Can Wal-Mart ever do the right thing?

This is a reprinting of my quarterly column Eye on the Pie, Spring 2006--but I'm gonna start writing again!

In the classic choice, people almost always pick the bad news to hear first—they want to cut to the chase. But when the bad news is Wal-Mart, Philip Morris and Coors, unless the good news is “what is the answer to the question which three multi-national corporations are destined to go out of business in the next year,” let’s face facts, you don’t want to hear it.

So what is the good news really? It’s that socially responsible business is hot hot hot. Every company in America is scrambling to prove that that it contributes to the commonweal. And the bad news is, you guessed it, this includes Wal-Mart, Philip Morris and Coors.

Or is it bad? Let’s examine the trends and the opportunities here. Other than the tardy dawning of the Age of Aquarius, it would seem that the main reason for corporate America to go ethical is a market segment called LOHAS.

According to Wikipedia, LOHAS stands for Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability and describes a $227 billion, 68 million person segment of the American marketplace, 32.3% of all American adults.

This fascinating group of people defies traditional market categorization—they cannot be defined by age, gender, education, or money alone. What defines them is their values, what they want to have happen in the world and how they want their consumer dollars to drive what wants to happen.

No company better meets the needs of this market segment than Whole Foods, whose 100s of stores across the country stock organic and sustainably harvested foods, body care products and, increasingly, clothing and household products.

After decades of double digit growth in the American economy, companies like Safeway and Wal-Mart have developed their own organic lines to go onion to onion with Whole Foods, local natural foods co-ops and Trader Joe’s.

And this is good news, right? This is what we wanted to happen—consumers would make it clear that they wanted environmentally sustainable, naturally pure products and giant corporations would eventually have to respond, right?

Well, maybe. According to Hijacked: Businesses for Social Responsibility by the ubiquitous megaphone-wielding Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Washington-based Corporate Crime Reporter, in an effort to tarnish their terrible images, giant massively unethical corporations including Philip Morris tobacco holding company have taken over a once legitimate business group called Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Soon it seems, the phrase social responsible business may have no meaning whatsoever. If all businesses claim this, how do you discern from whom and what to buy?

The real good news may be that the very qualities that make a member of the LOHAS market buy organic, make them want the product to actually be what it says it is. Accordingly to market research, people who shop this way defy traditional marketing strategies. They mistrust all advertising, read newspapers and books and make their own decisions on the basis of what they believe about what is true.

Invariably, that may leave Wal-Mart, Coors and Philip Morris out in the cold.

©Sara S. Nichols, 2006

Sara is a founding partner of the Gross National Happiness Team, a business that gives away 50% of its sales to organizations promoting peace and justice.

Pray for George

This a reprinting of my quarterly column--Eye on the Pie which appears in Rudolf's Diner. Please pass it on and Pray for George.

I am beginning to believe that we need to start a national movement called “Pray for George” in which we concertedly pray for George Bush to be a better President. The reasons are straightforward: first of all, he is our President for the next three years, like it or not (not) and it would literally be better for the world if he would behave better/differently; secondly, it is painful and divisive to hold so much hatred and anger towards anyone, least of all the most important world leader—it is not a peaceful decision; thirdly, it would be useful to show the nation that we can pray too, that prayer is not reserved for people who hate gay marriage.

The first reason is the hardest for people who aren’t fans of the President to swallow: “Why would I want to pray for George Bush to be a better President? I don’t want him to be President at all. I don’t want for him to succeed. I don’t want him to improve. I want this administration to pull the Republican party down the toilet with it for a generation.”

Alrighty then. But do you really mean what you say? Do you really want things to get worse before they get better? If you could snap your fingers and George Bush could suddenly improve the environment, create a real universal health care system and establish world peace, wouldn’t you want him to, even though he’s George Bush? I’m not saying that this is a likely scenario. But I am saying that by freezing in our collective conscious and unconscious minds a vision of George Bush that is evil, incompetent and unsuccessful, we enshrine that George Bush and insure that that is whom he shows up as each and every day.

Second reason, closely related to the first: it is painful to hate someone as much as many of us hate George Bush. To have a significant portion of the world population filled with bitterness, bile and hatred at our leader is really terrifying. Ghandi said it best, “be the change you want to see.” So it starts here with us—praying for George will be healing for us all.

Actually it is easy with this man—he’s so clearly human. He’s so clearly flawed. He’s so clearly in over his head. I’m not asking you to forgive or pray for Dick Cheney—we no doubt should, but somehow “Pray for Dick” has a different ring and it might get some of our email diverted by anti-porn programs.

