By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Politics

The U.S. Senate did two idiotic things regarding energy policy yesterday. In both cases, Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to stop a Republican filibuster.

First, they voted against a windfall oil profit tax that would fund alternative energy. OK, I can understand the logic of rejecting a windfall profit tax on the big oil companies; the argument could be made that this would ultimately lead to higher gas prices and more foreign oil imports. But this time, the oil companies could avoid the profit tax by investing those runaway profits in much-needed renewable energy technology.

But for the life of me, I can’t see the argument against extending tax credits for homeowners installing renewable energy.

According to the New York Times, the Democrats’ energy package (not dead but on hold, currently)

…would require electric utilities to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from wind, solar or biomass energy by 2020.

But the energy bill would make profound changes in other areas as well. It would require car companies to increase the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks to 35 miles a gallon by 2020. It would also require a huge increase in the production of renewable fuels for cars and trucks and require the federal government to set tougher efficiency standards for electric appliances. The measure would also give the government more power to prosecute “price gouging” by oil companies.

This is incredibly shortsighted. It increases dependence on foreign oil, increases demand, and contributes to the myth that our current energy supplies are limitless. And then people wonder why it costs $70 to fill up their SUVs, and why they can’t even sell those SUVs.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Politics

I’ve been calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for five or six years now. OK, so I’m not a Democratic Party bigwig, and they don’t have to listen to me. But Ramsey Clark was Attorney General under LBJ, and he’s been sounding the call at least as long as I have.

Why should these men be impeached?
A very abbreviated list:

  • A long litany of unconstitutional acts that have made us a “rogue state”: illegal wars, torture of prisoners, attacks on civil liberties, etc.
  • Massive corruption and favoritism, not to mention attacks on perceived “enemies” (shades of Richard Nixon)
  • Attacking the patriotism of those who disagree with them
  • Holding themselves, their private contractors,a nd their offshore prisons above the law
  • Interfering with elections
  • Firing US Attorneys who chose not to divert resources into their pet (and baseless) fight on non-existent voter fraud among Democrats and minorities
  • Either gross incompetence, gross malfeasance, or both in the response to Katrina

    • Again, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The current gang of ruffians gets my vote for the worst administration in U.S. history. Even Warren Harding did a better job.

    So therefore I take great pleasure in reading in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer that Congressman Dennis Kucinich, perhaps Congress’ most honorable member, has finally introduced an impeachment resolution–35 counts of it! A reader comment notes it took 3 hours to read the whole thing.

    Of course, the Judiciary Committee has done nothing with his resolution last year to impeach Cheney, and will likely do nothing with this one unless Bush is foolish enough to actually try to start a war with Iran. I still don’t understand why the Dems have had no guts on this, even after they won a majority in Congress in 2006. What have they been waiting for?

    I am not going to defend in any way Bill Clinton’s lying under oath about his inability to keep his pants zipped
    –but if that was grounds for impeachment, the far larger crimes of Bush and Cheney should have been on the table a long time ago.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

    Water is complicated. I recently wrote an article in my Monthly Frugal Fun Tips about why most people drinking bottled water should be switching away.

    Of course, there are situations when you need bottled water–such as if your water happens to be toxic.

    I found this AlterNet interview with Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte on the water controversy to be thorough (considering its relative brevity), readable, and understanding of the depths of complexity.

    Here’s a brief excerpt, a “taste,” if you’ll pardon the pun.

    I just did a story for the New York Times Magazine about Orange County’s toilet-to-tap program, where wastewater is being reclaimed for drinking.

    At first I wondered — if people know that they are going to be drinking this water again, it would be nice to think that people would take better care of what they put down the toilet, like would we switch to biodegradable cleaning products, would industry use nontoxic materials, would farmers cut their use of pesticides? Then I realized that is a false hope, because everyone is relying on the technology to clean it up, and it might even have the effect of letting polluters off the hook while we are spending $29 billion a year to run this very high-tech plant, and it gets everything out, so why should we bother. That’s the “faith in technology” problem.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s speeches yesterday demonstrate exactly what went right with this campaign.

    The longer the seemingly endless quest for the nomination went on, the happier I was with my decision in March to endorse Obama. While I don’t expect that an Obama candidacy will really change much, he just has so much class, I find it impossible not to like him.

    Remember eight years ago, when GWB ran as “a uniter, not a divider”–and then proceeded to run the most divisive and partisan presidency in my memory, and perhaps in the history of the country? I don’t think that would happen in an Obama presidency. At every crucial moment in the campaign, every time another candidate (like Hillary or McCain, and certainly like GWB) might have lashed out, he delivered a beautiful, genuinely unifying speech. He was graceful in apparent defeat, and remains graceful in apparent victory.

    As Alternet put it, “as is his style, Obama appealed to Democrat’s better angels to unify behind a campaign for real change.”

