Citizen Brand

Give it up for the Postal Service

The United States Postal Service gets a lot of grief and is the object of jokes every so often, but we all should stand and applaud for their "Mail Back" program.  Currently in ten cities across America, if you have an iPod; cell phone; digicams; gameboys etc. that no longer work, you can pick up a special envelope at the local Post Office and send it in to be either recycled or disposed of properly.

Here is more in a post from a University of Kansas student on a classroom blog.  Also a hat tip to Triple Pundit.  The company on the receiving end of the busted electronics is Clover Technology Group.  The folks at Clover are paying the postage in addition to recycling all the defunct devices.  This is a program that deserves our support so it can go national thus making it easy for anyone to recycle electronics.

The statistics regarding electronic waste are staggering.  Hundreds of millions of computers, cell phones, ink cartridges and even televisions are being cast aside for newer improved models.  This is one area where we can all do our part.

The Red Phone

As we head to the next showdown in the best political race in a generation, Rich Harwood has a nice take on the ad campaigns of Obama and Clinton evoking the fear tactics of the Walter Mondale's Red Phone or Reagan's Bear in the Woods ads of years gone by.  I will reprint it below or you can link to it here .  Rich is a smart guy who makes you think beyond the answers of the moment and focus on what can be in the moments of tomorrow.

It’s jolting and ominous. Indeed, the dueling Clinton-Obama “red phone” ads are a throw-back to previous eras, a time of the cold war, a bear in the woods, daisies and detonation. The red phone is an icon of fear, often used when other arguments fail. But that’s just it: the red phone is about the past. I want to look to the future, one rooted in our present-day reality.

This campaign has given us Senator Obama, who has captured many people’s imagination; Senator Clinton, who has demonstrated just how tough she is; and Senator McCain, an American hero. But my concern here is not about media buys, “get out the vote” operations, or how to excite people and motivate them to vote. I have no problem with tough-minded ads.

My concern is that I want candidates who call us to look to the future by genuinely reflecting and understanding the present. We’re squarely barreling into the 21st Century, whether we like it or not and things have changed dramatically from the 1990s, or even from 2004. For instance:

•    In just the past few years the auto industry has undergone a total makeover, well beyond changes in the 1980s and 90s. With tens of thousands of workers recently laid off or bought out, the auto industry of the future is not the one of our childhood.

•    The Internet has altered how we get information and news and with whom we connect, changing what and who we know, and how communities function. 

•    While younger Americans are re-entering politics, the huge baby boomer generation is retiring and seeking meaningful things to do; yet no one is clearly proposing how to tap into this energy, other than to say, “Vote for me!”

•    National security issues have fundamentally changed in the last eight years, with terrorism, the further emergence of China, an increasingly testy Russia, just to mention top-of-the-head issues.

With fundamental shifts taking place in this country and around the world, old discussions about the same old issues won’t work. Nor will simply updating various policy proposals, arguing endlessly about who voted for NAFTA and what they think today, or talking about speeches vs. solutions. 

I remember sitting in a restaurant in New Hampshire in 1995 with a group of citizens I was interviewing for a project with the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. The project was built around listening to Americans talk about their concerns and hopes. People talked movingly and with deep frustration about how their factory jobs had gone overseas.  They were clear that something was changing in America, but weren’t exactly sure what, and they were holding on for dear life to the past.  Of course, that’s not uncommon, we all do that.

But there’s little doubt today that the world has gone through a major transformation and that we are not returning to the 1980s, or even the 1990s. What’s more, no president alone can shape the future, or craft a new, complete and cogent narrative for the nation. Such changes emerge only over time. And yet, a candidate for the presidency and future president can help us “turn” toward the future, so that we can begin to see it and address it. You see, the fundamental choice before us is not simply a matter of debating one policy or another, but a choice about our orientation concerning the next leg of our common journey.

When I was 23 years old, several presidents ago, I was a young aide to senior staff for the Mondale for President Campaign. That campaign also produced a red phone television ad, one used against Senator Gary Hart (D-CO). Just a few short years later, in 1987, I made the decision to start what has become The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, in part because I felt that politics had become more about striking fear into people’s hearts, than tapping into their aspirations and solving problems.

