CAREERS Special Edition
Page 12
MCS Still in
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Martin
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Cleaning
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CARPET CLEANING
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$30.00 each Area
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(Includes: 1 small Hallway)
1 Cleaning Area (only)
$50.00
Includes Pre-Spray Traffic Area
and Hallway
Stairs (12-16 stairs - With
Other Services) : $30.00
Heavily Soiled Area:
$10.00 each area
(Requiring Pre-Spray)
Area/Oriental Rug Cleaning
Regular Area Rugs
$25.00 Minimum
Wool Oriental Rugs
$40.00 Minimum
UPHOLSTERY
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Sofa: $70.00
Loveseat: $50.00
Sectional: $110 - $140
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Throw Pillows (With
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August 15, 2018
O
PINION
Our Coarse Culture and Resurgent Racism
A downward
slide for
democracy
t om h. h astings
From calling Mexi-
cans rapists and animals
to calling the one black
person at one of his rallies “my
African American,” to endorsing
and appointing proven racists, to
defending confederate statues, to
encouraging violence by his base
at his never-ending rallies, Donald
Trump is taking page after page
from the rise of Hitler in Germany
in the 1930s to the populist Roman
empire nostalgia of Benito Mussoli-
ni.
Name-calling
tweets.
Body-shaming insults. Mock-
ing disabilities. Kneejerk juvenile
retorts. Grade school pejorative
nicknames. Trump returns again
and again to target people by their
identities—e.g. religion, country of
origin.
by
He scorns democratic dissent
even as his alt-right brown shirt
followers claim “free speech”
as their right to scream hate at
gays, Muslims, and those who
don’t toe the Trumpline. Trump
endorses torture and calls for
killing noncombatants in a war-
lord tear at the very fabric of all
international humanitarian and
rules of engagement as well as the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Facts are his enemy; another
accurate label for his utterances and
tweets is pathological lying.
Don’t dare compare? We must.
The Nazi rise in Germany only
happened because ‘good’ Germans
kept their heads down and enjoyed
the relief from the starvation and
extreme poverty of the 1920s that
Hitler brought them. He targeted,
in turn and ultimately lethally, gays,
Jews, communists, people with dis-
abilities, and more.
Is Trump adding jobs and there-
fore helping otherwise good Amer-
icans from resisting his coarsening
influence on virtually all aspects of
American polity and society? We’ll
see how that works out as his trade
wars dump the US economy into
insolvency.
What will it take for Americans
to put a stop to unraveling civil so-
ciety, the long-time pride of Ameri-
ca so touted by analysts ever since
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote so pas-
sionately and admiringly about it
in his 1835 volume, Democracy in
America?
We have shown ourselves the key
to combating this neo-fascism by
our collective mass action against
the cruel racism of separating “il-
legal” parents from their children.
This is the very first time Trump
has backed down and it was not be-
cause politicians suddenly decided
to draw a line; this was civil society
finally taking nonviolent collective
mass action across the U.S.
This is how we roll back this de-
scent into dictatorship, if indeed we
want to, if we decide to in enough
numbers. Because Trump controls
all branches of the federal govern-
ment, thanks in part to the remark-
able theft of a Supreme Court seat
by Mitch McConnell and his Senate
hench-people, we can only slow,
stop, and reverse these lurches to-
ward barbarism from the bottom-up.
Yes, we will have a huge chance
to stem this disastrous denigration
of democracy in November, but
even that will be tough, given the
dirty tricks done by Republican
operatives in redistricting using the
low tactics of gerrymandering and
the purges from voter rolls made
possible by overturning portions of
the 1965 Voting Rights Act, another
Republican attack on democracy.
The stakes are far beyond mere
name-calling and rudeness. As the
nonpartisan Freedom House report
shows, the US is sliding downward
in basic components of a healthy
democracy, and no one except the
American people themselves will
fix this, if indeed democracy is still
the ideal and assumed preference.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is director
of PeaceVoice and a professor of
conflict resolution at Portland State
University.