    Listen to Obama’s language last night, starting with his remarks about Hillary:

    Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn’t just about the party in charge of Washington, it’s about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.

    All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren’t the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn’t do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say – let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

    Clinton, on the other hand, gave out two conflicting messages. To the larger public, she’s still not letting go:

    In the coming days, I’ll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding the way.

    That same Alternet article raised a disturbing specter of Clinton the pit bull, clenching her teeth around Obama’s metaphorical pant leg and refusing to let go:

    Clinton left open the possibility that she would contest Obama’s delegate totals within the party’s governing bodies. Just this past weekend, a top campaign lawyer accused the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee of “hijacking” delegates after that body accepted a compromise on seating the Florida and Michigan delegations. It remains to be seen whether Clinton will appeal that decision to the party’s Credentials Committee.

    “Now the question is, where do we go from here, and given how far we’ve come and where we need to go as a party, it’s a question I don’t take lightly,” she said.

    Yet, to her private e-mail list of supporters, she sent a much more conciliatory message:

    I want to congratulate Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run. Senator Obama has inspired so many Americans to care about politics and empowered so many more to get involved, and our party and our democracy are stronger and more vibrant as a result.

    Whatever path I travel next, I promise I will keep faith with you and everyone I have met across this good and great country. There is no possible way to thank you enough for everything you have done throughout this primary season, and you will always be in my heart.

    Sincerely,
    Hillary Rodham Clinton

    Let’s hope this is the real Hillary, and not the pit bull. It is long past time to get on with the business of showing McCain for the shallow, hypocritical Bush Lite he has become.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary

    General Motors just announced that it’s considering discontinuing the Hummer line.

    Quite frankly–I’m delighted.

    Out of all the people who buy SUVs in general, I’m guessing somewhere between five and ten percent actually need one:

  • People who live (or have a second home) on bumpy dirt roads
    Border Patrol agents
    Extremely tall people who don’t fit easily into small cars

    • There might be a few other categories but I can’t think of them at the moment.

    Not one of these people actually needs a Hummer!

    Extreme even among SUVs, Hummers get terrible mileage, hog more than their share of natural resources, block other drivers’ view of the road, and are wildly overpriced in my opinion.

    The 2008 Hummer H3, maybe the most fuel-efficient in the brief history of this GMC division, gets 14-15 miles per gallon. Some of the older models get 9.

    I don’t think any responsible person could justify a Hummer.

    By the way, if you’d like to know how it happened that SUVs went from almost a non-category to such major market dominance, read It’s the Crude, Dude, by Linda McQuaig. It wasn’t an accident, but had a lot to do with U.S. government policies that allowed these monsters to bypass fleet-wide passenger car fuel efficiency regulations.

    Also, for a nice piece contrasting the Hummer with, of all things, Prius, here’s a cool article in Slate.

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    By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Other, Shel's Personal Life

    Blog: Absurdist Packaging
    I’m writing this aboard a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to L.A. Literally moments before beginning boarding, they announced that the supposedly included meal wasn’t free in the coach section. Hmmm–why didn’t they tell me this three days ago when I requested a vegetarian meal? Or even when I’d arrived at the gate with plenty of time to go find a restaurant.

    I’m generally not a lover of airplane food, and I certainly wouldn’t pay for it. So I rushed out to the concourse and grabbed a bag of overpriced trail mix.

    I’m one of those people who actually reads packaging. It’s an old habit; according to my mother, I taught myself to read before I turned four, using cereal boxes and mayonnaise jars. And since I’m a marketing copywriter, it’s actually a work-related distraction.

    And I’ve long been amused by some of the idiocy that’s written on America’s packages. This little bag of trail mix is a prime example:
    The second ingredient is peanuts and the fourth is cashews (or so they claim–I haven’t found a cashew yet. But just below the ingredients list are three absurd statements (capitalization and spelling are exact transcriptions of the original):

    1. “This product ingredients are from: USA, India and/or Africia and/or Vietnam and China.” Why don’t they just come out and say “we don’t’ know where this stuff is from, and we don’t care.” And where the heck is a country called Africia? Well, at least they didn’t put an apostrophe where none belongs. Instead they simply left it out, along with the s that should follow at the end of “product.”
    2. “ALLERGEN INFORMATION: It contains undeclared tree nut traces.” What on earth is an undeclared treenut? One you smuggle through customs? I mean, it says right on the label that there are cashews, even though none exist. Seems to be this is a case of declared untree nuts, or falsely declared tree nuts, or something like that.
    3. “PRODUCT PRODUCED IN A FACILITY THAT PRODUCES PEANUT PRODUCTS. MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS AND NUTS.” Well, hello there. Peanuts are the second ingredient, remember? And I can see them through the window in the front of the bag. Tree nuts would be nice. I love cashews. I don’t much like *raw* peanuts, however, which is what’s mostly in the bag. Oh well, at least they did roast the soybeans, thank goodness. Soy, however, is not mentioned in the allergen section.

