Category: Politics

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Eco-friendly, Environment, Green Marketing, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

I received a fund appeal from a climate-change nonprofit asking for money to put this ad on the air. I was so appalled that I sent this letter:

[Subject] THIS AD WILL DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE WANT Re: Enough tiptoeing around it

[Body] No, and here’s why: This ad shows an astonishing ignorance of the deep triggers that change or reinforce behavior.  You pit an audio track that is 100% climate-denier against visuals that fail to make a connection between the catastrophes shown and climate change.

For climate skeptics, this will not only not change their mind, it will REINFORCE the idea that climate change is a hoax. They will focus on the audio. Those of us who understand that climate change is real will focus on the visuals, and will be able to make the connection that climate change worsened the storms—but we’re not the ones who need to be convinced.

As a marketer with over 40 years experience who believes strongly in the ability of marketing to create social change, I think this ad will do more harm than good and should not be released.

Please don’t run it!

We’ve known about the difference between how the brain processes the obvious and the subliminal  messaging in an ad for decades.  I think I learned about this when I started reading a lot of marketing books, back in the 1980s. We’ve also known about “social proof” (the idea that because other people are doing something, you should too) going back to early-20th-century advertising geniuses like John Caples and Edward Bernays.

Edward Bernays' secretary Bertha Hunt smokes in public at Bernays' 1927 "Torches of Freedom" march
Edward Bernays’ secretary Bertha Hunt smokes in public at Bernays’ 1927 “Torches of Freedom” march

And we’ve known about the negative impact of negative images about the environment since at least the Cialdini study of 2003 (which showed that people are more likely to litter after watching an anti-littering video showing lots of people littering) and probably much earlier. So why would any marketer script an ad like this?

By contrast, consider how the super-successful anti-littering campaign “Don’t Mess With Texas” rallied people around state pride. Cleverly, the ad agency didn’t even announce it as a clean-up-the-state program at first. Aiming at the demographics that were most likely to litter, they handed out bumper stickers with just the slogan, then later introduced commercials that tied it to the real purpose: stopping littering. And Texan litter rates went way down!

We’ve also known for many years that cultural and language differences have a lot to do with any marketing piece’s success. I’ve written often about the way companies sometimes market the same product differently to different nations or subcultures, or how a company can even change up its whole product line for different markets. Here are two examples from very different industries (breakfast cereal and luxury cars) in an article I published five years ago on an Australian website.

Don’t make the mistake that Chevrolet made when it tried to market the Nova in Latin America. In Spanish, “no va” means “it doesn’t go.” Oh, and look at every possible way to break up a website or product name into separate words. Unintended consequences of a badly-chosen name are still consequences, as that link demonstrates extremely well.

Have you examined your own marketing to make sure the subliminal message, the obvious message, and the goal are all aligned? Do this right away—or contact me. I’d be happy to do it for you, at very reasonable prices. I’ve written eight books on marketing including several that won awards, were translated and republished overseas, and/or made some best-seller lists—note that I’m using social proof here ;-)—and have studied marketing for more than 30 years.

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

My heart goes out to all those impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the flooding in Bangladesh and other parts of Asia (not much in the US news but also very severe), or the out-of-control fires in the American West (a friend in Oregon told me, “the whole state is on fire. I can’t go out of my house because of the smoke.”

Every bit of research I’ve seen concludes that all these catastrophes are far worse than they would have been without human intervention. Humans have raised the temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico through our industry, agriculture, and architecture, and those warmer waters vastly increased the severity of the storms. And because of numerous social choices over decades if not centuries, disaster impacts tend to fall most heavily on those who can least afford it.

Storm Flooding. Photo by Gabriel Bulla, freeimages.com
Storm Flooding. Photo by Gabriel Bulla, freeimages.com

This pattern has been increasing dramatically since at least 2005, starting with the Asian typhoon and continuing through Katrina and Rita, Irene and Sandy, and now Harvey and Irma. Humans have built flood-vulnerable buildings in low-lying places where flooding, sooner or later, is inevitable. So not only are the storms more severe measuring just their force, but they impact the human-built landscape where that humanscape ignores nature’s principles.

