Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

After reading this post on the Indoor Health Council’s blog, I wrote a response worth sharing with you:

Cleaning by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Re: The Problem with Green Standard Offerings: You write, “focus on the main issue, health-focused cleaning; directing energy to one and not two main goals: health or sustainability, not both, or you compromise the program.” We need a reframing here.

The question is not whether to choose health over green practices (of course we do!). The better question is how to achieve the health outcomes while also minimizing negative and maximizing positive environmental impacts. As one very easy example, how much packaging do we really need? Does it really increase safety to wrap every component of a kit individually, place the wrapped components on a foam tray, wrap the entire inner contents, box the wrapped set, and then add another layer of shrinkwrap around the box, stick the box in a case with 11 others, shrinkwrap the case, stack cases on a pallet, and then wrap the pallet?

For that matter, could some of the components in that kit be used again? Why do we design so many products to be used once and then thrown away?

My comment ended there–but that’s only the beginning of a much larger discussion. Some other questions to raise would include:

  • When can we use nontoxic natural cleansers and disinfectants such as baking soda and peroxide–and when do we actually need something stronger?
  • Can we get our cleaning agents in eco-friendly formats such as pellets to be dissolved in water, rather than harmful ones such as aerosol cans?
  • What are the most ergonomic ways to clean that protect our hands, shoulders, and backs from injury?
  • How do we most effectively train cleaning personnel to understand health, environmental, and safety issues?

Please add your own questions in the comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, localism/locavore, Mindset, poverty, Psychology, Science, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

A whole bag of usable produce thrown away. Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumpster-a-plenty.jpg

I have a moral problem with food waste when others are going hungry. In the developed world, our hunger crisis has nothing to do with insufficient supply–and everything to do with throwing out vast quantities of usable food, and the people who need it being unable to get it. 30 to 40 percent of all food grown in the US is tossed. Some gets thrown away because it spoils–but 1) a whole lot of perfectly good food goes to the landfill, and 2) if one area has gone bad (like mold one side of a block of cheese), in many cases, the item can be trimmed and most of it saved. Smell, taste, and appearance can help you decide what can be salvaged and what should go in the compost.

Where it does food waste come from? To name a few: Restaurants cooking more than they sell. Uninformed consumers who think food has to be dumped once it passes its sell-by date. Produce wholesalers who reject fruits and vegetables because of non-uniform appearance. Commercial processors who are not set up to capture and process every bit.

This New York Times article describes two apps, Too Good to Go and Flashfood, that match unsold food with ready bargain-seeking buyers. I think this is terrific–a win-win-win. It reduces costs for restaurants, who still get paid a reduced price rather than having to pay to throw it away. It reduces costs for consumers who’d like a good meal and don’t mind taking whatever’s available. It reduces pressure on landfills, which are overrun with wasted food, and on the environment and climate, which take multiple hits when food is wasted.

Grocery stores need similar programs. One step in the right direction is services like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market, both of which sell reject produce direct-to-consumers.

On the consumer side, the biggest results will come from education. We need trainings that demonstrate:

  • What foods really aren’t safe past their expiration dates, and which are perfectly fine (in general, meat products should be used or frozen before their expiry dates, opened refrigerated dairy is typically good for at least three days beyond, and unopened often for a week or two, while many processed foods are shelf-stable for years)
  • How to preserve various foods
  • Where to donate if you have too much food that’s still good
  • How buying locally grown organic foods minimizes waste (including the huge environmental burden of transporting foods across oceans and continents
  • What makes sense for your size household to buy in bulk, and what’s much better to just buy as much as you need inn the near future
  • How to use smell, appearance, and small tastes to determine whether food is still ok
  • When it makes sense to trim bad parts off, and when to discard the whole thing
  • How to use leftovers without getting bored with them
  • Environmentally friendly options for disposing of spoiled food (compost, slops for animals, etc.)

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Marketing Trends/News, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

One area where sustainability can really easily interface with consumers–and give them a direct role in becoming more sustainable–is the very simple step of adding signage (including website notices) that indicates how far a product has traveled. Informal observation (not any real research) at a store that was doing this showed me that it significantly raised consumer awareness and drove purchasing choices toward more local options. Similarly, signage can clue people in about what progress you’re making on the social equity issues you’re addressing.

