Principled Profit: The Good Business Blog

Yikes! Drug Co. Wrote Its Own “Independent Doctor Reports”

2008-04-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

If you see my pulse racing and my heart pounding, it’s not because I ran up a mountain.. It’s not because I took medication and this was a side effect.

It’s because the New York Times reports that drug companies routinely write their own research studies on new drugs, and then find prestigious doctors to sign them

“It almost calls into question all legitimate research that’s been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry with the academic physician,” said Dr. Ross, whose article, written with colleagues, was published Wednesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. and posted Tuesday on the journal’s Web site.

Oh yes, and the red flag was a study on Merck’s now-discredited drug Vioxx.

Gasp. Cough. Splutter.

Now–some disclosure before anyone accuses me of being a hypocrite: I don’t object to ghostwriting in principle. As a commercial writer-for-hire, I have seen my stuff go out under other people’s names many times, even on the cover of a book. Ironically enough, one of those was a bylined article in the New York Times that cribbed heavily from a press release I had written several years earlier for a client. I don’t see that as much different from having an accountant prepare my tax return.

But I see a fundamental difference between helping a client be a more effective marketer by writing stuff for the client to use as if it were his or her own, and putting together the research material that the government and the public use to determine if a new drug is safe. And the latter strikes me, at least, as definitely over the line.

I poked around and located the original JAMA article, which you can click to read.

Tibet: Is the Media Showing the Truth?

2008-04-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

Here’s a website that shows falsely captioned photos as well as photos cropped in such a way as to completely change their meaning. The topic is the violence in Tibet–but according to this site, many of the pictures are actually from India or Nepal, or show things other than the Chinese anti-Tibet violence that they purport to.

Let me state my biases upfront:

• I am a supporter of the Free Tibet movement, and have been so since 1978 when I learned about Chinese repression there
• I have been increasingly aware of what appears to be a disinformation campaign by the Chinese government to discredit the Free Tibet movement–and I recognize the possibility that this website could be part of that disinformation campaign
• I attended a speech by the Dalai Lama in 1982, and in 1993 my wife and I hosted a young Tibetan woman for over a year, as part of the Tibetan Refugee Resettlement Project

Still, even as a supporter of Tibetan freedom, I am appalled to see this apparent media distortion, even though it helps “my side.”

I’m no photo expert, and it’s possible that this site is offering Photoshopped doctoring of its own, or is mislabeling the pictures. But my gut tells me the captions on this website are accurate, and that the mainstream media in the US, Germany, France, Asia, and UK have run photos that claim to show one thing and actually show something completely different. It’s not the first time this has happened; one prominent example in the relatively recent past is the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad–made to look like a huge an enthusiastic, locally originated event that was actually staged by US Marines in front of a small crowd that may have been comprised primarily of supporters of the discredited Ahmed Chalabi.

Which does make me wonder whether the CIA or similar organizations have their fingers in this apparent distortion of the Tibet reportage, and wonder who has been feeding the media these islabeled or cropped-to-distortion images.

Scandal Hits Travel Guidebook Industry

2008-04-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

Those who travel frequently know that different guidebook brands cater to different tastes. If you want American-style hotels and restaurants and don’t mind paying well for them, pick up Fodor. If you don’t mind sweeping off the bugs before you roll out your sleeping bag on a hard youth hostel bench, grab Let’s Go. If you’re on a low but not rock-bottom budget and you want some degree of comfort but nothing fancy, that’s Frommer.

And then there are three major guidebook series for adventure travelers, focusing the experience on offbeat experiences most tourists will never see: Moon, Rough Guides, and Lonely Planet.

Now comes a report of a major scandal at Lonely Planet: Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reports that one of its most published writers, Thomas Kohnstamm, not only violated the company’s firm (and understandable) policy of not accepting comps (freebies from hospitality and tourism organizations seeking good coverage)–but worse, he did his Colombia guidebook from the comfort of San Francisco:

“They didn’t pay me enough to go Colombia,” he said.

“I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate.

This same writer is quoted in a New York Times article on the lives of guidebook writers that one of his highlights last year was going “out partying in Bogotá and met a lot of cool people. It can be kind of addictive.”

Which Thomas Kohnstamm should we believe?

UPDATE
The International Herald Tribune issued a strong denial by Lonely Planet, which turns out to be majority-owned by the BBC.

And it turns out Kohnstamm was not assigned to the part of the Colombia guidebook that requires in-person visits. Lonely Plant Publisher Piers Picard…

called that claim “disingenuous” because he was hired to write about the country’s history, not to travel there to review accommodation and restaurants. That work was done by two other authors.

As a journalist, I can tell you that it is thoroughly possible to do a very good story of that sort without setting foot in a place. Phone or e-mail interviews and some research with validated sources can be plenty.

So why did Kohnstamm claim in the NY Times article that he was partying in Colombia’s capital? What are his real reasons for dragging his own name through the mud in order to apparently discredit Lonely Planet?

McCain Lies, Misses Votes; Cheney, Rice Tied to Torture Policy

2008-04-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

If McCain is an example of “straight talk,” I shudder to think of what the crooked guys look like.

Here’s another lie and amplification of what it means. According to Cliff Schecter on AlterNet, McCain’s official calendar had him missing a key vote on the neocon agenda because he was in California–BUT he managed to show up for 15 other votes of lesser importance that day.

Schecter writes,

According to the Washington Post database tracking Senate “vote missers,” McCain had missed a whopping 261 of 468 votes, or almost 56 percent, by March 2008. McCain is understandably busy running for president — and all the candidates running for that highest of offices in 2008 have shown a poor record in showing up for votes. But number of votes missed is one thing; which votes you miss is another. McCain the maverick has missed votes in a way that betrays a calculated strategy: namely, to avoid going on the record when doing so would be politically risky.

Not exactly a “profile in courage”–or integrity.

Meanwhile, in the we-knew-that-already department, for the first time, the mainstream media has clearly delivered the link between torture policies and the highest levels of government. Here’s the AP story directly linking Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice to the torture policies, expressed in a way that made even John Ashcroft (who was present, as was Colin Powell) uncomfortable.

And just what does it take to get our spineless Congressional leadership to get off the dime and start impeachment procedings?

OK, Who’s Got the Deceptive Ad Here?

2008-04-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

Patrick Byers over at the Responsible Marketing blog has a post today comparing TV ads from the Indoor Tanning Association and the American Association of Dermatology. You can view the ads and vote for which you find more believable.

Here’s what I wrote in his comment field:

What I find really disingenuous about the trade assn. ad is they say sunlight has these benefits (which it does), but then they say, go use a tanning bad–where’s the Vitamin D in that?

And the idea of a conspiracy with sunscreen manufacturers is just ludicrous.

My sister married a dermatologist, and her whole family is always well-armored when they go out. Me, I try to get out in the sun, but I live in New England. If I’m in a tropical clime or going to be out for many hours, I generally wear at least a hat and maybe a little sunscreen.

Tanning beds? I always assumed they’d have bad health consequences, and have never tried one–nor will I.

What do you think?

Martin Luther King’s Deeper Legacy

2008-04-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Great tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. in an Op-Ed by Taylor Branch in today’s New York Times. The article goes waaaaay beyond the standard establishment tributes, and even the progressive pieces that recognize the unity of his call to end racial injustice and his call to end the Vietnam war.

I particularly love these two paragraphs–not in any way to trivialize the struggle of blacks, but to clearly show how many other social movements (including the environmental movement, which Branch doesn’t mention) drew strength, inspiration, and tactics from King and the Civil Rights movement generally:

Dr. King said the movement would liberate not only segregated black people but also the white South. Surely this is true. You never heard of the Sun Belt when the South was segregated. The movement spread prosperity in a region previously unfit even for professional sports teams. My mayor in Atlanta during the civil rights era, Ivan Allen Jr., said that as soon as the civil rights bill was signed in 1964, we built a baseball stadium on land we didn’t own, with money we didn’t have, for a team we hadn’t found, and quickly lured the Milwaukee Braves. Miami organized a football team called the Dolphins.

The movement also de-stigmatized white Southern politics, creating two-party competition. It opened doors for the disabled, and began to lift fear from homosexuals before the modern notion of “gay” was in use. Not for 2,000 years of rabbinic Judaism had there been much thought of female rabbis, but the first ordination took place soon after the movement shed its fresh light on the meaning of equal souls. Now we think nothing of female rabbis and cantors and, yes, female Episcopal priests and bishops, with their colleagues of every background. Parents now take for granted opportunities their children inherit from the Montgomery bus boycott.

King was still alive when I started, before I even reached my teens, exploring nonviolent social change. Over and over again, I found evidence that nonviolent mass movements are far more likely than armed struggle to create lasting, powerful social progress, and that the revolutions achieved nonviolently are much harder to corrupt (not impossible, as we saw under Indira Gandhi)–and yes, organized mass nonviolence can even work against brutal dictatorships. Some of the most effective resistance to the Nazis was through nonviolence, including (but far from limited to) the famous heroic defiance of the King of Denmark after he surrendered his country, riding his horse through the streets of Copenhagen with a yellow star pinned to his clothing in solidarity with the Jews–and inspiring his Danes to save thousands of Jewish lives with a clandestine boatlift to neutral Sweden. And of course there was the massive nonviolent revolt led my M.K. Gandhi against the brutal British colonial regime in India.

In our own time, we’ve seen nonviolence achieve miracles, not only in the US Civil Rights struggle, but also, to name a few examples,

• Solidarity driving the Communists from power in Poland
• Safe energy activists at Seabrook (I was there!) and around the country making it politically impossible to build more nuclear power plants for the next three decades (we might have to fight that one again, I’m afraid)
• The end of apartheid in South Africa, in a struggle that was largely nonviolent (contrast that with Zimbabwe, where the “freedom fighter” Robert Mugabe turned out to be every bit as much a dictatorial thug as Ian Smith had been)

I totally agree with Branch that many of the social movements of the last four years would have been much harder to envision and carry out had it not been for the Civil Rights movement. That movement inspired us not to take injustice lying down, and showed us tools to fight for justice that maintained our dignity, that needed no weapons or weapons training, and that created long-lasting change. Labor, environmentalists, feminists, and poor people’s movements are just some of the many who have learned from Dr. King and his movement.

For more on effective nonviolent organizing, I strongly recommend the works of Gene Sharp. I read the three-volume The Politics of Nonviolent Action more than 25 years ago, and it still left an impresion on me. Not an easy read, but incredibly wrthwhile.

And meanwhile, I’ll have to put Taylor Branch’s 3-part history of the Civil Rights movement, Parting the Waters/Pillar of Fire/At Canaan’s Edge, on my reading list.

Writing & Publishing Orgs Line Up to Condemn Amazon’s Bullying

2008-04-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of days, quite a number of “players” in the world of publishing have taken a stand against Amazon’s completely unreasonable demand that digital publishers use their digital printer.

Among those lining up: PMA (formerly known as Publishers Marketing Association, in the process of rebranding as Independent Book Publishers Association–the statement doesn’t seem to be on their website as yet), SPAN (Small Publishers of North America)–in a wonderful more-with-honey-than-with-vinegar letter by Scott Flora, and the Authors Guild, in a very strongly worded statement. I expect my own union, National Writers Union, to join the fray,but haven’t seen a statement yet.

PMA’s Terry Nathan said,

On behalf of all the small and independent publishers whose businesses are in jeopardy, we urge Amazon to reconsider its position. Over the years, Jeff Bezos and his company have given small and independent publishers a level playing field to compete with the largest of companies. Suddenly, this magnificent playing field has been converted into a ‘members only’ club, to the detriment of those very publishers who have contributed to Amazon’s success. We will continue to monitor developments in the weeks ahead.

The company with the most to lose in this brouhaha, Lightning Source, a/k/a LSI, also had a statement. Here’s a piece of it:

Lightning Source has been following the recent press coverage and discussions about Amazon.com
and BookSurge. We are aware of the concern this is causing the publishing community. The issue centers around Amazon.com tying the availability of your books and terms of sale at Amazon.com to the production of books at the Amazon.com subsidiary BookSurge, specifically requiring you to use BookSurge in order to sell on Amazon.

Like you, we are very concerned about any conduct that would serve to limit a publishers choice in supply chain partners and to negatively impact the cost of your products to consumers. We believe that choice and selection of best of class services are critical to the long term success of publishers and a vibrant book market.

Lightning Source continues to provide the highest quality digital on demand print and distribution services for every one of our customers. All your titles continue to be available to all of our channel partners, including Amazon.com, with immediate availability for shipment within 24 hours.

Oh, and here’s the letter I personally wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:

Dear Mr. Bezos:

As a publisher, an affiliate, an author, a client of Infinity, and a customer, and as someone who devotes an entire chapter in my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers to working with Amazon, I am deeply distressed by your decision to channel all digital-printed books through Booksurge. I believe this is both restraint of trade and an undue burden on your publisher vendors.

Please reconsider a move that will tarnish Amazon’s brand:
Severely impact your long-held brand promise of “Earth’s largest selection”
Create an unfriendly reputation among tens of thousands of authors who have chosen subsidy publishing
Diminish Amazon’s standing as the place of first resort for resources along the middle and end of the “long tail”
Encourage customers, affiliates, and vendors to defect

Unless I receive a response that you are changing your policy no later than April 15, I will be directing my assistant to remove all affiliate links to amazon.com from our nine websites, and replace them with links to BN.com and/or BookSense. As someone who writes about business ethics, I cannot in good conscience stand by idly while you do this.

I will also do my best to disseminate my appeal through the publishing community.

In sadness,
_________________________________________________
Shel Horowitz - 413-586-2388 shel@frugalfun.com
–>Join the Business Ethics Pledge - Ten Years to Change the World,
One Signature at a Time (please tell your friends)

Marketing consulting * copywriting * publishing assistance * speaking
_________________________________________________

Amazon’s response is being widely distributed under the names of several different staffers, and which in my mind is more than a little disingenuous (see the Author’s Guild statement, above, for more believable motivations). My copy was signed by Jennifer Bledsoe.

Let’s hope all these statements will help the “swing votes” among the subsidy houses (who are the first to lose their buy buttons if they don’t kowtow) enough spine to resist this.

Pentagon, Keep Your Dirty Hands Off My Blog! Bloggers, Unite!

2008-04-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

Demcoracy Now reports on a particularly nasty initiative to hack into bloggers. Here’s the full report:

Military Considers Recruiting & Hiring Bloggers

In media news, new questions are being raised over the relationship between the Pentagon and bloggers. Wired.com has uncovered a 2006 study written for the U.S. Special Operations Command that suggests the military should clandestinely recruit or hire prominent bloggers. The report stated “Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering.” The report also suggested the Pentagon hack blogs that promote messages that are antithetical to U.S. interests. The report went on to say: “Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. “

At first I thought it might be an April Fool’s joke, especially when a Google search for pentagon blogging hack didn’t turn up anything useful. But I traced back the quote to its authors, James Kinniburgh and Dorothy Denning, and from there easily located the source document. It’s right there, on page 35.

Is this what we’re paying our tax dollars to fund? For the government to go into our blogs and twist our words for their own purposes? Is this why the founders of our country incorporated the First Amendment? Does anyone else remember what George Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith did for a living in the totalitarian 1984? He rewrote published newspapers to parrot the government’s current line, working in the “Ministry of Truth”

Bloggers–do NOT stand for this! If I find they’ve been int my blog, I’ll be on the phone with the ACLU and the National Writers Union immediately.

Once again, this administration is using 1984 as a playbook. It’s time to say NO.

PS–to bloggers thinking about taking the Pentagon’s pay for placing soft stories, all I can say is…DONT. The blogosphere is all about credibility; this would kill yours faster than you can say “Armstrong Williams.”

Bloggers need to protest en masse, and make it clear that we will not stand for this.

Ethical Products “Recession-Proof”

2008-04-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

Ethical Corporation magazine, a UK offering that’s always interesting, has a wonderful cheery article on ethical corporations will fare better in a recession.

This echoes many of the sentiments I discuss in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First– –that when you establish customer loyalty based on ethics and sustainability, those customers will give you the benefit of the doubt.

For those who buy on energy efficiency, the higher prices will not be a deterrent compared to long-term savings. And those who seek out fairly traded goods,

Jim Hawker, spokesman for green insurance group IBuyEco, goes as far as to say: “Ethical brands are recession-proof – they are perceived as luxury consumer goods, targeted at a niche market that will be less affected by the credit constraints of a recession.”

In fact, the opportunity is growing, they say–and here’s a conclusion I personally haven’t seen articulated before (and fully support):

According to research by the Climate Group, consumers not only expect leading brands to have strategies in place to tackle climate change issues, but also expect these brands to help consumers develop their own strategies, via the choice of products and services made available to them.

For the companies responding to this demand, it is an exercise in brand building.

I believe this is very much true, and smart companies have been educating their consumers on social issues as they relate to product choices for decades. But I haven’t seen anyone talk about this from a brand-building point of view before, nor have I seen the argument that consumers increasingly rely on these companies to provide that education.

Ken McArthur’s Grand Viral Marketing Experiment

2008-04-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

For years, I’ve been a proponent of viral marketing; as one among may examples, it’s the main tool I’ve used to gain support for the Business Ethics Pledge.

One of the best viral marketers I know is Ken McArthur, known for his joint-venture Internet marketing conferences. I met Ken several years ago at one of Fred Gleeck’s book marketing conferences, and then again a few years later at Mark Victor Hansen’s book marketing conference. We’ve stayed in touch. And since meeting him, Ive noticed that he crops up absolutely everywhere.

Yet even though he’s obviously been gong to book marketing conferences for years, he didn’t have a book. Now, he’s finally about to release IMPACT: How to Get Noticed, Motivate Millions and Make a Difference in a Noisy World (yes, its an affiliate link). I’ve been one of his many informal advisors, and even commented to him a few months ago that I also have a book title that ends with “in a Noisy World” (Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, published in 2000 by Chelsea Green

Frugal marketing genius that he is, Ken wouldn’t be content with an ordinary book launch–so he created one of the most powerful viral marketing ideas I’ve ever seen. I wish I’d thought of it.