To think of it another way, the planet is fighting back against the human assault. The planet doesn’t really care about humans as a species, or even individual ecosystems. The planet just wants to survive, and it acts to protect the “macro-ecosystem”: the planet as a whole. It has already survived extinctions of millions of species, including some that were the dominant lifeforms before earlier, non-human-caused catastrophic climate events. If humans are wiped out and cockroaches rule the earth, Earth won’t care.

But we care. We want a world whose treasured heritage and powerful promise we can pass on to many generations.

Please talk to your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and especially your legislators. Help them understand that human-caused catastrophic climate change is real, and that *there are things we can do to mitigate the impact and even reverse the terrible trends.*

We can take individual actions, from switching to organic foods and eating less meat to insulating our homes and workplaces and using LED lighting. And we can also take action as a society. With no help from the US federal government, individual cities and states can still participate in the Paris Accords (and many have). For bottom-line revenue-building and expense reducing reasons, companies can design buildings that create at least as much energy as they use, from clean renewable sources (and many have).

But still, government must have a role: in funding not just disaster relief but preventive measures such as dam inspections and humane ones such as fair labor practice enforcement (both stripped of much of their funding by the current administration). In encouraging clean energy. In understanding that foreign policy needs to factor in who uses what resources in which ways, and that domestic policy has to focus on creating jobs in industries that will remain relevant (unlike, for instance, coal and nuclear, neither of which are economically viable in the current world).

I could go on for much longer, but I’ll just say, thanks for listening, talk to your network, write letters to the editor, and contact your legislators.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Diversity, Environment, Events, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

This Facebook Live video by Brené Brown, “We need to keep talking about Charlottesville,” posted August 15, might be the best thing I’ve ever come across on how to combat oppressive language without heaping guilt and shame on the other person, building bridges instead. I’d known her name but not her work. This video made me a fan. Strongly recommended.

She has an unusual perspective: a white anti-racist raised in the South, often mistaken for black by people who hadn’t met her, on the basis of her full legal name.

Can we create a world where these girls will be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"? Photo by Anissa Thompson, freeimages.com
Can we create a world where these girls will be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”? Photo by Anissa Thompson, freeimages.com

I’ve been saying for many years that guilt and shame are not effective in making change (and in my work to create social change in the business world, I do my best to harness other motives, like enlightened self-interest). The example she gives of the young man confronting his father shows exactly why they don’t work. Not to confront racism or other isms, and not to protect the planet.

Brené is a better communicator than I am. As I engage in dialogue with “the other side,” I will do my best to remember her communications lessons, and those of Van Jones, whose wonderful riff on how to talk to Tea Partiers I wrote about several years ago.

For more of Brené Brown, visit her website.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, language, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the aftermath of the Charlottesville Massacre (a massacre that kills one person is still a massacre in my opinion, if deliberately intending to harm many—19 were injured by the madman’s car), an activist friend posted a cry for help. This is a piece of it:

…how can I fight this if I’m scared? And if I’m scared and it immobilizes me then who else will be able to face that fear and take action? And we must take action. We white people must take action. We must be at the forefront of this fight. With our sisters and brothers of color.

All my life I have fought for justice, for people, for equity. How do I step up to this fight with my full self and do what has to be done? How are you doing it?

Here’s what I wrote (slightly edited):