Another is revealing what goals were met in the making of the product, which were not meant, and how the failure to meet a sustainability or equity goal is pushing your company to do more.

And a third is to open actively monitored channels where customers and other stakeholders can make suggestions on your sustainability and social justice improvements. Think of it as a form of zero-cost consulting help (but recognize that however well-meaning they are, they are unlikely to know the true costs and feasibility levels of their suggestions. ALWAYS respond to any serious suggestion (ignore and block the addresses of the ones who spam your form, though). Engaging in real dialog is not only excellent PR, it’s also excellent market research.

Are there benefits to this approach? Absolutely! Consider Marks & Spencer, a major UK retailer. In 2007, they started measuring and reporting on 100 environmental metrics, calling this initiative “Plan A.”

Very quickly, the results provided so many benefits that the company started measuring an additional 80 metrics. As Bob Willard reports in his book, The New Sustainability Advantage (which I cite in mown book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World),

The company expected to invest £200 million in the program, but by 2009-10 Plan A had broken even and was adding £50 million t0 the bottom line. In response, M&S added another 80 commitments to the original 100 in Plan A. (p. 159)

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, General Commentary, language, Mindset, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A popular music festival in Atlanta, founded back in 1996, will not be taking place in Piedmont Park (or anywhere else) this September as scheduled. The organizers cancelled it, apparently because of Georgia’s ever-more-skewed laws that give gun owners the right to carry weapons at massive public events. Apparently, this right is stronger in Georgia (and elsewhere) than the rights of people who might not care to be shot at while enjoying a concert. The event was actively targeted by gun worshippers who informed the festival organizers that they’d be sued if they tried to block access to ticket holders bearing firearms, even though contracts with artists mandated a no-gun policy.

While the cause of cancellation was widely reported in media as diverse as The Hill (a nonpartisan political blog), Rolling Stone, and CNN, the organizers are publicly blaming unspecified “unforeseen circumstances.”

Which is really a shame. I hope the organizers find the courage to say, “Georgia legislators, YOU and your guns-without-limits laws are the reason we had to cancel. You’ve cost Atlanta hospitality business owners (restaurants, hotels, etc.) millions in lost revenue because you do not allow us a way to keep our artists and patrons safe.”

Because THAT kind of messaging is how we will eventually, finally, turn back the culture of gun-rights-matter-more-than-human-rights. All the deaths of little kids and innocent bystanders haven’t mattered despite Sandy Hook, Columbine, Tree of Life, Las Vegas, Texas, and all the other horrific mass shootings.

And if businesses, conference organizers and others start boycotting states with obscenely pro-gun policies, the change will come faster.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Mindset, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

See link in caption for a text equivalent

I’ve had a blog post percolating for several weeks about the Supreme Court and what we can do to rein them in. I had not started writing it and then I came across this from YES magazine, which says most of what I would have said. So I will let Chris Winters say it for me. As he notes, nonviolent resistance including general strikes is a powerful force for change. It has brought down some pretty repressive governments (examples: Arab Spring, the overthrow of South African apartheid and , the collapse of the Soviet Union) and forced others–even Nazi Germany–to soften their stance.

The Supreme Court’s Crisis of Legitimacy

Map key: Status of abortion laws by state[1]   Illegal   Potentially illegal   Soon to be illegal   Legal for now   Legal. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Democracy, Diversity, Environment, Ethics in Government, Mindset, Politics, privacy, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition politics newsletter (which I read daily) quoted a reader who suggested that Democrats label the Republican platform for 2022 as “The Big Steal.” Here is his suggestion, with edits and additions by me:

Vote Republican, and you vote for the “Big Steal”:

Your Social Security will be stolen.

Your Medicare will be stolen.

Your prescription drugs will be stolen.

Your affordable health care will be stolen.

Your right to privacy will be stolen.

Your control over reproductive choices will be stolen.

Your voting rights will be stolen.

Your right to elect leaders will be stolen.

Our democracy will be stolen.

It’s not perfect, but you get the idea. Iterations are endless. Republicans want to take things away (The Big Steal), including personal liberties and equal protection under law. Democrats want to provide Americans the things they need to lead safe, healthy, productive lives—including personal liberties and equal protection under the law. Somewhere in there is a winning message.

