Silver State Holding Corp.

The CTA(Chicago Transit Authority) is making an effort to help small business’ ran by women and minorities by giving them grants, but there are business services behind them, instead of money. This mostly due to the fact that the CTA allocates it transportation services among different groups evenly, but there is a low percentage of women and minority based business’ present. To meet the qualifications of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, one must be is a small business as defined by the U.S. Small Business Administration and at least 51 percent of the ownership belongs to a person who is a member of a minority group or a woman and whose personal wealth does not exceed $750,000. The CTA also offers programs such as monthly workshops that educate the women/minorities, but the biggest problem is getting the companies in the desired areas to get certified and finding the ones that do meet the certifications. The CTA will continue to hold it’s monthly workshops in hopes to bring in more certifiable companies to contract to.

“By holding these workshops, we hope to certify more companies and increase the range of expertise of (such) companies that want to do business with the CTA,” transit agency spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney said.

Via ChicagoTribune

The Housing and Urban Development Program is known for its efforts to renovate/build houses to green standards in minority communities by providing all kinds of grants, but they have other subsidiaries that also carry out those tasks, such as ACORN(Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) who receive their funds from HUD. This is set to change as the Senate had an amendment passed due to suspected fraudulent activities. The issue on hand is that two filmmakers are believed to had dressed as a pimp and an associate obtaining information on how to use a mortgage to start a brothel and how to evade the IRS. The question at hand is,”Who is at fault?”. The employees that had given out the information were fired, but why did the suspected filmmakers go inside in the first place. Well unfortunately, there is no answer to that question, but it was speculated that the filmmakers were inspired by special interests. When it comes down to it, it is hard to see how the Senate can regulate who the funding goes to, but there is a slew of guidelines that are regulated by the federal government that they must follow, even though they are giving out grants.

In a statement on his Senate Web site, Johanns said,” The amendment’s passage was a bipartisan move to stop tax dollars from supporting fraudulent organizations and activities.”
Via HousingWire

There are plenty of simple ways to help your community, but only a few that go down to the source, which the University of Wisconsin System is doing with a set of 18 grants that will help growth in higher education, enrollment, retention, produce more graduates, stimulate more well-paying jobs, which will in turn strengthen the surrounding community. The projected amount of funding that will go into these grants next year is $1 million. By getting to the level where directly effecting the citizens means educating them, then they will have predisposed knowledge and experience to help themselves and others want to learn and work. This could create a great sense of a strengthened community and if the majority of citizens are focused on positives like work and schooling, then there is less likely to be a high rate of crime, education drop-outs and people who just don’t care. Though this method isn’t proven or guaranteed, it has to be just as if not more effective compared to the methods we have been demonstrating for so long and if they can keep the grants coming in, then this could prove to be the most successful method.

“We need to reach out to people that are not always represented here on campus,” University of Wisconsin System spokesperson, David Giroux, said. “First-generation students, low-income and minority students; in various ways these populations in Wisconsin are not well represented on college campuses.”.We have a tremendous obligation to the men and women who have served our country, but we also know these people have unique needs.”
Via BagerHerald

Mary Kay is know among women as a provider of great make-up and beauty products, but now she will be know as providing another service to women, grants. The Mary Kay Foundation’s annual shelter grant giving program has just recently granted 150 domestic violence shelters in each state with $20,000, coming out to a totaled $3 million. The grant will greatly help those women who at risk/in a violent relationship, homeless or in need of aid, but the best part is the Mary Kay evenly distributed the grants to all of our 50 states making a greater sense of equality among these foundations. During the future months of October, the Mary Kay organization will observe our National Domestic Violence Awareness Month by continuing their efforts, even though funding isn’t seeing the numbers it had before. One way Mary Kay is trying to combat this is by using part of the proceeds of her products to go towards the fund, which Mary Kay contributes to by buying and using her own products.

Mary Kay stated” I am so happy that Mary Kay Foundation is giving grants it makes me feel like I am sort of contributing since I do use the product, ” during the foundation’s annual shelter grant giving program.