Singer, actor, activist and athlete Paul Robeson. Courtesy NY Public Library Digital Collections.
Singer, actor, activist and athlete Paul Robeson. Courtesy NY Public Library Digital Collections.
It’s OK to be scared, and then do the work anyway—that’s what courage is. I know you already know this, but maybe others reading here will take inspiration.
The times in my life when I’ve done this, and there have been several, have been among the most meaningful moments of my life. But I’m no great hero—and the times when I failed to step up and do the right but scary thing are some of my few regrets. Here are two successes and one failure that I’m thinking about in particular.
1. In 1975 and 1976, I ran the Gay Center (that’s what we called it back then) at Antioch College. I left when the semester was over and began a summer-long hitchhiking trip. A few weeks later, on July 5, 1976, I stopped by for a short visit. I still had the Gay Center key and was crashing there. During that visit, some creep threw a rock through the center’s window, wrapped in a vile hate-speech note with a swastika drawn on it. I not only went to the police [and the campus authorities], but I wrote a letter to the school paper, including the full text of the foul note, and called out the perpetrator. Nobody offered any protection [nor did I request any] and I kept sleeping there until I pushed west.
2. When the US bombed Libya in the early 1990s, I called up [local peace activist] Frances Crowe and asked her where and when the demonstration would be. She said she didn’t know of one. I said “noon at the courthouse.” I was out there by myself the first day, and the passers-by were hostile enough that I was worried for my safety. But I was back the next day with a handful of others, and the day after that with about 20 folks, and I watched the tide turn. By that third day, supporters passing by far outnumbered hostiles. I felt my actions had made a real difference.
The regrets are mostly about not having the strength to verbally interrupt oppression. I’ve gotten better at this over the years. Many of the incidents were when I was a child or teen and didn’t have the strength or the skills to do this in a positive way. But I particularly regret one incident in 1986 when I should have been able to think and act differently: I failed to interrupt a neighbor’s racist comment. We had just moved in next door and I was in his living room at that moment, getting acquainted. I let the comment go by as if I hadn’t heard it. 31 years later, I still feel shame about that.
As an activist for more than 40 years, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve really only risked my life or serious injury a dozen times or so. I’ve never had to spend time in a real jail; my one and only arrest (Seabrook, NH, 1977) was part of a movement too big for the state’s corrections system, so I spent a week in a large National Guard Armory room with 700 other comrades and we made it a school of nonviolence theory and practice.

But my greatest successes bore no personal risk. I faced no serious repercussions when I started the movement that saved our local mountain, or when I set the wheels in motion for the first nonsmokers rights regulations in the city where I was living. Nobody was going to crack a nightstick over my head while I was being paid to organize the Gray Panther chapter in Brooklyn, NY.

I realize just how privileged my place of activism has been when I think of the nonviolent warriors who fought for their rights in places like Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, and the American South in the 1950s and 1960s. I think of my long-dead friends and comrades Dave Dellinger and Wally Nelson, who served had time in prison for refusing to fight in World War II. I think of another dead friend, Adele Lerner, who came to the US to escape the Nazis and who was present at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York that when the Klan attacked—and who was responsible for a lot of my political and cultural awareness in the early 1970s.She turned me on to Leadbelly (who’d been a friend of hers), Malvina Reynolds, and real cheese, to name three among many. I think of labor organizers, LGBT activists, and so many others who gave their lives so that my generation could have our freedom to protest. Their actions give me the courage to continue to work for a better world.
And I think about the power of ordinary people to step through the door that cracks open for a moment, to step into their greatness and change the world. The seamstress, Rosa Parks. The shipyard electrician, Lech Walesa. The activist serving a life sentence, Nelson Mandela. The humble priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who spent so many years in jail for direct action against the military. These and many other heroes put their lives on the line in a way I never had to.
Mind, I’m not beating myself up. I’ve chosen a path of “easeful activism” (as my yoga teacher might call it). I’ve found plenty of ways to be an effective agent of social change without getting beaten, killed, or thrown in jail. I haven’t found it necessary to be a martyr, but I deeply respect those who do. And I am prepared if the day comes where I am called to do as much or more. I will not allow fear of my own death to keep me from doing the right thing. I will continue to follow the path of nonviolent action for deep social change.
impact in the world? Please post your comments below.
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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Democracy, Diversity, Politics, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

If you’ve been walking around in shock and depression since the election, and you’re anywhere near Minneapolis, get thee to Brave New Workshop, 824 Hennepin Avenue, and buy tickets to “Guardians of the Fallacy: Executive Disorder.” Bring a bunch of liberal and progressive friends.