You know the concept of internships: students donate labor in exchange for training. Ken has taken this to an extreme: he recruited over 100 people to be his unpaid Internet marketing corps, in exchange for learning all his tricks via a series of conference calls. What a perfect example of the Abundance Principle at work! The six-week program started tonight.

I decided that one of my contributions to the effort would be to chronicle it here. So thus, my key takeaways from call #1:

• 100 people can have a huge impact in a number of ways, for example all contacting the same key influencer, or divvying up John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Book (fewer than 10 ideas per participant)
• Not only are affiliate commissions an effective motivator, but you can motivate your affiliates further by making the deal open-ended. When people sign up for Ken’s affiliate program, they will not only earn a couple of bucks on the book, but also on all sorts of backend products from now to eternity–products that will pay many times better than the book sale.
• Ken is providing tasks and thus not only training others but outsourcing the ground work. He asked participants to generate lists of key contacts, blogs, forums, and potential joint venture partners.

This is an easy one for me, as I know a lot of people in the independent publishing sector. Except that I can’t really separate influencers from JV partners. But because what he’s doing is newsworthy in the publishing world and in the Internet marketing world, I have a number of people I could approach to let them know about what’s going on, including John Kremer, Dan Poynter, Fern Reiss, Patricia Frey, and Joan Stewart–all very big names in the world he’s trying to reach.

Ken being Ken, he makes it quite worthwhile to visit his site, offering a truckload of quality resources just for dropping by.

Is this your chance to learn from a master launcher, without paying thousands of dollars for a product? I think it might just be.

Amazon: Action Steps to Protest

2008-03-31T02:35:00.000-07:00

Angela Adair-Hoy, co-owner of Booklocker, has posted a number of links on her Writers Weekly blog, including an online petition as well as contacts for Amazon execs.. If you want to register your protest about the demand to only print at BookSurge, or if you want to better understand the fallacies of such a move (from her perspective as publisher of some 1500 books, go and visit.

One of the things you’ll see: a public statement by PublishAmerica, which I excerpt here:

Quite some time ago, sir, long before you were born, American soldiers fought the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. When the 101st Airborne Division found itself surrounded by the enemy, the Germans presented U.S. general McAuliffe with a piece of paper that demanded his surrender.

McAuliffe looked at it, borrowed a soldier’s pen, wrote in caps, “NUTS!”, then proceeded to win the battle.

There’s our answer, sir. Couldn’t have said it any better.

Mind you, this is not an endorsement of PA. I am generally not a fan of PublishAmerica and have warned authors away from their standard contract. But on this, they are right on, and I salute them for being early and public and firm in their opposition.

My friend Marion Gropen posted to a discussion list that Amazon’s tactics remind her of Standard OIl; it’s a good analogy. Standard Oil’s monopolistic and bullying practices actually caused a years-long anti-trust action by the federal government.

Amazon’s Stupid Anti-Competitive Move

2008-03-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

Amazon wants to force publishers to use its wholly-owned printer, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reports. If it thinks this is a good idea, amazon.com needs its collective head examined. I think it’s one of the dumbest moves I’ve heard of in a loooong time.

Amazon gets a lot of its books through a company called LightningSource, Inc., or LSI–which is owned by Ingram, the 800-pound gorilla in the U.S. book wholesaling world. LSI prints digitally, which enables production of books as they’re ordered, in runs as small as a single book.

Thousands of publishers, from one-title solopreneurs up to the biggest names in the industry, use LSI for some or all of their printing–in part because it allows flexible inventory management, and in part because the connection with Ingram means any bookstore is automatically set up to special-order those titles.

LSI has many competitors, though it’s the only one to offer the Ingram connection. Amazon owns a competitor to LSI, called Booksurge/Createspace. And it’s going to force all publishers listing digitally printed books on its site to use this company.

The Journal reporter sees this move as rosy for Amazon:

The move will likely generate significant profit for Amazon, which has evolved into a fully vertical book publishing and retail operation.

Well, ummm, I don’t think so. This is what I see happening instead:

• Publishers, not a bunch that can be bullied easily (what’s that old saying about never getting into an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel?), will haul Amazon into court for restraint of trade
• Publishers who control mailing lists totaling hundreds of thousands of names will tell their public about Amazon’s bullying, and encourage them to buy elsewhere (there’s already quite a bit of rumbling from publishers who say they themselves will shop elsewhere)–they may even get customers to write massive numbers of letters to Amazon saying if you want to keep my business, reverse this policy
• Subsidy publishers, which print perhaps 50,000 titles per year by mostly unknown authors, have promised those authors to get them listed both with Ingram and with Amazon, and are in a position to orchestrate a massive rebellion
• Publishers will withdraw book titles from Amazon, severely damaging its brand identity as “Earth’s largest selection”–on which they built their business
• If Ingram sees Amazon as

an enemy, and Ingram is a very powerful company, it will not be pretty

Of course, I may be wrong. Publishers may choose not to fight Amazon and to print non-exclusively with both LSI for Ingram and Booksurge for Amazon. Or they may simple knuckle under as if they’re John Kerry or Michael Dukakis attacked by Swift Boaters. But I’m betting this comes back to bite Amazon, hard.

Anti-competitive measures have a way of backfiring. There’s already been some backlash against certain independent bookstores that are demanding authors who do events with them don’t include links to Amazon. Amazon joining the fray will be shooting itself in the foot. The Abundance mentality, which I write about regularly, says it’s smarter to network with your competitors and to build alliances with them than to try to cut their throats, and end up cutting your own.

HuffPo: Time to Re-regulate Business

2008-03-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

Writing in Huffington Post, Hale “Bonddad” Stewart makes a compelling case that business practices need immediate attention––NOW.

From contaminated meat to toxic toys, Stewart attacks multiple industries.

And the subprime mortgage crisis, he says, could have been avoided easily if regulators had bothered to pay attention to numerous warnings over many years:

Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.

But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.

In 2001, a senior Treasury official, Sheila C. Bair, tried to persuade subprime lenders to adopt a code of “best practices” and to let outside monitors verify their compliance. None of the lenders would agree to the monitors, and many rejected the code itself. Even those who did adopt those practices, Ms. Bair recalled recently, soon let them slip.

And leaders of a housing advocacy group in California, meeting with Mr. Greenspan in 2004, warned that deception was increasing and unscrupulous practices were spreading.

Let’s remember the business climate in 2001. A long period of economic growth had crested, business scandals were being exposed everywhere, the economy was heading downward–and plummeted later that year, in the aftermath of 9/11.

If ever there was a time when it made sense to look at risky lending practices and a baseless assumption of permanent housing price spirals, that would have been the time.

So why did Greenspan ignore all the warnings?

–> In my writing, and particularly my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I repeatedly demonstrate that business ethics is more profitable. Don’t know why this lesson is so hard for some of the “mainstream” players to learn. Wouldn’t it be nice if they all had a conversion and started signing (and taking seriously) the Business Ethics Pledge, in droves?

Brief, Wonderful Article on Using Emotion in Copywrting

2008-03-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

Specifically, the emotion of empathy.

I’ve been urging my clients for years to do what they can to be seen as the caring humans they are, and not some faceless corporate monstrosity/bureaucracy.

Chris Haddad gives some very powerful examples, including the wonderful idea of the “maybe bullet”:

What’s a “maybe bullet?”

A “Maybe” bullet is a short statement that “paces” the feelings and emotions that your customer are going through and shows them that you UNDERSTAND them.

He also gives two specific examples of empathic copy. Go read it.

In my own copywriting, I often use “perhaps” rather than “maybe.” It does the same thing but sometimes seems more personal–and sometimes I alternate.

Obama, Wright, and The Hypocrisy Parade

2008-03-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have been dumping on Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, for his remarks about 9-11, his endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, and various other things.

Obama has consistently publicly and thoroughly distanced himself from Wright’s positions–a clear repudiation even of a close personal friend. Obama also immediately got rid of the key staffer who called Hillary Clinton a “monster.”

Meanwhile, it looks like a lot of those shaking their fists in the air about this have some reluctance to criticize others who surround themselves with extremists and questionable characters–or, in some cases, are guilty of this behavior themselves.

You want examples?

• First of all, Fox (big surprise) took Wright’s remarks wildly out of context, according to Alternet. Wright was quoting someone else, Edward Peck–the white former Ambassador to Iraq (under Jimmy Carter) who might be expected to actually know about such things. And Fox’s camp-followers and parrots in the mainstream media (I don’t consider Fox to be mainstream in spite of its large viewership–it’s politics are extremist, its columnists act as attack dogs who use hate and intimidation, and its journalistic style seeks not the truth but the discrediting of those who disagree) didn’t question this, and repeated the accusation.
• Clinton herself seemed remarkably unwilling to part company with Geraldine Ferraro, despite Ferraro’s crude racist remarks about Obama.
• The ever-loathsome Sean Hannity, says Huffington Post, has ties to a neo-Nazi, Hal Turner.
• And last but certainly not least, John McCain actively went after his endorsement by pastor John Hagee, an open homophobe and right-wing demagogue who is at least as extremist as Wright, and to my mind quite a bit farther out–and why isn’t the mainstream media, or Fox, jumping on McCain for this?

Transparency: David Patterson’s Smart Move

2008-03-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

David Patterson, New York’s new governor will never need to stand, ashen-faced, and admit that he cheated on his wife–as his predecessor, Elliot Spitzer did.

Why? Because, knowing that skeleton was in his closet, Patterson pre-empted it with an act of transparency. He openly admitted, at a time, place, and manner of his own choosing–actually on the very day he was sworn in as governor–hat he and his wife had both had affairs during a difficult time in their relationship. He maintained control of the discourse, and the admission can never be used as a weapon to destroy him, as it would very much do if he’d been suddenly, unexpectedly, “outed.” As Spitzer found out very quickly.

For all we know, the Pattersons may have even had an agreement that theirs was an open relationship–in which case, the word “cheating” wouldn’t even apply. It’s not cheating if you have permission from the cheatee.

Transparency is a good strategy whenever there’s an ethics issue. It means you can’t be blackmailed. It means you minimize the hurt to other people. And you stay in control of the situation.

Almost four years ago, I wrote about a utility company that handled a gas explosion with rare good sense. Like Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol poisoning scare years earlier, this company was both transparent and extremely customer-centric, and thus enhanced rather than destroyed its reputation.

Gay and lesbian activists have understood this for almost 40 years, since the 1969 Stonewall riots. The closest thing to a rational reason for keeping gays out of sensitive jobs (say, those that expose the employee to highly sensitive information) is the fear of blackmail. But when the gay employee is already out of the closet, that weapon fizzles away.

I’d say that transparency, combined with Nelson Mandela-style reconciliation, creates powerful momentum in favor of the person making the confession, whether in business or politics. Plus, as the Catholics with their confession ritual have understood for centuries, there’s tremendous personal release in not bottling up secrets.

Black-Hat Sploggers Leave a Bad Taste

2008-03-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

The other day, I got invited to help promote an Internet marketing report. Sicne I never endorse anyting I haven’t seen, I asked for a copy–and boy, was I appalled.

The model these folks were pushing was to steal content, intersperse enough meaningless blather so Google doesn’t think it’s a duplicate page, and build traffic/ad revenues.

Eeeeeeew!

I let it simmer for a couple of days, until I could response with enough politeness to get read, and until I could find a way to talk to the part of these people that wants to be better (with a tip of the hat to my friend Bob Burg, who taught me how to do that), and then responded this morning, thusly:

“Let me know what you think, good or bad. I appreciate your opinion.”

OK, you asked. I read it over the weekend.

I’m sure you have good intentions, but frankly, I find your business model unethical. It is one very small step above splogging; the only difference is you’re adding meaningless content around someone else’s words instead of just presenting someone else’s hard work.

It devalues the Internet as a useful information medium; I’d hate to see search results be as useless as e-mail, but if people follow your model, they contribute to poor search results.

And then there’s the matter of making a buck on other people’s hard-earned intellectual property without compensating them in any way, or even asking permission, and doing so in a way that most definitely violates the Fair Use provisions of the copyright law.

I think with the intelligence and understanding of the Internet that underlies your black hat approach, you could come up with a business model that would be just as profitable and a whole lot more palatable. Come talk to me when you’ve done so.

Some Debates Have Only One Side: Martin Samuels in the London Times

2008-03-17T09:04:00.001-07:00

I love this article! Starting with the debate on whether, after five years, the Iraq debacle can be called a success or failure he goes on to explore other arguments that really only have one side, such as did Gandhi have his assassination coming to him? Was Lee Harvey Oswald merely keeping the powerful on their toes when he shot JFK?

And then he comes back to Iraq:

Ah, yes, but things are so much better for women in Iraq now. Try walking down the main drag in Basra in a short skirt and lippy, sunshine, then report back on that one.

If we remove this desire to acknowledge both sides of a moot argument, other issues become clearer, too. Barack Obama voted against the invasion of Iraq. Hillary Clinton did not. On the most important judgment call of the early 21st century, he was right and she was wrong. Any small changes in her stance have come now the calamity has unfolded, meaning that her shifting positions could be exploited by the Republicans as evidence of opportunism, a problem Obama would not have. See how it all falls into place?

You want a debate, though, we’ll have a debate. Is the region safer? No. Is the world safer? No. Is the West safer? No. Are the Iraqi people safer? No. Have we made a bad situation worse? Yes. Has our international standing improved? No. Did we find any weapons? No. Did we find Osama bin Laden? No. Will it be over soon? No. Is it a recruitment poster for al-Qaeda? Yes. Did we at least get some cheap petrol out of it? No. Well, I think that about wraps it up for this one, folks. Read my lips. Worst. Decision. Ever. Now here’s Jim with the travel.

Whew! The whole article is that sharp. Highly recommended.

Victory for the People–And Common Sense

2008-03-17T03:44:00.000-07:00

We celebrate a huge victory against special interests this week in my town of Hadley, Massachusetts: a retail development that was waaaay out of scale for the town, and would be illegal under current zoning, has been withdrawn.

Let me give some background. I’ve had some involvement with land and resource use/planning issues all the way back to 1972, when I was tangentially involved in opposing a nuclear power plant proposed two miles from New York City (where I was living at the time). Two years later, when I researched the safety of nuclear power for a school project, I realized just how dumb an idea that had been. Later, that was the subject of my first book.

Over time, I’ve been involved in a number of efforts around sensible development, including founding and serving as publicity chair for Save the Mountain, a group that successfully blocked a very inappropriate mountaintop development (bringing it from 40 houses going up the ridgeline to two at the bottom, and getting the remaining land protected forever).

This project, a Super Wal-Mart, would have added 6000 cars an hour, many of them crossing a very popular bike path with no traffic control. One of the streets is two lanes. The other becomes two lanes about a mile in either direction. And that corner is already facing two other large retail projects plus a large housing development. This in a rural town with a population under 5000 that already has a non-super Wal-Mart just a few hundred yards from the proposed new one–and when that was built in 1998 the company promised it would not be back for a larger one.

Wal-Mart pulled out because “Hadley [our town] had become too difficult” a place to build.

I translate that as the citizen opposition group, Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development (in which I’m a proud participant), made it clear that this project would be opposed at every turn.

This development is dead, but the actual applicant was not Wal-Mart but Pyramid, a mall developer. It is unclear whether the developer can exercise the remaining four years of its grandfathering under the previous zoning with a different tenant.

I’m hoping that if Pyramid does come back with a different plan, that it is, in fact, a sensible development, in keeping with the nature of the town.

House Passes Ethics Office Legislation

2008-03-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

Well, what’ya know–Nancy Pelosi actually showed some leadership and got the House to pass a somewhat weak measure establishing a special office of ethics, as many states have had for years. And against strenuous opposition (WHO are these people?) from both parties. The New York Times headline says it all:

Kicking and Screaming Toward Reform

If you want to thank her, visit MassPIRG’s page set up for the purpose, here. If you have autofill in your browser, it takes under 30 seconds.

“Shut Up and Sing”: The Dixie Chicks and Freedom of Speech

2008-03-15T18:44:00.000-07:00

By Shel Horowitz

I’ve been wanting to see the Dixie Chicks movie “Shut Up and Sing” since I saw a trailer for it about a year ago. Last night, we watched it on video.

It tells a gripping story about free speech and repression that started on the eve of U.S. invasion of Iraq. Lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” And all of a sudden, the biggest selling women’s band in the country couldn’t get radio airplay, was picketed, watched right-wingers engage in mass collection and destruction of their CDs, and lost a big chunk of their conservative country music audience.

Interestingly, their sold-out 2003 concert tour continued to draw wild throngs of enthusiastic fans–but their next tour didn’t do so well. And their next album–an album that contained sharp, penatring original songwriting about the whole experience, a first for this former cover band–was deliberately (and very succesfully) launched through other channels than country radio.

It is a sad, sad day when the U.S., the country that not only pioneered free speech but enshrined it as a founding principle, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, can be so vicious to its dissenters. These women received death threats for speaking out!

I want to know how is that when Bill O’Reilly said on national TV that they “deserve to be slapped around,” there was no boycott of his books, no mainstream call to get an advocate of violence against women thrown off the air. How come he wasn’t Imused while the Dixie Chicks got Dixie Chicked?

Let’s go back to the First Amendment for a moment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It seems to be that in the “with us or against us” years of the GWB administration, a lot of people seem all-too-willing to forget this powerful language that has kept us reasonably safe from internal tyranny for years. Yes, I know there are some very unpleasant exceptions, including not only the McCarthy era of the 40s and 50s but also the Palmer Raids following World War I. And Jefferson, a slaveholder himself, “forgot” to block discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity, which was a shame. It would have been helpful to have an early, consistent, and strong legal argument against slavery.