Third reason, which probably has the most cynical appeal, although I don’t personally mean it that way: show middle America that we can pray too. This proposed action really performs a bit of political jiujitsu on the Christian right. It takes up a bit where Martin Luther King, Jr. left off. Pray for George is there to help the President be the best that he can be. Pray for George out Christians the Christians by loving the man we have hated most (well almost the most, see Pray for Dick discussion above).

Let’s flesh the Pray for George campaign out a bit. How would it work? Set up a website at www.prayforgeorge.com (I just bought the domain name, $8.95 at www.godaddy.com, I am telling you) which has a prayer kit for any individual, church or organization that wants to pray for George. Also buttons, t-shirts, hats, etc. Spread the word through existing churches, networks, viral email campaigns.

There are those among us who fret about a couple of other factors: won’t Pray for George distract people from “real” action like working to change the Congress? Won’t Pray for George be a diversion from the real issues? I argue no. For one thing, the amount of media attention this campaign is likely to get once it takes off will significantly help those efforts.

More importantly, this campaign might be able to open some ears to hear our message. When you proceed from love instead of hate, people who haven’t been your allies relax, let down their guard and can hear you. The best kept secret in American politics is that Americans agree on far more than we disagree on. We have a wealth of shared values. We have a wealth of shared experiences. We have a wealth of shared dreams.

Yet partisan handlers highlight and distort our differences so we're unlikely to ever get close enough to "the other" to find out that, hey, they're actually remarkably similar to us.

Like virtually all Americans, we share a core set of values, including: respect, responsibility, fairness, and belief in a greater power. We all want:
• The best for our children
• Plentiful and safe food, water, and air
• Peaceful and livable communities with good schools
• Meaningful jobs, businesses, and opportunities for advancement
• Freedom to make our own decisions

Let’s pray for George so that we can hear each other clearly.

So here is my prayer for George:
I know there is only one power of love within and without us that connects us all.
It runs through us and in us and around us.
Where there is the appearance of dischord, there is only harmony.
Where there is the appearance of violence, there is only peace.
Where there is the appearance of incompetence and chaos, there is only divine right order.
We are swimming in that harmony, peace and divine right order.
And we call it love.
And we call it God.
And we call it good.

And I know that I am a unique manifestation of this power of love.
And as I know this for me, I know this for George Bush, President of the United States of America.
George is a powerful manifestation of this love and power for good that connects us all.
Where George appears to be incompetent, he is capability itself.
Where George appears to be warlike, he is peace itself.
Where George appears to be mean-spirited, his heart is open, gracious, loving and good; He wants the best for his people.

And he produces the best for his people.
Since there is only one mind and George is a product of that one mind,
George has access to all that mind knows.
George has always believed that his top advisor is Jesus the Christ.
George’s heart is now open so that he can listen to the Christ.
George’s body is imbued with Christ consciousness, the Christ of love, the Christ of forgiveness, the Christ of peace, the Christ of charity, the Christ of abundance, the Christ of mercy.

And with this Christ consciousness and the awareness of his role in the world, comes a call to action:
A call to change.
A call to love.
George’s spirit is courageous and true and able to manifest the true spiritual teachings of this consciousness.
George lives and embodies these changes.
George is peace, order, capability and harmony itself.
He is a true leader.

And so I am profoundly humbled and grateful as I utter these words.
I know them to be true.
I know them to be so true and so right and so good that I weep with joy.
I weep with joy at the knowledge that God has a better world
already built for us then the one we think we live in.
I weep with joy at the knowledge that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And so, knowing that it has been done and that George and the world are good, I ask only that this good be revealed to us right here and right now.

I take my hands off it and let it go, knowing that my word spoken into the law of God will make it so.

And so it is. Thank you infinite spirit. Amen.

Medicare hell

First blog in over a month. I am consumed with getting my business off the ground and passing the public financing of elections bill through the California legislature and can't seem to fit the daily blog into my busy routine.

Howsomever.

I need to observe that my pharmacist, Lloyd Ouye of Ouye's Pharmacy on 10th street in Sacramento, one of the few real conscientious neighborhood pharmacists around, now has a recording on his machine that says that due to the new Medicare changes, all prescription drug fulfillment, no matter who is paying for them, will be delayed by 2 to 3 days!@#

I try and try not to be this cynical, but it's impossible to believe anything other than that the Republicans are trying to destroy public support for Medicare by making the prescription drug benefit a nightmare for everyone.

Will it work? I hope not. I hope it backfires big time. Write your congressman. After I talked to him, Lloyd called his (Doris Matsui of Sacto) for the first time.

