Category: General Commentary

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Technology Tagged with , ,

We still have a long way to go on eco-friendly packaging. I just finished a box of crackers. I washed out the plastic tray and will add it to the plastics recycling bag when it dries, put the box in the paper recycling bin, and threw away the shrink-wrap around the tray in the actual trash.

cracker box, tray, and inner shrinkwrap
Excess packaging: cracker box, tray, and inner shrink-wrap. Photo by Shel Horowitz

Most people won’t bother to do all this. Designers: this is a profit opportunity for you: create packaging that people only have to put in one place when it’s over, and that can be repurposed later–and remember that today’s compostable “solution” is only an alternative if people have access to an industrial compost facility. Most people don’t.

And businesses: as you adopt truly eco-friendly packaging, you’ve got a branding and marketing opportunity.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

Like everyone else, I’ve been a bit grumpy (and a lot horrified) as the world shuts down to slow the spread of the killer virus COVID-19. But I also find myself being grateful for some of the changes.

Grumps (things I miss a lot)

  1. Hugs (I still get them with my beloved spouse, thankfully)
  2. Gathering with friends in person
  3. Travel
  4. Potlucks
  5. Restaurants

    US military photo of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.
    US military photo of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.

Gratitudes (places where I see improvement)

  1. Gatherings of widely dispersed friends and family over Zoom (tonight, we’re hosting a Passover Seder with participants in seven US states)
  2. Still finding ways to make new friends–like the Sustainability Director for a major US city who became my friend after we were in the same breakout room in a Zoom webinar (and who then had me present to her daughter’s online learning group of high school kids)
  3. An explosion of “compassionate creativity,” from the Italians singing on their balconies to the outpouring of live and recorded concerts, Broadway shows, and more, to the business owners who still pay their idled staff
  4. The people who are using this situation to examine where our society could be improved both now and even long after the crisis ends: developing new approaches in addressing the carbon/climate crisis, education, transportation, health care, bringing people out of poverty, and more
  5. Watching people rediscover nature (all the hiking and biking trails near me are getting heavy use) and realize that there’s more to life than looking at screens all the time

Resources

Forbes Magazine’s list of aid programs for US businesses

Good article on the impact of Coronavirus on corporate social responsibility

Extensive list of resources for businesses trying to cope (mostly Australian)

While-you-wait résumés over Zoom and free résumé critiques by email—and if you’re unemployed because of the virus, your first cover letter is a gift when you get your résumé written (this is an offer from me personally)

What are your highlights in this time? Please post in the comments.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Democracy, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Along with much of the nation, I get to decide what vision for the next four years inspires me. As a progressive, I have many friends in both the Warren and Sanders camps. 

I  think either Bernie or Elizabeth would do well in debates against DT and win big against him, IF the likely Dem voters in swing states are allowed to vote and if ballots are counted fairly. Those are two very big IFs, and they will be an issue with pretty much any Democratic candidate. For Sanders, it’s even more of an issue because the party is so hostile to the idea of his nomination that they will do whatever they can to sabotage it. One only has to look at the dirty tricks the Hillary Clinton campaign used against him four years ago.

But my big worry with Bernie is he may get elected but be functionally unable to govern, because the Dem establishment will block his agenda at every turn, as the Repubs promised but failed to do with DT. Bernie is not a team player or a negotiator and he will get sabotaged.

I also think Elizabeth is smarter and her plans are more well-thought-out. She would prove that HRC didn’t lose because she’s a woman but because she 1) came with a whole lot of negative baggage, such as the pay-to-play scandal, 2) ran a terrible campaign (as just one example: failing to visit Wisconsin even once between the convention and the election, despite losing hugely to Sanders in the Wisconsin primary), and 3) faced a disinformation campaign funded by at least one foreign government. I voted proudly for Bernie in the primary four years ago (and not-so-proudly for HRC in November), but I’m voting for Warren tomorrow. I live in Massachusetts and feel she’s done an excellent job as my Senator.

I do agree with my Bernie-supporter friends that if she does poorly on Super Tuesday, it’s time for her to endorse Bernie and get out.

I have to wonder yet again why the Dems didn’t bring us mandatory hand-countable paper ballots (I wrote that post back in 2007)  and ranked-choice voting when they had the chance in ’09. I don’t think DT would be squatting in the Oval Office if there had not been active voter suppression (see that top link in this post again) and if there were paper-ballot recounts in those three very marginal states that put him over the top–and yet the Dems ignored (and may have actually sabotaged) Jill Stein’s effort to get recounts there. Their failure means I and millions of others do not accept the 2016 results as legitimate. It would have been healthy for the country to settle the question of who actually one.

