Here is a poll full of loaded questions, but it is fun. Sometimes the truth hurts so much you have to have a little fun to get through the process.

The first thing to know is that you can place your certification logos anywhere on your profile using the simple html gadget (not the text only gadget). This will accept any code and then of course that can be moved anyplace on your page you’d like. The way that you want to organize that is completely up to you.

If you have not seen the tutorial, go to the front page http://asapgreen.com, you’ll find it there.

There are several green certificates out there, dozens in fact, it is hard to say exactly which one is best, or how the are different. Some of them are national, some of them are regional, and some are designed by the websites who give them out.

The main thing to remember is this. When it comes to contracting and you are getting work done at your business or your home, if you are determined to use products that are efficient, made from recycled materials, do not off-gas, and are non-toxic, then it really does not matter whether you use a “green certified” company or not. What if there are no green certified contractors in your area? Or, what if you have a relative who wants to do the work. If you hire a non-green company to do your green work, then you have helped them take the first step in becoming green.

So don’t freak out if you can’t find a green certified company to do some work, because you are the one who knows what you want, and you are  the one paying. Just make sure they use the right materials, and you have done a heck of a good deed; For yourself, your property, the community and for that contractor who now has some green experience under their belts thanks to you. That’s the whole point, it’s your responsibility, and we do not want to isolate or alienate companies who are still getting the hang of things.

Members providing content to the front page of Asapgreen is encouraged.

If you are a blogger who likes to write, a business who wants some exposure, or an organization seeking to promote an event or activity, you can contact content(AT)asapgreen.com.

Use a subject like “Front Page”, or “Writer“. Send the link to your member profile, describe what you write about, or even include the piece you’d like to see up there. Then your piece will be reviewed and hopefully placed on the front page.

Inquiries about advertising for the front page, in either banner, text or advertorial format should be sent to advertisement(AT)asapgreen.com.

Looking forward to your input!!

Asapgreen: It’s yours, Drive it!

Asapgreen is not interested in clogging the site with a lot of loud and distracting ads. Any ads will be added in a way that does not detract from the site, as best as is possible.

Why even do them?

• Well, any business that joins Asapgreen, besides having all the great tools that allow them to network, communicate and promote at no cost, is also free advertisement for them, so the idea that there should not be advertisement is contradictory, business requires advertisement. Anything anyone does that needs attention requires promo and advertisement.

• The idea behind Asapgreen is to help get costs down for business. So having ads might create some competition and encourage people to do their best toward that end.

• All these tools, and the ones that are coming must remain free for our members.

The greatest care will be taken to keep them unobtrusive, and moving or flashing ads will not be permitted.

If you would like to advertise on Asapgreen.com, please contact: advertisment@asapgreen.com

This is the video tutorial category for operating the free, fully customizable profile blocks at Asapgreen.com

Here is where you will learn how to create your HTML, RSS, Video, and other embeds for your profile blocks.

At this time Asapgreen.com seeks collaboration and partnerships with self-starters with results oriented desires.

If you have motivation and ideas for using ASAPgreen as a means of creating income for yourself, you should send an attachment with your ideas to bizdev@asapgreen.com.

Any attachments or media you send to ASAPgreen remains your property.

Included in your attachment should be a notice that the concept you are describing is yours, and if Aasapgreen is not already engaged in the activity you describe you might be contacted to discuss the possibility. This is standard content in any non-disclosure agreement and that approach can also be taken.

Some of the things that need to be accomplished are the following:

• Finding ways to keep the services free for our members, even as we grow.
• Some special advertising concepts need to be discussed with people who have proven code skills.
• Social bookmarking and automating posting systems need to be discussed with people who have proven code skills.
• Ad management partners
• Private Investment or Philanthropic expertise
• A kids section
• Music section management

At this time, Asapgreen is not seeking people with employment desires.

Collaboration and performance oriented people should include their resumes and examples of their work in response to any of these opportunities, or in presenting or suggesting any sort of professional relationship.

Professionally minded, collaboration oriented people are always welcome to communicate with Asapgreen.

There is a lot of potential for partnerships, sponsorships and advertorial relationships.

Asapgreen: It’s Yours, Drive it!

Warning: The Following is non-Partisan in nature.

We listen to these arcane demagogues go back and forth on their mutually failed policies, struggling to maintain their relevance in a world where their rhetoric and their policies have left us bone dry, but what about the rest of us? What about the citizenry who have to live in the shambles of what is left? And what about those of us who are not satisfied to “wait it out” and see if some new program or other works? We have problems we need to solve now, and we are in a conundrum, because we Americans are the only ones who can solve our problems, but it seems like many of us have forgotten that.