Rumors about Lieberman

So there's some sort of rumor flying about in Washington that President Bush is considering appointing Senator Joe "I lost Florida" Lieberman to be Secretary of Defense (or at least, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) treated it as a serious possibility in his appearance on Air America today.

If Lieberman would even consider this appointment, I consider him a traitor to his party. We have no reason to think he'd be a good Sec'y of Defense and it would just hand the Republicans an opportunity to have a high profile Democrat to receive populist anger against the war.

Air America & Mark Maron

Air America has grown in the year and a half it's been on from airing on 15 stations to some 84 stations across the country. Its shows are beating right-wing talk shows in many many markets.

Here in Sacramento, Air America started out on Talk City am1240 and then grew so popular that it outgrew its bandwith and moved to am 1320, now christened "Sacramento's left station." But Talk City did so well with leftwing talk that it stayed "Sacramento's progressive station" so now we have two progressive talk radio stations in Sacramento instead of none--great stuff.

The growth of progressive talk radio is easy to explain. The real appeal of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly is populist. But how can you get a good populist rant against a federal government run by people you totally supported and helped elect? Answer: you can't.

What's gonna be your rant? It's like John Stewart said when covering last year's Republican convention, "after 4 years of controlling the white house, the Congress and the federal judiciary, we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it any more!" It doesn't work.

If Kerry had been elected, Air America might not be sitting so pretty, but no conspiracy theories here.

My one beef against Air America is that they've apparently fired "Morning Sedition" (weekdays from 6-9am) host Mark Maron. He is in his last days on the air. In my opinion, that show is fantastic--very funny and informative. Mostly funny. It has a lot in common with the daily show, only more like classic drive-time radio buddy stuff. I enjoy interviews with their reporter from "Planet Bush," and the daily faxed "Marching orders from the Streisand Compound" especially.

If you too will miss Mark Maron, or if you just want to make me happy. Call or write Air America at the email and numbers below and urge them to reconsider this decision.

1-866-303-2270 sedition@airamericaradio.com

The Trial Lawyers Get Smart

The Consumer Attorneys of California, as they are known to me, or "trial lawyers" as they are known to the world, finally got smart enough to start doing some affirmative public relations for the civil justice system.

And they enlisted two of my favorite people in the world to get the job done: my husband, Bill Magavern, and my close friend, Anne Bloom.

If you go to their website Protect Civil Justice, you can click on these wonderful 30 second spots that have running across the state and see Bill and Anne speaking from the heart about the importance of our civil justice system.

Too late for some of us, the trial lawyers in California have woken up to realize that the organized campaign against our civil justice system has worked. People across the country have gone to the polls and voted to abridge or give up their Seventh Amendment constitutional right to a jury trial.

This ad campaign shows the folly of that kind of thinking and how the civil justice system protects us all. Plus Bill and Anne look really cute on screen...

Food For Thought

I am simultaneously encouraged and worried by this blog posting by Dan Weintraub last
Monday on Clean Money. Dan makes the point that Democrats receive more corporate
money than Republicans and later says that the left supports public financing of elections
because it will allow Republicans to vote more freely. While this may be partially true,
the main reason I support public financing of elections is to allow the majority of Democrats
to vote more freely. I don't see the point of having Democrats in control of the legislature
if they are not going to be free to vote like Democrats. Consistently a rump group of
Democrats votes against bills to take poisons out of our air and water, make products more safe,
bring down the high price of prescription drugs, and extend health care coverage in a
meaningful way. I agree with Weintraub though in one major respect: public financing
of elections is an idea whose time has come--Sara

A Weblog by Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub
November 14, 2005

Clean Money

Supporters of the California Clean Money Act -- public financing for political campaigns -- plan to make a big push for their bill, AB 583, when the Legislature reconvenes in January, and they say they're looking for a new, dedicated source of revenue to fund it.

Here are my thoughts.

First, while I have never been a big fan of public financing, I think its time may have come. The defeat of Prop. 75 last week suggests that public employee union money will continue to be the primary source of funding for California Democrats for the foreseeable future. To a lesser degree, Republicans are prisoners of corporate money. While we often compare the public employee money to corporate money as if they were opposite sides of the same equation, they are not quite that. Corporate money tends to be from a much more diverse set of interests with a variety of goals. No one company has nearly the influence on Republican legislators that, say, the CTA has on Democrats. And business gives more to Democrats than the unions give to Republicans. Much of the time, when the public employee unions are pushing something in their narrow interest, almost nobody is pushing back on the other side. Did any individual company oppose the pension bills that went through a few years ago? The state, its people and its businesses would be better off if we find a way to elect Democrats who feel free to say no to the public employee unions. And the only way to do that is to wean them off that money, to match the union money with our money. The funny thing is that public financing has always been pushed by the left, as a way to free Republicans from corporate money. But in California I think it might play out differently.