You need at least one good laugh per day right now. At this show, you’ll make your quota for many weeks.

Founded in 1958, the US’s oldest live political satire troupe may also be its funniest. This show had all four of us roaring with laughter, even if we missed some of the pop-culture references. Only one skit had me scratching my head and saying “huh?” (But a few of them had me asking “what did she just say?”; the enunciation got muddy at times.) I saw The Capitol Steps during the Clinton administration and this was much funnier. All four of us felt it was actually more consistently funny than Saturday Night Live.

This group of five writer/actors has an uncanny ability to get deep into our angst, to express all the fear and worry we face, and to be side-splittingly funny. It’s not really a musical but it has several hilarious song parodies. Remember these names: Lauren Anderson, Denzel Belin, Ryan Nelson, Tom Reed, Taj Ruler (the five writer/actors) and their gifted improvisational accompanist Jon Pumper. One day some of them may be as familiar as BNW alumnus Senator Al Franken.

Cast of "Guardians of Fallacy." Photo by Dani Werner, courtesy of Brave New Workshop. Used with permission.
Cast of “Guardians of Fallacy.” Photo by Dani Werner, courtesy of Brave New Workshop. Used with permission.

Although a large majority of the show takes on DT and his cohorts, two of the funniest skits—a woman still grieving in July over Hillary’s loss, and an interracial gay couple encountering a patronizing liberal manager at Trader Joe’s—skewer liberals, and one with no political content involves two Minnesota fishermen. But you also won’t soon forget Sean Spicer and an a enthusiastic Alabaman taking us a few decades into the future to lead a tour of the DT “Presidential Lie-berry,” whose only book is a copy of the McConnell healthcare bill…the pre-existing conditions song…a perfectly captured 20-second cameo by Jeff Sessions…and Hillary chomping down on WHAT? (no spoiler here, you’ll have to go and see it).

I don’t happen to live in Minneapolis, but was glad to visit while this show was running. Which it does through October 28. I hope they release a video or go on tour. People in my own area of Western Massachusetts would love it.

And by the way, if you’d like to get out of that despair, sign up for action alerts from groups like 3NoTrump, the organization my wife, daughter, and son-in-law started after the election. Each week, they post three easy and EFFECTIVE action alerts. 3NoTrump is also on Facebook and Twitter.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , , , ,
Just as Left and Right joined forces a few years ago to protect Net Neutrality (the right to an open Internet without tollbooths and bandwidth restrictions for those who are not part of big cable or news empires), so we must come together to protect our precious freedom of the press.
Someone commented on a post from one of my right-wing acquaintances that they thought DT was being humorous when he threatened CNN journalists. Here’s my response:
Making thinly veiled threats to beat up journalists is NOT humor. If you don’t see the need to protect press freedom and other First Amendment rights, you are wearing blinders. And your liberties will be trampled just as much as ours on the “other side.” Laughing off threatening behavior as “humor” is creating a culture where the behavior is permissible and excused. Put your glasses back on! We should be able to join across sides to protect First Amendment freedoms.
Another right-wing acquaintance posted on his own page,
If he can destroy the out of control reckless American MSM and force them to recalibrate their models and become honest, unbiased journalistic organizations instead of hacks (and that goes for FOX News), then he will go down as the greatest President of all time.
I responded:
If you want unbiased MSM, start by reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine. Eliminating that began a long slide away from honesty and toward bias. And despite flawed reporting, I still am thankful every day that we have a free press—sand very worried when DT attempts to create a culture where beating up journalists is OK. That’s right out of the Hitler playbook. Without primary sources in the MSM, bloggers with minimal research skills would have no platform.
No sooner had I posted these comments when I scrolled down in my feed and found a chronology of Nazi suppression of press freedom, starting with Hitler’s threats to press freedom in Mein Kampf. The parallels are disturbingly chilling. Please go read the link. I will wait.
Statue of Thomas Jefferson. Photo by Thad Zajdowicz, FreeImages.com
Statue of Thomas Jefferson. Photo by Thad Zajdowicz, FreeImages.com