I know that when people starting businesses become vocal in their personal criticism of government policy, and the politics that have laid us low, we are in danger of being smacked down before we get started, I know we are all supposed to “remember our place” and just pay our taxes and let the “experts” take care of things, (which is what got us into this mess) and I know people are going to see this headline and make the incorrect assumption that I am a crank, but I don’t care, I can’t stand it anymore.

When politicians blame failures on each other, and the people blame failure on the politicians, then we have failed ourselves. I swear on the rest of my days that I will not go about making my way in this world on the whims of and the hope in policy makers. No way! If it were up to me, it’s up to me. I’m the only one who can let me down. If I am doing everything I can do to get private capital back in to the economy so the government can stop borrowing more from the Federal Reserve printing press interest machine, I really can’t ask any more of myself than that.

I keep hearing Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and a lot of other people constantly whine and cry about all the money being printed, even though the policies they support were supposed to create jobs and never did. They gave so much of our money away to corporate welfare queens that they have no business complaining about printing more, because you know they are going to do everything they can to get it out of the economy and into their contributors hands anyways. It has always been like this. The Republicans give our money to people who don’t need it and the Democrats give our money to people who don’t know what they’re doing.

I am tempted to say that we owe ourselves better than these two choices, but maybe we don’t. Maybe we are getting exactly what we deserve. Maybe this is the best we can do because this is the best we can do. Maybe I have to suck it up when Dick Armey and Mitch McConnell, two real career academics and politician winners who have never created a thing in their lives refer to my Dad’s pension from the Ford Motor Company, where he worked for 45 years out of his 87 year life as a “legacy cost“, when they are the ones who have left a legacy we can’t afford. The hypocrisy is deafening and maddening. Maybe I have to suck it up when I hear Machine Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel, another careerist, say things like “We cannot let a crisis go to waste”, and scheme to use our misfortune as an opportunity to grab more power from the people at exactly the time when people need to be freed from control so we can solve problems. Maybe when our President, Barack Obama, who I believe is a genuinely intelligent and uniquely qualified person surrounds himself with Federal Reserve Bankers, Wall Street bankers and political players, instead of solid business and social leaders, we need to get serious and realistic about from where our solutions are really going to come, us.

Citizens, we are the only hope we have. We are going to have to give private capital a reason to come back into our economy. If we don’t do that, no one will. There will be more cash for trash (let’s not forget last years cash for trash deal), more money printed and none earned, and more smarmy, set for life politicians insulting us and diverting our attention with perceptions and rivalries that we simply cannot afford.

I am going all the way with this. Reader, I am going to do the cliche, I am going to have to tell you some of my family history to see if we can jog your memory toward what it takes to make things happen. Yes, looking forward is good, but there are some things we all have in common beyond just being in the same boat, and if we can get in touch with the essence of what that is we might have a chance at remembering enough about the identity of this country to pull out a respectable win-win, when our enemies and some of our rivals are hoping for and banking on our demise.

One day, my Grandpa had to make a decision to leave his home in Poland, so in 1916 he took a walk across Europe. Yes… he WALKED across Europe to see if he could find a way to provide for his young family. That was a tough time in that part of the world. He could not find any work, there was nothing he could find on the Continent, so he heard about a boat that was leaving the Continent and going to America, and the boat needed a crew. So, he took the gig.

This boat, probably a barge of some kind, made it’s way through the St. Lawrence Seaway, into the Great Lakes, and finally into Lake Superior via the Soo Locks. There were several ports in operation in those days that are not in operation for commercial use today, but whichever one they docked in, when my Grandpa got off that ship, he did not re board. It could have been Copper Harbor, Black River Harbor, or maybe even Duluth, Mn. Whichever Port is was, he hiked through the woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and continued his walk to find work.

There was lots of work to be had. He worked in the mines for a while, but they were so unsafe that he did not remain there, people were dying in the mines every day. From what we know, he was a woodsman in Poland; some kind of builder too, and he finally settled in as a lumberjack in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That is where he remained for a while, and within 2 years he had sent for my Grandma and their daughter and first son, within a year of my Grandma’s arrival my Dad was born, and they lived in the U.P. for three years before they moved to Detroit, where they had another son.

Now, through a weird chain of events, some frugality on my part and some sheer coincidence, I currently live in that same town in the U.P. where my Dad was born. I can tell you that living up here year-round is tough enough now even with all the comforts and standard of living that we enjoy these days, and my Grandpa must have been a hell of a man to stay up here at that time in the world. Seriously people, the hell that our forebears went through to make the way for us should make us ashamed if we ever complain about anything that is not criminal in nature.

My Grandpa had to leave everything behind in Europe due to politics, land grabbers, revolutionists and thieves. He had to start from scratch. As a matter of fact, this is something that pretty much everyone in the United States can relate to or learn from their families’ history if they are honest. Let me go further and say that I think we have taken our forebears for granted. They have gotten us here, and now too many people are looking around for where the next handout and free ride is going to come from. What would they say about us?