For the revenue source, I'd suggest a 1 percent increase in the bank and corporation tax. (That's one percent of what they pay already -- not a percentage point on the rate, which would be a much larger increase in the total tax.) The corporations tax now brings in about $10 billion a year. A one-percent increase would yield about $100 million. I'd use that money to finance legislative races. Again, the business community, which normally squawks at both tax hikes and public financing of campaigns, should like this idea. It would be money well spent.

As for the method of distributing it, I'd prefer something as decentralized as possible. I like the "patriot dollars" concept that proposes using individual vouchers to allow each citizen or registered voter to direct his or her chit to a candidate of their choosing. I think this method has the added bonus of potentially re-engaging the public in government and civic affairs. When you feel like you have some money at stake, even a small amount, you tend to pay closer attention. The downside of this method is that each chit would be so small that, in practice, candidates would have to be well known before they could persuade citizens to transfer their chits, which gets us right back to where we are today. So another method might be more practical.

Many people would like to couple public financing with new limits on union and corporate dollars. That wouldn't break my heart. But I am philosophically opposed to such limits because I think they violate the right to free speech, and I think they just drive that money to hidden corners where it is more difficult to track. I would simply add the public money to the mix and hope it gave legislators some freedom from their normal impulse to kow-tow to contributors.

Finally, I would put a sunset on it. If all it did was add to the money-raising arms race, you'd want it to go out of business on its own rather than waiting for lawmakers to repeal it.

They're Just Crazy Enough to Do it

Here's the thing: I've been encouraged by the chaos in the Republican party lately. The environmentalist House Republicans defections in the amendment to the budget deal on drilling the Alaska Natural Wildlife Reserve was a thing of beauty.

And then I get waves of perverse excitement over how deeply in debt the nation is--clearly anyone, ANYONE would see that it is time to balance the budget or at least lessen it by repealing the Bush tax cuts.

But then I read, as I did yesterday, a front paid story in the relatively liberal Sacramento Bee in which the entire "objective" tone is to make clear that the real problem with our federal government is the ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS!!!! Sorry to use the large caps like someone who is receiving radio signals through his teeth and believes that there is a conspiracy to narrow mayonnaise jar necks but c'mon, people (and by this I mean reporters, so it's stretching it to say people), let's not report this as if it were received truth, that the reason our budget is in trouble is entitlements!

I can't believe I'm even having to say this: the budget was fine after Clinton left office. It became far less than fine when Bush pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens followed by sending more and more of our poorest citizens to war in Iraq with attendant massive expenditures for the benefit of Halliburton. My God, I have avoided having a conspiracy theory about this but I guess it's an avoidable conclusion now: the Republicans appear to have deliberately driven us into debt so as to use it as an excuse to cut health care, and programs for the poor and they are so determined to do it that they are willing to use Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to cut them.

Gunfighter a Brilliant Tour de Force

This just in: time and space are mere illusions. So go back in time and cross space to see Gunfighter: A Gulf War Chronicle directed by Katie Laris at the Santa Barbara City College, running October 21st through November 5th.

I can attest that the closing night performance, while by all accounts not as strong as some of the previous performances, will be fabulous. Laris' staging is nearly flawless: an extraordinary multi-media montage of CNN-footage from the first gulf war, riveting apache aircraft movement and sites and actual footage of people on-stage being interviewed by the ubiquitous on-stage tv reporter Heidi dogging the soldiers for a story. But the truth of the production is in the sum of its parts: the music, the video, the performances of the central characters all fit together perfectly. It was of a production level almost never achieved at the community theater level (and SBCC is a community theater, not a college theater, the actors are cast from a wide pool and paid).

The play takes place during the first Gulf War and shortly thereafter and is the true story of a Lt. Colonel who took the fall for faulty equipment in a friendly fire incident. I believe the play premiered in Sacramento at the River Stage at Cosumnes River College (which is incidentally, consistently the best community theater in Sacramento, sorry B Street...).

In keeping for my theme from this week, my only criticism would have been the reaction of the closing night audience. You could tell they were riveted to the stage, but it was more as if they were watching tv than at a theater performance--huge laugh lines were passed over by a passive crowd, opportunities to gasp were missed. Still, they clapped loud and long at the end and clearly loved it. It's a shame one has to drive 400 miles from Sacramento to see such high quality theater.