Republicans doing The Big Steal is half of the messaging. Yes, absolutely, we need to show that corrupt and greedy party for what it is. But we also need another half, maybe call it The Big Payoff. And the second part will subdivide into two as well.

The first part will be what the Democrats have actively accomplished. They have created jobs in a terrible economy. They have restored us leadership in the world sphere. They have taken some action to mitigate climate change. They have stood up for integrity of the political process and showed that insurrections and coup attempts will not be tolerated here. They have supported Ukraine against Putin’s barbaric war. And they have restored dignity and mission to a corrupt and twisted executive branch.

The second part is the wish list: things Biden and the Democrats tried to do but were blocked by filibusters, judicial opinions, or just plain refusal to cooperate from the Republican side. This would include Build Back Better, protecting the right to vote, protecting women’s right to control their own bodies, meaningful progress on the biggest issues like climate change and immigration reform, and of course, the right of regulatory bodies to regulate. Not only have Republican judges forced the CDC–which stands for, let us remind them, Centers for Disease Control–to give up protecting the public in transit facilities, but other decisions will threaten such rights as environmental protection and labor protection, using that very bad precedent to attack EPA and OSHA. Let’s also talk about the right not to be sitting next to someone who is carrying a concealed weapon. The right to love and marry whom you choose as long as they are above the age of consent. Etc, etc, etcFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Democracy, General Commentary, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, privacy, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Muhammad Ai probably wore gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.
Our rights are under attack! Photo by Wojciech Ner.

Ever since the upcoming decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, I’ve been stewing on it. Tomorrow, I am going to my second rally to uphold women’s reproductive rights. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is. If we can prevent Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from moving from a dystopian novel to a description of life in 2020s America, it’s our obligation to do so. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in anyplace resembling the theocratic dictatorship of Gilead that she describes.

I will not address the valid question of when does a fetus’s life take precedence over the mother’s because I don’t have the medical qualifications to give an answer that is based on fact. But let me raise a personal liberty argument: I will bring up the extension of the upcoming court decision to other areas, because we know that is coming–and because it personally affects my family. One former National Review editor actually posted on social media, “Next stop Brown vs. Board!” That was the decision that outlawed segregation in 1954. Here’s a screenshot of that post (NOTE: the blog that shows the post is a foul-mouthed screed–but you can see a picture of the post and learn some useful information about the person who wrote that post).
There is no doubt in my mind that they will go after easier marks first: such as the LGBT community and especially the T (trans) part. But they’ve said it out loud (or at least in a Tweet): they will eventually go after interracial couples–and likely, eventually, the ability to even socialize with people of different skin colors (see this analysis from Reuters).
Alito has a long history of speaking out against same-sex marriage and cannot be trusted not to use the same twisted reasoning to go after it. He also authored the Hobby Lobby case, which could be seen as a wedge decision that could eventually be used to eliminate legal contraception. In both of these probable attacks on our rights, it gets personal for me.
  • My younger child identifies as nonbinary, uses they-them pronouns, and is five years into a beautiful relationship with someone who has the same types of body parts and chromosomes but a very different cultural and religious upbringing. I fully support them, their choice of identity, and their wonderful life-partner.
  • My older one married another lovely guy from a different cultural and religious upbringing–who is the product of a White father and a Latina mom who clearly has indigenous ancestry. He is an excellent life partner for my daughter. My wife and I love both of our kids’ partners.
  • My mother, raised in a super-observant Orthodox Jewish family, divorced my father and married a Japanese man who was raised Buddhist. She also did some pretty intense civil rights work, including serving as a tester for the Urban League to determine if those apartments declined to Black families were really “already rented.”
  • I identify as bi and have had relationships before my marriage with both men and women. And I have slept with people who were not the same color as me. If I were my kids’ age, I might well have chosen to identify as nonbinary. While I am now very comfortable in my maleness, I was very UNcomfortable with it in my teens and 20s.
  • I am a survivor of rape by a grown male stranger who literally grabbed me off the street when I was 10 or 11. Fortunately, becoming pregnant was not an issue–but what if I’d been a 15-year-old girl, and had been forced to bear a child whose every moment would remind me of the violence done to me–a violence that was extremely traumatic even without a pregnancy?
Let’s also put this into a wider context: this is the same Supreme Court that recently decided that the Centers for Disease Control does not have the right to control disease by mandating masks in public conveyances–so you could be sitting next to a superspreader on a six-hour flight with no protection other than your own voluntary mask, and a coughing fit on a rush-hour subway car could expose dozens.
In fact, two people I’m very close to, who bought plane tickets before the mask mandate was overturned but flew later, have come down with COVID. I am flying next month, and I’m not happy about it. But my 91-year-old dad no longer travels and it’s important to see him when we can.
Even before that inane ruling, it was necessary to fight for my right to protect myself and the people I pod with. I refused to sit next to someone on a plane who would not mask (while that ruling was still in effect), and he was eventually taken off the plane. And at our official Town Meeting last week, I had to call a Point of Order to demand that the inadequate separation of masked and unmasked on opposite sides of an aisle be enforced, after asking someone to either put on a mask or go sit in the no-mask section. You would think the anti-vax crowd would actually be in favor of masks in public indoor spaces, since they would have lower risk of getting a bad case of COVID–but no. I still don’t understand the way these basic public health measures have been weaponized, even after many prominent mask critics contracted fatal cases. After all, we have seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws,  and requirements that school children receive various other vaccines.
The same back-asswards SCOTUS logic that killed the transportation mask mandate could threaten the abilities of OSHA and EPA (and many other agencies) to protect citizens in their domains. This is the same Supreme Court that has upheld discriminatory voting rules in several decisions. Here’s a Fox News report on the decision to hear a case in Arizona where they later decided in favor of the state and against election justice activists— and here’s a report on the actual decision, from C|Net.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Environment, Ethics in Government, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The man who lived in The White House from January 2017 to January 2021 took the US from respected world leader to banana republic serving the whims of an incompetent would-be dictator in an alarmingly short time. We are fortunate to have a new leader who is doing his best—though not enough—to undo the damage, and who steadies our foreign and domestic policy at a time when the need for leadership is clear.