Via RegisterCitizen

Santa Cruz will be seeing some major budget cuts to their programs that aid battered and homeless women. One organization that is being greatly affected is Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres(meaning Defending the Women) has already seen employees let go, work days/hours being, pay cuts at 20% and they even won’t be able to hire defense attorneys that represents women in court for various offenses or restraining orders, all due to the budget cuts. The remaining employees can be found outside their building during lunch, openly protesting the states budget cuts. There are still cars who honk in support, but the number of protesters is getting smaller and smaller everyday. Also making matters worse is that most citizens of Santa Cruz aren’t even aware of the effect the cuts are having. The problems don’t stop there, they no longer are able to keep their prevention programs, counselling, therapists, also their youth and children programs. Of those programs, 5 positions were terminated, which includes two open positions and an administrator. The finger of blame is being pointed towards Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for cutting out the funding to the Domestic Violence Program,which was being ran by the state Department of Public Health, that was bringing in $16.3 million in funding to 93 of California’s Domestic Violence Centers/Shelters. An estimated $477,000 was being given to Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres which in turn was being used to help around 1,500 women, and children if they have any, who now won’t have somewhere to turn when times get too ruff. The Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres will continue to provide their remaining services, but with funding being cut for the whole state makes their future outlook very bleak.

“We’re getting positive reactions because some people don’t know that our services are cut,” employee Maria Barranco said. “We’re getting support from the community asking questions about what’s going on: What are we going to do? What are they going to do in order to receive services? They’re concerned about if anything were to happen worse than what we’re going through now, they’re not going to have a place to go to,” said Barranco, who works at the 21-bed shelter and oversees the 24-hour crisis line, two programs that survived this month’s cutbacks.

Via MercuryNews

Usually when someone is awarded a grant, there are stipulations as to how the funding is spent and how long you have to spend it. Well there was recently two grants awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as “genius grants” at $500,000 each, with limitations on how they spend the money or where. This is highly unusual because grants are awarded to people on certain guidelines or qualification, and the grant is to be spent accordingly, but with these “genius grants” the rules could change. There is nothing that prohibits the foundation from granting them that ability and they are confident that James Longley, a documentary filmmaker, and Heather McHugh, a poet, will spend their grants in responsible ways.

“This is a very special moment, and one has to be careful,” said Dan Socolow, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, from his Chicago office.

Via NWsource

If you think that drama in school only surfaces in high school, think again. Though the everyday problems very, many elementary students deal with problems on a day to day basis. One of the larger standout is the fact that these middles scholar’s grades are suffering from their parent’s low-income. It is not exactly that the kids are starving, but the combined factors that poverty brings. The stress of little to eat, the possibility of no home to go to and pressures of school shoud not be problems that young kids experience first hand, but the crippling economy is bringing reality to children at younger ages each year. The government does it’s best to provide services to these less unfortunate citizens, like Food Stamps. Since they were introduced, every family has greatly benefited from them, regardless the monthly tendered amount, but with unemployment so high, Food Stamps are almost a common commodity among most families. One of these children suffering is a nine-year-old named Charity Crowell, who along with her brother, is enrolled in Asheville Elemantary School, but her parents aren’t going to be able to pay their $475 rent and have no other options. This means that Charity will have to possibly go to another school, take a hit to her grades and re-socialize herself. These aren’t as big of problems for us as adults, but the children go through the pain and pressure all the same, sometimes even more because it is totally out of their control. All hope isn’t lost though, thanks to the schools and charity foundations like Eblen-Kimmel Charities. Asheville Elemantary School has started a program that appoints a liaison who identifies the homeless families that meet the qualifications and give their the much needed aid, as part of a Federal Law passed back in 2001, while some schools even acquired grants to hire someone in the position full-time. The Eblen-Kimmel Charities foundation has been providing the homeless with shelter, funding to pay for utility bills and one women even received a prom dress. If there aren’t more efforts made to help low-income/homeless parents then their children will continue to suffer.

“It’s hard enough going to school and growing up, but these kids also have to worry where they’ll be staying that night and whether they’ll eat,” said Bill Murdock, chief executive of Eblen-Kimmel Charities, a private group in Asheville that helps needy families with anything from food baskets and money for utility bills to toiletries and a prom dress.“We see 8-year-olds telling Mom not to worry, don’t cry.”