Nodding at the She-Mob

What a pleasure to be at the release party for She-Mob's new album, Not in My World, this past Saturday at the Starry Plough in Berkeley. Mostly, I just love the idea that I, a middle-aged mother of two, am friends with a punk-rocker: Suki O'Kane.

Of course, not completely coincidentally, it turns out that She-Mob is populated by, specializes in and thrives on middle-aged women. How many punk rock bands can say the same?

Watching them play their "album" "cuts" backwards first the "second side" of the disk then the "first side" was often not unlike life itself in that there were, especially in the last (hence played first) slower more esoteric songs, long stretches in which one kept waiting for whatever was going to happen to happen. And then one would realize (and this is the life part): oh! this IS what's happening. It's never going to be more than this. This is it. And then one relaxed and really loved it.

But the most surreal moments came towards the end when they got to their most head-banging thrashy pieces and were really tearing up the stage. Cut to an audience that could have been downloaded from a jazz club and superimposed on this punk scene. Polite nodding, slight tapping of feet, and nursing of drinks was the order of the day.

To hell with that thought Lisa Mennet and I. We'll change the order of the day. We get up, virtually stepping on mellow Berkeley-esque types sprawled on the floor and begin wildly dancing, thrashing ourselves around--the music demanded it. The music wasn't happy without us doing that. We had no choice.

The audience responded. Oh, not the way we had hoped, by leaping to their feet and thrashing with us. No, they responded by nodding, smiling, enjoying the show. Obviously we, painfully overdressed middle-aged women (well, I was, Lisa was understated), were part of the she-mob. Obviously, we were part of the show. Yay, She-Mob! Good show.

Yes. Yay, She-Mob! The songs were clever, fun and well-done. The music, particularly Suki's inspired rhythms, was great. These girls have been written up in the Village Voice. They're the real thing. Buy the disk. Have a listen at their website: http://shemob.com/.

Hurray for CNA!

When all is said and done, the turning point in being able to beat this special election came when Arnold made the mistake of attacking the California Nurses Association.

He shoulda asked SEIU first: you just do not pick on CNA. They may seem like a small insect of a union, that you can squash like a bug, but they're not--they're the feistiest, most ornery, most tendacious group of (mostly) women you'd ever "like" to meet. He should not have bragged about "always kicking their butts" ...or called them a special interest ... or ejected one of them from sitting at a movie premier he organized.

And CNA joined forces with another group to be reckoned with on the California scene: the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. For years this Nader-derived group has been giving as good as it got. And its Arnold Watch played a pivotal role in changing the water the voters were swimming in in this no-so-very-special election.

Together CNA and FTCR had the guts to attack Arnold when the rest of the Sacramento insiders were still fawning over him and hoping to here the secrets of his orange tanning glow. Once these Davids pummelled Goliath to the point that he shed blood, the rest of the cowards took notice and began coming after him with all they had. (oops, pretty violent imagery for me: I'm trying to practice peace--forget all that: CNA and FTCR had the guts to LOVE where others merely HATED, that's what I'm trying to say).

Okay, this is falling apart, but what I'm trying to say is Hurray for CNA! You did it again. The People of Cah-lee-for-knee-a thank you.

BILL MAGAVERN'S BALLOT RECOMMENDATIONS, NOVEMBER 2005

Here are my husband's famous ballot recommendations for how to vote in the special election in California, Tuesday, November 8th--it's pretty easy this time. Please forward them to anyone who think might need them:

From Bill:
Yes, the very existence of this election is idiotic, of benefit only to the state’s small cadre of campaign consultants, but don’t let that keep you from voting. If turnout is low, some of the idiocy might get written into law.

So, on the off chance any of you have not already voted, here are my brief thoughts:

73 – NO

Sure, it would be great if minors discussed all important life decisions with their parents, but having government require it is not going to make it happen.

74 – NO

With all the real problems in our schools, this is the best Schwarzenegger could come up with?

75 – NO

Funny how this initiative does nothing to address the ability of large corporations to spend money on politics without the consent of their shareholders, or to replace private campaign funding with public funding. It’s an obvious effort to tilt the political playing field even more toward the wealthy and big companies, and to dry up one of the only sources of political money for progressive candidates.