But even though DT is out of power despite every crazy attempt to maintain it, his numerous judicial appointments gave the crazies a scary degree of control that persists today.

Which seems to mean that reproductive rights, environmental protections, the right to be protected from contagious lethal diseases, and the right to vote have had big portions chiseled away, while the rights to carry and use firearms, to infiltrate others’ airspace, and the right of corporations to fund candidates and dictate favorable terms have been enshrined.

While DT’s government made up new and undid longstanding laws and regulations with no regard for precedent or separation of powers, Biden’s attempts to return to normalcy, curtail the pandemic, and govern effectively keep getting shot down by—you guessed it—the appointees of his predecessor.

These judges and Justices invent new legal doctrine out of whole cloth, undermining more than two centuries of settled law, and using truly bizarre reasoning to uphold a “new normal” where skin color, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and religion are once again grounds to be discriminated against.

At the Supreme Court level, they often (far more often than in the recent past) use a procedural workaround known as “the shadow docket,” which often results in rushed, unsigned decisions with little or no written documentation of the rationale. This was used to implement both the MPP and Texas abortion decisions of right-wing District Judges, explained just below along with some other examples:

  • Early in his term, Biden kept campaign promise to end the MPP Remain in Mexico program—one of several policy pieces that inflicted massive violations of human rights (and international law) in his predecessor’s immigration policy of deliberate cruelty. MPP (and several other immigration changes instituted under DT) put thousands of people at grave risk of kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of the cartels they were fleeing.  Even though the policy, developed by the notorious xenophobe Stephen Miller, undid generations of settled procedure without any plausible justification, A DT-appointed judge forced the Biden administration to reinstate this horrible program.
  • Texas’s criminalization of assistance to or performing an abortion and deputization of any citizen to file for redress is so blatantly against the constitution that even right-wing anti-abortionists like this conservative anti-abortion lawyer are screaming “no”—as did Chief Justice Roberts (no friend of the reproductive rights movement).
  • Just this week, another DT-appointed district judge overturned the CDC’s public transportation mask mandate, drastically increasing the risk of COVID spreading when people are next to each other in tightly enclosed spaces for hours at a time. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle is one of many DT-appointed judges (along with Supreme Court Justice Barrett) whose confirmation was rushed through with many other nominations in the closing days of his administration; she was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’m getting on a plane again for a while—and I flew five round-trips since April 2021 when my vaccine took full effect. By what spurious reasoning do you take away the right of the Centers for Disease Control to control disease? Some lawyer should rapidly organize a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people who bought tickets with the understanding that they would be protected by a mask requirement in airports, bus and train terminals, and on the planes, trains, and buses.