In many respects, politics is on the upswing this year. The positive changes have been a long-time in the making, a manifestation, I believe, of Americans’ long-held aspirations for a better politics and public life. Which leads me back to the red phone: this year’s race, I believe, is the first in recent times to be squarely about the new century, about an era already upon us, one which represents a fundamentally different trajectory for our nation. If, as I believe, our trajectory is fundamentally different from era’s past, then I want a campaign which talks about that different path and how we can take it.

You can't make this stuff up

We will be talking about the 2008 presidential election for decades to come.  And it won't be because of voters in Chicago accused of voting more than once (Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960) or hanging chads and Supreme Court votes (Bush v. Gore in 2000).  No, this time we will be thinking back on an election that has had candidates that voters actually were supporting and issues that were actually being discussed.  And here it is the day after Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday and we still don't know exactly who will be on the ballot in November.  Isn't it great?

A Hollywood screenwriter looking for work right now instead of a picket line could not write some of the story lines that are unfolding right before our very eyes.  Rush Limbaugh, the conservatives' favorite comedic radio host is doing everything he can to submarine the apparent Republican front running John McCain.  Mike Huckabee, who has no money compared to everyone else, manages to win a few states on Tuesday catapulting himself into top challenger status in the GOP race.  Meanwhile, Mitt Romney would have to spend $1.33 billion dollars to win enough delegates to take the nomination away from either McCain or Huckabee.  That is based on what he has spent thus far to win the paltry number of delegates he has scraped off the floor since the snows of Iowa.

Then there is the Democratic race.  This time last year, Hillary Clinton was all but anointed as the nominee.  Turn the page to February, 2008 and she finds herself running neck and neck with Barack Obama.  The first legitimate chance for either a woman or an African-American to be elected President of the United States and they wake up each morning realizing they are battling each other for the right to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  And today, she revealed she had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it going.  Obama is out-raising her in donations by a big margin.

And the talk is already beginning of a deadlocked convention and smoke filled back rooms deciding the Democratic nominee.  Wait a minute, there won't be any smoke filled rooms inside any building in Denver for the convention.  Those meetings will have to occur outside.

This is what I mean.  You cannot make this stuff up.  We are witness to a remarkable story in 2008.  Don't blink.  You might miss something.

Bush-Clinton Fatigue

Hillary Clinton had a big applause line in the Hollywood Showdown starring her and Barack Obama at the Kodak Theater on Thursday night.  She was asked how she could possibly represent change when the same two families (hers and the Bushes) have been in The White House since 1980.  Her response, while clever, points out why Republicans are praying every night that she is the Democratic nominee.

I paraphrase a bit, but in essence she said it took a Clinton to clean up the first Bush presidency and it would take another Clinton to clean up the second Bush presidency.  It was met with the biggest applause of the night from the glitterati of Hollywood in the audience.  Heck, CNN even went to commercial over the applause as if they had just handed out the Oscar for Best Actress!

Can you imagine what we would think if two families in the United Kingdom, or France, or Germany, or Japan had basically shared executive power for 28 years straight?  Interesting to think about it from that perspective isn't it?

Super Duper Tuesday is coming and it may be the day that the November ballot for President begins to take final form.  There is tremendous interest in this election as there should be.  We all have different motivations for making decisions when we vote.  I have to believe that whether it is conscious or unconscious, there is an underlying feeling in many voters that 28 years of the Bushes and the Clintons is enough.  We will see on Tuesday if I'm right.

An important postscript - it was amazing to see a woman and an African-American sitting side by side knowing that one of them can be elected President of the United States later this year.

 

The nerve of those voters

All of us here at Citizen Brand - that would be me I guess - have to be willing to admit when we may have gotten ahead of ourselves.  But wait, I don't think we did.  Barack Obama still looks like the real thing from this vantage point.  So what exactly happened in New Hampshire the other night?

What happened was nothing more than what had been predicted to happen for a few weeks - Hillary Clinton would win New Hampshire and so likely would John McCain.  And that is exactly what happened when the voters spoke.  It is what happened between Iowa and New Hampshire among the media; the pollsters; the pundits; and the consultants that needs to be questioned. 