Thomas Jefferson, whose politics today would be described as Libertarian-Conservative, came back to the theme of the importance of free press over and over again. Here’s a whole page of Jefferson’s quotes on press freedom. His most famous is right at the top:

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Another quote on that page speaks directly to the issue of fake news, and how much of that originates in government:
The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.
Why am I not seeing an outcry on the right as the country takes a sharp turn toward thuggish fascism? Their news channels will be restricted and attacked just as much as ours. Look what he said and continues to say about his one-time cheerleaders at Morning Joe.
This is important, folks. Do not let this petty tyrant erode our freedoms. It CAN happen here. Don’t let it.
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By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

After a wonderful week visiting four cities in Portugal, I noticed a lot about the state of green consciousness there. Obviously, visiting only four of hundreds of communities is only a sampler, but certainly enough to share with you.

Renewable Energy

For such a sunny country, Portugal has remarkably empty rooftops. We saw a few dozen photovoltaic arrays, mostly just a two to five panels and maybe two or three larger installations. And hardly any roofs had solar hot water heaters, even though other sunny countries, like Israel, have them on practically every house and they’re far less expensive than PV, with very quick payback.

Large building with rare photovoltaic solar array, Aveiro, Portugal. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Large building with rare photovoltaic solar array, Aveiro, Portugal. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

We passed one wind farm, and a few installations with a turbine or two. I didn’t see any hydro or geothermal facilities, but we weren’t in the mountains where they’d be more likely to be built.

Overall, Portugal appears to be trailing in this area. But appearances can be deceiving. In 2016, an astounding 58 percent of Portugal’s electricity generation and 27.2 percent of overall energy was renewable—and those ranges are typical of the past several years. For four days in a row in May 2016, the country generated all of its electricity renewably. The country has also invested heavily in wind and solar farms and even opened (and then quickly closed) the first commercial ocean-wave energy capture facility in Europe.

Recycling

Trash sorting stations for metal/plastic, paper/cardboard, glass, and undifferentiated (the world looks a lot like “indifferent”) were very common in Sintra (where they were enormous and hard to miss), and somewhat more sporadically—and in smaller bins—in Lisbon, Porto, and Aveiro.

In places, litter is a problem, especially around the edges of some of the plazas and parks.

Green Food Movement

It was easy to get vegetarian options in every city we visited. All of them also have a small natural foods community with places to get organic, vegan, gluten-free, and other options. In two cities, we stayed with families, and both served us farm-fresh eggs (one from their own chickens). For every vegan cafe, there are hundreds of traditional cafes and restaurants serving almost entirely meat or fish or seafood, but there would usually be one or two vegetarian options such as an omelette or a baguette with cheese. Artisanal cheeses are commonplace (and scrumptious). Choices are much more limited for vegans.

Some of the more artisanal vineyards and port wine cellars use organic grapes—and in fact we’ve enjoyed organic Portuguese wine in the US for several years, particularly the vinho verde, young, “green” wine. In-country, we sampled a number of wines and were especially impressed by some of the reds.

Fruits were often amazingly delicious, and fresh-squeezed orange juice (sumo laranja) is available almost anywhere. Many natural food cafes and smoothie bars will also juice carrots, mangos, and other fruits and vegetables, to order.

Transit

In Lisbon and Porto, it was possible to get most places via metro, bus, antique tram, modern tram, or funicular, and both cities have at least three intercity train stations (including the one across the river from Porto in Vila Nova del Gaia). Transit was inexpensive. Taxis were also inexpensive, and tuk-tuks were available as well. Car-sharing networks exist but don’t seem heavily used.

The small communities of Aveiro and Sintra were much less well served. Most of central Aveiro is built along canals, and there are plenty of boats, but more for sightseeing than actually getting someplace. There’s a nice bike path going from town to both halves of the university. Sintra has frequent commuter rail service to Lisbon, Queluz, and several other towns along its one rail line. Sintra had local buses serving the downtown area, hop-on/hop-off service to the palaces and parks from at least three companies, and rather poor service to the outlying areas.