We got that protection decades later, in the Fourteenth Amendment–and even that wasn’t enough to stop the extreme segregation that followed for a hundred years after the Civil War…the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II–but not German- or Italian-Americans…and the roundups of Arabs and Muslims without due process that took place during the current administration.

Now, I happen to be a First Amendment absolutist. In fact, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson principal authors of the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution) were absolutist as well–saying in the original draft and in later statements that the First Amendment means “there shall be no law abridging”…from Congress or anyone else (i.e., the states, the executive branch). I actually did some research on this back in 1972, for a high school paper, although I’m not turning up the citation in Google. But it has stuck with me all those years.

In other words, I think Bill O’Reilly and Don Imus have the right to spew their filth–and their employers have the right to terminate their employment. I think the pro-war faction has every right to stop patronizing the Dixie Chicks, and to picket, and to make noses impugning their patriotism, event hough I happen to think the DCs are the patriotic ones here. But I have issues when that broadens to actual suppression of dissent.

The DCs were suppressed. Word came from on high from the headquarters of at least two radio networks: Don’t play their music, or else. It was not left to the individual DJs, or even the individual stations. In the movie, we see Senators John McCain (in the days when he hadn’t yet thrown away his integrity) and Barbara Boxer skeptically quizzing record company executives about this. Not shown in the movie but also very much at issue was the “guideline” from Clear Channel to its 1170 stations: don’t play these hundreds of songs, including John Lennon’s Imagine! And the pressure on journalists to go along with the war and beat the drums–and to exclude opposing viewpoints from mainstream channels (casualties included Bill Moyers and Phil Donahue, among many others)…attempt to suppress Michael Moore’s latest book at the time…and a gazillion other examples.

(My friends Charlie King and Karen Brandow sing a wonderful song by the Prince Myshkins about this: “Why Aren’t WE On the List?”

Yes, we must be vigilant against attacks on our fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, press, and assembly. I think I just might go out this weekend and buy that Dixie Chicks album.

Palast: Spitzer Taken Down to Protect the Banks and Bush

2008-03-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

Wooo-eee! Columnist Greg Palast has a powerful commentary on the difference between the trashing of Elliot Spitzer, crusader for consumers in the mortgage mess, and do-nothing Republican Senator David Vitter.

Spitzer, says Palast, was pretty much the only one standing in the way of a Federal reserve $200 billion bailout of banks who lost money in subprimes. Does this help the overmortgaged householder in any way? Nope.

And Spitzer was ready to take on the Bush administration over this, and in fact that’s what he was doing in Washington on that fateful night.

Fascinating reading. Here’s a little taste:

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bail-out. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Funny–one thing I haven’t heard discussed at all, is that Spitzer built his reputation as a consumer advocate, yet he was willing to pay far more than the going rate. Forgetting for a moment about morality, about idiocy, about hypocrisy (this guy was a prosecutor before he became governor, and he even went after some of the high-end “escort” operations), about throwing your entire career away for a few minutes of pleasure–you really do have to wonder how someone who works so hard at stopping consumer ripoffs would pay, on multiple occasions, $5K to spend an evening with a call girl. I’ve owned cars that cost me less than that!

Spitzer Caught in Prostitution Scandal

2008-03-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

The danger in being an ethics warrior is that if you get caught with your own pants down, you’re in trouble. You’ve lost all the credibility you spent all those years building up.

It happened to John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods last year. This week it happened to the crusading anti-corruption New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer, who apparently uses a high-end call girl service similar to those he investigated as Attorney General.

It’s really a shame. There’s been much to admire in the public positions of both men. But if you make your living touting honesty, you should, quite frankly, know better. I’m not trying to sound self-righteous here, really I’m not–but from a marketing point of view, if you stake out your reputation on being the best and then get caught dealing in lousy product, you’re going to fall a lot harder than if no one expected any better from you in the first place.

Don’t Waste Your Money on Marketing Like This

2008-03-10T06:04:00.001-07:00

I won’t embarrass this company by naming it, but boy, they could use some marketing help. They really haven’t got a clue.

I found their quarter-page ad in the program guide of a play I attended.
here’s what it contained:

• An attractive, professionally done logo with the firm name (but no clue either in the name or in the graphic representation about what this company actually does)
• This very pleasant quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” (Still don’t know what they do)
• Street address, phone number and Web URL–which is such an abridgment of the firm name that it does nothing to reinforce brand identity

I am guessing I will be the only person to type in that URL on the basis of that ad–and only because I wanted to be able to write this blog post. Turns out it’s a financial services firm, ad even that wasn’t obvious at first glance. the home page is dominated by a picture of a park and skyline in a nearby city–but this company is actually located in a nearby suburb.

And the copy–oy! It’s the perfect example of what I call “we, we, we all the way home.” See for yourself:

We are a fully integrated financial services company. Our mission is to help our clients build, protect and preserve wealth to meet their long-term financial goals.

(Firm name)’s centerpiece is our own unique Process approach, which allows us to offer comprehensive advice to our clients. We have an exceptional degree of expertise across four disciplines, including Wealth Transfer, Investment Management, Executive and Employee Benefits. Each discipline works together to meet our client’s goals.

Let’s see…out of 74 words, eight are either “we”, “our”, or “us”. That works out to 10.8 percent.

Now…how many times can you find a “you” or your”? I’ll give you a hint: a four-letter number that begins with z and ends with o. Yup–zero. They do say “clients” or “client’s” twice, d would have been easy to replace those with “you” and “your”, respectively.

Okay, how about any testimonials? None on the home page. How about anything about what makes the “Process approach” (and whose idea was that bizarre capitalization scheme?) different from/superior to any other agency’s offering? Nope.

I’m sure this is a well-meaning company and probably does right for their clients–but I think they could have more clients if they stopped patting themselves on the back, stopped assuming people know what they do by their firm name (two last names), and started positioning themselves as people who can help answer your investment questions.

And yes, I know, the ad that caught my ire was a charity ad that they don’t really expect to bring them any business. But why exclude the possibility?

It would have been just as easy to make the Emerson quote smaller (it fills fully half the ad) and then add a line like “For enthusiasm about growing your investments, please call or visit.”

It would have cost nothing more to make the home page you-focused, and to make it obvious on first click what exactly their offering and what their specialization is. (A headline would help; there isn’t one).

And then people say marketing doesn’t work. Of course it isn’t going to work if you can’t be bothered to even try!

Unfortunately, this is all too typical.

I’m sorely tempted to dig through the contact page and send a gratis copy of my book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World–but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be appreciated.

Kevin Kelly: Hope for Struggling Artists/Authors

2008-03-07T18:53:00.000-08:00

Artists, authors, and other creatives, take note: Kevin Kelly, the guru of Wired Magazine, says you don’t have to be a starving artist anymore. Instead of grabbing for crumbs at the very end of the long tail, build a base of 1000 uber-fans. All you have to do is add one person a day for three years (not that long to pay your dues, really–historically, many artists spent decades to achieve this kind of fan base).

Better yet, Kelly outlines how to make this self-funding without anyone worrying about not getting their money back if you don’t make your goal, through a very cool Web 2.0 website, Fundable.org

Over the years, I’ve always liked Kelly’s work–although sometimes the layout of Wired makes it rather unapproachable. This article, however, is on a blog called The Technium, and it’s very easy to read.

Social Responsibility Questions and the Presidential Race

2008-03-06T05:28:00.000-08:00

A day after the Texas, Ohio, RI and Vermont primaries, and the Democratic nomination is once again totally unclear. It’s time to ask how social responsibility issues will affect this election.

Both Obama and Clinton are talking about change, but neither is really putting forward a dramatic change agenda. Clinton has taken heat for her vote for the war, Obama (whom I’ve endorsed, in spite of his shortcomings) for what seems at times like empty rhetoric, and McCain for flip-flopping on torture and on campaign finance reform. And both Clinton and Obama have made some good noises on climate change.

Meanwhile, I haven’t heard any of them talking about business ethics, a meaningful exit strategy in Iraq, or the questions of poverty raised by the Edwards campaign–to name just a few.

I think the American people are ready for a candidate who is willing to go beyond rhetoric and propose substantive social change, especially in health care and the war. Unfortunately, the Democrats have driven out the multiple candidates who put forth those positions, the Republicans apparently have no interest, and our system treats third parties as thrown away votes (unlike most of Europe).

Meanwhile, the mainstream media focuses on “soma” (a word invented by Aldous Huxley in his book, Brave New World) like the shenanigans of Britney Spears.

Tortured Responses on Torture

2008-03-06T00:32:00.000-08:00

Even after seven years of the long night of the GW Bush administration, I can still be shocked by how low he is wiling to go. His latest and continuing embrace of torture just makes me sick. This mini-item from Democracy Now, “Bush to Veto Bill Outlawing CIA Use of Waterboarding”:

President Bush is expected to soon veto a bill that would have required the CIA and all intelligence services to abide by the same interrogation standards as outlined in the US Army Field Manual. The Army manual specifically bans waterboarding, mock executions, the use of electric shocks, beatings, forcing prisoners to perform sexual acts and depriving prisoners of necessary food, water or medical care. President Bush says the Army rules are too restrictive.

This is the same man who claims to be strongly influenced by his Christian faith. Did he maybe skip the sections in the Bible about the golden rule, turning the other cheek, and treating even those at the very bottom of the social ladder with utmost respect. Harumph–endorsement of torture strikes me as within the impeachable category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”!

Oh, and didn’t occur to him that he is putting American servicemen and servicewomen at severe risk? If we torture those we capture, what happens when our people are captured?

Meanwhile,a perceptive piece by Marty Kaplan in Huffington Post on this issue:

When Dana Perino told the White House press corps that the Field Manual is “perfectly appropriate… for young GIs, some so young that they’re not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they’re from,” but not for trained intelligence agency “professionals… with an average age of 40,” it’s a wonder she wasn’t asked a follow-up about how tall you have to be to ride the Constitution.

The same piece has some speculation on why John McCain, long a champion of treating prisoners right, and himself an ex-POW, is now willing to go along with torture.

Scott Karp’s Challenge to Print Media: Be Relevant to Me

2008-03-05T03:30:00.000-08:00

Over at Publishing2.com, Scott Karp takes the Washington Post to task for using the same old coupon-style discounting offers they’ve used for decades–when in order to get him to pick up a physical newspaper, they’d have to speak to why it’s a better option than just logging on to read online.

He cites one motivation that might have worked for him: enjoying an unplugged no-computer day kicking back with in-depth analysis he wouldn’t normally have time to read.

Fr me–and I still read the print form of my local daily paper–a key argument might be reduced eyestrain. I’m always looking for ways I can get offline to do some of my work.

I discuss in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and elsewhere, why discounting is often a poor strategy for lots of marketers. It’s always better, as Scott points out, to show the real value you add.

Republicans Finally Denounce Racist Anti-Obama Strategies

2008-02-29T21:06:00.000-08:00

GOP now says using “Barack HUSSEIN Obama” is a “distraction” and should be stopped. Took them long enough!

I noted that this racist tactic was backfiring back on January 30.

Good morning, GOP. It’s nice to know that 145 years after Lincoln (the first Republican president) freed the slaves, that you still care at least a little bit about black folks. At least when it seems expedient.

The Real, Scandal-Ridden McCain–Mainstream Media, Wake Up!

2008-02-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

Whole bunch of links in the Citizens for Legitimate Government e-bulletins this week, all pointing to different aspects of the real, not-in-the-spotlight John McCain. And it’s not a pretty picture, especially since this is the “straight shooter” who claims to be focused on ethics. Mainstream media is not doing a good job of looking at these stories, even when they’re published on big wire services like Reuters.
A few of the news bites:
• McCain retracted his statement that he has to convince the public that the Iraq war is going well, in order to win (Reuters)
• McCain is implicated in an influence-peddling scandal involving a broadcaster in violation of ownership-concentration rules. His formerly unheard plea for assistance suddenly went to the top of the pile after he became a $40,000 client of McCain’s lobbyist friend Vicki Iseman and made a $4000 contribution directly to McCain (WorldNetNews)
• As I noted earlier this week, McCain has been sued by the Democratic Party over his lack of compliance with a federal campaign finance program. It appears that McCain is using public financing as collateral, yet he wants to withdraw from the program in order to spend money faster than the law allows
• McCain’s personal wealth may have a lot to do with his father-in-law’s involvement in organized crime (for which the in-law was convicted in 1948) (WorldNetNews)

Ethnic Fashions and the Presidential Race

2008-02-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve already commented about the smear campaign of right-wing blabbermouths like Ann Coulter emphasizing Barack Obama’s middle name. Now he’s been shown wearing the robes and turban of a Kenyan tribesman, on a visit there.

Once again, the subtext is anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism.The racists seem to be playing that card rather than worrying about anti-black racism.

And I found the best rebuttal to this despicable racism on a blog with the unlikely title, “Chapati Mystery.” Click on this link for pictures of George W. Bush in a Chinese jacket, Bill Clinton in a turban and lei, holding some kind of ceremonial object–and Hillary and Chelsea, all decked out in Chinese or Vietnamese pointed straw hats.. The Obama picture is there as well. You may even want to bookmark it; no doubt, we’ll need it during the fall campaign. If you want to see Laura Bush in Islamic dress–black overgarment and headscarf–click here.

Sure.y, in the year 2008, it’s time to say no to this petty racism! We’re better than that.

Faked Chinese Photo: Propaganda or Personal?

2008-02-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

This is a doozy, from China.

The photographer of an award-winning photo that advanced the Chinese government’s aims and allayed fears of environmentalists who had protested a high-speed China-Tibet rail link has admitted faking his widely published photo of a herd of rare-species chiru antelope placidly grazing underneath the train tracks, while a train zooms by.

It is two photos spliced together. Liu Weiqing, a man who claimed on his blog, “One man, one car, one year…and a campaign to protect Tibetan antelope,” has now resigned in disgrace along with his editor, his reward revoked.

But…as the Wall Street Journal notes,

Other photographs that took home awards that night included “Facing a harmonious future,” a picture of Chinese President Hu posing with world leaders, and a “A trip to apologize,” a picture of a Japanese monk apologizing to China for Japanese atrocities in World War II. CCTV didn’t reply to inquiries about its criteria for photo awards.

In other words, this award seems to follow a trail that dovetail’s nicely with Chinese government policies and propaganda.

Which makes me–and the Journal’s writers Jane Spencer and Juliet Ye–wonder if Liu was merely the fall guy, if he was asked or ordered to come up with a photo like this:

His friends say he was dedicated to his job and determined to raise the profile of the embattled antelope. “He was a good guy,” says Zhou Zhuogang, an environmental activist from Shenzhen in southern China who met Mr. Liu in the summer of 2006 when the two men were at a volunteer station on the Tibetan plateau. “He loved photography, and he loved the antelope. I don’t know what pushed him to do this.”

Some suspect pressure to create the photo came from above. “When everybody points a finger to the photographer, we actually missed the real core problem here,” says Wang Yangbo, editor of Wen Wei Pao, a Hong Kong Daily. The photographers “are nobodies in the scheme of things here,” she adds.

Remember:
• China invaded Tibet in the 1950s, has behaved with the worst kind of imperialistic colonialism since then, and continues to repress Tibetans and their independence movement
• China has been roundly criticized on a number of environmental grounds, from flooding a huge and magnificent area with the Three Gorges Dam to contributing to rapid climate change through its unbridled (and largely un-pollution controlled) consumption of fossil fuels
• Environmentalists tried to block this train’s construction precisely because of worries about this antelope species

Hmmmm.

Democrats File FEC Complaint: Possible McCain Campaign Finance Violation

2008-02-26T07:29:00.000-08:00

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The crucial issue here is John McCain’s integrity. John McCain poses as a reformer but seems to think reforms apply to everyone but him,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “He used taxpayer money to guarantee a loan so he could raise money from lobbyists and special interests - it’s the height of hypocrisy. This is just the latest example of his do as I say, not as I do double standard, and it’s unlikely to be the last. McCain financially benefited from this legally binding contract - he got free ballot access, saving him millions of dollars, and he secured a $4 million line of credit to keep his campaign afloat by using public financing as collateral. He should follow the law.”

This is from a Democratic National Committee press release sent today.

Ironic, isn’t it. “Straight shooter” McCain doesn’t seem to be shooting very straight these days. This is the lead sponsor of the rather mild McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Added to the questions the New York Times raised last week (see my previous blog post)…it does make you wonder. This is their ethics guy???

“Straight Shooter” McCain’s Crooked Path

2008-02-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

To me, the biggest news of the highly critical New York Times story on John McCain is that a man whose entire campaign for the presidency is based on being “Mr. Straight Shooter” is caught in an obvious, blatant, easy-to-check, and dare-I-say spectacular lie. And it’s not about whether or not he slept with this lobbyist (he and she both deny it, and from what I’ve read it appears that staff were getting nervous that the affair might happen not that it was happening.

Anyway, the New York Times ran a long profile about a number of instances of questionable judgment on John McCain’s part–and McCain’s office issued this rebuttal:

It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

(emphasis added).

And that is the lie. McCain was one of the infamous Keating Five. Here’s the Keating Five section of his hometown newspaper the Arizona Republic’s bio of McCain.

In fact it was his brush with ethics censure over Keating that led McCain into campaign finance reform, a place where he’s had a bipartisan leadership role. Yet it seems like

Meanwhile, Kelly McBride and others at the journalism/ethics think tank Poynter Institute took the Times to task both for the timing of the article, and for leading with the allegations about the inappropriately close relationship with this lobbyist, Vicki Iseman (an attractive blonde over 30 years his junior).

Says the Times,

Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

Says Bob Steele of Poynter:

The New York Times had the obligation to apply rigorous, exacting, substantive standards of reporting, editing and ethics on the McCain story. Times’ editors clearly believed this story was important, given its strong play and length. The Times could have and should have given readers more information about why and how they developed, reported, vetted and edited this story. They should have revealed proactively the story behind the story. They should have better explained the decision to use some unnamed sources, better explained the timing of the publication.