76 – NO, NO, NO

This is the worst measure on the ballot, a gubernatorial power grab that would make a dysfunctional budget process even worse by empowering a minority in the Legislature to stand in the way of solutions. The goal of 76 is to facilitate the erosion of needed social programs, especially for education, while making sure the rich get to keep all of their precious tax cuts. Even programs that are funded by user fees rather than taxes – like most of our clean air and water programs – could be mindlessly cut under this proposal, to satisfy a rigid formula.

77 – NO

It pains me to oppose this one, because we really need sound redistricting reform. Districts that are more competitive and representative of actual communities would benefit the public interest. Unfortunately, this proposal is badly flawed. It would draw new districts mid-decade, based on the obsolete 2000 census data, simply for blatant political advantage. New districts should be drawn every decade, right after the census, which had been the practice nationwide until Tom Delay’s criminal intervention in Texas. And having voters then decide on the new districts, at the same time as elections are being held in those new districts, is really harebrained.


78 – NO

79 – YES

These initiatives both address prescription drug prices. 78 was written by the big drug companies who are spending tens of millions of dollars to obfuscate the facts. 79 was written by consumer advocates. The key difference is that 79 would use the state’s purchasing power to keep drug prices down, while 78 relies on voluntary discounts.

80 – YES

Enron (you may remember them as “the smartest guys in the room”) and other energy companies sold our politicians on the canard that the magic of the market would bring down electricity prices. It didn’t exactly work out that way, so now a consumer group is trying to re-regulate electricity to make sure the market can never again be manipulated and the state held hostage by greedy amoral sharks. The opposition’s argument that 80 would hurt renewable energy is bogus. 80 would actually accelerate the current clean energy requirement, while allowing for future increases.

E for Treasurer

Our daughter E (almost 9) is running for Treasurer of her Elementary School Student Council. It was tough for her and her brother to work out who should run. Strategically it was decided that a 4th grader had a better shot at Treasurer than a 5th grader, so she ran and her brother N is her campaign manager.

After a week as her campaign manager, he decided to file to run against her for Treasurer. He wasn't going to tell her and asked me to sign the document authorizing his campaign. I demurred. I suggested that he think it through, "is this really how a good campaign manager behaves?" I asked.

He murmured something about Karl Rove (I am not making this up) and ran from the room.

When he returned, cooler heads prevailed. He decided to run for Secretary instead, even though at first it seemed boring, but he had heard about when I was Secretary of the student council in college and wrote really funny minutes. He thought he could write really funny minutes too. His friend E.E. could help him.

"Me and E.E. are infamous, Mom," says N.

"Don't you mean famous, N-----?" says his sister.

"No, E-----, I mean infamous. It all stemmed from the incident with the wasabi cashews," he bragged.

The wasabi cashew incident (hereinafter WCI) involved trying to pass wasabi-laden cashews (available in the fruit and nut aisle of Trader Joe's) off as sugared cashews. Apparently some of the reactions were x-treme.

Later, despite his infamy, he decides not to run for Secretary afterall. He throws himself into his sister's campaign. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that I throw myself into the campaign.

I kick into high gear:
"We gotta figure out your base, E-----; You're running against 7 candidates but how many of them have a chance?"

We carve up the numbers, map out a strategy. N---- says this guy D----- is the guy to beat. He's very popular among the 5th graders--he can pull like 50-60 votes. We figure we need 110 votes to win.

N is close with the leading candidate for President's little brother. Together, the brothers arrange a sit-down between their sisters to see if an agreement can be reached. If all goes well, E goes into Friday's election with the potential of serious coattails.

Caught in a perennial struggle for the dignified politician ("E, I don't think you realize the slogan is designed to attract other people to vote for you, it doesn't matter whether you like it.") , E rejected what she judged more frivolous sounding slogans concocted for her like "don't be mean, I'll watch your green" for the least sober slogan we could talk her into:

"EM for Treasurer: Honor, Trust...Fun!

At this point I'm paying more attention to this election than the Special Election to be held November 8th in California.

The "other" Sara Nichols

The time has come to publically acknowledge the other Sara Nichols. I've never met her, but she's increasingly becoming a factor in my life by being in slightly overlapping circles, and generally more high profile than I.

I am an attorney and am politically active and progressive. The other Sara Nichols (spelled exactly the same way) is an environmental attorney and is also politically active and progressive.

For most of the time that I lived in Washington, DC this other Sara Nichols lived in Philadelphia. She ran for Congress in like 1994 as a sacrificial lamb candidate against some suburban Republican congressman (took like 38 points off him--I think it was the election where the Republicans took the House). I was in the media a lot more than I am now, and it was understandable that we would occasionally get mistaken for each other in print.

To make matters even more confusing, around the same that I moved to Sacramento, the other Sara Nichols moved to California too, Los Angeles, to be precise!