Open Space

Every community we visited had lots of parkland, public plazas, and nearby farms. Sintra is particularly phenomenal, with vast and magnificent nature reserves in and surrounding the town. Three of the four (Lisbon, Aveiro, and Porto) had active waterfronts with good public access, and Aveiro had public salt marshes. High marks on this one.

Overall Environmental/Climate Change Consciousness

Several times, when someone realized we were from the US, the other person would bring up the presidential decision a few days before our visit to exit the Paris Climate Accord, signed by 193 countries including the US. This decision is seen as a disaster in Portugal. We did not meet a single person who supported it—and our president is seen as either a madman or a laughingstock. This survey was based only on those who started conversations with us, but it was consistent. Not one person who started these conversations had anything good to say about the new US regime.

Interest in eating organic and natural foods seems to be rising rapidly.

Small cars are still extremely dominant, as was true in most of Europe until about 20 years ago. There are surprisingly few motorscooters and motorcycles, and even fewer bicycles—but you see almost no large cars. I saw two Jeeps (one small, one larger) and one Hummer. Most everything else was no bigger (and often a lot smaller) than a Toyota Corolla. This may be based in economics as much as environmental awareness, or even just a reaction to the narrow streets in all the historic sections—or it may have to do with carbon consciousness. Almost all the cars have manual shifts, which is no longer true in other European cities we’ve visited in the past decade. Of the cars I happened to look into, only one (the big Jeep Wagoneer) had an automatic.

Urban architecture is primarily row houses, which are energy-efficient because they have fewer outside walls. In the few houses we entered, the appliances seemed pretty large. Portugal clearly values historic preservation, though many of the buildings are only 100-130 years old, but look centuries older.

Water-saving dual-mode toilets were very common, though there were still plenty of single-mode ones.

In short, Portugal is moving nicely along with the rest of its European Union neighbors on the full range of green issues, even though it’s one of the poorer countries in the federation.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Psychology Tagged with , ,

I would not consider DT a success. Yes, he’s got a bajillion dollars and has the most powerful job in the world. But he strikes me as a deeply unhappy person. I would even use the word “wounded.” His Id is out of control, his Ego (in the Freudian sense—in the more common use, of course, it’s utterly dominant) is weak and unstable, his Superego doesn’t seem to exist, and neither does any sense of compassion other than misguided self-pity. Both his ethics and his style of personal interaction are appalling. The only part of being President he actually seems to enjoy is power-over-others. The only thing he’s actually good at is marketing to a very narrow base. I’ve seen exactly two pictures ever where he was smiling. Much as I hate 98% of what he says and does, I don’t hate HIM. I feel sorry for him!

Prior to the current few months, I called W the worst president in our history. DT has already taken over that dubious distinction. When W was president, I was able to find a few things to like: his endorsement of hydrogen cars at a State of the Union address, the amazing green initiatives at his Crawford ranch (a far greener home than Al Gore’s mansion, ironically), his ability to laugh at his own foolishness, and the quiet lifting of restrictions on importing really good cheese. (I never saw a single news story about this, but I noticed it in my area supermarkets).

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

I can so far only find two good things to say about DT: he is opposed to the terrible TPP (though for the wrong reasons—he opposes international trade agreements in general, when the real issue is the way TPP removes so many national and local consumer protections)…and his words in his victory speech (too bad they were yet another DT lie) about unifying and being a president for all Americans. That’s a pretty damn thin list.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

How often do you see companies like Monsanto and ExxonMobil joining forces with environmental leaders like Patagonia, Goolge, Tesla, and Walmart—not to mention practically every scientist, head of state, and subject expert, as well as a large percentage of business analysts from IBM to Goldman Sachs? They were all part of the coalition that joined with DT’s own Secretary of State and his daughter to convince him to keep the Paris Climate Accord.

