for everyone, now and increasingly in the future, are some examples of the fallout. Small businesses are in the driver’s seat SMEs have a disproportionate impact on the ecosystem, thanks to their sheer numbers, size, and s...
In yet another sign of inflation, U.S. automobile dealers are adding premiums of up to $50,000 on new cars. This is on top of the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price. A photo posted on Facebook shows a 2022 Dodge Ram 1500 TRX for sale for an MSRP of $94,370. An anti theft option and other options, add $4,480. A "Market Adjustment" adds another $50,000, so you're out the door for $148,000. Plus tax and license, which would take you to about $165,000 out the door. Or about the...
October 28, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Walmart shoppers face the daunting challenge of identifying and dodging a vast assortment of counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica products offered on Walmart.com. Walmart is both a direct retailer of fake and fraudulent items and has opened its website to global third-party sellers who can list just about anything they want, including counterfeit, replica, and fraudulent products. The counterfeit items appear right alongside authentic p...
San Francisco's only In N Out Burger issued a statement decrying the City's vaccination mandate policy. The policy would require the luxury burger chain to check Covid-19 vaccination cards before allowing customers to enter. The In N Out at Fisherman's Wharf has reopened, but it is now take out only. That way the restaurant does not have to check for proof of vaccination. Conservatives and libertarians immediately lauded the burger chain for its stand against government over...
October 14, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Amazon is running a systematic campaign of copying products and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines, according to a Reuters Special Report. Rigged search results and creating knockoff products under its own brand are highlighted from a trove of internal Amazon documents that provide a rare unvarnished look, in the company's own words, into business practices that Amazon has denied for years. Internal documents seen by...
September 8, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Organized crime rings are stealing billions in merchandise to peddle online -- often on Amazon, says a Wall Street Journal investigation. Online sales of stolen merchandise have plagued e-commerce sites for years, now supercharged by the pandemic and growth of unregulated websites. Consumers are on their own, left to sort through an inexhaustible supply of stolen, counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica goods from unvetted sellers allowed t...
6/23 Rising gas prices have become the theme for the 2021 summer travel season. Drivers in LA County will see prices remain above the $4 per gallon mark in time for the upcoming holiday weekend. Even with some relief from a recent small drop in prices, the LA County average price of gas on July 4 is still expected to be $4.11 per gallon, some 43 percent, or 93 cents more than last year's Covid-induced price of $3.18. 46 percent of Americans' plans this summer were affected by...
June 3, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Buried in Amazon's Conditions of Use (COUs) agreement was a binding arbitration clause forcing buyers, marketplace sellers, and infringed trademark-owners to utilize arbitration to settle disputes. The practice allowed Amazon to skirt the traditional court system and dodge plaintiffs aiming to launch big class-action lawsuits against the e-commerce juggernaut. The requirement was effective, burdening plaintiffs with an arbitration structure t...
Ransomware attacks are making headlines with worrisome frequency. In May, 45% of the fuel supply for the east coast of the United States was disrupted when cybercriminals took Colonial Pipeline's computer network hostage. This latest digital exploit, which created massive commercial and consumer havoc, was international news. Missing from most reporting, however, were the facts that consumers are increasingly targeted as well – and simple steps like maintaining paper and offli...
May 19, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Amazon's global empire is in a crisis. The invasive, manipulative superpower which controls over 50% of online sales is flooded with fakes, scams, phony reviews, and fraud. The e-commerce sales explosion made it easy for criminals to exploit consumers through online counterfeit sales, but Amazon's reaction is too little, too late.. A study funded by the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies found an entire underground economy devoted to c...
The City of Santa Monica has announced its public counter will offer in-person permit services by appointment on select days beginning next Monday, May 3. The Permit Services' public counter in the new City Hall East (CHE), accessible from Olympic Drive, will be open Mondays and Wednesdays, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. The public counter is a one-stop hub for a range of services offered by the city's planning, building and safety divisions as well as the public works and finance...
Editor, You report that Code Enforcement Officers refuse to enforce street vendor regulations at the pier and that on a busy weekend, there was not a single public safety officer of any kind at the pier. Not to worry. On Saturday morning the 17th SMPD was at the Airport Dog Park enforceing licensing requirements for non resident dogs....
CHICAGO – April 22, 2021 – As U.S. consumers become increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of the products they use every day, there remains a wide gap between perception and reality when it comes to the sustainability of paper products. This according to a new survey commissioned by Two Sides North America and conducted by global research firm Toluna. The survey, "Paper's Place in a Post-Pandemic World," sought to explore and better understand consumer per...
