The new Union Plus Book Club, a project of the AFL-CIO “that will delve into the latest publications by leading experts on vital working family and workplace issues,” has announced its first selection: Cosimo’s Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, by Thomas Croft. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who supplied the foreword for Up From Wall Street, named the book the club’s first main selection for matching its goal of “creat[ing] labor movement dialogue about current issues and… inspir’ing] thought-provoking conversations within our union community.”

Author Croft will be speaking at the Sustainable Opportunities Summit in Denver in March. On Wednesday, March 3, Croft will appear on the panel “Financing Sustainability: Is Wall Street Buying the Opportunity?” Please see the Summit’s site for more information, including schedules and how to register.

Up From Wall Street is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

no comments »

Hazel Henderson, coauthor of the Cosimo book The Power of Yin and a longtime advocate for global financial reform, has written an editorial for CSRwire, which covers corporate social responsibility and sustainability, framing the Supreme Court’s decision to treat corporations as “persons” not as a debacle for democracy but as an opportunity for corporate social responsibility. From her editorial:

Including unions in the new Court ruling is a red herring since unions represent real people while corporations are chartered to delver profits to shareholders. Key proposals [for fighting the SCOTUS decision] can include: tightening corporate governance through regulatory agencies, particularly the SEC, so that corporations must get prior approval from their shareholders for such new political financing while enforcing immediate public disclosure of such funds and recipients.

The full editorial is available at CSRwire.

Also: see economist Dean Baker’s “simple route around the Supreme Court’s ruling” at truthout, and the video interview, at Democracy Now!, with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose new film Casino Jack and the United States of Money is debuting at Sundance this month.

The Power of Yin is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

no comments »

Danny Schechter, author of the Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, appeared yesterday on the English-language Net news channel Russia Today to discuss the U.S.’s response to the earthquake in Haiti:

Schechter — always a vocal voice in progressive activism — now appears weekly on Progressive Radio Network with his News Dissector radio show.

no comments »

Darwin Gillett, author of the Cosimo book Noble Enterprise: The Commonsense Guide to Uplifting People and Profits has some new tips on revitalizing your business model for the new year at his blog Notes on Noble Business:

Ask yourself these questions about your own business and leadership:

1. What is the ultimate purpose of your business – to do what for whom? Try answering it in as deep or global a way as you can. Why? Such a new perspective on the purpose of your business might just rekindle enthusiasm and focus in your company, making people – including yourself, more alive and motivated.

2. What is the non-material or spiritual dimension of this? I know – business is supposed to be rational and practical. But some of the most successful businesses, even big public ones, have at their core spiritual purpose and principles.

Visit Notes on Noble Business for the full article.

Noble Enterprise is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

no comments »

Thomas Croft, author of the Cosimo book Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, talked recently wirh Leo W. Gerard, president of United Steelworkers International, about responsible investing and the challenges of these tough economic times. From the interview at Huffington Post:

So, what it means in terms of the economy is that the country doesn’t build things anymore. Remember Allentown, and the song by Billy Joel that described the shutdown of Beth Steel? Bethlehem Steel was originally constructed to build the nation’s rail systems. And those workers helped build the skyscrapers in New York City, and they helped win WWII. After the Beth Plant was closed, a new Las Vegas Casino was to be built on the former steel site. Well, the casino couldn’t find the structural steel, at first, to build the casino. Kind of ironic, but also tragic

If we can’t find enough steel to build casinos today, how in the world will we build the green jobs industries of the future? We need steel to build the Obama administration’s proposed new high-speed rail system, right? And how will the Allentowns and Homesteads and Youngstowns and Flints of this country, and all of our other rust-towns ever fully recover? We can’t depend on casino jobs, eds and meds, tourist and service jobs alone to replace the lost manufacturing jobs. We need a robust domestic manufacturing economy if we are going to benefit from the green jobs boom.

And:

[W]e also know that it’s time that our assets are put to work for the long-term, and not in ways to destroy our economy. With the Obama Administration’s help and guarantees, for instance, we could co-invest real money to re-build our cities and towns, and re-grow and re-shape this economy. And our money should be invested so that markets serve society–community, in other words– and not the other way around. We indeed have the capacity to construct infrastructure, reinvigorate our cities, and create those highly-anticipated green jobs for our children. We just have to re-claim control of our money.