Says I, however,

Actually, to me the timing makes a lot of sense. It’s part of a series by the Times profiling the major presidential candidates still left standing. And it’s early enough that if McCain becomes an untouchable from the fallout, there’s plenty of time for someone else to ride in on a white horse. Though it would be ironic indeed if it turned out to be the smarmy flip-flopper Mitt Romney, who seems to focus on the politics of expedience.

Why Hillary Is Losing: Huffington Post

2008-02-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

Dylan Loewe argues persuasively in Huffington Post that Hillary Clinton’s series of strategic errors have cost her the nomination.

I agree with his analysis, but it misses a crucial point: Hillary’s slide started long before the Iowa caucuses. With a record of not just support but cheerleading for the Iraq war, support for the Patriot Act, and even some enthusiasm about the possibility of spreading the war cancer into Iran–Hillary does not inspire support, let alone warm fuzzy feelings, among progressives.

Meanwhile, the Right has a special passion for hating and vilifying her. I’ve never understood why they are so ardent in their hatred–but they are. So if she were the nominee, she’d be at a serious disadvantage: the right will come out in droves and vote against her, and the Left will stay home or vote 3rd party.

Even as far back as March, 2006–when she was the undisputed frontrunner–an ABC News poll showed her very weak against McCain. Now that he’s been tested in real elections, Obama of course is much stronger. Latest polls from Zogby/Reuters, AP, Time, ABC, CNN, USA Today, Cook, Rasmussen, Fox all show Obama beating McCain handily in the general election, in some cases by up to 8 points; only NPR shows McCain narrowly winning. But in a McCain-Clinton matchup, Clinton only wins in the AP and CNN polls, ties in Time’s poll, and loses in the other six–by as much as 12 points in the Zogby poll!

Will the US Mass-Roundup Dissidents? SF Chronicle Says It Could Happen

2008-02-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

For many months, I’ve seen articles in alternative media sources about the construction of large detention camps, even about boxcars outfitted with shackles for transporting prisoners.

And my response has always been that I want to see coverage in mainstream media, that it’s too easy to buy into the hysteria and paranoia that can afflict movements of both the left and right.

Well, here it is: a large and detailed op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle outlining the detention camps, the no-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root, the involvement of at least one member of Congress–and the series of post-9/11 laws that give life to this grim scenario. Yes the article entions boxcars with shackles.

On the other hand, the article notes that this project began in 1999–when Bill Clinton was president. And long before all that enabling legislation.

Civil libertarians: we need to keep our eyes on this. Be afraid–but don’t be paralyzed by fear.

If You Want My Endorsement…Let Me See the Product

2008-02-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know–viral marketing and all that. And I actually love referral marketing, but not like this.

But am I the only one offended when someone gives me a tell-your-friends page before I even see the product? It’s happening more and more lately. These unfortunates happened to be the ones to push me into ranting about this trend, but it could have been any number of others.

At least these guys were smart enough to do a “no, thank you” link where I could still get the download. But I value my reputation and I’m not in the habit of sharing e-mails of my friends with strangers who send bulk mail. Had the only way to get the report been to fill in e-mails, I’d have either given phony names or bailed out.

Maybe this is one of the factors contributing to the growth of social media at the expense of e-mail. Successful marketers can still be clueless when it comes to human relationships.

In fact, when I get to all those petition sites (and I confess, I sign a lot of political petitions), the thank-you page invariably asks for addresses of my friends. I never give them. Instead, if I find the petition worthy enough to send, I’ll forward the e-mail, bcc, to my politics list.

And at least there, I’ve had a chance to see the text, decide if it’s something I want, and pass it on. Why marketers think I’m going to feed their mailing-list fish tank before even seeing the fish… Yuck!

If you like this rant and want more about how to run and market an ethical, successful business, you may have a look at my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. You can get the first few chapters as a no-charge download, and you don’t have to fill in a squeeze page OR a tell-a-friend page to get it. So there.

Government-Corporate Nuclear Chicanery in Canada

2008-02-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

Lest you think collusion between corrupt government and dubious business interests happens only in the US–read this article on the firing of Linda Keen, until recently the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Keen was fired for having the temerity to insist that the 50-year-old Chalk river nuke in Ontario stay closed until safety concerns were fully addressed.

Now, let me disclose my biases. I’ve been studying about nuclear power going back to a college report I did in 1974–and my first book, in 1980, was an expose of the nuclear power industry. In my mind,

• there is no such thing as a safe nuke (and a wide swatch of the Ukraine is still uninhabitable, more than two decades after the accident at Chernobyl)
• waste storage will cause problems for thousands of years
• counting the entire fuel cycle, nukes are a net consumer of energy–so we’re not actually gaining anything by using them
• solar, wind, and other nonpolluting, renewable technologies make a lot more sense

Why was the plant ordered to stay shut?

In the inspection process, the CPSC regulators found something at the 50-year-old reactor that was terrifying:

…the reactor had been operating for 17 months without two cooling pumps hooked up to an additional emergency back-up power system capable of withstanding a severe earthquake.

And yes, there have been earthquakes in the vicinity. And this plant is only two hours from Ottawa, Canada’s capital city.

But still…here is a woman who was fired because she didn’t want this ancient and probably crumbling nuke to have an accident! Best of luck, Linda in your wrongful termination court case. And thanks for doing what’s right.

(my thanks to The Weekly Spin for alerting me to this story).
Business and government ethics violations that directly put life and property at risk are more than just crooked collusion. They are criminal acts.

Arianna Huffington: Media, Voters Must Divorce McCain

2008-02-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

Arianna Huffington is consistently a pleasure to read. she’s smart, well-informed, and a wonderful writer.

Arianna was once a fan of John McCain–in years past, when he still remembered he had a spine. The “new, improved” pander-to-the-far-right candidate, however, brings out the full thrust of her sharp wit as she calls for the media and independent voters to break off the love affair with McCain.

If any of your friends still think McCain is the moderate he once claimed to be, send them this link, where they can read such comments as

The old John McCain once stood tall as a fearless leader on immigration, co-sponsoring a humane, bipartisan reform bill with Ted Kennedy. The new John McCain, when asked during a recent GOP debate whether he would support his own proposal, replied: “No, I would not.” In other words, he was for his core beliefs before he was against them.

What’s the opposite of a “maverick?”

So McCain has backed an amendment that would limit the right to habeas corpus, has endorsed an Arizona constitutional amendment that would not only ban gay marriage but deny benefits to unmarried couples of any kind (lest those pesky gay people find some kind of loophole), and has discovered a newfound support for teaching “intelligent design” in schools.

The old John McCain once tried to take the mantle of true conservatism away from George W. Bush. The new John McCain is now essentially running to give America a third Bush term - and, indeed, will even out-Bush Bush when it comes to staying the disastrous course we’re on in Iraq.

And you should hear what she has to say about McCain’s cozy relationships with GWB and Karl Rove, and a wonderful comparison with a certain scene in “The Godfather.” Click on over and have a look.

And then, later in the week, she says McCain’s vote in favor of waterboarding torture“should drive a stake through the heart of the McCain-as-straight-talker meme once and for all.”

Strip-Poker and Pelosi’s Challenger

2008-02-13T19:26:00.000-08:00

Copywriter Drayton Bird recently talked about the element of surprise. Here are two brilliant ads that harness that principle.

First, Shirley Golub, who is a progressive candidate challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic Party nomination for Congress. Watch her video here (scroll down about half a screen).

This is an example of how to be extremely effective on basically zero budget. One camera, one talking head, no special effects, I’m guessing a single take–and twisting a metaphor of Pelosi’s in an unforgettable way. And then spreading it through the power of social networks like the People’s Email Network, which put up that page and notified its thousands of activists.

If I were directing the shoot, the only advice I’d give Golub is to not look down so much–put the script somewhere you can see it while appearing to look at the camera.

On to the other ad: a slick, commercially produced, expensive (large cast), quite salacious and extremely funny bit that’s rapidly making its way around the Net.And boy does it ever harness the element of surprise (Yes, I have some issues with the politics of the surprise but to say more would spoil it–suffice it to say I recognize and criticize the issue). Don’t watch this one if you wouldn’t see an R-rated movie.

The surprise is there, all right, and it will get tons of viral exposure–I got the whole huge Youtube video e-mailed to me, and I’m betting it’s making the rounds on MySpace, Facebook, etc. But I wonder how many people will remember the product 24 hours later. In other words, was it a good investment for the manufacturer?

Bet someone does some research on this, eventually.

It’s Starting: The L-Word Backlash Against Obama

2008-02-13T04:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve been waiting for people to start tossing around the word “liberal” as if it’s some kind of curse, and applying it to one or both of the Democratic front-runners.

Today for the first time, I saw hint of it, directed against Obama–by someone who seems to be a supporter, Joan Vennnochi, writing in the Boston Globe:

Other questions, just for the sake of political argument: Do endorsements from the liberal Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and from the ultra-liberal political action organization, MoveOn.org, come with a downside in the general election? The National Journal just released a listing that ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007. Have the old labels truly lost their ability to zing?

And why, you ask, have I been so eagerly waiting for this? Very simple: it gives me the excuse to give Barack Obama my very best advice:

Barack, stand strong, don’t back down, and don’t be ashamed to be liberal. You were voted the most liberal Senator; make the most of it, and wear it as a badge of honor.

I want to hear you say these words, or something similar:

You say I’m a liberal as if it’s some sort of dirty word. Liberals shortened the work day from 12 hours to 8. Liberals made it possible for all of us to still breathe the air and drink the water, by passing the Clean Air an Clean Water Acts. Liberals brought us universal public education, the civil rights movement the idea that discrimination is wrong no matter who its target. I’m proud to be a liberal, John. In the next four years, liberals will bring us universal health care, will get us out of a war we had no business entering in the first place, will reverse the Bush Administration assault on civil liberties, and will restore our standing as a leader among nations that it had before the very unliberal Bush administration took over. John McCain, aren’t you ashamed that you’re so adamantly not a liberal?

Dave Barry on the US Primary System

2008-02-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

Written before the Florida primary,Dave Barry’s comments are still worth reading. Without doing much of his usual Barryisms, he uses the painful reality to absolutely skewer the US system of nominating presidents. Heres a little taste:

Most of the candidates ignored Wyoming and focused on the New Hampshire primary, except Rudy Giuliani, who’s following a shrewd strategy, originally developed by the Miami Dolphins, of not entering the race until he has been mathematically eliminated. After New Hampshire came Michigan, where the ballot listed all the Republicans, but only certain Democrats — including Chris Dodd, who had already dropped out if the race — but not including Barack Obama or John Edwards.

After Michigan came the Nevada caucuses, in which Hillary Clinton got more votes but Barack Obama got more delegates. (If you don’t understand how that could happen, then you have never been to a casino.)

Of course, there’s much more that could be said–like the way the media colludes with the party brass to force out intelligent candidates they deem “marginal.” Or the way most democracies have a system that incorporates the wisdom of smaller parties, in parliamentary coalitions–rather than our all-our-nothing two-party system.

I’ve written about this before; here’s my seven-point plan for US electoral reform, published in this space on December 17, 2007.

But read it and have a good laugh–and then a good cry.

Spam “Cures” Are Worse than the Disease: A Rant

2008-02-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

Grrrr! If you think e-mail is reliable, you’ve just been lucky so far. The only way you can know for sure that e-mail has reached its destination is if you get a response. Nothing else is sure–and people don’t realize this!

For several years now, I’ve encountered increasing difficulties in getting mail through. For a while, I couldn’t even e-mail my own mother! More of a problem–I had a client in Poland where e-mail between us was so unreliable it ended up causing them not to work with me anymore.

Far too much legitimate mail is undelivered, filtered to trash, or simply lost forever. And I, for one, am totally sick of it.

Today, I tried to respond to someone who had answered my note about a possible speaking gig. It was blocked, with a 550–we-think-this-is-spam-so-we’re-not-going-to-send-it message. And yes, I plugged it into one of the popular spamcheckers and got a clean rating. At least this time, I actually got notified that my mail wasn’t going to leave my server (this doesn’t always happen). Then I copied the entire contents into an attachment, deleted the text, and added one line about why I was sending an attachment–and that was blocked! I will have to call my recipient on Monday

Yet somehow, even though probably at least 5 percent of my totally legitimate inbound and outbound mail never arrives, I get at least 20 up to 100 or more total crap junk spam jobs every day: “Nigerian scam” letters offering to pay me a percentage of some huge transaction…messages about account security from banks I’ve never done business with….offers to extend the size of various body parts I may or may not happen to have…procurers of various mind- or body-altering chemicals, legal or not.

Why in heck can this total crap clog up my mailbox while the real stuff is blocked?

It’s time for a movement of resistance. E-mail is extremely broken and it needs to be fixed. It was at one time the most effective means of communication ever devised, and it’s dying a long slow death.

Let’s take it back! If we can send astronauts to the moon, surely we can figure out a way to block the real junk and let through the real mail. The automated tools don’t work. I’m tired of having my business interfered with by floods of junk mail and blocked real mail. I’m tired of spending huge amounts of time and effort trying to get blocked e-mail to go through, and more time deleting all those spams. I’m tired of my ISP deciding what I can and can’t read, and guessing wrong all the time. I’m tired of challenge-response systems that put undue burden on their correspondents. I’m tired of spam-filter solutions that work for a year or two and then get completely bollixed up. I’m tired of having to send only a teaser about my newsletters and forcing my readers to click to the web. I’m tired of missing important mail that does get to my inbox, but doesn’t get seen because too much garbage piles in on top of it.

And I’m wondering if it’s time for some kind of mass movement or campaign to members of Congress (or the national legislature that governs you)–or SOMETHING!

P.S. In my fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, I have a section called “Spam: The Newbies’ natural Mistake,” in which I demonstrate mathematically that spam is a really bad idea from the spammer point of view as well as from the user. http://www.frugalmarketing.com/shop.html

Endorsements, Sports, and Misleading Advertising

2008-02-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

Patrick Byers’ Responsible Marketing blog quite correctly calls attention to Pfizer’s Lipitor ads featuring artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik–only, it turns out, in the ads featuring “Jarvik” rowing or doing other highly physical activities, it’s a professional athlete, a body double.

There are times you could make a case that using an endorser’s double is legitimate–but not, IMHO, when you’re advertising a product for the greater physical endurance it supposedly provides, having an internationally known cardiologist endorsing it, and you replace a man who is “about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen. He can’t row” with an undisclosed professional athlete.

Byers implies that this is not ethical–and I agree with his assessment.

Unmet Expectation = Lost Opportunity

2008-02-08T22:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was listening to an interview with a very smart-sounding marketing copywriter. It was all about trust, integrity–the stuff I talk about in this blog, in my award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and in my ethics newsletter.

Thinking that this was someone I needed to know, and thinking about all sorts of mutual-benefit ventures we could do, I went to the writer’s site.

And boy, was I shocked!

It was a hard-sell, blowhard, I-know-so-much-more-than-you snow job, and the only credibility builder was the very generous use of testimonials. Let’s just say I did NOT feel ready to trust him.

Well, guess who I *won’t* be approaching with any partnership offers. We’ll never know what might have been, because he led me in expecting one sort of thing, and delivered something entirely different.

Marshall: “40 of the Last 2″

2008-02-08T05:02:00.000-08:00

As a copywriter, I love a good turn of phrase that makes you rethink your reality. It’s why I’m a fan of people like Sam Horn, author of books like ConZentrate, Tongue Fu!®, and Take the Bully by the Horns. It’s why I’ve written press releases with headlines like “It’s 10 O’Clock–Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?” and “The One who Dies With the Most Toys–Is Just As Dead.”

And it’s why I was utterly captivated to read this on Perry Marshall’s site:

This whole “recession” thing everyone’s blathering about was merely fabricated by the media (you know, the people we trust to deliver the “news” to us) so they’ll have more to, uh, g-r-i-p-e about while they assault us with election propaganda.

Did you know that ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN have predicted 40 out of the last 2 recessions?

I love that: “predicted 40 out of the last 2 recessions.” It’s a completely fresh and interesting way to state that he thinks the media are lousy at economic predictions.

Do I agree with him? Well…my own business is doing pretty well, but I choose to live in an abundant world, and the world tends to reaffirm that conviction. However, I definitely see some areas of concern about the economy–in housing, in job creation, and other factors, most of which I can easily blame on the Bush administration.

After Super-Tuesday–Media Reforms Needed

2008-02-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like McCain will be carrying the banner for the Republicans this fall, after so many previous tries, and after being essentially written off by the pundits just a few short months ago. That was when Giuliani was considered the front-runner.

This is one among many reasons why we shouldn’t rely on pundits. Once the voters started speaking, it was clear that Giuliani was a non-starter. I heard one commentator say this week that he had the worst dollars-to-delegates ratio in the history of politics: $50 million to get one lone delegate. Ouch!

McCain is much, much better than his competitors on some issues, notably torture and campaign finance reform. But on war (for me, the dealbreaker issue), he’s the worst of the lot–even more hawkish than GWB. Yikes! And his own shady past on ethics issues–he was one of the infamous Keating 5, after all–makes me wonder how sincere the reform really is.

Still, he’s certainly less of a flip-flopper than Romney, who would have made a great used car salesman. And far less scary than our American Ayatollah Huckabee, whose election would make me seriously consider leaving the country; as a non-Christian with progressive politics, I’m not sure there would be room for me in a country governed by someone who equates homosexuality with necrophilia.

Much less clarity on the Democrat side. For me, the real question now becomes who could beat McCain. For reasons I stated here, I believe that in a McCain-Clinton contest, McCain would win, although I think she might beat Romney. But some of my friends believe that Obama hasn’t yet shown he can attract enough white voters to prevail against any opponent in November.

I know that I personally would not vote for Hilary Clinton–but I have the luxury of living in a state where my vote doesn’t count anyway: no matter what I do no matter who the candidate, Massachusetts will go for the Democrat.

