Organic Restaurants

We just spent 2 nights and 3 days in one of my favorite places -- Santa Barbara, California. When I went to grad school in U.C.S.B. many years ago, I spent a lot of time in downtown Santa Barbara, probably more than the typical U.C.S.B. student. I always loved the downtown area, especially the array of restaurants.

On this trip we discovered two restaurants with organic menus. By this I mean organic produce, AND, organic/free-range chicken, beef, pork, and wild fish. While I like vegetarian restaurants, I think there is definitely a need for restaurants that cater to non-vegetarian consumers who support organic produce and healthy meat.

If you are ever in downtown Santa Barbara, check out the Natural Cafe or Spiritland Bistro.

Happy New Year!

St. Anthony Farm

Part of the St. Anthony Foundation, St. Anthony Farm

... provides a free residential drug and alcohol recovery program for 28 men and 14 women. On a 315-acre farm outside of Petaluma, participants have the opportunity to address destructive patterns in their lives while in a safe, supportive, and structured environment. Through a routine that consists of work, recreation, education, solitude and peer feedback, participants are both challenged and supported to take personal responsibility for their lives. Program participants work in an organic garden, on the grounds crew, in the facility kitchen, or in the commercial dairy while participating in a social model 12-step based rehabilitation program.

Plus, they are organic dairy farmers:

The work component of the Farm is vital to the recovery process. More than 250 cows are milked twice daily at the organic dairy, producing over 1800 gallons of organic milk that are sold commercially to Clover-Stornetta.
and organic gardeners:

Participants also have the opportunity to work in an organic garden that was developed in 1993. The 1-acre garden produces fresh vegetables and fruit for Farm residents, St. Anthony's other residential programs in San Francisco and local free food programs. The therapeutic value of weeding, sowing, planting, harvesting and feasting greatly enhances the quality of the recovery program at the Farm.

Looking to make a donation before the end of the year? Check here.

Caterina in the Big City

A gem of a movie! Mostly set in Rome, this coming-of-age film also contains funny bits about the Italian Left and Right. It was a perfect stay-at-home-on-a-rainy-day movie for us. Rent it from your LOCALLY-OWNED video store, buy it, or Netflix it.

Fair Trade For All

I'm looking forward to reading the soon-to-be-published book from Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton. For now, I have to be content with reading reviews such as this:

This "Washington Consensus" has been dominant since the late 1970s. Unfortunately, as Stiglitz dryly points out, "it is difficult to identify the evidentiary source of the bullishness for unqualified trade liberalisation". This is an economist's way of saying that the emperor has no clothes; that trade liberalisation has become a dogma that does not deliver. Indeed, poor countries which have grown rich have done so by doing the opposite of what the neoliberals told them to. "To date," Stiglitz writes, "not one successful developing country has pursued a purely free market approach to development."

Forcing poor countries to open their markets, in fact, often simply entrenches poverty and inequality. What is needed, says Stiglitz, is a trading system which focuses on poverty-reduction and fairness.

He and Charlton lay out a number of detailed ideas, including a proposal under which all WTO members would have to provide unfettered market access for countries smaller and poorer than them; a commitment by developed countries to eliminate agricultural subsidies; the integration of environment and human-rights measures into trade agreements; and the removal of global agreements which favour the rich, like those on patents and intellectual property.

In a previous post, I highlighted the need to bring people from the environmental and social justice movements into some of these trade discussions. Hopefully, the IMF/World Bank/WTO are realizing that they could use a dose of new ideas.

Christmas Eve

Another awesome party at Martin de Porres House of Hospitality. Great music by the all-volunteer band, lots of volunteers, fantastic gift bags. A truly inspiring place to volunteer.

Happy Holidays!

Syriana

Loosely based on the life of ex-CIA agent Bob Baer, this is a well-written, fast-paced, and well-edited movie. I was really not planning to watch this film, until I saw the writer-director on Charlie Rose, and was enamored by the stories he told:

• There are corporate lawyers in Washington who know all the key players and families in the Middle East: they may know some things even the CIA are not aware of.
• Energy traders are good sources of geo-political information in the Middle East.
• Oil executives boast of affecting political events in oil/energy countries all over the world.

Stephen Gaghan is a definitely a writer-director to watch. What a debut a film!