We are borrowing money to borrow money so we can print to lend. If you are not concerned about this, or at least cautious in your optimism, remind me to not do any business with you, hire you, or work for you. Avoid me and my business at all costs. I’m not looking for any taxpayer funds, I’m not asking any banks for any loans, and I only want to be involved with seasoned business people who know how to avoid the boom and bust mentality, who are not looking for heavy front end loading, and can manage money competently from a position of experience and success, that’s what I want because that’s what I need right now.

The other way of thinking about business is what has gotten us into trouble, and there are still scoundrels and scammers waiting with shiny fangs for the govt. free-for-all to begin. The front loading boom and bust mentality is still a threat, and It is going to take more than 140 characters, a soundbite and 10 seconds to get us out of the economic fix we are in.

I am one of those people who could see the irrational nature of the bubble that was created and I avoided it. I did not want to have anything to do with it. Some people are saying that the green conversion is the next bubble. Only if it is managed improperly. Only if it is done in the same manner as the banking and real estate chaos. When businesses remember their roots, when they remember that success takes time and that it takes work, and when they do not confuse an influx of cash with success, only then can things move forward.

Over the past 20 years I have seen people from the entire spectrum of society make the mistake of confusing an influx of cash with success. Everything in the world is not about money, just because your business gets a loan, or your 501c3 gets some grant, does not make you successful, it does not mean you are in business. What are you doing? what are you creating? what are you producing? who are you serving? Success is built, and if you think that simply having a large some of cash or gigantic corporate income is the measure of your success, then you are a part of the problem. If you think knowing the right people and playing the game enough to get your hands on a chunk of change is what it all comes down to, you are standing in the way of your descendants’ future.

You can have the biggest pile of money on the planet, but if it is not worth anything because the value of the unit is being driven down due to over saturation, and no one wants any of it, and you have to borrow money to print money so you can buy up bad assets and stave off your failures, then what is it worth? Is that really success?

How about the people who can provide actual solutions to real problems? These are the real success stories, that is the real news, and this is who you are looking for right now. The innovators, the people with the decades of experience developing and honing the new technology and practices that will make our lives less wasteful and more efficient, saving our resources, keeping us safer, healthier and thinking objectively. These are the people who have mastered the art of keeping the use of arcane technology with its value being eclipsed by its cost to a minimum. These are the people who are beginning to make lateral moves and investments away from the old energy sources to the new, and these are the people you need to know right now.. and the recognition of their talent is long overdue.

This movement toward clean technology and the weening from the old is one of the most exciting opportunities right now. Half a trillion dollars in private capital has been invested in the past 6 years, and you should not need some guru, consulting firm or costly government program to put you in touch with the results of those investments. It is an exciting time, and you can bypass the bureaucracies and the consultants and get in direct contact with the people and efforts that are getting ready to provide these solutions. It does not need to be costly, it does not need a bureaucracy, and it can be as entertaining and as simple as using a free social network. That is the whole point of Asapgreen.

If you are an innovator or business who wants to get your brilliance in front of people, you have highly functional and entertaining tools to do it, at no cost. You should not have to deal with all kinds of consulting and marketing costs when people are actively seeking what you offer, and want to ask you questions and be in direct contact with you. There is no need to make everything so costly, complicated and mysterious. You have it, they want it, and here is the toolkit and the means to make those relationships happen. That’s what ASAPgreen is all about.

I hope the free ride mentality is ending, and I do not like getting into policy debates, especially when there is work to be done, but I have a foreboding sense about the top popping off the Government Cheez Whiz can that is aimed at the Green Business Community. When that stuff starts flowing, everyone and their mother are going to be coming after that money whether they have anything to offer or not, and if you are in one of the good businesses, you are going to be bombarded by “consultants” telling you how you need to be spending that money on them, when you are totally able to find the answers and information you need from other businesses who are in the same boat as you, and directly from the people who have the solutions you need, and directly from potential customers in a network setting that puts it all right out there and recognizes who the real heroes and heroines are. That is what I created ASAPgreen for. If this situation is handled poorly, the way things have been done to this point, the opportunity will be lost, and the incredulity of the people will prevent what could be a positive and rewarding experience for everyone.

So, let’s finish up on the bit about starting from scratch. Do we remember that the vast majority of people on our Continent are either immigrants or descended from immigrants who started from scratch? Can we see that if they could do it then we owe it to their memories to do it too? How about the descendants of the people who came here in the hulls of ships and were not even recognized as human? You better believe that they know about starting from scratch, and how to do it too. And the Native people. What about them? They were here all along and were nearly decimated and conquered. Think they know a little something about starting from scratch? Damn skippy they do. How about you? Do you think you can take a look around this Continent, put the chains of Colonization behind you, grit your teeth, bend your knees, and look in your neighbors eyes and decide to agree to start from scratch together?

You’d Better.

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