The real shame for me, yesterday, was standing with my ballot and looking at Dennis Kucinich’s name right next to Barack Obama’s, thinking about what might have been. Kucinich has withdrawn, of course, and I’m not going to waste my vote on a candidate who’s no longer interested. But I think it’s a crime that the media–the same media that annointed Giuliani–decided for itself that it would not let us hear the voices of any of the candidates whose positions actually represented progressive change, and gave us a media blackout on the candidates who should matter most. They refused to cover Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd, and Ron Paul, among others–all of those bringing forward substantive reforms on a host of issues. This, to me, is a serious ethical breach and somehow we need a mechanism to address this that doesn’t interfere with the First Amendment.

For broadcast media, at least, the solution may lie with their licenses to use the public’s own airwaves for profit. For print media, the solution is probably intense public pressure in the form of letter-to-the-editor campaigns, pickets in front of their stockholder meetings, and so forth.

Why an Edwards Supporter Switched to Obama

2008-02-04T04:15:00.000-08:00

Note from Shel: This guest column by Paul Rogat Loeb, a writer whose work I like quite a bit, outlines many of the reasons why I chose Obama when Kucinich left the race.

A Dozen Reasons Why This Edwards Voter Is Now Backing Obama

Guest Column By Paul Rogat Loeb

I gave John Edwards more money than I’ve given to any candidate in my life, and I’m glad I did. He raised critical issues about America’s economic divides, and got them on the Democratic agenda. He was the first major candidate to stake out strong comprehensive platforms on global warming and health care. He hammered away on the Iraq war, even using scarce campaign resources to run ads during recent key Senate votes. He’d have made a powerful nominee˜and president.

I’ve been going through my mourning for a while for his campaign not getting more traction, so his withdrawal announcement didn’t shock me. But sad as I am about his departure, I feel good about being able to switch my support to Barack Obama, and will do all I can to help him win.

I’ve actually been giving small donations to both since Iowa, while hoping that the Edwards campaign would belatedly catch fire, and e.html>exploring ways the two campaigns could work together. With Edwards gone, I think Obama is the natural choice for his supporters, and that Edwards should step up and endorse him as his preferred nominee. All three major Democratic candidates have their flaws and strengths˜they all have excellent global warming plans, for instance. But Edwards wasn’t just being rhetorical when he said that both he and Obama represent voices for change, versus Clinton’s embodiment of a Washington status quo joining money and power.

Here are a dozen reasons why I feel proud to have my energy, dollars and vote now go to Obama:

1. The Iraq war: Obviously, invading Iraq remains the most damaging single action of the Bush era. Obama spoke out against it at a public rally while Clinton was echoing Bush’s talking points and voting for it. Obama’s current advisors also consistently opposed the war, while Clinton’s consistently supported it. It’s appropriate that Clinton jumped to her feet to clap when Bush said in his recent State of the Union address that there was “no doubt” that “the surge is working.”

2. Clinton’s Iran vote: The Kyl-Lieberman bill gave the Bush administration so wide an opening for war that Jim Webb called it “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.” Hillary voted for it. Obama and Edwards opposed it.

3. The youth vote: If a Party attracts new voters for their first few elections, they tend to stick for the rest of their lives. Obama is doing this on a level unseen in decades. By tearing down the candidate who inspires them, Clinton will so embitter many young voters they’ll stay home.

4. Hope matters: When people join movements to realize raised hopes, our nation has a chance of changing. When they damp their hopes, as Clinton suggests, it doesn’t. Like Edwards, Obama has helped people feel they can participate in a powerful transformative narrative. That’s something to embrace, not mock.

5. Follow the money: All the candidates have some problematic donors˜it’s the system–but Hillary’s the only one with money from Rupert Murdoch. Edwards and Obama refused money from lobbyists. Clinton claimed they were just citizens speaking out, and held a massive fundraising dinner with homeland security lobbyists. Obama spearheaded a public financing bill in the Illinois legislature, while Clinton had to be shamed by a full-page Common Cause ad in the Des Moines Register to join Obama and Edwards in taking that stand.

6. John McCain: If McCain is indeed the Republican nominee, than as Frank Rich brilliantly points out, he’s perfectly primed to run as the war hero with independence, maturity and integrity, against the reckless, corrupt and utterly polarizing Clintons. Never mind that McCain’s integrity and independence is largely a media myth (think the Charles Keating scandal and his craven embrace of Bush in 2004), but Bill and Hillary heralding their two-for-one White House return will energize and unite an otherwise ambivalent and fractured Republican base.

7. Mark Penn: Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, runs a PR firm that prepped the Blackwater CEO for his recent congressional testimony, is aggressively involved in anti-union efforts, and has represented villains from the Argentine military junta and Philip Morris to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

8. Sleazy campaigning: Hillary stayed on the ballot in Michigan after Edwards and Obama pulled their names, then audaciously said the delegates she won unopposed should count retroactively. She, Bill and their surrogates have conducted a politics of personal attack that begins to echo Karl Rove, from distorting Obama’s position on Iraq and abortion choice, to dancing out surrogates to imply that the Republicans will tar him as a drug user.

9. NAFTA: Hillary can’t have it both ways in stoking nostalgia for Bill. NAFTA damaged lives and communities and widened America’s economic divides. Edwards spoke out powerfully against it. Clinton now claims the agreement needs to be modified, but her husband staked all his political capital in ramming it through, helping to hollow out America’s economy and split the Democratic Party for the 1994 Gingrich sweep.

10. Widening the circle: Obviously Obama spurs massive enthusiasm in the young and in the African-American community. I’m also impressed at the range of people turning out to support his campaign. At a Seattle rally I attended, the volunteer state campaign chair had started as Perot activist. The founding coordinator in the state’s second-largest county, a white female Iraq war vet, voted for Bush in 2000 and written in Colin Powell in 2004 before becoming outraged about Iraq “I’ve always leaned conservative,” she said, “but Obama’s announcement speech moved me to tears. The Audacity of Hope made me rethink my beliefs. He inspires me with his honesty and integrity.” As well as inspiring plenty of progressive activists, Obama is engaging people who haven’t come near progressive electoral politics in years.

11. The story we tell: Obama captures people with a narrative about where he wants to take America. His personal story is powerful, but he keeps the emphasis on the ordinary citizens who need to take action to make change. Clinton, in contrast, focuses largely on her personal story, her presumed strengths and travails. Except for the symbolism of having a woman president, it’s a recipe that downplays the possibility of common action for change.

12. Citizen movements matter: Edwards not only ran for president, but worked to build a citizen movement capable of working for change whatever his candidacy’s outcome. Obama has taken a similar approach, beginning when he first organized low-income Chicago communities and coordinated a still-legendary voter registration drive. His speeches consciously encourage his supporters to join together and constitute a force equivalent to the abolitionist, union, suffrage, and civil rights movements. Like Edwards, he’s working to build a movement capable of pushing his policies through the political resistance he will face (and probably of pushing him too if he fails to lead with enough courage). In this context, Clinton’s LBJ/Martin Luther King comparison, and her dismissal of the power of words to inspire people, is all too revealing. She really does believe change comes from knowing how to work the insider levers of power. Edwards and Obama know it takes more.

That’s why this Edwards supporter is proud to do all I can to make Barack Obama the Democratic nominee and president.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles

Microsoft + Yahoo–Will It Matter?

2008-02-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0 blog has a very very interesting analysis of the proposed Microsoft/Yahoo merger:

The main problem with Microsoft and Yahoo, looking forward, is that they are not web-native companies — they rely on centralized control models, rather than distributed network models — thus they are not aligned with the grain of the web, which is a fundamentally a distributed network.

Microsoft and Yahoo rely on software lock-ins (Windows, Office, IM clients, web mail) to maintain their user bases — but without distributing any of that value to the network or harnessing the value that the network would give back if they did. As such, they do not benefit from network effects, which is precisely what powers Google — and why Google will likely still beat a combined Microsoft/Yahoo.

Jeff Jarvis, in Buzz Machine, also sees a similarity of operational strategies in these two giants:

Yahoo, I’ve long argued, is the last old media company, for it operates on the old-media model: It owns or controls content, markets to bring audience in, then bombards us with ads until we leave. Contrast that with Google, which comes to us with its ads and content and tools, all of which I can distribute on my blog. Yahoo, like media before it, is centralized. Google is distributed.

Maybe I’m thick, but I don’t really see the similarity. I see Yahoo as in many ways much more like Google than like Microsoft–and in many ways, as the precursor to all these Web 2.0 social networks springing up:

• Yahoo spread virally because it created a much better search experience–as Google did later to overcome it
• Yahoo has tried over and over again to broaden its offerings and provide one-stop shopping for free, a model which Google emulated
• Yahoo’s corporate culture is much more Silicon Valley-loosey goosey, while MS is much more of an old-line massive and rigidly structured corporation–more like its original partner IBM (read yahoo exec Tim Sanders’ book, Love is the Killer App, which I reviewed here–scroll down–for a look into Yahoo’s culture)

I would in fact argue that at least some Yahoo tools offer exactly the same kind of distributed power that Google does. For instance, Yahoo acquired, years ago, the first e-mail discussion group tools that really allowed anyone to set up and run a discussion list or newsletter (egroups, which had recently bought onelist) and rolled them into its own Yahoogroups–one of the few instances in which I find a Yahoo tool superior to Google’s version. How many hundreds of thousands of people are operating–for free–this very powerful and completely decentralized information creation and distribution method that once required a programmer and a pile of money?

In fact, other than placing ads, I can’t think of anything that Yahoo charges for–whereas MS’s whole model is based on expensive software and forced upgrades.

One thing all three companies, Microsoft, Yahoo, AND Google, have in common is their desire to aggregate massive amounts of information about their users–which makes me, personally, very nervous.

Overall, I agree that Google will be the victor–but not for the reasons Karp and Jarvis posit. Google will win because it just provides a much better user experience. Which would you rather search with: Google’s clean, pleasant interface, instant results, and much better ability to return the right pages on the first results page, or Yahoo’s visual bombardment, slower and less accurate results? Most people have chosen Google.

Coulter: “I’d Campaign for Hillary” vs. McCain

2008-02-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

Well, I never thought I’d see ultra-right and often-bizarre commentator Ann Coulter endorse Hillary Clinton. But Coulter said that if McCain is the GOP nominee, not only would she vote for Hillary, she’d actually go out and campaign for her!

Apparently the very conservative McCain is not conservative enough for the woman who called John Edwards a faggot–and she sees Clinton as more likely to continue the war, the repressive policies, etc. McCain is no liberal, and he was the one who sang “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran””. But Coulter may be right I have no confidence that Hillary will end the war, and that’s a lot of why I’m voting for Obama Tuesday.

Wonder what Hillary thinks of Coulter’s ‘endorsement.”

Meanwhile, George Lakoff has a very perceptive column on the real differences between Hillary and Obama–not about issues, on which they’re largely in agreement, but about personality and style. This goes a long way to explain why Hillary, cut off from emotional rapport and drowning in her policy-wonk bathtub, is such a divisive figure–and why Obama has been a much better coalition-builder. Strongly recommended.

Racists in America Increasingly Nasty Around Obama

2008-01-30T18:54:00.000-08:00

Warning: I’m about to share a link to something filthy, vile, and disgusting. We all knew that if Obama turned into a serious candidate, as he most certainly has, that the racists would get down and dirty. I already heard William Bennett on the radio talking repeatedly about “Barack Hussein Obama”–and yes, the emphasis was in the original.

But Alec Baldwin shared a clipping on Huffington Post from his small-town Long Island (NOT Mississippi) newspaper that is incredibly audacious in its hatred––thank you, Alex, for pointing out the barbarism we’re up against. It was written by the publisher of the paper, so don’t expect any firings. But a nice boycott might be in order. And wouldn’t it be nice if the publisher saw fit to enroll in a course on civil rights, ethics, or both?

I personally find nothing funny in this “satire.”

For whatever it’s worth, I had planned to endorse Obama in this space anyway, now that Kucinich is out of the race. I hereby endorse him–not because of this racist screed, but because I’d already made the decision (and actually last night authorized my name on a signature ad in our local paper). And I hope when people start to confront the racism of their own neighbors, that he will receive many, many more endorsements.

Saddam, Bin Laden, and Climate Censorship

2008-01-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

I don’t dip into Alternet as often as I should. But I did today, and I found the juxtaposition of two stories very interesting:

1. The FBI agent in charge of interrogating Saddam Hussein for seven months says that not only was there no link between Saddam and Al Qaida, but Saddam saw Bin Laden as a dangerous and destablizing force.

2. Months after the scandal first broke (or is it years), government honchos are still interfering with scientists who try to speak out on climate change.

These two stories share a pattern: a White House administration that sees truth as an inconvenient obstacle, but one it can easily climb over. See my post earlier today about the 935 documented lies on just one issue, in just two years.

How Many Times Does Bush Lie? 259 on Iraq Alone, in Two Years

2008-01-30T01:00:00.000-08:00

While I was still feeling nauseous after the smug hypocrisy and misleading statements that filled last night’s State of the Union address, I followed a link to a study released this week by the well-respected Center for Public Integrity.

That study documents 935 false statements by the Bush administration just about Iraq, counting only the two years beginning 9/11/01. 259 of these lies were straight from the lips of George W. Bush. That means Bush lied about Iraq (either about WMDs or the imaginary Al Qaida connection) once every 2.8 days–and his administration lied more than once a day.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the last president impeached for telling one single lie, about a personal matter that affected only his immediate family and a few others. Yes, that was wrong. But how much worse is it to tell almost a thousand lies on just this one topic (who knows how many others?), and have on your conscience some 4000 dead Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, that country in ruins and our own a rogue state that can’t meet its own people’s basic needs, and our reputation as a great nation in tatters.

Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi, what will it take to convince you that the time is long past to put impeachment back on the table?

Why Are They Calling These Nonviolent Revolutionaries Imperialists?

2008-01-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

Throughout history, far more lasting, positive social change has been accomplished through nonviolent (though often massive) organizing than through coups, violence, military dictatorships of the left or the right.

Need examples? Just in my own lifetime, there are many. A few to tickle your memory:

• The US Civil Rights movement
• Abolition of apartheid in South Africa
• The Solidarity movement and the dismantling of the entire Soviet empire
• Getting the US out of Vietnam

The skills involved in this kind of organizing are not necessarily intuitive, and if you only look at traditional history sources, they aren’t well documented. However, plenty of people’s history exists, and numerous courageous individuals have spent their lives studying these skills, and building them in others.

I didn’t know Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Dorothy Day–but I have been fortunate to know personally some of the leaders of this movement. The late Dave Dellinger was a personal friend for a few years. And I knew George Lakey and Stephen Zunes when I lived in a nonviolent study and action community in Philadelphia. Stephen and I even collaborated as the principal authors of a paper on future directions for the peace movement.

I bring this up not to name-drop but to be able to speak from personal experience that these are people of very high integrity.

So I was a bit shocked to get an e-mail from Stephen calling attention to criticism he and Gene Sharp (author of the definitive analysis of nonviolent social change, The Politics of Nonviolent Action), and others. Apparently, they are being targeted by certain elements of the left who sees them as tools of imperialism–including Hugo chavez of Venezuela.

Stephen has posted a long rebuttal to this absurd claim on the Foreign Policy in Focus website.

Stephen points out that the consulting he and other nonviolent activists do focuses on helping democratic opposition to totalitarian groups favored by US government interests, and not on destabilizing governments the US doesn’t like. In fact,

…The only visit to Venezuela that has taken place on behalf of any of these non-profit groups engaged in educational efforts on strategic nonviolence was in early 2006 when I – along with David Hartsough, the radical pacifist director of Peaceworkers – led a series of workshops at the World Social Forum in Caracas. There we lectured and led discussions on the power of nonviolent resistance as well as offered a series of screenings of a film ICNC helped develop on the pro-democracy movement in Chile against the former U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet. The only reference to Venezuela during those workshops was how massive nonviolent action could be used to resist a possible coup against Chavez, not foment one. In fact, Hartsough and I met with some Venezuelan officials regarding proposals that the government train the population in various methods of nonviolent civil defense to resist any possible future attempts to overthrow Chavez.

I very much like Stephen’s analogy of nonviolence training and the appropriate technology/green development movement:

Just as sustainable agricultural technologies and methods are more effective in meeting human needs and preserving the planet than the conventional development strategies promoted by Western governments, nonviolent action has been shown to be more effective in advancing democratic change than threats of foreign military intervention, backing coup plotters, imposing punitive sanctions, supporting armed rebel groups, and other methods traditionally instigated by the United States and its allies. And just as the application of appropriate technologies can also be a means of countering the damage caused by unsustainable neo-liberal economic models pushed by Western governments and international financial institutions, the use of massive nonviolent action can counter some of the damage resulting from the arms trade, military intervention, and other harmful manifestations of Western militarism.

Apparently, there will be some kind of action campaign in support of Gene Sharp and others. I Not in the article but in the letter, Zunes writes,

I’ve recently posted an article which critically examines these claims that popular indigenous pro-democracy struggles and Western nonviolent activists who support them are somehow collaborators with U.S. imperialism… Among the things I address is the irony that so many on the authoritarian left ˆ after years of romanticizing armed struggle as the only way to defeat dictatorships, disparaging the potential of nonviolent action to overthrow repressive governments, and dismissing the notion of a nonviolent revolution — are now expressing their alarm at how successful popular nonviolent insurrections can be, even to the point of naively thinking that they are so easy to pull off that it could somehow be organized from foreign capitals. (One would think that Marxists would recognize that revolutions grow out of objective social conditions…)

Anyway, I will shortly be sending all of you an open letter in support of Gene Sharp and other folks who do this kind of work I hope you will consider signing on to.

When I get the link, I’ll post it here.