There’s much more…

Up From Wall Street is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

no comments »

The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust has taken note of new Cosimo publication Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, by Thomas Croft:

Croft’s book includes a special section profiling worker-friendly investment funds in the U.S. and Canada whose portfolio investments have yielded “not just good returns-on-investment, but also collateral benefits for working people and the environment.” The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) is included in this “Field Guide to Responsible Capital” and is described by Croft as “one of the nation’s earliest and most experienced socially-responsible investment funds.” The guide also profiles the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust (BIT) as another model of responsible investing. Using actual case studies, Croft demonstrates how worker-friendly funds such as the HIT have a significant impact on the projects, regions and economic sectors in which they invest….

AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, in a forward to the book, praises the efforts of “visionary labor leaders to re-claim workers’ capital, the immense sums of money that represent the deferred wages of millions of workers across this country,” through responsible investing. He goes on to call Up from Wall Street a “helpful and hopeful manual that shows we have the capacity to rebuild our economy and infrastructure, reinvigorate our cities, and create those highly-anticipated green jobs of the future.”

A featured speaker at the book launch in Washington, D.C., in October was United Steel Workers International President Leo W. Gerard. “Up From Wall Street is a guide for those who care about pension fund investment,” Gerard said. “It’s about applying the right set of values to the investment of workers’ pension funds.”

Cosimo books are available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

no comments »

Danny Schechter, author of the Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, appeared recently on “The Keiser Report” to discuss the book. Schechter’s segment begins at about 16:55 in this video:

no comments »

Looks like Cosimo’s newest author, Tom Croft (who’s an international expert on innovative capital strategies), is not only busy traveling around the country to appear at conferences and standing center stage at his successful book launch for Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, now he’s guest blogging at HuffPo.

Essentially Croft implores: Mr. President, remember the anger you expressed so freely on the campaign trail about the deplorable economic situation we find ourselves in?  Well, you’ve been in office nearly a year already and it’s time to push for real economic change to rebuild the nation’s economy!  Read more of the author’s sage advice for our Economic Commander-in-Chief @ One Year After…

no comments »

Cosimo author Peter Robbins — coauthor of Left at East Gate: A First-hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-up, and Investigation, about England’s notorious 1980 close-encounter event, is on a speaking tour about UFO issues. His schedule:

• September 5, 8am-11pm, First Annual Exeter UFO Festival and Conference, Exeter, New Hampshire

Robbins will appear as a speaker and panelist at the lecture “The Power of Ridicule vs. an Uncomfortable Truth: Why We Need to Take UFOs Seriously.”

For more information, visit the festival Web site or contact Molly at the Exeter Area Chamber of Commerce: 603-772-2411 / events@exeterarea.org.

• September 11-13, Beyond Knowledge Conference, Liverpool, England

Robbins will appear at Dr. Wilhelm Reich’s talk “UFOs, Updates on the Rendlesham Forest Incident.”

• October 10-11, PA MUFON Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

• October 17-18, Monster Mash Conference, Massachusetts

• November 6-8, 7th Annual Crash Retrieval Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada

Robbins will appear at the talks “Voronezh: A Re-evaluation of Russia’s Best Known CE3 Incident” and “Witness to History: The United Nations Effort to Establish a Permanent UN-UFO Agency; A Personal Reminiscence.”

• November 12-15, UFO Info Weekend, Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn, Cocoa Beach, Florida

Robbins will appear at the talk “ England’s Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident: Anatomy of a Best Case.”

ALSO: Read Robbins’ latest paper, “Politics, Religion, and Human Nature,” at Scribd or at Calameo.

Left at East Gate is available at Amazon and other online booksellers.

no comments »

Cosimo regrets to announce that Professor Cecil Helman, author of the Cosimo/Paraview title The Body of Frankenstein’s Monster: Essays in Myth and Medicine, died on June 15 in London after a short illness. (Read the Guardian’s obituary; and the Independent’s obit.)

Helman, a doctor and medical anthropologist, was the winner of numerous awards author of multiple books.

Cosimo publisher Alexander Dake said, on hearing the news of Helman’s passing:

I met him several times on his New York visits, and was impressed with his humanity and wisdom, as evident in his career from GP to medical anthropologist specialized in different forms of healing worldwide.

Cosimo offers its condolences to Helman’s family and friends.

no comments »