Once your web browser elbows past the dudes hocking toasters or trying to find the girl with the lip ring from the coffee shop, Craigslist is the wide open plains of weirdness. Case in point: if you’ve been wandering around the Cleveland section of the web site’s lost and found listings, you might have spotted an ad for a real life pet detective.
But Jim Berns ain’t no Ace Ventura, and he’s fine with that. A Cincinnati businessman and employee at local architecture school, Berns moonlights looking for lost dogs and cats, the only such sleuth not only in Ohio, but the surrounding region. With undaunted, animated earnestness only a multi-national nuclear strike could dent, he offers his services to heartsick owners willing to open their wallets.
“We’re not a silver bullet, we don’t work magic,” Berns cautions. “But when you’ve tried everything else and you don’t want to give up, we definitely make a difference.”
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2012.
Now this is a niche only a true American could start. There are so many of these opportunities which we forgot existed when electronic image took over out there for anyone with a little adventure and risk to take advantage of. I’ll bet he has some information on hunting pets which is very valuable information. He can franchise his model and share his valuable lessons in finding pets. A book or books, a trainning class (es), tee-shirts and bumper stickers. He has 130 wins in what will be a new survival niche for many a survivor. Thanks cleve.scene for getting these kinds of unique talents recorded.
In every good idea like this there are good jobs created. We talk about the gigantically wealthy as creating all these jobs, yet I would bet that if a broke person tried to get a loan from a main stream banker or investment capitalist for a pet PI firm, they may not even be heard out let alone helped. They would help you to the door and maybe they would even call security if you continued to give your pitch.
Jobs are not being created because the guys with money perceive everything outside of their box as too high of a risk. The conservative practices have now reached a point of total absurdity and are without a question fighting the very people who made this country great. The 1% hoarders of power and wealth in this country have taken us on such a ride, that we feel guilt if we speak out against a boss or a rich guy or corporation or person. So intimidated by the power of money we have become that we do not even speak out about poor working conditions or intimidation by ownership and upper management. So powerful did they become that they nearly captured any power to unite and discuss labor issues. If the unions fall to the control freaks on the republican power machine we will all be without freedom…First they take the freedom of speech…there are many ways to take the freedom of speech from an American. The act of firing people who complain any at all about their work or relationships with management and ownership can go a long way to gain control of a workforce. Perhaps the unions were needed to stop some of the absolute control of the early industrialists. The greed of the ownership (which now includes shareholders and uppers in management), will always take as much as they are allowed to take by the people and the government. Now that they have become the rulers of the government they have combined and conived against the freedoms of the USA which we fought for over the last few hundred years. Who may have fought and been beaten up on the most–The African American–is still getting the raw end of the stick even though we have many fine Black leaders in politics and public work, they have been systematically held from positions of power within corporate America. Like women, they only succeed when they embrace the tactics of the powerful male super-rich 1% club. Make no mistake, this club has taken more ground every year for about three decades in a row in America. It is no mistake that OWS and many others have protested this fact and our overall displeasure of the new type of slavery in the USA. The good old fashion mass-jails are here in the form of those chained in poverty. The far right would like us to continue to blame poverty on to those who are victims just like they always blame things on the ones with no voice or say in the whole mess. Bring back the protest music of Dylan with a modern theme and the message of OWS will be sent onto every radio in the country. Compete with Rush and Glenn and even our very own Triv where conservative thought process seems cruel and plotting against the people. We live in a world of ideas. This is what thought is made of. Cultural behavior is what mass thought and interpretation of the will of the people converts to. But when the field is lopsided by money and political power things like Nazism can grow. It has grown so much over recent times that it is all a person can do is just keep quiet and follow the orders of the rich and wealthy and powerful…the corporations have taken control of our thoughts because they own the media.
011912—KJ—1250pm