Kucinich Drops His Presidential Bid

2008-01-27T19:54:00.000-08:00

Facing a tough race for his own seat in Congress, Dennis Kucinich is ending his presidential campaign.

This is very unfortunate. I heard Kucinich speak during the 2004 campaign, happily voted for him in the primary, and was appalled to see the way mainstream media refused to acknowledge his candidacy.

In fact, Kucinich and the similarly ignored Ron Paul are the only ones to raise any truly visionary ideas in this campaign (unless you count Huckabee’s idea to rewrite the Constitution as a Christian fundamentalist document––ugh!). Kucinich’s platform included single-payer health care, a dramatic shift toward renewable energy, and many other things we progressives have advocated for years–and which the mainstream media cloaks in invisibility, so candidates with something fresh to bring to the table get no coverage, and people have to hear about them through their own personal networks and brave media outlets like Democracy Now.

.
I question the ethics of a media empire that decides which candidates we should listen to, sanitizes those remaining, and ducks out on intelligent coverage of real issues. The whole system is deeply broken.

To me, Kucinich was the first person since George McGovern and Shirley Chisolm that I could vote for with a smile and a light heart, as someone who actually represents my views, and I wasn’t old enough to vote for McGovern.

He and Ron Paul have been the only ones willing to speak truth to power. Gravel has good politics but he’s been reaaaaly quiet!

The country is poorer for him being forced out.

Amazing! An Airport Bookstore with Great-Sounding Books!

2008-01-27T04:40:00.000-08:00

Maybe there’s hope for our society. I stopped into Simply Books in the C concourse of Atlanta’s massive Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, not expecting much. After all, most airport bookstores, and even a lot of chain-owned downtown and mall stores lately, cram their shelves with trashy mass-market novels by the likes of Danielle Steel.

I don’t mind a good yarn; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all the Harry Potter books, Kite Runner, and even the occasional Stephen King–but when I dragged myself through one of Steel’s, I found it one of the most uninteresting and poorly written novels I’d ever encountered.

This bookstore, despite its very limited shelf space, was great. I saw literally dozens of books I’d have been happy to read–including some you may eventually read about in my monthly review column. In my brief foray, I saw these among others:

• Giving, by Bill Clinton
• Gary Hirshberg, founding CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt, writing about socially/environmentally conscious companies
• The Zookeeper’s Wife, a novelized account of a true family that risked their own lives to hide dozens of Jews in the zoo during the Nazi era
• About five of Jeffrey Gitomer’s entertaining and acerbic sales books
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, sequel to Kite Runner
• Meatball Sundae–the latest unconventional marketing rant from mega-guru Seth Godin

It is soooo refreshing to see an ariport store whose buyer values intelligent discourse! (And don’t worry, there were plenty of beach novels, too.

Wow! I Made the Enemies List!

2008-01-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

When Richard Nixon’s secret list of “enemies” (very broadly defined) became public knowledge, I was much too young and unimportant to be included–and I confess I was a bit jealous of some of my older friends who made the list. And a few years later when I lived with a paid staffer for a leftist peace magazine, we were pretty sure our phone was tapped.

But I discovered today that I have made it onto at least one more recent enemies list, put out by a Jewish right-wing hate site. 7000 of us, in fact, described by these modern-day McCarthyists as self-hating Jews. The language they use is racist, homophobic, and “my way or the highway.” The list includes celebrities like Woody Allen, most of the famous progressive rabbis I’m aware of, and even the very pro-Israel pundit Christopher Hitchens. My wife, who’s written an award-winning book whose protagonist is a Jewish teen who flees the ghetto of World War II to go live in a forest camp with partisans, makes the list by being married to me.

I’m rather amazed. I get a whole paragraph about me, while my friend Stephen Zunes, who has published probably hundreds of articles opposing Israel, gets only his name. Stephen and I collaborated back in 1981 on a white paper outlining strategies for the US peace movement. It was never published, but I’m very glad to have gotten a chance to work with him.

My crime? Saying publicly that I don’t necessarily think the “security fence” Israel is building is such a good idea. Just for the record, this is accurate. I’ve also said that I don’t think much of the similar fence the US is trying to erect to close of Mexico.

If they’d dug a bit deeper, they might have found out that I spent much of my 20s writing and organizing around Middle East peace issues and have published articles about the Israeli peace movement, and that one of my websites contains several pro-peace articles.

Fortunately, these people don’t run the wonderfully pluralistic societies of either Israel or the U.S. I shudder to think of what they’d do if they were in power.

I thought about linking to their site, but I decided that I would not be benefiting the causes I support by giving them an undeserved link from a well-ranked site. Nor do I want Google’s computers to think that I endorse them in any way.

Speaking of endorsements and link love–I was amused to see that my wife’s mention was linked to the Amazon page for one of my books (I presume it’s an affiliate link)–so these people are not above making a few shekels off the people they despise, although the book they chose to link to is actually out of print.

I guess I’ll have to start blogging more on Middle East peace issues, in order to properly earn my place on the list (wink)

Is Bill Gates More Moral Than Mother Teresa?

2008-01-15T04:50:00.000-08:00

In a very long piece (7823 words) in the New York Times Magazine this week,Steven Pinker makes the case that Bill Gates might be more moral than Mother Teresa––because he’s using his fortune to deal with problems like malaria in developing countries.

Well, I’m not sure I’m ready to agree. But it certainly is nice to see moral issues getting lead-story placement in the Times Magazine.

It’s also fascinating to see how the author, a Harvard professor, manages to explore moral questions in some depth, and yet manages at the same time to keep his own viewpoints remarkably hidden. We don’t know if he’s liberal or conservative, and we don’t even know if he thinks Gates or Teresa would win the morality contest.

Another of his examples is how the difference between Islamic Sudan and the secular West had near-disastrous consequences for a well-meaning schoolteacher.

And because we don’t know his position, it’s easier to accept his premise that morality can create a common ground between Left and Right, or between people of widely disparate cultures.

An example of the former:

But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other guy is acting from moral rather than venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground. One side can acknowledge the other’s concern for community or stability or fairness or dignity, even while arguing that some other value should trump it in that instance. With affirmative action, for example, the opponents can be seen as arguing from a sense of fairness, not racism, and the defenders can be seen as acting from a concern with community, not bureaucratic power. Liberals can ratify conservatives’ concern with families while noting that gay marriage is perfectly consistent with that concern.

This insight, about 90% through the article, is simply brilliant. I’ve seen it in action many times, but never so clearly expressed, except perhaps by legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky. It’s a principle that every agent of social change should internalize.

Greenwashing Increases the Corporate Credibility Gap

2008-01-12T23:06:00.000-08:00

Thoughtful article by Mallen Baker in the UK publication Ethical Corporation, discussing a number of specific companies who’ve been called on the carpet for greenwashing: claiming to be more ecological than they really are.

As one among many examples:

Shell, which said “we use our waste CO2 to grow flowers”, was in breach of the advertising code because the wording could be seen to imply that all the company’s waste CO2 was so used, not just 0.33 per cent of it.

The result of this corporate misfeasance is not surprising. As Baker notes,

According to a recent survey, 80 per cent of Britons now think that companies simply pretend to be ethical in order to sell more products. Widespread cynicism over all the claims has set in, and is hardening with every ill-judged poster or TV ad. Nobody can see an ad with flower petals floating from the exhaust of a motor car and be anything other than cynical.

Oil companies are often making green claims, which I’ve learned to treat with skepticism. Yet I admit to being fooled occasionally. I once profiled BP as the socially responsible company of the month in my Positive Power of Principled Profit newsletter on the basis of its stated policies and actions on environmental responsibility. Later, I found out that BP still has quite its share of environmental problems, even disasters.

Colorado Mainstream Journos Try to Block Alt Reporters from State House

2008-01-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

Seems to be a day for absurdist stories. First the FBI phone tapping gets shut off for nonpayment, and now this: some print journalists in Colorado want to keep “political activists posing as journalists” out of the legislature. and they’ve actually gotten a really dumb policy enacted.

Translation, as I see it: keep the bloggers and other riff-raff in the indy media out. Just as Kucinich and Paul were kept out of the New Hampshire debates, becuse neither of them follow the party line.

Let’s hope this gets reversed quickly, before it makes a lot of people look stupid.

FBI Wiretaps Shut Off for Nonpayment

2008-01-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

Big Brother is Big Broke? One more bit of incompetence from the bizarre GWB administration:

The FBI lost a whole bunch of its wiretaps for failing to pay its enormous phone bill, USA Today reports.

Of course, since a lot of government wiretaps didn’t bother with such niceties as FISA warrants, this might turn out to be a good thing.

But don’t you feel so much safer?

Needless to say, some bloggers have been having some fun with this:

Fast Silicon

Because incidents like this make it all too clear that “Big Brother” rides the short bus and frequently forgets to take his meds.

This same blogger referred to the FBI being “outed as morons.”

Then there’s this delicious satirical piece by James Dickerman on Huffington Post:

When the ACLU complained initially to the phone companies, talking about some constitutional hooey, the phone companies said that they were just trying to do their patriotic duty to help the FBI find terrorists between phone conversations about The Office. It made a lot of sense. Now though, the ACLU is saying, “Hey hey, phone companies. If you’re really so patriotic, why are you shutting down the wiretaps?” It’s a ridiculous idea that completely contradicts what the phone company is up to. Can’t the ACLU see that if the phone company had to shut down the wiretaps in order to protect our way of life?

If you want more, here’s the whole Google listing for fbi phone bill.

Oh, and wait till you see the FBI’s official excuse–one of the best examples of how not to write a press release I’ve ever seen:

The FBI is confident that the Department of Justice effort to create a Unified Financial Management System for all DOJ agencies will greatly strengthen oversight and controls over financial programs, including confidential case funds and the related costs associated with telecommunications services. While there is widespread agreement that the current financial management system, first introduced in the 1980’s, is inadequate, the FBI will not tolerate financial mismanagement, or worse, and is addressing the issues identified in the audit. Every effort is being made to either implement the recommendations or otherwise put in place corrective actions to ensure appropriate oversight.

Spin Doctoring: Lessons From Mitt Romney

2008-01-08T21:56:00.000-08:00

This exchange between Mitt Romney and John McCain, and the follow-up dialogue with George Stephanopoulosshows everything that’s wrong with the bland, I-didn’t-mean-what-I-said-and-in-fact-I-never-said-it, duck-the-real-issues treacle that U.S. presidential politics has become.

Could you ever imagine Hugo Chavez spouting that sort of junk?

I’m no fan of McCain, but Romney should be ashamed of himself–except that he has made it abundantly clear to me for years that he has no shame. He specializes in the flip-flop.

And a lot of the other candidates imitate this crap. We, the American people, ought to flat-out reject it. We should demand that our candidates say what they mean, mean what they say, and be held accountable when they screw up or retreat into this sort of meaningless blather.

Columnist Chris Kelly analyzed it like this:

And then remembers that it’s probably on videotape somewhere. So he clarifies:

I would never stoop to accusing you of doing the horrible things everyone knows you do. I’d just insinuate it.

But it’s even more remarkable than that. Mitt Romney has the power to reverse-insinuate. Sometimes when he directly says something, it turns out he’s really just hinting.

He can unsay things by saying them. Don’t ask me how that’s possible. It resists interpretation, like abstract expressionism.

BTW, I’m using “treacle” as Lewis Carroll used it–to describe a bland, unappetizing mishmash–think of it as Muzak(TM) without music. I actually do like molasses.

Busting The Myth of Eco-Friendly Hummers and Eco-Toxic Priuses

2008-01-07T01:45:00.000-08:00

Is it outright deliberate deception, bad science, or merely urban legend run amok?

The widely cited study that claims the manufacturing and transport of Prius batteries has worse environmental impact than building and driving a Hummer has serious flaws:

• It bases assumptions on the Hummer being driven for 379,000 miles, while the Prius gets retired after just 109,000 miles (and having owned many Toyotas, I can tell you that most of them are just hitting their stride at 100K); this alone is enough to completely invalidate the study
• The issues about nickel mining are taken out of context and based on 30-years-obsolete data
• In general, life-cycle issues related to cars skew 85% toward use over the vehicle’s lifetime, and only 15% to manufacturing and distribution–so even if the Prius energy consumption has a higher front-load than typical, it’s not likely to be enough to overwhelm the energy savings during the car’s useful life
• Oh yes, and no independent researchers reviewed the data

Two good articles with real data: This very readable one from the Sierra Club, and this more technical one from Pacific Institute(it’s a PDF).

I would be very curious about what economic interests were behind the original claim–which got picked up by George Will, among many others.

What the Iowa Caucus Results Mean

2008-01-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

Obama has a commanding lead.. He is a remarkable orator, a very charismatic figure. His record is not quite as progressive as his rhetoric, but if he (or Edwards) is the nominee, I would vote Democrat in November. If it’s Clinton, with her hawkish politics and defense of extremely antilibertarian legislation such as the Patriot Act, I’ll vote for Cynthia McKinney on the Green ticket.

Edwards’s second-place showing is remarkable given the way he was outspent.

The marginal voices are being squished out. Neither Kucinich nor Mike Gravel got any showing at all, and Richardson, Biden and Dodd together couldn’t muster 3 percent. Ahead of time, Kucinich threw his support to Obama in the caucuses, and Nader to Edwards. Following the results, Dod and Biden dropped out.

Speaking of outspent, the very scary Mike Huckabee ran away with the GOP side, 34% to Romney’s 25, and Romney outspent him 3:1. And Ron Paul got 3 times as many delegates as Giuliani.

Much as I love the idea that you don’t have to spend your way to the nomination, I am extremely troubled by Huckabee’s beliefs. I don’t trust him to be the president of all of us.

Social Networking for Journalists

2008-01-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

This is cool: a new social networking venture that has journalists–both mainstream and New Media (e.g., bloggers) judging the relevance of stories and filtering them to the world at large. Sort of like Digg but covering a much broader sphere, since absolutely every field has its own journalists.

The venture, called Publish 2, is fronted by Scott Karp of the very nicely done Publishing 2.0 blog.

I was not familiar with Scott, with Publishing 2.0, or with Publish2 (which was announced back in
August)–but in true “social proof” fashion–this is why search engines are less important than they used to be–I followed a link from Joan Stewart’s excellent Publicity Hound, which I’ve been reading since she interviewed me many years ago, to a long article by Howard Owens on bringing non-wired journalists up to speed, and he had a link to Publish2.

Wow, no wonder I’m falling behind on my work! The Web is just too darned seductive for an info-junkie like me. I’ve got a client project to get done today–but first, off to request an account at Publish2.

Solopreneurs Can do Web 2.0 Better than Big Corporations

2007-12-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

Whether we use Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites, email discussion groups, blogs, or even Usenet newsgroups, one of the key advantages for solopreneurs/very small companies is our ability to use social networking much more effectively than big corporations. This has been true all the way back to BBS systems in the 1980s.

We can be nimble, we don’t need committees to approve our posts, and we can be authentic. And this is one medium where dollars don’t mean as much as quality.

As someone who provides marketing consulting and copywriting to microbusinesses (many of them home-based businesses), I have been urging my clients (and the readers of my books) to pick a social medium that works for them, and work the niche since at least 1993.

E-mail discussion lists in particular have been very powerful in growing my own business from a local to an international clientele. They have allowed me to brand myself very powerfully in front of a carefully target group of prospects, and I get many clients as a result of a consistently helpful and well-informed posture.

What’s your experience?

Ben Silverman: How NOT to do PR

2007-12-26T03:36:00.000-08:00

Talk about a clueless company! First its PR department issues wrong information. Then when journalists pick up the story and cast the company in a negative light, they demand retractions saying the story was based on erroneous information–but not bothering to mention that the wrong stuff was supplied by them in the first place.

Read all the way down to see how they get their comeuppance–it’s sweet! The story in Ben Silverman’s PR Fuel is called “Shooting the Messenger“

BenMack’s Amazing ‘Poker Without Cards’

2007-12-24T00:30:00.000-08:00

Novels have been used to persuade since at least the days of Gulliver’s Travels. Books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huckleberry Finn had a major influence on 19th century social policy; in more modern times, authors from Ayn Rand to Joseph Heller to Phillip Campbell have used novels as a platform for their agenda.

Now comes a novel that teaches the very skills of persuasion–something I’m not sure has been done before (though the late Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus trilogy skirts the edges).

Advertising maven Ben Mack’s Poker Without Cards goes deeper into the human psyche than even the very provocative Daniel Quinn, and with the same kind of unexpected mind twists. Set up as a dialogue over several months between Mack’s alter ego Howard W. Campbell and a hospital psychiatrist who believes Campbell holds the key to understanding a particularly difficult case, the book is a page-turner even without trying to have any kind of real plot. The places the two men go in their discussions may change your mind to the whole idea of what’s possible and how the brain actually works–while providing a gripping, if not particularly easy, read.

And speaking of persuasion, he’s managed to persuade people who seldom write blurbs to endorse his book, including not only Wilson himself but also Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brodie (author of Virus of the Mind as well as the original MS Word) and Internet marketer supreme Mark Joyner, among others.

As a marketer, I recommend this book without hesitation to marketers who want to understand persuasion on a deeper, more personal level than you can get from nonfiction. And as a planetary citizen, I recommend it to consumers who want to understand what’s being done to them by forces they may want to understand.

Mendelsohn, the Fixer: Another UK Government Ethics Scandal

2007-12-23T22:32:00.000-08:00

While others are shocked, investigate reporter Greg Palast is not surprised that Jon Mendelsohn, chief fundraiser for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, is involved with a big scandal.

Nine years ago, Palast secretly recorded Mendelsohn–thinking he was taling to a lobbyist from Enron–bragging that he could get to anyone in British government is the price was right, even Gordon Brown (at that time in charge of the British treasury).

His question is not how a supposedly ethical party man was able to channel “£630,000 ($1.2 million) in dodgy, possibly illegal, campaign contributions to Labour”–but why Brown, who couldn’t have been uninformed about Mendelsohn’s shady history, brought him on board in the first place.