Then for a long time, nothing earthshattering, although it would occasionally come up and once my husband met her at an environmental meeting in L.A--I can't remember whether he said they talked about me, or whether he confirmed that she is aware of my existence.

But now, with me pretty much out of the limelight for a time, laying low, all of a sudden there's a spate of mix-ups.

Recent instances of Sara Nichols mix-ups:

1) At a dinner party of progressive legislators at my home, Senator Liz Figueroa (running for Lt. Governor of California) takes me aside. "I understand we have a mutual friend," she says conspiratorily. I give up, "who?" She says a woman's name. I stare at her blankly. "The fundraiser in LA?" she says. Again, I stare at her blankly. "Liz," I finally confess, "I have no idea who or what you're talking about." She sweetly explains. Long story short, it turns out that this fundraiser told her that Sara Nichols endorsed Liz's opponent, Senator Jackie Speier. And Liz was baffled and little hurt by this.

At once, the light dawns, "your fundraiser contact must mean the other Sara Nichols," I babble excitedly. "She's in LA, she's a prominent environmental lawyer, something of a sought after endorsement. It wasn't me." (I then hastened to point out how grateful I was that Figueroa even cared who I endorsed and that I would never endorse Jackie Speier over her. This is true--I think that Liz Figueroa is a fabulous public servant who really cares about the right things and I wholeheartedly do support her for Lt. Governor).

2) A candidate for Assembly in LA recently asked me to add my name to a letter vouching for her environmental credentials--I suspect that she wanted me because she had my credentials confused with those of my doppelganger.

and

3) today, probably the least interesting, but just to show you that the incidents are increasing in frequency, a LA-based statewide organization whose board I recently got appointed to recently informed me that the reason I wasn't getting key emails was that they had me confused with Sara Nichols.

I don't blame them. I have me confused with Sara Nichols too....

Good news, bad news

I'm trying to blog every single day. The result? I often will have very little to say. Some snippets. Last night I hosted an alumni function in the common house of my cohousing community. Everyone in the greater Sacramento area was invited. The RSVPs weren't to me, but to the Reed College alumni office. They were shared with me shortly before the event.

My heart leapt as I saw the name of my close friend & vital organ Harry Mersmann on the list. Wow! Harry's coming all the way from Stockton. It'll be so good to see him. I wonder why he didn't reply directly to me? Probably wants to surprise me.

Yesterday, while carefully slicing pears for the fruit & cheese tray, I learned that of all the RSVPs, one had sent their regrets that day, Harry. He would not be in attendance. I felt sad and immediately wondered if he would have come if I had contacted him upon learning of his intentions? Would he have come if he had contacted me?

Over and over I learn that we can't underestimate the value of direct communication between people (no matter what the relationship). In the hubbub (what kind of a word is hubbub? is it onomatopoetic? why does it have so many "bs"?) of middle-aged life, squeezed by family and work, whether or not we keep any optional commitments may really come down to the degree of human contact or effort used to make them. How do we most often communicate: in person, email, mail, phone, just through the alumni office or, worst of all, by blog?

Between the Right and a Hard Place

I don't know about you, but I'm loving the Bush administration squirming to have to frantically bolster Harriet Miers anti-abortion credentials, which in turn causes Democratic centrists like Feinstein to have to distance themselves from the possibility of supporting Miers.

I don't know what it all means ultimately about Miers chances at confirmation (could Bush really lose the far right on a confirmation vote?) and I'm not sure it'll result in anything good, but for now, it's quite riveting theater and no matter how you hoist it, his petard has been hooked--what is a "petard", anyway?

On the New Supreme Court Judges

In all the focus, thought and obsession with Roberts and Mier, we may have missed an important point. That is, although there may be some wiggle room, some vague chance that these appointees are going to continue the razor thin support for some degree of protection of our civil liberties, there is exactly no chance that either of them is going to do anything to reign in the power of gigantic multinational corporations over individuals' lives.

Both Roberts and Mier are unequivocally, completely, avowed corporatists. By this I mean that they strongly believe (and not just in a legal sense) that corporations are people too. And that as "people," corporations have certain rights and deserve certain protections from government encroachment and regulations. Laws that protect our water and our air, laws that protect worker safety and minimum wage, laws that make it harder to make defective, poisonous, or harmful products and put them on the market, all these are at serious serious risk under the Roberts-Mier regime.

Ah, you hasten to point out, that battle was lost long ago, in 1886 in the Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad which created the legal fiction that corporations are "persons" deserving of protection from the constitution. Moreover, you add, O'Connor and Rehnquist were already avowed corporatists themselves, so what changes?