April 21, 2021 A fight that broke out April 11 in the pier's north parking lot among six members of the Murcia family, ending in their arrests, highlighted the ongoing and unchecked activity of the allegedly criminal Murcia family regarding the vendors. According to a highly placed city official, the Murcia family brings in dozens of vendors every day to Santa Monica. None of these vendors have city permits or county or state licenses to operate. Instead of licenses, they pay...
Forget that silly stuff about Meghan and Harry. Here's a story that actually affects you: On Sunday, April 18th Krispy Kreme Donuts will close its Santa Monica location at Euclid (13th Street) and Wilshire. "Dear Santa Monica Community: Our lease is expiring and this store will be closing permanently on April 18th," said a sign on the counter at KK." we have enjoyed serving you" the sign continued, and please visit our website for other locations. This will leave only 3 donut...
March 31, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Amazon continues to destroy the retail economy, retail workers, and related services despite hundreds of lawsuits that expose its dangerous business practices. Undeterred by pending legislation, executive orders, and just plain common sense and ethics, the website grabs the retail dollars previously injected into local economies and support trades and turns them into higher salaries for Amazon management and inestimable wealth for CEO Jeff B...
3/29: Egypt's President Sisi bragged today (justifiably), about his country's massive technical achievement in refloating and moving the 400 million metric ton Evergreen Ever Given, and moving her out of the place where it had been stuck since Tuesday in the lower Suez Canal. Breaking Monday Morning Cairo time: “MV Ever Given was successfully re-floated at 04:30 lt 29/03/2021. She is being secured at the moment. More information about next steps will follow once they are k...
March 19, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – Shoppers expect Walmart to provide authentic and safe products when they shop on Walmart's website -- but that confidence is misplaced. Walmart's push to capture a portion of the exploding e-commerce marketplace exposes a seedy and dishonest practice -- the sale of counterfeit, replica, and fraudulent products. Walmart is both a direct retailer of fake and fraudulent items and has opened its website, Walmart.com, to global third-party s...
PeopleConnect, owner of the social networking site Classmates.com, has settled a consumer protection lawsuit alleging the website did not properly inform its users regarding automatic subscription renewals, the Santa Monica City Attorney's Office announced last week. A final court judgment was entered last Monday by a San Diego judge that calls for PeopleConnect Inc, to pay to $550,000 to settle a consumer protection lawsuit filed by the California Automatic Renewal Task...
March 4, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is warning consumers not to buy or use loose 18650 lithium-ion battery cells. These cells are manufactured as industrial component parts of battery packs and are not intended for individual sale to consumers. However, unscrupulous China salvagers separate the battery packs and re-label the recycled unprotected 18650 cells as "new" with wild capacity claims, selling them online. Consumers who be...
February 2, 2021, Los Angeles, CA – The U.S. e-commerce business keeps on growing. Online shopping due to COVID-19 has contributed significantly to the growth and to the proliferation of counterfeit products available on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. "Many consumers are ... unaware of the significant probabilities they face of being defrauded by counterfeiters when they shop on e-commerce platforms," reads a January 2020 Department of Homeland Security report (PDF) r...
With Social Security's finances in the spotlight these days, especially since COVID-19 devastated the U.S. economy, there is no shortage of ideas for how to reform the Social Security System (SS) to restore it to financial solvency. Some proposals have originated in Congress (Social Security 2100 Act) and others have been floated by various "think tanks." In the latter case, some independent "outside-the-box" proposals advocate entirely scrapping the existing Social Security...
1/10/21: Bitcoin sank to a low of $32,500 per bitcoin, in a sudden 20% overnight decline. The world's first crypto-currency (symbol BTC), could fall all the way back to 23,000 which is where it started this week's rally. The crypto-currency may have risen as the US seemed in a near insurrection on January 6th. Bloomberg news reports that just 40 billionaire bitcoin holders, own 95% of the crypto-currency bitcoin. This could limit the damage on the downside, and may present a...
Finiteness- There are only 21 million coins that are assigned to be mined. Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin declared that only 21 million coins would ever be mined. This drives up the value of the existing coins and makes the unmined ones ever so priceless. Scarcity- We live in a fear-based world and increasingly in the Technology and Finance space, a lot of decisions are made based on fear or FOMO (the Fear of Missing out) in particular. This is human psyche at its...
He was once lauded as the Chinese equivalent of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. From a humble background as a school teacher, Jack Ma founded Alibaba.COM, the largest online retailer in the world's most populous country. But now he has not been seen for 4 weeks, since Chinese authorities asked to "question" him. Ma is a strong proponent of an open and market-driven economy. This may have brought him into conflict with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a man who came to power promising...