An interesting question, indeed!

Can an ‘Empty Calories’ Ad Actually Work?

2007-12-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

On one of the many Internet marketing newsletters I read, I got this link, and this teaser:

Over 82% of the people who have viewed this
video have opted in for more information.

Must be pretty powerful, eh? So I went to check it out.

What I found was a short and extremely well-produced video from one of the masters of Internet marketing, someone who has been behind the launches of a dozen or so successful “continuity” programs–where you pay a fee each month until you tell the company you want out. Most of the continuity programs out there sell membership programs; this guy sells software tools, as well as a very popular seminar series.

And he’s someone who very much understands the power of focusing on benefits, and of delivering value–and has parlayed that understanding into many millions of dollars.

So it was a shock to watch this video. It’s an exercise in non-benefit-oriented brand-building, and the call to action at the end is extremely week in my opinion–what I call “empty calories marketing.” In other words, the sort of thing you’d expect from a large ad agency that wants to make its client feel good but doesn’t care about actually generating results, and not one of the most sophisticated direct marketers on the planet.

Well, maybe he knows something I don’t. I wasn’t moved to leave my name of the squeeze page at the end, but if that copy in the e-mail blast is to believed, better than 4 out of 5 visitors do leave their names.

I’ll be curious to learn what kind of results he gets from this. And also whether other marketers disagree with me and feel the ad is effective.

Note: the link above is the affiliate link for the people who sent me the e-mail. I am not an affiliate of this program.

Mark Joyner’s Viral Experiment: Blogging Courseware

2007-12-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

Mark Joyner has deservedly enjoyed a reputation as one of the online world’s most creative and successful marketers, going back many years.

He and I have become Internet friends after he bought a copy of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First over my website and I responded with a personal note.

Now Mark is trying another viral experiment with his new blogging course: giving it to anyone who posts the following text on his or her blog.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

That’s Mark’s language. i don’t write like that. I’d just say that anything Mark is giving away is certainly worth exploring. I own three of his books (one of them, The Great Formula, even has half a chapter by me. I’m going to get my copy.

But anything Mark does is also worth studying. As a marketer, this is what I see:

• A clear attempt to go viral with the power of free
• Canned text that will show up on hundreds or thousands of websites, and in most cases without any added commentary
• My own need to add commentary, in part because I don’t like to pass off other people’s words as my own, and in part because I want to differentiate this page for the gazillion identical pages this will generate

If I were Mark, I’d have actually encouraged people to do their own text, and use his link. But that wasn’t my call to make.

For Sale: Congressional Medal of Honor-What Next?

2007-12-20T08:01:00.000-08:00

Ken MacArthur reports that he was offered a Congressional Medal of Honor in a robot-telemarketing call by the office of Congressman Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma.

He was quite rightly sickened by the for-a-fee pitch, as the Congressional Medal of Honor is supposed to be “the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress.”

Hmmm–didn’t Jesus himself throw the moneychangers out of the temple? Wasn’t the Protestant Reformation launched by people who were sick and tired of the Vatican selling indulgences that hadn’t been earned? And didn’t a certain President Clinton get in trouble for selling access to the White House and the Lincoln Bedroom? Have we learned nothing? Are we so wwilling to cheapen the name of the veterans who earned this powerful accolade?

The Mafia’s Code of Ethics

2007-12-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

Chris MacDonald’s Business Ethics Blog has a very amusing article on the Mafia’s Code of Ethics, in which he extracts business success principles from the until-recently-secretMafia’s 10 Commandments.

As one example:

#3. Never be seen with cops.” (i.e., avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest)

Chris doesn’t do permalinks on his blog, so to find this post, dated 11/11/07, use the search bar to hunt for ” Business Ethics, Mafia Style”.

Sony’s Paint-Fireworks Commercial: Marketing Lessons

2007-12-17T03:01:00.000-08:00

Watch the stunning commercial Sony made showing fireworks made of paint instead of the usual substances.

Then watch the behind-the-scenes story of the making of this commercial.

As a marketer, what conclusions can you draw? Here are a few of mine:

• It is still possible to make commercials that are also art–even make them absolutely riveting
The logistics involved in this 60-second spot are as complex as a general’s decisions on the battlefield
f you don’t have several million dollars to play with, making TV commercials may not be the best use of your marketing resources, because you cannot compete with this level of craftsmanship
If the purpose of the ad is to get me to buy this particular TV, the ad is an utter failure; at no time does it show me any benefit to this set over any other
However, if the purpose is to draw a positive association with the theater, the excitement the art of it, and the viral thrill of sharing it with your friends, then the ad is a rip-roaring success–but whether that will translate to enough additional sales to justify the costs of producing and airing the ad, I don’t know

Hillary Clinton would be a Disaster for the Democrats

2007-12-17T02:47:00.000-08:00

Who will the Democrats nominate? Let’s hope it’s not Hillary. There are thousands and thousands of people in the “democratic wing of the Democratic Party” working to nominate somebody who more closely represents the progressive viewpoint.

Hillary has made it abundantly clear that neither peace or personal liberty is particularly important to her. She has an abysmal record. She voted for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, has been quick to embrace the Bush Administration’s warmongering rhetoric on Iran, has as far as I can tell has shown no real leadership during her years in the Senate.

She has a double-whammy disadvantage. the Right, for reasons I don’t understand, demonizes and vilifies her to the point where they would come out in droves to vote against her, even if her opponent is someone they also despise–while the Left is completely uninspired by her, recognizes the betrayal of their constituency, and wouldn’t turn out to support her bid. The Dems are crazy if they nominate her.

She may get some votes from muddy thinkers who think that voting for a woman is always the progressive choice (ignoring examples throughout recent decades from Margaret Thatcher on down). She won’t get votes from true progressives.

While I might have to grit my teeth to do it, I think I could vote for any of the other Dems in the running. If it’s Hillary, I’ll bloody well vote Green. And in the primary at least, I’ll have the fun of voting for a candidate whose views are quite close to my own: Dennis Kucinich.

Voting Reforms Needed: 7-Point Plan for the US

2007-12-17T02:41:00.000-08:00

How to Reform the US Voting Process: A 7-Point Plan
Do we ever need serious electoral reform in the US (all those in parliamentary democracies can take a moment to laugh at us)! Here’s my reform platform:

• Instant runoff voting
• Allocation of presidential electoral votes proportionally in *all* states (Nebraska and Maine already do this)
• Proportional representation in Congress and state legislatures including minority parties at a 5 percent threshold
• De-marginalization of third parties (possibly through a parliamentary system)
• Participation by all recognized party candidates in party debates
• Removal of elections from the control of clearly partisan operatives such as the State Co- Chairs of one candidate’s campaign

[This actually happened both in Florida, 2000–Katherine Harris–and Ohio, 2004–Kenneth Blackwell. In both cases, the Secretary of State, in charge of the election, also happened to be the Bush state co-chair. In both cases, the question of who actually won that state will be forever under a cloud. and in both cases, the state was the crucial determinant of victory or defeat nationally. and in both cases, millions of people do not accept the “result” as valid–myself included–and therefore grant no legitimacy to the Bush II presidency.]

• And don’t let us forget the most important: voter-verified paper ballots, screened on a first pass by an optical scanner machine for a preliminary count but then hand-counted under appropriate supervision and controlled conditions, in the presence of neutral observers, observers from each party (including third parties), and the media

A New Low for Scraped Content

2007-12-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

It’s bad enough that sploggers go around lifting articles and slapping them up on splogs (spam blogs) with no paragraph breaks and a bunch of Google ads.

Now, Business Week reports on professor Philip M. Parker, “author” of 300,000 scraped books.

I am sorry, but setting a computer robot to pull data from a topic is not authorship. While as a multi-source compilation it probably doesn’t qualify legally as theft, it certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth! Some of “his” reports sell for as much as $495, too.

Yuck!

Slate’s IQ Article Doesn’t Show the Whole Picture

2007-12-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

A friend recently sent this link to a very controversial article on IQ and race by William Saletan that appeared in Slate.

I’m for reconciliation. Later this week, I’ll make that case. But if you choose to fight the evidence, here’s what you’re up against. Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70. One IQ table shows 113 in Hong Kong, 110 in Japan, and 100 in Britain. White populations in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States score closer to one another than to the worldwide black average. It’s been that way for at least a century.

I wouldn’t be so quick to reach Saletan’s conclusion. The ultra-high score among Jews, for instance, points toward the influence of culture vs. nature (and as a Jew, I can say this on the basis of some experience). The vast majority of Jewish homes are filled with books, and the people who live in them have a 3000-year-old culture of reading, learning, and testing their theories by argument, even with God. Jewish parents are more likely to take their kids to museums and cultural events regularly, to expose them to highbrow music and art (though I think Asians do so even more).

The classical music youth scene in my area, which is overwhelmingly white and Christian, runs about 40 percent Asian or Jewish. By percentage of population, it should probably be somewhere around 3 to 5 percent, combined.

I don’t think you can generalize to innate intelligence. But it would be worth looking at why such a lower percentage of parents in the normative group, and even lower percentages among non-Asian people of color, expose their children to the kinds of experiences that expand brains. I strongly suspect the reasons would be cultural. I’d love to see some studies that address that aspect.

Not to mention that the IQ test itself is widely known to have strong cultural biases toward the majority culture. And that it measures expected capability over age. I was never told what my IQ score was as a child, but I was told that it was quite high. However, I may just have been ahead of my peer group in that regard, and if I were tested today it’s quite possible that my IQ would be more typical. Because I was extremely book-smart for my age all through childhood, but others have had a chance to catch up. If I was reading at 12th grade level in 4th grade, it doesn’t mean that by the time I finished college I was still reading at three times my grade level. In fact, I don’t do well with writing written above the level of a liberal-arts grad student.

And then there’s the matter of different types of intelligences. I can argue intellectual concepts at a reasonably high level–but don’t *ever* ask me to take apart a car engine–or connect a thin wooden bat with a fast-moving round object! I’d have flunked those intelligences completely as a child and would flunk them again as a 50-year-old.

Intelligences can evolve over time. As an example, over the last 12 years or so, I’m slowly, slowly learning to declutter my physical space. It comes very hard for me, but I am making progress.

I surely hope we don’t retreat to the days of making social policy based on these sorts of data!

Combining Creative and Effective Copywriting

2007-12-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

It’s not often that I see a salesletter that not only moves me to immediate action, but also makes me laugh out loud.

Rob Toth’s letter at http://www.buynowwizard.com/report/index.php did just that.

First of all, Rob got me to his page by having a brief tip in Doug Hudiberg’s Daily Marketing Ace. I was so intrigued by the title of the free report: “Buy Now! How To Get Customers Ordering So Fast Your Bank Account May End Up With a Speeding Ticket” that I had to click on over.

Reaching the page I see the same headline and a cute cartoon that directly illustrates it.

After the cartoon and a couple of brief lines, he jumps right in with the zany, humorous tone that pokes fun at the whole genre of sales letters while pulling me further into the content:

Sorry if I seem a bit out of breath. I was just at the hospital and had to hurry back to be able to tell you about this. You definitely want to hear this.

Why was I at the hospital? I went to see a friend of mine. (I feel so bad for this). He was rushed in for surgery hours ago. Doctors say he damaged his jaw’s bone structure when it dropped to the floor hard after having read a sneak-peek copy of my new report that I sent over to him.

Like I said, I feel really bad about it. So let’s have a quick safety meeting you-and-I. Do me a favor and go grab a pillow (or one of those Costco sized bags of marshmallows should do the trick as well) … before you listen to anything more that I say (and definitely before you read my report), please place that pillow (or your baggy) under your jaw. This is for your own good.

Of course, I read all the way down.

And then he’s got a really short window to take action, with a visible, ticking clock counting the time–just a few minutes (warning, once you say yes, you have to get back to the confirmation email very quickly as well–something I think could easily backfire). Since it’s a free report and there’s nothing to lose, I took the bait. I haven’t read the report yet, but I signed up.

I understand why the back button doesn’t work, because he quite correctly wants the time limit to be real. But one thing I’d do differently if I were Rob is make it easier to share the webpage. After I said yes, I wanted to share it, but it wasn’t easy’ the back button didn’t take me there. I finally had to dig through my email trash can and find the Daily Marketing Ace that had the link.

I think this could go viral if it the you-signed-up, confirm-quickly page had some language like

“Did you have fun here? If you want to share the page with your friends, here’s the link.”

For more on great copywriting, BTW, my award-winning book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World has a huge and informative section.

Iran Gave Up The Bomb Program–and Bush Knew

2007-12-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

By now, everyone’s probably heard the news earlier in the week: not only did Iran stop pursuing its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but Bush knew this as far back as August–even though he was still claiming otherwise as recently as Tuesday

ABC put it like this:

“I was made aware of the NIE last week,” Bush said Tuesday. “In August, I think it was [Director of National Intelligence] Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.”

However today the White House is saying the President was told much more…

[White House press secretary Dana] Perino stated Bush had been told in August that Iran suspended it’s covert nuclear weapons program.

Meanwhile, Bush, Cheney et al. are still beating the drums of war against Iran. Isn’t it time to beat the drums for impeachment, instead?

A Brave Man Who Does Not Seek Revenge

2007-12-07T00:19:00.000-08:00

Bassam Aramin lost his daughter in January. Bassam is Palestinian; his daughter was killed by the Israeli army.

Most people would seek revenge–especially someone with Bassam’s background. He spent seven years in an Israeli jail, for terrorism.

But Bassam, and the small group of people he works with on Israeli-Palestinian relations, understands that more violence doesn’t bring his daughter back.

Bassam is a co-founder of Combatants for Peace, a remarkable group that brings people together on both sides–not just bystanders or even activists, but people who formerly participated directly in continuing the violence.

Bassam has a beautiful essay in the Jewish Daily Forward: “A Plea for Peace From a Bereaved Palestinian Father.” I urge you to read it.

Here’s a little piece:

I will not rest until the soldier responsible for my daughter’s death is put on trial, and made to face what he has done. I will see to it that the world does not forget my daughter, my lovely Abir.

But I will not seek vengeance. No, I will continue the work I have undertaken with my Israeli brothers. I will fight with all I have within me to see that Abir’s name, Abir’s blood, becomes the bridge that finally closes the gap between us, the bridge that allows Israelis and Palestinians to finally, inshallah, live in peace.

I heard some members of Bassam’s group, a former Israeli soldier and a former Arab terrorist (not Bassam) just days after Abir Aramin was killed, and I was deeply moved by their story of seeking peace even as their own hands had built the violence. Here’s the report on that event.

Lou Dobbs, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzales: Spin & Spin Control

2007-12-06T05:38:00.000-08:00

TV pundit and talk show host Lou Dobbs is a master manipulator. He did an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now–an arena that he clearly considered hostile territory–and he used every sleazoid right-wing media manipulation technique I’ve ever seen: interrupting, name calling, avoiding the topic with a twisted answer changing the subject, denying he said something until it was proven on tape, claiming to hold a high standard only to be caught out on fact-checking issues, demanding to be allowed to finish the question but not granting his interlocuters the same courtesy…and plenty more. This interview demonstrates a lot of what’s wrong with “punditocracy.” Oh yes, and he cleverly started the interview by focusing on areas that his audience would actually agree with. But most of his hour focused on immigration, and especially on exposing his rather bizarre sources for his politics on that issue.

Fortunately, Goodman and Gonzales were up to the challenge and kept him honest–territory that seems, from listening to the interview, to be terra incognita: unknown.

I particularly liked Juan Gonzales’ response here:

LOU DOBBS: What in the world is your point?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’m getting to my point, but give me the time to do it. We have time on this show, unlike—we don’t do soundbites here, alright?

Go to the link and don’t just read the transcript. Listen or watch. Listen or watch, and examine this interview through the lens of media manipulation by a right-wing punditocracy that doesn’t want to give air to opposing views, makes up facts when the real ones are inconvenient and resorts to personal attacks when nothing else seems to be working.

Lou Dobbs embodies much that is wrong with contemporary journalism–but Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, and the entire Democracy Now staff (which does an amazing job digging up news that doesn’t make the mainstream media, five whole hours a week), embody much of what is right.

Ferret Poop, Media Opportunities, and You

2007-12-03T05:22:00.000-08:00

Look what a skilled marketer can do to create a news angle.

A government agency, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), sent out a news release advising people to dispose of old prescription meds so they can’t be abused. Since flushing them down the toilet can have ill effects on water sources and the animals that use them,

“Mixing prescription drugs with an undesirable substance, such as used coffee grounds or kitty litter, and putting them in impermeable, nondescript containers, such as empty cans or sealable bags, will further ensure the drugs are not diverted…Ferret waste, like nearly any other form of pet waste, can be effectively used to help prevent the abuse of unused prescription drugs,” SAMHSA spokesman Mark Weber said.

And the American Ferret Association was ready to pounce! That group’s press release noted,

“The U.S. government declares ferret poop to be an effective weapon against drug abuse.”

Brilliant! So brilliant that Reuters (one of the largest newswire services in the world) picked it up.

Can you find some lessons on making yourself newsworthy?

(Thanks to Joan Stewart of PublicityHound.com for tipping me off to this story–I’ve been reading her excellent newsletter for years)

A New Discovery…And a Web 2.0 Moment

2007-11-30T19:50:00.000-08:00

I love discovering fresh, articulate voices who discuss important things. And today I discovered Mike Wagner, of OwnYourOwnBrand.com. He writes elegantly on the brand as based in the customer’s own experience. I particularly enjoyed his story of the broken minor promise that cost a hotel $30,000 in lost future revenue, and also of the receptionist who made him feel special.

What especially interests me is the way I found him. I participate fairly passively on several Web 2.0 social networking sites. This morning, I logged onto Plaxo and found that someone in one of my groups had posted a link to the Thinking Blogger Awards. And Mike was one of the five honored Thinking Bloggers. Is that cool, or what?