First I ask, have we reached the point in our history where we have given up on moving forward and all we can think about is not losing ground?

Secondly, what's palpable here is I think is the degree to which Roberts seems likely to make it part of his judicial philosophy to turn back the clock on these issues, and the degree to which Mier has devoted her whole life to supporting George Bush and his corporate cronies like Halliburton.

All I am saying is let's not let our civil liberties, as precious as they are, be used as a slight of hand to distract us while our collective pocket is thoroughly picked.

On the Obama Piece

I have thought a bit about the piece by Barak Obama that I posted the other day, and this is what I've come to. While I agree with much of what he says regarding the importance of respect, tone and eliminating certain kinds of rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric (note: snichols recognizes that this is something of an about face for her, but she's coming to it in her old age), and I still trust Obama's motives and heart, I think the proof is still in the pudding.

In other words, why should I fucking care what any Democratic U.S. Senator thinks about anything until they start winning some battles with their "thoughtfulness" and "room for debate?" I have recently started again reading Master of the Senate (Robert Caro's amazing 3rd biography in a series on LBJ). I had left off at page 400 out of 950 (the first 150 years of history on the U.S. Senate were sort of tough sledding) but now it reads like a page-turning thriller leading towards the amazing conclusion (I'll spoil it for you) of how LBJ, segregationist Texas Senator, uses his brilliance, his skill and above all his lust for power to overcome the power of the Old Southern Bulls and break the filibuster to pass the first significant civil rights legislation in decades.

How does he do it? He does it by creating party discipline by harnassing his party's lust for power to the forward advancement of civil rights. He does it by marrying naked political self-interest with truth and justice.

Under its sweeping lovely rhetoric (yes), Obama's statement is highly political and pragmatic but to what end? It is preaching the pragmaticism of moderation, the pragmaticism of letting politicians off the hook when they vote for corporate interests over the interests of working people, because the "average person" doesn't think that corporations are bad.

Well this may be highly pragmatic for him, but is it for us?

Okay, so not all corporations are bad, but are giant multinational corporations polluting our water and air, sending all the good jobs overseas, exploiting women and girls for pennies a day in China, and making products that kill you? Yes!

Are average people capable of grasping this? Yes!

Could good leaders play a role in helping people grasp this? Yes!

Ultimately though, Obama needs to just chill. He's an insider now and it's their job to make tough decisions and it's our job to let 'em have it when they make the wrong ones. And no, by being a generally good guy you don't deserve an occasional pass when you do the wrong thing--the wrong thing is the wrong thing and you deserve to have it pointed out to you. Every liberal politician I've ever known has hated it when they get called on the carpet for doing the wrong thing.

"I'm on your side," they whine. "You need me in here," they continue. "I have to do certain things to stay where I am," they conclude.

All this may be true, and we would be wise to think twice about how public our attacks are on generally good senators like Leahy or Feingold or Obama (or hey, my own homey Barbara Boxer, who failed to urge Schwarzenegger to sign the Gay Marriage bill, I'm told), but let's keep letting 'em know what's right and what's wrong. And let's not be shy about it.

I've been saying it for years and I'll say it again, an admonition to all of us activist/advocates: It's not up to us to make the tough choices, it's up to us to make the choices tough.

Read this Posting By Barak Obama

My friend Vince Marchand called to my attention this fascinating post on The Daily Kos by Senator Barak Obama regarding the need for progressives to be more thoughtful and respectful. It's worth reading. I think I agree with much of it, even though it contradicts some of my favorite ongoing political rants.

Please read it and let me know what you think..

Read my column in Rudolf's Diner

George Bush is to be forgiven Katrina. Not only in the long run by his Savior Jesus Christ and his other largest contributors but now, by us--for what we did to cause it, for our share of the blame...

Are you terrified? Read more, or less, by going to my monthly column Eye on the Pie in this issue of the fabulous on-line magazine Rudolf's Diner. Also not to be missed is a review of the Hurricane Katrina music tributes, The Winds Have Changed by my own Bill Magavern or the disturbing and hilarious humor of Mateo Burtch's Big Blue Ball. Give a listen to Kitchen Sing, I mean Sink by Evan Nichols, aka Uncle Rudolf and see some pictures of hands that I suspect contain similar DNA to mine.

I did my first triathlon yesterday (1/2 mile swim, 16 mile bike, 3 mile run--since you ask). My body is beginning to recover so I'm going to blog again. Blog for all I'm worth.