I also don’t believe DT would be president if we’d had ranked choice four years ago. We might have President Hillary Clinton, President Ted Cruz, or President Bernie Sanders–but we would not have this lying, cheating, mean-spirited sociopathic bully destroying our foreign policy, our environment, our education, and our human rights.

I am proudly voting for Warren tomorrow. And in response to those who say a vote for anyone other than Sanders is ultimately a vote for Biden, let me quote democracy activist and constitutional scholar Jennifer Taub:

Q: Bernie supporters told me that a vote for Elizabeth is a vote for Biden. Is that true?

A: No. A vote for Elizabeth is a vote for Elizabeth. Bernie’s camp is reasonably worried that nobody will have a majority of delegates when they get to the convention this summer?.

There are rules in place that Bernie helped write in 2016. Under those rules, on the first vote at the convention, pledged delegates must vote according to our primaries. If nobody has a majority, then there will be a second vote. On the second vote, delegates can realign. And so on.

It’s quite likely that neither Bernie nor Biden nor Warren will have a majority at the outset. So, all three of them will be viable and there will be some serious horse trading.

Please join me in voting for the future we want, and not any kind of “lesser evil.” We might have to do that in November, but we certainly don’t have to do it now.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, language, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with

Effigy of "the Donald," photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC

That guy who’s squatting on government property at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC (The White House) has more chutzpah than just about anyone, anywhere.
His latest gambit, telling the two most liberal Supreme Court Justices they should recuse themselves, is especially ironic considering how Attorney General William Barr behaves as a matter of course, and how blatantly biased Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham conducted themselves during the travesty of the impeachment kangaroo court with a preordained outcome.
There’s an old Yiddish joke that defines chutzpah as the man on trial for killing his parents who pleads with the court, “Have mercy. I’m an Orphan!”Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, General Commentary, Gratitude, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,

Healing

Sand Mandala by Anandajoti Bhikkhu from Sadao, ThailandThis year, healing will have both a personal and a global component, starting with a deeply moving experience in mid-December. In August, 2018, my stepfather was in the crosswalk in front of his apartment, on his way to his daily 3-mile jog. He had activated the flashing light and was making his way across when a driver, looking at the GPS on the phone in her lap instead of the road, struck and killed him.

On December 16, 2019, we finally got our day in court. In collaboration with my sister and my wife, we had submitted a statement more than a year earlier saying we didn’t feel incarceration would serve any purpose, and we proposed instead that the driver perform community service by speaking about distracted driving to audiences that would include high school students. This came out of our belief in restorative justice, and not out of any human connection with the defendant.

But that connection came when we went to court. I read my statement and added some unscripted thoughts based on information that had come to light since I’d submitted it. She read a deep and sincere apology. We both cried during our statements.

After she was sentenced to three years of probation with 200 hours per year of community service, half of it speaking, I went up and hugged her, and then we all (the defendant, my wife and I, and our respective lawyers) found a meeting room and spent about 40 minutes together, forging a connection that I think will be lasting. Before the hearing, I never in my wildest dreams thought we might become friends. Now I think that’s quite possible.

I wrote up that day in some detail in the Gratitude Journal I’ve posted daily on Facebook since March, 2018. And I heard from several people that my account was one of the most moving things they’d read in a long time. The Gratitude Journal, by the way, has deepened my life in many ways, but that’s for another time.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this hearing was a day after Shonali Burke sent out her newsletter with her three Brogan words, and that she and I have been emailing about her newsletter, and my promise to her that if I came up with the words, I’d share them with her.

So that’s on the personal side. Let’s touch on the global side of healing.

For me, healing is bound up with justice. All of the work I do to make the world better has both a healing component and a focus on justice. Whether I’m attempting to help heal an ill individual (I do send prayers when asked), a threatened ecosystem, or a rift between very different communities with different culture and values, these two parts will be there.

And especially when there’s so much division and even hatred in our society today, it’s very challenging to find the positive, find the places of agreement, and work outward from there to mutual respect even though our conclusions–coming out of those widely divergent values and cultures–may be so different.

This has been a challenge my entire adult life, starting when I was 17 or 18 and at a demonstration at a military base near my college in Ohio. I found myself drawn to the fences, where a few of us were starting to talk with the soldiers on the other side of those chain-links. And I found that this felt really powerful.

I’m far from an expert in cross-barrier dialogue, but I find that the more I do it, the easier it gets. Even with my limited skills, I work really hard to find ways for people who disagree to talk and listen with each other. And the opportunities are all around us. Over these fifty years, I’ve had conversations not just as a progressive talking with conservatives but also as a Jew talking with Arabs and Muslims, a bisexual interacting with and educating both straights and gays (separately), a believer in conscious capitalism working with socialists who have absolutely no use for the business world, a believer in minimum standards of living for poor people who gets into ardent discussions with uber-capitalists who think anyone can claw their way out of poverty, a techno-klutz among geeks and a whiz kid among Luddites. Some of these have been highly structured, others are casual conversations.