Energy Efficiency Beats Fossil Fuels on Jobs
And at a faster
rate and lower
cost
b asav s en
We’ve
all
heard claims that
fossil fuels such
as coal, oil, and
gas are major job creators.
But it turns out that developing
and installing the technology to
reduce fossil fuel use — known in
the industry as “energy efficiency”
— creates many more jobs than
fossil fuels.
Energy efficiency jobs in the
United States totaled 2.18 million
in 2016, more than double the total
by
of fossil fuel production and fos-
sil-fuel based electricity generation
combined. They’re growing at a
much faster rate, too.
From 2015 to 2016, there was 53
percent employment growth in ad-
vanced and recycled building ma-
terials, and 59 percent employment
growth in Energy Star applianc-
es. Compare that to just 9 percent
growth in fossil fuel-based electrici-
ty generation.
These energy efficiency jobs are
much cheaper to create. According
to an academic study, every $1 mil-
lion invested in energy efficiency
creates 12 jobs, compared to just 4
or 5 for fossil fuel jobs.
These are good, well-paying
jobs. For example, electricians have
a median hourly pay of $26, and the
Providing Insurance and Financial Services
Home Office, Bloomington, Illinois 61710
Ernest J. Hill, Jr. Agent
311 NE Killingsworth St,
Portland, OR 97211
503 286 1103
Fax 503 286 1146
ernie.hill.h5mb@statefarm.com
24 Hour Good Neighbor Service R
State Farm R
corresponding numbers for heating,
ventilation, and air-conditioning
(HVAC) workers and carpenters
are $22.64 and $21.71, respectively.
(Compare that to the median hourly
pay for all U.S. workers, $18.12.)
These jobs are more likely to be
unionized, too. And they’re a great
way to lift up people who’ve been
left out of the fossil fuel economy.
So it’s no wonder that many
states, including Oregon, are work-
ing to grow their share of efficiency
jobs, especially for traditionally ex-
cluded populations such as people
of color and low-income people. I
looked at a bunch of inspiring ex-
amples in a new report for the In-
stitute for Policy Studies that will be
out this week.
For example, Illinois has passed
legislation requiring larger utilities
to create renewable energy and
energy efficiency job training pro-
grams, especially for people from
economically disadvantaged com-
munities — including youth of col-
or, formerly incarcerated people, in-
dividuals who’ve been in the foster
care system as children, and others.
Oregon is another success story.
Forty-seven percent of new jobs
created through Oregon’s statewide
residential energy efficiency pro-
gram — and 55 percent of the hours
worked — went to women and peo-
ple of color. Median hourly wages
for these jobs were 7 percent high-
er than the median hourly wage of
$17.24 for all Oregon workers, and
81 percent of workers had health
benefits.
These successes didn’t happen
by themselves — they were the
product of setting goals and making
serious efforts to meet them.
So energy efficiency creates
more jobs than fossil fuels — and at
a faster rate and a lower cost.
They’re good jobs, with good
wages and above-average rates of
unionization. And states have taken
concrete measures to make these
jobs accessible to everyone and
raise standards for energy efficiency
workers.
Why, then, does the federal gov-
ernment lag behind? And worse
still, why does it pursue fantasies
such as bringing back coal? Sadly,
the answer is bribes, bribes, bribes.
Fossil fuel interests pour money
into congressional and presidential
campaigns, and politicians return
the favor by doing their bidding.
The Trump administration’s push
for coal is driven by two billionaire
coal oligarchs, Robert Murray and
Joseph Craft. Both have pumped
money into Trump’s campaign and
openly advocate for deregulating
fossil fuels and bailing out coal.
If the federal government really
cared about “jobs, jobs, jobs,” they
would follow the lead of Illinois and
Oregon and make a big push to sub-
sidize energy efficiency — instead
of bailing out coal.
Basav Sen directs the Climate
Policy Project at the Institute for
Policy Studies. Distributed by Oth-
erWords.org.