Via NYTimes

Ed Magedson is the founder and owner of ripoffreport.com, had continually abused the Acceptable Use Policy(listed in the end of this article) to extort business owners and is now going to pay the price for it. As with most business/personal review sites on the Internet, anything stated on another site is opinion, not fact, unless it comes from the company itself. Some many companies and individual people have suffered greatly from this and one of the leaders is ripoffreport.com. There is no way to confront what another person says to start with, much less the fact that there is no verification that the person writing the report is actually who they say there are, or even credible for that matter. There are proper channels that people, such as journalists, who have to go through the proper education and channels to make such strong statements of opinion with credibility to back them up and Ed Magedson and the faceless people who put reports on ripoffreport.com. This raises the question as to why his site was seen as so credible, because through keeping his domain host, Akamai, hidden no one knew that he was violating their rules. Akamai took the first chance to absolve themselves of Ed Magedson’s mistakes by following the correct disciplinary actions for violating the Acceptable Use Policy. So many lives have suffered from this, including Silver State Holding Company. One of the most absurd reports was about “Data recovery scams over charge and steal private data from broken hard drives”, we are a grant firm, at no point do we deal with fixing broken hard drives or data recovery systems. The only thing ridiculous reports like this do is hinder the good effort honest , hard working companies are trying to establish themselves with. Don’t just take our word for it, do the research yourself and you will read about the lives that were ruined and all the false accusations made by Ed Magedson and his ripoffreport.com site.

Acceptable Use Policy of Akamai
Please review the Acceptable Use Policy of Akamai, in comparison to Ripoff Report below. These are also available to see, at the Akamai website as this is required by law.

1. Inappropriate and Illegal Content:
Customer (i.e. Ripoff Report) shall not use Akamai Network and Services to transmit, distribute, or store material that inappropriate, as reasonably determined by Akamai. This includes material that is defamatory, libelous, indecent, obscene or pornographic.

2. Intellectual Property
Customer (i.e. Ripoff Report) shall not use Akamai Network and Services in any manner that would infringe, dilute, misappropriate or otherwise violate any privacy or other personal right or any intellectual property rights.

If customer (i.e. Ripoff Report) uses a domain name in connection with it’s use of the Akamai Network and Services, such domain name must not violate any trademark, service mark, or other rights of any 3rd party.

3. Fraudulent/Misleading Content
Customer (i.e. Ripoff Report) shall not use the Akamai Network and Services to transmit or distribute material containing fraudulent offers for good or services, or any advertising or promotional materials that contain false, deceptive or misleading statements, claims or representations.

Ripoff Reports contains 230,000 reports that contain defamation and libel. In addition to obscene categories that range from prostitution to child pornographer. Ripoff Report violates the privacy of thousands of people, by publishing a person’s full name/address/phone along with the defamation and libel against their will. Ed refuses to remove any of the above, even if asked to.

Ripoff Report “pirates” the names of thousands into “meta tags” to draw visitors to their own website (all those #1 google search results), where they have things to sell them. In addition to violating trademarks and the rights of 3rd parites (everyone of those 230,000 reports) all over the place and without measure. Ripoff Report has potentially 230,000 (over 1 quarter of a million) potentially false, deceptive or misleading statement, claims or representaitons. Consider all the above with the direct threat to extort, and it’s easy to see, why this information is hidden.

Under Akamai Code of Ethics:
Akamai will never promise what we cannot deliver.
Akamai will never violate the trust of customers, their clients, business partners, employees or shareholders.
Akamai will never allow any illegal, unsafe or abusive behavior in the workplace, including harassment or discrimination of others.

Here are a couple of links to stories of what has happened.
Via ArticleBase
Via Google
Via Complaintsboard.com

Via Collective Complaints and The World Wide Web

Nevada Blind Children’s Fund is one of many non-profit organizations who not only say, but prove their dedication to their cause. NBCF regularly holds events that raise funds for their cause and have newsletter memberships that also fuel the fund. Along with their fund raising, they offer a good amount of services such as Parental education and support every 3rd Saturday of every month from 10:30 to 12:00, infant and toddler services monthly that bring the parents and children into fun activities together that they can also do at home, tutoring services that range from regular education to technological education, along with special events that promote athleticism that take place throughout the year.

NBCF’s mission statement,”We are dedicated to providing information and services that enable families, health care professionals and the community to understand and meet to meet the unique needs of infants and children who are blind or visually impaired.”

Via nvblindchildren

A total of 87 students from Bunker Hill College in Boston, Massacusetts will benefit from a grant fund of $63,000, which comes out to about $725 each. These grants were awarded to try and stem the tide of the economy causing more students to not re-enroll and had such a positive response that the school will be upping the amount of funding by twice as much as it was this year. A Student Emergency Assistance Fund is unique by name in Boston, but there are many programs like it around the nation. The grants will help students to pay for an array of things from food to tuition, even lost buss passes.

“The weak economy has hit our students hard. Sometimes an MBTA pass is the difference between going to school or not,” said Bunker Hill Community College President Mary L. Fifield. “This fund is for students who planned their educational finances prior to the academic year and then during the time of their enrollment are confronted with an emergency or unanticipated event that could cause them to drop out of College.”

Via Reuters