Profile of Kos

The man behind the Daily Kos is profiled here.

Kos himself fact checks and reviews the article :-)

Euro vs. Dollar

New working paper from Chinn and Frankel:

The US dollar is still the international reserve currency most used by central banks. What factors determine the shares of major currencies in the asset portfolios of central banks? Is the dollar's primacy going to last? A serious competitor, the euro, is on the scene now. Will Europe's common currency overtake the dollar? Over the next ten or twenty years which is the most likely scenario?

... Central banks prefer to hold currencies of large economies characterized by low inflation and low exchange rate volatility - signs of currency stability. Whether the euro will overtake the dollar as the leading reserve currency crucially depends on the adoption of the euro by the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent by other member countries of the European Union. The persistence of the dollar's recent depreciating trend and the slow pace at which central banks change the composition of their asset portfolios will also play an important role in the competition between euro and dollar.

Microcredit Missionary

A nice profile of Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank:

Today, Yunus runs Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, a leading advocate for the world's poor that has lent more than $5.1 billion to 5.3 million people. The bank is built on Yunus' conviction that poor people can be both reliable borrowers and avid entrepreneurs. It even includes a project called Struggling Members Program that serves 55,000 beggars. Under Yunus, Grameen has spread the idea of microcredit throughout Bangladesh, Southern Asia, and the rest of the developing world.

When Yunus started Grameen, he wanted to turn traditional banking on its head. One of his first moves was to focus on women because they are most likely to think of the family's needs. This was a radical step in a traditional Muslim society, and it took Yunus six years to reach his initial goal of a 50-50 gender distribution among borrowers. Today, 96% of Grameen's borrowers are women. "If banks made large loans, he made small loans. If banks required paperwork, his loans were for the illiterate. Whatever banks did, he did the opposite," marvels Sam Daley-Harris, director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign. "He's a genius."

... The professor's most recent innovation is still an experiment: Grameen Danone Food Co. is a proposed partnership between Grameen and France's Group Danone to make a nutritious and inexpensive baby formula. Next on his list are low-cost eye care and rural hospitals with video-conferencing between villagers and doctors in Dhaka. "In Bangladesh, where nothing works and there's no electricity," Yunus says, "microcredit works like clockwork."

Architecture: Small is Beautiful

The LA Times has a nice feature on an architect who builds small, elegant, and highly regarded homes in Southern California.

An architect builds big for others but lives within 710 square feet himself. The quality-over-quantity ethos of the 'not-so-big' movement.
...
But he is just as inclined to be plain-spoken. "I treat houses basically as a shelter. The chief purpose of a house is protection from the elements, even if the elements are as mild as here in Southern California. It's also a place to put your stuff, as George Carlin says."

The biggest mistake architects and clients make, he says, is not thinking of architectural design as a total environment for living. Landscaping is part of the design, lot line to lot line. There should be a soft interplay between indoor and outdoor, and every room should have its own outdoor space.

"He put windows in my garage. I never had that before," says client Carolyn Craft, a retired teacher. "Everything Doug does is thought out, beautiful, simple — cabinetry, his use of space, glass walls, beam ceilings. I lie in bed and just stare at my ceiling. You can always tell a Doug Rucker house. It's like walking into peace."

Check out these pictures of his home.

Adventures in Ethical Shopping

The Washington Post has an interesting feature article on "Ethical Shopping". It can be difficult for the shopper to make sure that they are supporting truly ethical companies, might it be better to go for the lowest price producers? With the savings generated from low-cost shopping, one can then contriubute directly to the charities and causes that one values.

That's why I prefer the term "Mindful Shopping": it communicates the need to be conscious consumers. If we believe that the true cost of production should reflect our environmental and social justice concerns, we consumers will have to allocate a portion of our purchase dollars to support those companies that reflect those values. We also need to devote time to learn more about what we are buying. That's why I believe it is best to start slow and with a short list of products and staples.