Yesterday, he-who-thinks-he-knows-better-than-any-expert-on-any-subject rejected their good counsel and announced that he would withdraw the US from the accord. Fortunately, this will take four years and there’s a good chance someone who is sane and thoughtful will be in charge by then.

I will not repeat the numerous arguments about how the US would benefit economically by continuing its leadership through this agreement. I will not repeat the huge blow this is to the poorest of the poor around the world. I will not repeat the idiocy of his arguments, based on what the New York Times called “dubious data.” I will not repeat the condemnation of this really dumb move from almost all quarters, or the happy fact that numerous municipalities and states are rejecting his stance and pledging to meet the targets.

Earth Lightning, by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger

I will only say this: We, the people of the United States, and the people of the World, will continue to do what we can to protect our beautiful planet. And its people, including those without sufficient resources to tackle this on their own. Justice demands it.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Six (almost seven) months after the election, and 200 days into the disaster of Trumpian government, Democrats still want to blame it all on the Russians, or on their new hero and recent villain James Comey.

Those are real factors. But the Democrats are not blameless. The soullessness of the Democratic party had a lot to do with DT’s victory despite losing the popular vote.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton face off. Screenshot from CBS News.
The two candidates debate

Consider these influences on the outcome—and note that the Democrats could have easily fixed items 1 through 6 in 2009 when memories of GWB’s failures were strong and they had a clear mandate for change. They also own full responsibility for items 7-10 in 2016. So of these baker’s dozen factors, only three were external forces:

  1. Republican purges of the voter list and discarding of likely-Democratic ballots, including 90,000+ likely-Democratic voters in Florida in 2000 (and 350,000 in Ohio in 2004—read this very thorough analysis by none other than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.).
  2. Hackable voting machines lacking traceable paper ballots (#1 and 2 alone are probably the biggest two factors in the two GWB victories).
  3. Gerrymandering.
  4. Special-interest lobbying and campaign funding, creating a system that works against real change—and should have been replaced years ago by meaningful public funding across all parties receiving 5 percent or more.
  5. Failure to institute ranked-choice voting, so that a third-party vote or a vote for your top choice in the primary is not a spoiler that helps elect your least favorite candidate (DT would have never even been the candidate if the Republicans had used this in their primaries; one DT voter in my family told me he was her “seventeenth choice” among 17 Republican candidates).
  6. And yes, the electoral college that disenfranchised a majority of voters twice in the last five elections.
  7. Messaging: if you’re not following the issues closely, would you rather stand strong and “Make America Great Again” or blubber out a wimpy, incoherent “I’m With Her”?
  8. In 2016, Obama refused to force the issue on Merrick Garland, not only losing the seat to an ultra-rightist but setting an absolutely terrible precedent that he, a constitutional law scholar, could have certainly seen coming. To progressives, that was (among other things) a message that the Democratic Party was not even willing to support itself and the constitution, so why bother?
  9. Also in 2016, even though Hillary would have probably gotten the nomination honestly, the double-dealing and shenanigans against the Bernie campaign gave some people—maybe enough to upset the election—reasons to stay home on November 8.
  10. Worse, nobody on her campaign seemed to notice that her primary victories were heavily tilted toward the Deep South, where it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t going to win in November–and they took the midwest for granted. Hillary made exactly zero trips to Wisconsin between nomination and election day, even though Bernie cleaned her clock in the primary by 13 points. These folks were hard-hit by the recession and they watched Obama bail out the banks and Wall Street while doing precious little for underwater working-class homeowners. This was not a victory strategy. It was only because DT was so disgusting that it was even close in states like that.
  11. Russian interference, and we may never know what really went on.
  12. Comey’s “October Surprise” last-minute disclosure of more suspicion around Hillary’s emails
  13. Fake news. Lots of it.

This is not a comprehensive list; I could easily list another dozen factors. Here’s the reality: we will never know exactly which factors shifted the results; probably each contributed a little bit to DTs razor-thin, non-popular-vote victory.

But we do know that nine items on this list were avoidable or fixable. And despite the worst presidency in the history of the US, they still don’t understand what they need to do to fix things.

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