Think about it.  Two of the least ethnically diverse and not exactly wildly liberal states in the nation have said an African American or a woman should be President of the United States.  Forget the horse race the media foists on us every four years and focus on what has happened in the first two official contests of the 2008 Presidential election.  On the other side of the aisle, Republican voters have given the nod to a true evangelical and the straight talking, shoot from the hip, Vietnam POW.  Obama, Clinton, Huckabee and McCain are not the kind of candidates we are used to seeing in the race for the White House.

Lost in the shuffle right now are the two guys who we have been conditioned to seeing in the race - John Edwards and Mitt Romney.  Two white guys with good hair and good talking points.  Either one of these guys might make a good president.  But after seven years of the gang that can't shoot straight with us, the USA is ready for a big change.  And the differences on display for us with the Obama, Clinton, Huckabee and McCain variety hour have a little something for everyone.

Thus we have seen a different winner in every contest thus far.  (Wyoming GOP went for Romney by the way.)  Which brings us back to those pesky voters.  In 2008, I believe the more the media and the pollsters try to tell us what they think is going to happen, the less likely it is to happen.  If New Hampshire taught us anything, it may have taught us to wait for the votes to be counted and then see who the winners will be.

Voters are on to the exit pollsters.  After waiting 45 minutes to cast a secret ballot, the last thing any right thinking person should do is tell a complete stranger how they voted and why.  Let 2008 be the death of the exit polls.  Good riddance.

On to Nevada, South Carolina and 20 or so other states by February 5.  This is fun.  And it is important.

Voting made easy

Today is election day across America.  It isn't a big election day in most places but there are a few governors being elected and a slew of local issues being decided.  In some states, some people have already voted since early voting is becoming more in vogue these days.  Some states are also becoming more lenient in allowing voters to register right up until election day.  But most still close down registration a few weeks before.

And why do we still have this patchwork quilt of voting laws in 2007?  We know why.  Because it has taken decades and decades of blood, sweat and tears to even get to the point today where we have made it possible for everyone over the age of 18 to have the right to vote, much less a uniform approach to how we actually vote in the individual 50 states.

That should be next on our voting rights agenda.  We need uniform laws across the nation that says we can register to vote year around, including on election day itself; that allows for us to vote early starting four weeks before election day; and that says everyone in a voting line at the time of polls closing in any state of the union will be given the right to cast their vote.  Should we consider allowing people to vote from home on the Internet?  It should be studied, but call me old fashioned because it seems to me we should have enough desire to participate in the electoral process that we can get out of our house or place of business to go join our fellow citizens and vote in our polling place.

One other issue that should be considered is the day we choose to vote.  Federal law in 1845 mandated elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  Tuesday was generally considered the best day of the week for a country that was then dominated by agriculture.  Obviously, things have changed a bit.  So, lets move elections to Saturday.  Some states do that now.  It might be worth a try to reflect where our country is today.

Regardless, we should all vote whenever we have the opportunity.

One news cycle

Back to the keyboard after a summer hiatus and it took just 45 minutes with Tuesday's New York Times  to make it happen.  Whatever page I turned to there was example after example of questionable, even unethical decisions by people and organizations.  One news cycle produced some of the worst examples of bad citizen brands I've ever seen.  Consider just a few of them:

In 2005, corporate America received huge tax breaks to bring home their offshore profits and create jobs in America.  Drug makers were the biggest winners bringing home $100 billion while paying only six percent taxes instead of the 35 percent they would have paid prior to the '05 legislation.  Any new jobs created?  Hardly.  Instead tens of thousands of people have been laid off by drug companies in the past two years.

Without even leaving the front page, we see that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has himself in a bit of a sticky wicket.  The man who used to make Wall Street titans tremble finds himself on the defense after a couple of long time aides decided to use the New York State Police for a little political tomfoolery.  Seems the Governor's nemesis - State Senator Joe Bruno used some police helicopters for trips from Albany to New York City.  Turned out not to be a problem, but the Governor's helpers saw an opportunity and solicited the acting Superintendent of the State Police to help them make a case against Bruno.  By the way, the acting Superintendent is vying for a permanent appointment so he did what any good public servant should do - he helped try to make the case.  Anyway, given Spitzer came into office seven months ago pledging to clean up New York state government, it seems apparent he will need to start with his own staff.