As I said, opportunities for dialogue are all around us.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my three words and the rationale and goals underpinning them. You’re welcome to share this with friends and colleagues–and to post your own three words in the comments.

If you missed the earlier posts, please click to read Part 1, Clarity, and Part 2, Justice,

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Diversity, Eco-friendly, General Commentary, Gratitude, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , ,

Guest post by Seth Godin, 

Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

reprinted with his permission. Originally published on his blog under the title, “‘Not good enough’ is an easy place to hide“

 

Sniffing at the others who care is a form of virtue signalling. It’s also an ineffective way to create real change.

“My Prius Hybrid gets 140 miles per gallon.”

“My Tesla is solar powered.”

“Really, well I take an electric scooter.”

“We carpool by sharing a horse.”

“A horse? You should walk!”

This misses the real problem: The 1998 Chevy Suburban, with just one person on board, doing a forty-mile commute at 12 miles per gallon.

The same goes for ranking elected officials on who is the most perfect on the issue we care about.

The people who are paying attention are the ones who are trying. And shaming people who are trying because they’re not perfect is a terrific way to discourage them from trying. On the other hand, the core of every system is filled with the status quo, a status quo that isn’t even paying attention.

Focusing the group’s energy on shutting down stripped-mine coal is going to make far more impact than scolding the few who are trying.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, privacy, Shel's Personal Life, Technology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,

A lot of people tend to get upset when they see an article about governments spying on their citizens. For instance, this article in Common Dreams, ‘Highly Disturbing’ Pentagon Document Shows US Military Surveilling Groups Protesting Family Separation.

Surveillance cameras. Photo by Pawe? Zdziarski [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]
Surveillance cameras. Photo by Pawe? Zdziarski [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

But this is not exactly a surprise. Government spying on activists has been a thing since at least the 1920s, and the more we develop tech tools, the easier it is to spy. This article cites a spy report that sure looks to me like the Attending/Interested numbers were simply copied off a Facebook event page.

But don’t let Big Brother scare you off activism. Privacy is an illusion. If you have a bank account, credit card, driver’s license, medical record, or even a salaried job, you gave up your privacy long ago. These days, even walking down the street puts you on “candid camera.”

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protest intrusions on our privacy. But we have to live our lives as if we’re under constant surveillance–because we probably are.

In the 1970s, I was suspicious enough that my phone was tapped that every once in a while, I’d say things like, “FBI agents, get your pencils. I’m going to give you my recipe for three-minute chocolate mousse.” And then I’d tell them to melt chocolate chips, mix it into ricotta cheese, add cinnamon and cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and maybe a bit of rum.

To me, this was a really empowering way to handle it. It said that I was aware of the possibility that someone was listening, and that I wasn’t disclosing any sensitive information–not that I even had any–so they ay as well not bother to listen. And it brought a little humor to my day, and hopefully, to theirs.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Peace and War, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

As a supporter of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign (and a resident of Massachusetts who’s seen the positive impact she has had on the state she represents), I got asked to do a survey of what issues I felt were most important.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

While it was tempting to check every choice, I limited myself to 12 of the 32 options.

And then there was an open question:  “Is there anything else you’d like to share about why you’re in this fight?” This is what I wrote:

I see the two biggest challenges as peace and climate change. The US has a major role to play in both, starting with STOPPING our support for repressive governments around the world. To get there, we have to have meaningful electoral reform to secure our own democracy, meaningful gun policies that make it at least as hard to get a gun as it is to get a license to cut hair, and policies/tax codes that eliminate all subsidies for fossil and nuclear while encouraging a rapid transition to solar, wind, hydro, and other true clean renewable technologies–including a deep conservation retrofit program. I’ve been a supporter of yours since your first run in Massachusetts (where I live) and an activist for 50 years starting at age 12.

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Gratitude, language, People Helping People, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , ,

Guest post by Jacqueline Simonds.

Way back in 1979, I worked in a Texas bar & grill. One of my co-workers discovered she had Graves Disease/hyperthyroidism. She was put on a medication and her slightly bulging eyes and weight started to diminish.

Then she discovered she was pregnant.

[Recall that in 1979, there were no home pregnancy tests available. By the time she figured out she might be pregnant, and got into the doctor, she was maybe 2 – 2.5- months along. That’s 6 – 8.5 weeks.]

She told the doctor who was treating the thyroid, and he freaked. The medication she was taking would 100% result in a mangled fetus. He insisted she get an abortion – for the sake of her health, and her family.