Of course, this attack on US law started before Biden. As an example, after two previous attempts were overturned by various courts, the Supreme Court upheld version 3 of DT’s Muslim travel ban. And we all know about SCOTUS’s horrible pre-Biden decisions to block the recount of the Florida presidential results in 2000 (which gave us eight years of a dubiously elected president who was the worst in history until 2017)…to allow corporate donors to trample individual rights in decisions like Citizens United…

Whatever happened to “the land of the free” and “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?

 

Is there anything we can do about this?

Yes. Before I start suggesting things, I need to state that I am not a fan of the Democratic Party, have a long history of supporting electoral reforms that would reduce both Democratic and Republican Party power (like ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan administration of elections), and have written many letters, posts, and articles criticizing the current system. Nevertheless…

The first step is to win enough elections—whether for School Board or Senator—to wrest control of every possible office from the right-wing conspiracy theorists, January 6 conspirators, climate change deniers, bigots who see themselves as legitimized by a Republican Party no longer willing to confront evil and punishing the handful of its members who are still willing to go out on a limb and do the right thing. While I wish we had a viable alternative, under the two-party system, our choice in most races must to support Democrats.

I will not personally give money to a Party that continues to enable the right-wingers—from 11 Democrats voting to confirm Clarence Thomas despite highly credible accusations of sexual harassment to the Party allowing its two most conservative Senators to control the agenda and sabotage so many of the best things Biden has tried to do.

But I do give money to groups like Movement Voter Project that funds progressive grassroots groups to influence elections in swing districts—and reminds politicians who of the promises that got MVP to support them. That creates a progressive sphere of influence in ways normally reserved for powerful corporate donors and wealthy individual contributors in the 1%.

The second step is to reject any nominee endorsed by the Federalist Society, which according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a 2019 speech, openly attacks the gains made in the last 100 years on a host of issues including labor, environment, civil rights, and more, and not only supplied DT’s pick lists but trained the nominees on how to get through the hearings.

The third step is to consider major reforms like changing the judicial nomination process (perhaps through a non-partisan commission), ending lifetime appointments, and forcing the Supreme Court to apply the same Code of Ethics to itself that other courts require. This will be much more successful if we have accomplished step one.

The fourth step scares me and I wish we had a better alternative. This could come back to bite, and bite hard. But the judiciary has been running roughshod over the rights of average citizens, and especially those with less privilege.

So, reluctantly, we need to consider expanding the Supreme Court. We have to remember that the appointments of three of the six current conservative Justices (Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were confirmed by brute force with narrow majorities, and that Obama’s nomination of current Attorney General Merrick Garland was denied by brute force—McConnell refused to even hold a hearing and 17 Republican Senators supported him in public statements.

I said at the time and still say that Obama should have pushed back, saying that failure to hold a hearing by a certain date would constitute approval. Thomas and Kavanaugh defended themselves very poorly against credible claims of sexual harassment (Thomas) and sexual assault (Kavanaugh). Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020, less than two weeks before the November 3 election—but for these same Senators, March to November, 2016, was too close between nomination and the election.

How little constitutional basis there was to deny the hearing was proven in 2020 when that same McConnell rushed the Barrett nomination through, ignoring his own precedent and her extreme inexperience in the appellate courts, and the Republican hypocrites (who had said in 2016 they’d do the same thing if a Republican president nominated in the last year) reversed themselves and voted her in. Susan Collins was the only Republican voting nay, while Graham, Rubio, and the others who’d spoken out against final-year nominations completely ignored their own earlier comments.