Of course the sports pages these days read more like bad reality television shows.  From Michael Vick and fighting dogs to the critical question of whether or not baseball Commissioner Bud Selig will be in the stands for Barry Bonds' record home run it's amazing that sports writers still find time to report scores of games.

The perfect sports commissioner, David Stern of the National Basketball Association , has a small gambling problem.  He doesn't wager himself, but seems he has a referee who got in over his head with some betting debts and began to make some interesting calls that turned a game or two or ten.  A good betting scandal is needed every ten years or so just to purge the rookie gamblers out of the system.

And then there is poor Sergio Garcia .  I love golf and I truly love the Open Championship.  It looked like Sergio was finally going to win his first major.  He was 0 for 35 coming into the British Open.  He is now 0 for 36.  Unfortunately his major drought is apparently starting to eat away at him.  He was not the shining example of a gracious loser in the press room at Carnoustie on Sunday.  He blamed bad breaks and other golfers in front of him for losing a four stroke lead in the last 14 holes in the final round.  Golf is one sport where no one else has anything to do with the way you play the game.

A handful of news stories in one newspaper in one news cycle.  All examples of either a lack of common sense, common decency or ethical behavior.  And proof that it's time to crank up Citizen Brand again and look for some good examples.  I know they are out there.

Good to be back.

Chicago Green Festival

Brady and Alicia of Two Hands Worldshop (aka - my son and daughter-in-law) spent Earth Day weekend at the Chicago Green Festival.  Visit the THW blog for their first person reports from the Windy City.

If you missed Chicago, there will be two more Green Festivals this year in Washington D.C. in October and San Francisco in November.

Early warning signs

So many have said so much about the horrid events at Virginia Tech.  One important fact I want to focus on is the information that has emerged about the gunman having stalked female students in the past.  We need to learn from this tragedy that people who stalk other people need to be viewed as serious threats to society.  Esta Soler, the founder and president of our client the Family Violence Prevention Fund , explains it better than I can in a statement on their website today.

"The Murders at Virginia Tech
April 17, 2007

"There are still many unanswered questions about the horrific violence Monday at Virginia Tech," Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler said Tuesday, "and troubling indications that the shooter had stalked women and that the first murder may have been a domestic homicide. That would be no surprise; the Justice Department tells us that, on average, three women are murdered each day in this country by their husbands or boyfriends. We saw a brutal domestic homicide of a pregnant woman at the CNN Center in Atlanta just this month. We aren't doing nearly enough to stop domestic violence, which frequently escalates to homicide and often involves bystanders and children."

"We need answers about what happened at Virginia Tech," Soler continued. "We need to know whether the shooter had stalked or committed violence in the past, if he had a legal right to have a gun, and whether the police discounted the danger because they thought the first murder was a domestic homicide. Whatever the answers, there is no question that we need more research and more prevention, to keep guns out of the hands of batterers, to understand what causes violence against women to occur and to escalate, and to change attitudes."

"The last Congress failed to fund the new programs in the Violence Against Women Act -- campus-based initiatives, support for children who witness abuse, programs to train health care providers to recognize batterers and victims and intervene to help them, and prevention programs aimed at changing attitudes toward women," Soler concluded. "The new Congress must do better. We need full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, and to do much more to stop violence and change attitudes."

Well said.  Let's tell Congress that one way to honor the lives of those that died at Virginia Tech is to step up and fully fund the Violence Against Women Act.

Green is good

Read "The Power of Green" by Thomas Friedman in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.  Friedman says the green movement not only has gone mainstream, but it represents the future platform for a "new, unifying political movement" in the United States.  He says this movement is necessary to address the three major issues all Americans now face: "jobs, temperature and terrorism."

"How do our kids compete in a flatter world? How do they thrive in a warmer world? How do they survive in a more dangerous world? Those are, in a nutshell, the big questions facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green states — not an America divided between red and blue states."

Change is in the air.