My friend, a Latina, was also very very Catholic, and already had 3 children with her husband. This caused a terrible crisis for her. So she went to her priest, and told him what the doctor said. He immediately told her she couldn’t have the procedure, because it was against God.

My friend was completely wrecked by the moral and ethical challenges before her. What should she do? She understood the danger, but the priest said it was wrong. She cried all day at work.

She called her doctor and told him what the priest said. Then the doctor did something sort of amazing.

He called the priest and asked him to come to the office.

When they met, the doctor explained what was happening in my friend’s body. He showed the priest pictures of what a healthy developing fetus looked like, and what would happen to this one. And then he described, in great detail, the life my friend and her family would have. That my friend would have to quit work, and take full care of the child, for the rest of its life (caring for a medically-challenged child was even more financially and emotionally draining then than it is now).

But more, the doctor said, is that it might just kill her. Then her 3 children would be left without a mother, her husband without a wife, the parish without a devout member. And how did this serve God? How, he asked the priest, can you help her best? (He did not demand that the priest give in to the doctor’s way of thinking.)

The priest was astonished at all this information, and asked for time to go and pray. The doctor told him he encouraged him to do so, but not to take too much more time. The procedure had to be done soon.

The next day, the priest called my friend and told her he felt God wanted her to lay down the burden of the pregnancy, and that the priest himself would take her to the procedure.

And he did. And she was saved.

My friend suffered guilt and remorse and sorrow on a scale I could barely stand to watch. But with all of our love, she got through it.

If the conversation between the priest and the doctor seems unlikely to you, it is because times have changed that radically. We were on the middle path back in the 70s, where you could object to abortion, but see its necessity. When you could be pro-choice, but have an adult conversation that didn’t involve a screaming match – and therefore might change a mind.

Extremism erases rationality and damages real people. Right now, we HAVE to fight right wing pseudo-Christian extremism, because it is a toxic poison to women’s bodily autonomy. Once we can force the extremists back into the shadows, we can return to a time of the middle path, where your decision is YOURS.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, General Commentary, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,
Child brushing teeth (FreeImages.com)
Child brushing teeth (FreeImages.com)

We always hear from conservatives that they don’t see how we can possibly afford universal health care, let alone the Green New Deal. Thus, as a public service, I’m listing five ways (among dozens if not hundreds) we can locate the funds. This is not even pretending to be comprehensive (or in any sort of order), and I’d love you to add your favorite in the comments.

  1. Eliminate the private for-profit insurance system, which jacks up the price. According to The New Republic (2015), this is costing us between $375 billion and $471 billion per year. The savings in getting rid of the middlemen would more than cover the increase in taxes.
  2. Cap doctors’ salaries at something reasonable and generous. I’ll pull a figure out of the air: 200K per year for generalists, 300K for specialists—but it could be higher or lower.
  3. Eliminate the crazy subsidies and price protections in so many industries, and particularly fossil and nuclear fuel, Big Pharma, highways and bridges to nowhere, and chemiculture-based Big Ag. We are subsidizing all sorts of things that should not be subsidized! Our policies should support the changes we want society to make (but right now, our policies interfere with those changes.
  4. Cut the military budget down to the expenditure of China (the country second on the list). Right now, the US is spending an obscene $649 billion per year (2016) to “defend” 329,345,285 people (more than the next seven countries combined). Yet China manages to protect 1,420,615,635 people, more than 4.3 times the US figure,  with military spending of just $146 billion (2016), or less than a quarter overall, less than a sixteenth per capita. So if the US slashed military spending by 75 percent to match China’s, it would still be spending more than four times per person than China does. Surely that would be enough to protect ourselves!
  5. Increase the tax rates for multimillionaires and for multinational megacorporations. Under Eisenhower, the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent; now it’s less than half, just 37 percent. Meanwhile some of the most successful corporations pay zero income tax even while decimating local economies built on mom-and-pop retailers; In 2018, Amazon managed to double its profits from $5.6 billion in 2017 to $11.2 billion, and paid zero income tax both years. Lets end socialism for the rich.
  6. Do a Marshall Plan-style investment program to convert the entire nation to safe, clean, renewable energy; the upfront cost will be quickly amortized by energy savings AND healthcare savings, since we’ll be eliminating major causes of asthma, emphysema, etc. Plus, the cost of converting to solar, wind, etc. will drop way down, as economies of scale kick in. Even without a big government investment in converting the whole economy, solar and wind prices are now often compatible with or even better than fossil or nuclear power sources.

So next time you meet someone who wonders how to pay for the world we want, this article gives part of the recipe. Readers, please add your own favorite ways to find the money for these improvements, and please include a source for your data.

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