In other words, the Republicans have not earned their 6-3 SCOTUS majority. The consequences of their cheating their way to a majority will be felt for decades unless we find a way to stop them. If we can limit their power through steps 1-3, maybe this “nuclear option” is unnecessary. But given this Court’s avid willingness to throw away settled law, undermine both the legislative and executive branches, and not even bother to justify their decisions with written opinions, I’m expecting we will have to move on this.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, language, Mindset

Here’s the headline and lead from a press release I happened to see:

Continuous Environmental Disinfection System Market Trends, Application Analysis, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Future Growth Till 2028

The QY Research released a latest market research report on the global and United States Continuous Environmental Disinfection System market, which is segmented by region (country), players, by Type and by Application. Players, stakeholders, and other participants in the global Continuous Environmental Disinfection System market will be able to gain the upper hand as they use the report as a powerful resource. The segmental analysis focuses on revenue and forecast by region (country), by Type and by Application for the period 2017-2028.

Do you have any idea what they’re talking about? I’ve been writing press releases for my marketing clients for decades–and I have NO idea what this one is about. Which means this press release, IMHO, is an abject failure.

Compare that with the clarity of message in the picture. Greta Thunberg pointing an accusatory finger doesn’t even need any words to communicate.

Greta Thunberg on the cover of GQ, with commentary by Marisa Murgatroyd (Instagram screenshot)


A press release should never be a bunch of bland, unintelligible gobbledygook. It should leave the reader with no doubt about what it’s about AND what you want them to do next. And the best press releases tell “the story behind the story.” They give the reader reasons to be involved, to get caught up in the experience, and to think positively about my client.

As an example, when I was hired to write a press release for a new book on electronic privacy, my headline was NOT “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book”–because curing the reader of insomnia didn’t happen to be one of my goals I told the story behind the story, and the headline was “It’s 10 O’Clock. Do You know Where Your Credit History Is?” The book first showed up in the third paragraph. And the reader read that far, because the reader was interested.

Want that sort of magic for your business? Visit this link on my Frugal Marketing site to find out more.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Copywriting, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Don’t the Republicans ever get tired of their own shameless hypocrisy? A lot of the rest of us are sure tired of it. It’s time for the Dems to focus their messaging on why the Party of Never-if-a-Democrat-proposed-it is no friend of the people.

I offer these as a gift to the Democratic Party, its candidates, and its supporters.

  • Why do Republicans support socializing the costs of billionaires’ mistakes and misdeeds while privatizing their profits? Why should working folks have to pay to clean up their mess when billionaires don’t even pay taxes on much of their wealth?
  • Why do we pay so much more for health care, for university education, for prescription drugs, for so much else–and get less for our money than most other countries? Why did Republicans hold all three branches of government and come up with nothing to address these crises?
  • If we want to free the world of power-mad dictators and thugs like Putin, we need TRUE energy independence from renewable sources like solar, wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–so Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries can’t push us around because of our dependence on fossil fuel. That’s also our way out of the carbon crisis.
  • If you want to halt fuel-cost-related inflation, ditto. That will lead to better health outcomes, too.
  • Green energy will continue to create good, well-paying jobs right here in the US–and by the way Biden has presided over the longest steady growth in employment since 1939.
  • If expulsions of immigrants at the border due to fear of COVID–which are against both international law and human decency–aren’t warranted for Ukrainians, there’s no justification for their use to keep Black and Brown people out. Don’t accede to Republicans’ racist demands to hold COVID prevention/protection/treatment funding hostage to keep this cruel, illegal, and discriminatory policy in place.
  • Stop defending domestic terrorists! January 6 was an attempted coup, an attempt to blow up our democracy. Even Republican Secretaries of State admit that the 2020 election was the most fraud-free in history and that Biden won honestly (something we can’t say with certainty about Trump in 2016, since the Republicans blocked recounts in three crucial swing states). And yet you refuse to discipline even the most blatant seditionists in your ranks! Doesn’t democracy mean anything to you anymore?
  • Why are you, the party that claims to believe in freedom, passing laws that take “cancel culture” to levels approaching those of early Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia? How dare you make it a crime to teach or read honest history! How dare you try to suppress the speech rights of whole classes of people! How dare you try to roll back women’s reproductive rights, the right of people of color to vote, and the right to live without fearing violence because of who you are, what way you worship, or what you look like? Stop trying to grasp at your fading power OVER others and focus on your power TO do good in the world (hint: oppressing others is not doing good in the world)
  • Why was it OK to refuse to even hold a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland because nine months before the election was “too close to the election”–while Barrett was rushed through just weeks before?

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