If you’re not starting to harness Web 2.0 in your own business, maybe it’s time to start.

One Democrat Who Understands How to be On Message

2007-11-24T22:54:00.000-08:00

A Democratic Congressional staffer wrote a piercing and widely circulated memo showing that the Republicans know how to frame things, while the Dems gather ’round the policy-wonk water cooler and talk to themselves in dull messages.

This of course is nothing new. Back in the ’90’s, Newt Gingrich unleashed the “Contract With America” (which many progressives quickly dubbed “Contract On America”, as indeed, it turned out to be).

The last really powerful Dem to be able to sound-bite a key message so it becomes a rallying cry was probably Lyndon Johnson, with his Great Society, War on Poverty, etc.

Yeah, so read the article. And read books like George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant, or other books on persuasion. While social change takes more than sloganeering, it definitely helps if you can frame the discourse. Failure to do so is why both Kerry and Gore were close enough to defeat that the election could actually be stolen from them, and why their weak and ineffectual attempts and keeping their victories fell flat.

I think it’s also interesting that what led me to this article was a blog post by copywriter Ben Settle (I read a lot of copywriting newsletters called Democrats Suck at Copywriting? Didn’t hear about this one from any of my progressive pen-pals.

Score: Homeland Security, 1; Organic Herbs, 0

2007-11-20T02:37:00.000-08:00

A friend of my daughter’s was planning to visit her at college over Thanksgiving weekend, and we took advantage of this to courier a large book. While we were at it, and since my daughter was planning to cook a big holiday meal, my wife prepared a bottle of dried organic basil, rosemary, and oregano from our garden.

And then it hit me: the student is from Venezuela. TSA or Homeland Security might think it was drugs, and my daughter’s friend could be arrested or even deported. Ummm, let’s not send the herbs. And then, in a fit of paranoia, I decided that even though we’re 50 and Caucasian, maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to bring the other bottle of herbs to my brother-in-law in Minnesota. After all, we also have to go through airport security!

I notice a few changes in my behavior. If I’m reading a magazine like Mother Jones (progressive politics), I’ll actually fold it open so the cover is not visible. And I very consciously don’t wear political t-shirts on airplanes. This is not paranoia; I’ve heard of a lot of cases of people stopped for wearing a shirt that had a harmless phrase in Arabic, or a peace message. If I’m going to be on the no-fly list, I want it to be for my writing and speaking, and not for my taste in fashion.

And TSA is consistently bizzare and inconsistent anyway. Once, my son was stopped because he had a set of tiny screwdrivers (about two or three inches long each) to adjust his oboe–like the sort of screwdrivers opticians use to tighten a pair of glasses. TSA said we couldn’t bring the set, but we could bring one of them. I asked if we could each take one, since there were four of us, and four screwdrivers. No, we had to throw the other three away. But somehow, I once discovered a week into my vacation that there was an actual knife in my carry-on bag (a remnant from a potluck where I’d brought a loaf of fresh bread), and that went through security, no problem.

Oh yes, TSA also once made me eat my leftover broccoli and rice noodles that I was planning to have for lunch hours later–at 5:30 a.m.–because I happened to put it in a cottage cheese container! I managed to choke down a few mouthfuls, but it really wasn’t my idea of breakfast–and then I had to buy lunch later. Grrrr!

So, you can rest safe and secure in the knowledge that no terrorists in either Minnesota or Ohio will be smoking our rosemary. doesn’t that make you feel much better?

On Being Wrong and Admitting It

2007-11-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I thought I’d invented the word “jargonaut.” Then I found out it already existed.

And in today’s world, there’s no excuse for my not checking. It was, after all, a pretty obvious coinage, and William Safire used it 27 years ago.

So my two lessons here are:

1. If you think you’ve invented something, check on Google. and you won’t feel like an idiot if someone beat you to it. Many good ideas were developed independently by researchers/inventors in different locations, but they didn’t have the luxury of the Internet. I do and should have used it.

2. If you make a mistake, own up to it. I made a mistake. It’s not life-threatening but I do have to backtrack to all the places where I made the claim, and correct it. And then it’ll be done.

Wonderfully Scathing Attack on “Jargonauts”

2007-11-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

Jargonaut: noun: someone who expresses him or herself in meaningless babble. Word invented by Shel Horowitz (that’s me) as I commented on Drayton Bird’s Bird Droppings blog.

He has a fabulously funny essay about jargonauts. Go read it.

Disclosure and Objectivity on IAOC Blog

2007-11-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

Finished out my week as a Guest Blogger for the International Association of Online Communicators with another look at the Blogger’s Code of Ethics, specifically the part about disclosure, differentiation.

Also a pleasant a ramble through the question of whether journalistic objectivity actually exists.

Now, if I can just get people to start posting real comments on my own blog…

They Can’t Claim Innocence: Cheney on Iraq, 1992

2007-11-17T09:58:00.000-08:00

Astounding! In a speech made in 1992, Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense under the first George Bush, outlined all the reasons why a ground war in Iraq to force out Saddam would be a really dumb idea.

Sadly, all his predictions came true in the present war. I am once again grateful to Democracy Now for digging this up. And if you go to the link above, you can actually hear Cheney say this.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about how President Bush and Vice President Cheney made the case for war in Iraq, I want to turn to comments made by Dick Cheney in September of 1992. At the time, he was President George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense. During an address at the Economic Club of Detroit, Cheney was asked why the United States didn’t bury Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. This is how he responded close to fifteen years ago.

DICK CHENEY: At the end of the war in the Gulf, when we made the decision to stop, we did so because we had achieved our military objectives — that is, when we decided to halt military operations. Those objectives were twofold: to liberate Kuwait and, secondly, to strip Saddam Hussein of his offensive military capability, of his capacity to threaten his neighbors. And we had done that.

There is no doubt in my mind, but what we could have gone on to Baghdad and taken Baghdad, occupied the whole country. We had the 101st Airborne up on the Euphrates River Valley about halfway between Kuwait and Baghdad. And I don’t think, from a military perspective, that it would have been an impossible task. Clearly, it wouldn’t, given the forces that we had there.

But we made a very conscious decision not to proceed for several reasons, in part because as soon as you go to Baghdad to get Saddam Hussein, you have to recognize that you’re undertaking a fairly complex operation. It’s not the kind of situation where we could have pulled up in front of the presidential palace in Baghdad and said, “Come on, Saddam. You’re going to the slammer.” We would have had to run him to ground. A lot of places he could have gone to hide out or to resist. It would have required extensive military forces to achieve that.

But let’s assume for the moment that we would have been able to do it, we got Saddam now and maybe we put him down there in Miami with Noriega. Then the question comes, putting a government in place of the one you’ve just gotten rid of. You can’t just sort of turn around and away; you’ve now accepted the responsibility for what happens in Iraq. What kind of government do you want us to create in place of the old Saddam Hussein government? You want a Sunni government or a Shia government, or maybe it ought to be a Kurdish government, or maybe one based on the Baath Party, or maybe some combination of all of those.

How long is that government likely to survive without US military forces there to keep it propped up? If you get into the business of committing US forces on the ground in Iraq to occupy the place, my guess is I’d probably still have people there today, instead of having been able to bring them home.

We would have been in a situation, once we went into Baghdad, where we would have engaged in the kind of street-by-street, house-to-house fighting in an urban setting that would have been dramatically different from what we were able to do in the Gulf, in Kuwait in the desert, where our precision-guided munitions and our long-range artillery and tanks were so devastating against those Iraqi forces. You would have been fighting in a built-up urban area, large civilian population, and much heavier prospects for casualties.

You would have found, as well, I think, probably the disintegration of the Arab coalition that signed on to support us in our efforts to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait, but never signed on for the proposition that the United States would become some kind of quasi-permanent occupier of a major Middle Eastern nation.

And the final point, with respect to casualties, everybody, of course, was tremendously impressed with the fact that we were able to prevail at such a low cost, given the predictions with respect to casualties in major modern warfare. But for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it was not a cheap or a low-cost conflict. The bottom-line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: Not very damn many. I think the President got it right both times, both when he decided to use military force to defeat Saddam Hussein’s aggression, but also when he made what I think was a very wise decision to stop military operations when we did.

So why, knowing exactly how things were going down, did Cheney push this idiotic war?

Self-Policing Vs. Regulation, and the Free Speech Bridge Controversy

2007-11-16T05:26:00.000-08:00

My guest blog today is on whether the Code of Ethics, and self-regulation among bloggers generally, may help keep regulators out of blogs.

Also, my previous posts on that blog have attracted comments. In my response to one of yesterday’s comments, I brought up the strange saga of the insults hurled at members of the U.S. championship women’s bridge team, who have been accused by other bridge players of treason and sedition for holding a sign at the awards ceremony in Shanghai, declaring that they did not vote for Bush.

Well, it may not be to the liking of some conservative bridge players, but it’s a long way from the definition of treason or sedition. One could actually make more of a case that bush and some of his cronies have committed treason.

Last time I checked, it as enshrined in the Constitution (specifically the First Amendment) that Americans have a right to free speech. Whether or not this was an appropriate forum could be discussed (especially in the context of the self-regulation versus outside regulation question I raised on the IAOC blog), but the right not to be silenced is guaranteed, at least in theory.

2nd Post on IAOC Blog: Do No harm

2007-11-15T01:14:00.000-08:00

Continuing the discussion of the Blogger’s Code of Ethics: an examination of what it means to minimize harm to the people you write about.

Latest issue of Ethical Corporation magazine

2007-11-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

Bunch of interesting stuff in the latest issue of the British publication Ethical Corporation, all available online.

Among the goodies:

A rather jaundiced view of Apple’s treatment of its customers and the Steve Jobs mystique–also referred to as the “reality distortion field”

A look at diamond mining giant DeBeers and its partnership with Botswana. This is a company much-criticized by activists over the years. Who knew they even had a corporate citizenship department or a board member from the Botswanan government? I’m not ready to award them a Positive Power Spotlight any time soon but I’m glad to see they’re not completely evil.

An examination of Starbucks’ relationships with its workers amid charges that the company that prides itself publicly on social responsibility is in some ways a less union-friendly climate. On one statistic–percentage o employees covered by the corporate health plan–it compares unfavorably with the notorious union buster Wal-Mart.

Blogging on Ethics for IAOC

2007-11-14T03:59:00.000-08:00

Today through Friday, I’m blogging daily on the Blogger’s Code of Ethics at the blog of the International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC).

My first post identifies which of the numerous codes of ethics we’ll be working from, and focuses on the biggest ethics issue I see: disclosure.

Why You Should Never Trust Automated Translations

2007-11-11T19:02:00.000-08:00

I use automated translations frequently to get a rough idea of what someone is talking about, and some pages of my sites offer free translation. But I know better than to rely on them for anything that really matters if I’m translating more than a single word.

Here’s an example of why. I am quite sure that a human translator would have rendered this very differently:

The material that we include has expressed you the aspirations of many people with longings to change radically the transforming processing that the art has in the human beings. If, by any motive, it not out of your current interest or possibilities of participation, a lot we will thank transfer this anxiety to your close persons.

One More Reason NOT to Trust Big Gov and Big Corp

2007-11-11T02:23:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed a retired AT&T worker, Mark Klein, who claims he actually observed AT&T diverting copies of pretty much all email–not just the foreign stuff to the National Security Agency.

In an interview Tuesday, he said the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T. Contrary to the government’s depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Klein said he believes the NSA was analyzing the records for usage patterns as well as for content.

He said the NSA built a special room to receive data streamed through an AT&T Internet room containing “peering links,” or major connections to other telecom providers. The largest of the links delivered 2.5 gigabits of data - the equivalent of one-quarter of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s text - per second, said Klein, whose documents and eyewitness account form the basis of one of the first lawsuits filed against the telecom giants after the government’s warrantless-surveillance program was reported in the New York Times in December 2005.

How did it work?

The diagram showed splitters, glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One copy fed into the secret room. The other proceeded to its destination, he said.

“This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style,” he said. “The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T’s customers but everybody’s.”

I urge you to contact your representatives i Congress and the Senate (I’ve written to mine) and tell them NOT to allow any amnesty for telecom companies that illegally turned over data to the government.

It as a crime when Google and Yahoo helped send a Chinese activist to jail by giving their records to the Chinese government and it’s a crime that AT&T turned over our e-mails to an agency not authorized to see them.

Conservative Authors Accuse Publisher of Cheating Them

2007-11-09T23:39:00.000-08:00

Most book contracts give the publisher the right to sell at a deep discount to book clubs, and to pay much less to the authors on those sales. However, the assumption is that the book club is a distinct and separate entity.

For example, if one of my publishers, Chelsea Green, sold my Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World to Book of the Month Club, I’d get lower royalties, reflecting the deep discount.

But here’s the ethics problem: The New York Times reports on a lawsuit filed by several authors against their publisher, Regnery Publishing–probably the dominant name in books for those with a conservative worldview.

The authors (Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter) accuse Regnery of essentially forming a book club of its own with the express intent of defrauding authors out of royalties due, by channeling as many sales as possible into its book club and other wholly-owned enterprises.

In the lawsuit the authors say that Eagle sells or gives away copies of their books to book clubs, newsletters and other organizations owned by Eagle “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.”

This is a rather nasty form of self-dealing, given the small share authors get even under the best of terms. (Yes, I’m a publisher. I know how much publishers have to invest in a book, yada yada–but I’m also a member of the National Writers Union and I’ve seen the way things are stacked against authors in most book deals.)

While I totally disagree with these authors’ view of world and national politics, if what they say is true, I totally support their drive to get their fair share. Selling inventory to oneself in order to pay pennies on the dollar is unethical and disgusting.

Yeah, Blogs Can Be Gorgeous–45 Great Examples

2007-11-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

OK, so I’m a word guy. I use the power of copy to inform, persuade, and hopefully make a difference. When I’m forced to create a layout, it tends to be barebones–the minimum work necessary to get my words to appear.

Still, I have a lot of respect for good design as a component of good marketing. Here’s a link to 45 prize-winning blog designs. Most of them are easy to rest your eyes on, eye-catching, and still easy to read.

If my assistant and I can figure out something easy, maybe this blog will start looking nicer. But then again, I’m a jeans-and-t-shirt kind of a guy, so maybe not.

The Oprah Example: How A Class Act Accepts Responsiblity

2007-11-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

Hey, big CEOs with ethics problems–learn a lesson from Oprah Winfrey. Yes, Oprah, the talkshow queen of daytime television.

She started a leadership school for girls, in South Africa. When she discovered that 15 girls accused a female staffer of sexual assault, she first immediately removed the suspect from contact with the children (and then, noting a climate of fear and intimidation still existed, removed all the dorm matrons and replaced the with faculty), quietly initiated an investigation (in conjunction with law enforcement officials), brought in American experts to help, made several visits to the school, provided counseling and support, etc.

As soon as an arrest had been made, she called a press conference, outlined the steps she had taken, conveyed deep, sincere apologies, and outlined preventative measures for the future.

Here’s a piece of her statement:

This has been one of the most
devastating if not the most devastating experience
of my life. But like all such experiences,
there’s always much to be gained and I think
there’s a lot to be learned. And as Mr. Samuel
said, we are moving forward to create a safe, an
open, and a receptive environment for the girls
and I’m also very grateful to their parents and to
their guardians and their caretakers for their
continued trust and their support in me and also
in the school.
What I know is, is that no one, not the
accused, nor any persons can destroy the dream
that I have held and the dream that each girl
11
continues to hold for herself at this school. And
I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to make
sure that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for
Girls becomes the safe, the nurturing, and
enriched setting that I had envisioned. A place
capable of fostering the full measure of these
girls’ productivity, of their creativity, and of
their humanity. It will become a model for the
world. With each girl who graduates, we will show
that the resilience of the human spirit is
actually stronger than poverty, it’s stronger than
hatred, it’s stronger than violence, it’s stronger
than trauma and loss, and it’s also stronger than
any abuse. No matter what adversity these girls
have endured in their short lives, and let me
assure you, they have endured a lot, their lights
will not be diminished by this experience.

Joan Stewart of PublicityHound.com has a good piece on this.

Kucinich Way Ahead in DFA Poll

2007-11-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

In a field of nine candidates within the Democratic Party, Dennis Kucinich, arguably the most progressive of the bunch (with the possible exception of Mike Gravel), finished well ahead of the pack in a straw poll conducted by Democracy for America, with 31.97 percent.

The only other “candidate” to get more than 20 percent was Al Gore, who is not actually running at the moment: 24.77 percent. Edwards and Obama were next, with 15.6 and 13.86, respectively. Hillary Clinton, probably the most conservative of the Democrats, was a very distance fifth with just 4.21 percent.

This organization is definitely on the left edge of the Democratic Party, but there’s a very important message to candidates here: Democrats cannot take the Left for granted. Our support has to be earned. Kucinich, with consistent progressive positions on every issue I can think of, has earned that support–and he carried 41 states in the poll. Those who voted for a more centrist but still liberal candidate they feel could win went to Gore, Edwards and Obama, and not to Clinton.

I have to say, it was a thrill to vote for Kucinich in the 2004 primary (and to hear him speak at the University of Massachusetts that year). The last time there was an opportunity to vote for a serious candidate in one of the two major parties whose positions were so much like mine was for George McGovern–and I wasn’t yet old enough to vote!

I fully intend to vote for him again in the 2008 primary. he is a man of great courage and conviction:

A consistent and forthright opponent of the existing war in Iraq (right from the beginning, in 2002), the apparently forthcoming war in Iran, and the highly repressive Patriot Act
A visionary who has proposed a Cabinet-level Department of Peace and a European-style single-payer health plan
A man so unafraid to kowtow to the administration that he has introduced an impeachment resolution against Cheney and has promised to do the same to Bush
A man who sees the connections of energy policy, war, megacorporatism, and their impact on human rights, social justice, and economic well-being
To learn more about his campaign, or to get involved, visit his website.