    Am I snarkier than usual today? Airplanes will do that to me. Especially when this whole situation came about because they lied when they told me I got a meal.

    (Postscript: my little bag of trail mix was so unsatisfying that I ended up breaking down and buying an airline meal. My choice was a hummous platter with decent hoummous, pita brushed with balsamic vinegar, and a whole bunch of raw veggies, most of them of reasonable quality. So I have to eat a least some of my words about airline meals.)

    (I wrote this a few days ago on my way to Los Angeles–and then forgot to post it. I’m still there.)

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    By Posted on Posted in Peace and War

    Journalist/activist Jim Hightower (once upon a time, the Texas Commissioner of Agriculture) estimates that in the Iraq war, in addition to the more than 4037 US troops and 1200 American private-firm employees (Blackwater, Halliburton, etc.) killed, a shocking 1,033,239 Iraqi war deaths have occurred since 2003. One in every five Iraqis had lost at least one householder to the war.

    Why aren’t we reading this in the mainstream media? This is Darfur-scale genocide! Bush has trashed Iraq to the point where any Iraqis are actually longing for the days of Saddam the thug. We are killing their country along with our own economy.

    Congress needs to keep refusing to fund this barbaric and unprovoked attack–and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gates, Rice et al ought to face impeachment at home and war crimes charges in an international court, much as happened with Slobodan Milosevic. Enough is enough!

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, Publishing, Shel's Personal Life

    In a few minutes, I’m heading into downtown L.A. for my 12th Book Expo America.

    I’m remembering the first time I did the show in L.A. It was only my second BEA, and I struck up a conversation in a booth that led ultimately to the contract for my fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. Other years, I exhibited Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First at a co-lp booth, nd that led to rights sales for Indian and Mexican editions, both of which have been published. I’ve made connections with editors, agents, vendors, and clients, and I find the show can energize me for weeks (even while overwhelming me with the followup) on top of my usual workload.

    This week, already, just from the pre-show conferences, I have a possible subrights deal for the newer, more specialized Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers. Not to mention a few new client leads, some good PR contacts, and some great tips that will make me a more effective author and publisher. In other words, the show dovetails nicely with my attitude that the world is a place of abundance, and good things are there for you if you want to tap into them. Every single BEA has brought good things to me, from friendships and hugs to powerful deals.

    And then there’s the social part. Every year, I see friends and have a lot of fun. Last night, at the Ben Franklin Award dinners, I was able to introduce several sets of people who should know each other. Some of those connections will lead to business for the people I introduced. I get a lot of satisfaction if I bring that kind of relationship into being.

    It was also a privilege to be at the Franklins for the photo-tribute to the amazing Jan Nathan, the group’s long-time executive director who passed away last summer. Jan was among the warmest and most helpful people in the very warm and helpful world of independnet publishing, andshe had a great sense of huor and a smile that could light up a room.

    You can read numerous articles I’ve written about most of these BEAs; the majority of articles on that page come out of these events.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Who will be Obama’s Veep? The ideal candidate would be nationally known, white, female, from the South or West, progressive without alienating, and lacking the very heavy negative baggage of Hillary Clinton. Someone who’s been against the war from the beginning and is good on environment and economy–and who runs clean, unifying campaigns. I can’t actually think of anyone like that. Bill Richardson comes close, and is Latino to boot. So does Edwards, although he hasn’t fared so well in the past. But both of them have Y chromosomes. Where is the late Ann Richards when you need her? She’d have been perfect: sassy, clever, a friend to everyone, and the Governor of Texas before George W.

    There’s the brilliant but relatively unknown Native American activist Winona LaDuke–but she’s also from the northern Midwest, also not white as most Americans define it, and about Obama’s age. Plus she doesn’t have enough of a following and the Dems would crucify Obama for choosing Nader’s former running mate.

    Some names being tossed around make me decidedly uncomfortable, like Virginia Senator Jim Webb–and Hillary, whose sleazy, dirty, innuendo-filled, divisive campaign has appalled me.

    Where are the great stateswomen of our time? In the 70s, there were plenty of them.

    And if you were Obama, who would you choose, and why?

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    In Huffington Post, Robert Creamer claims the long, grueling primary will make a very strong Obama for November: battle-tested, Swift-boater attacks already launched and deflected, campaign organization in every state and their organizers understanding what it takes, and so forth.

    He concludes,

    In the end, the long primary season has set the stage for what could be a transformational election that sweeps Obama into the presidency, and substantially bolsters Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

    Well, I hope he’s right. But meanwhile, the once-honorable McCain is getting a free ride. Took him bloody long enough to ditch Hagee, I must say. What a shame to see him betray everything he once stood for. I hope Obama busts him by 10 points or better, and carries big coattails for Congress.

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