Using buying power to improve the world is a growing commitment among consumers in this country, according to the rug sellers at the Mennonite church, who told me that increasing numbers of customers ask well-informed questions about the conditions under which their purchases had been made. And it has become big business in Europe, where a fair trade consumer guarantee was launched almost 20 years ago under the Dutch label Max Havelaar. The aim back then was to replicate the moral mindset that charities like Jakciss had fostered around niche handcraft markets and take it mainstream. According to the umbrella group Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) , there are now fair trade initiatives in 20 countries, including the United States, for such staples as cocoa, chocolate bars, orange juice, tea, honey, sugar and bananas as well as the ur-currency of the fair trade world -- coffee. Between 2002 and 2003, sales of these goods grew by 42.3 percent worldwide. But there is also controversy brewing about just who's profiting from the guilt-charged spending habits of the Western world's consumers.

... That, at least, is the contention of conservative commentator Philip Oppenheim, who argued recently that in Britain, it's supermarkets that profit most from fair trade sales. They charge a premium for fair trade bananas, for example, while a "minuscule sliver ends up with the people the movement is designed to help," he writes. I'm not sure whether he's right. And that's the root of the problem: I'm a consumer, not a trade expert. I'm more interested in finding fresh fruit than in investigating profit margins as I swoop bananas into my shopping cart. But if he is right, Europe's experience may be a warning. A Wall Street Journal story last year, about misleading labeling by some companies here, said that Cafe Borders adjusted its pricing after it was suggested that the company might be taking advantage of consumers' charitable instincts.

... But I'm left with a conundrum. I want to do the right thing, but I'm not prepared to make a career of it. It's not hard to find criticisms online about the Body Shop, for example; it's much harder to verify them. And I'm much less interested in checking out the story behind the bananas I buy than I am in the origin of those origami ornaments. What's more, despite efforts by nonprofits like TransFair and the International Fair Trade Association or IFAT (which monitors companies like Ten Thousand Villages), there's a lot of room for misleading labeling in our ethical shopping baskets. So when it comes to my food shopping in particular, I'm left wondering whether I would be doing just as much good if I simply bought the best bargain and sent the money I had saved to a development charity (as Oppenheim would have me do). Best of all might be to buy locally whenever possible, like my brother.

Wal-Mart Model

This time, its the NYTimes Magazine that claims the Wal-Mart approach is the best retail model. Guys how about giving Costco a look? Costco's CEO is a cool guy, and would make a great profile subject. For that matter, Whole Foods, is quite successful, while doing good by its employees and the environment.

Tupperware Parties, with a Fair Trade Twist

Remember tupperware parties from the 70's? I recently encountered Pachamama " ... a Fair Trade organization dedicated to working towards economic justice through educating consumers about the importance of purchasing Fair Trade products." They have a program in which you can invite a Pachamama representative "... to your home or office and bring Fair Trade crafts from around the world and educate your friends and family so they can become more informed about the importance of Fair Trade. " They even allow you to start your own Fair Trade business, just like Tupperware!

"By bringing awareness to your community and selling beautiful crafts by artists of the world, you can generate income and help others at the same time."

Having seen some of their products, I can attest to their quality and design.

Bush's Ownership Society: Why No One's Buying

Excellent overview of the "Ownership Society" in the Washington Monthly:

Talk to scholars at the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or to movement organizers like Grover Norquist, and they'll walk you through the strategy. Big government and individual freedom, they'll explain, are opposed to each other; more of one means less of the other. The three big areas of non-defense-related government spending are retirement (mainly Social Security), health care (mainly Medicare and Medicaid), and education (mainly K-12 public schools). For political reasons, it is practically impossible to cut spending in these areas. But it is possible to dismantle the government bureaucracies that administer them in a way that enhances personal freedom and makes possible big cuts down the road: privatize the benefits.

... Consider President Bush's effort to sell the public on private Social-Security accounts. ... by June, when informed that private accounts would be paired with cuts in benefits for future retirees—as the president himself admitted they would have to be to have any impact on Social Security's long-run finances—27 percent of voters gave their approval, a level of support below that for legalizing marijuana and gay marriage.

Or consider another high-profile element of what Bush calls the “ownership society”: giving individuals more control over their government health-care benefits. ... Today, a scant 31 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the new program.

Finally, consider the president's efforts to give parents more choice over the schools their children attend. ... Yet a two-year-old federal voucher experiment in D.C. that provides low-income students a hefty $7,500 to attend private schools has garnered only modestly more interest. Only 7 percent of families with children eligible for the vouchers have applied for them.

You can begin to see a pattern here. Americans love the idea of choice—in the abstract. But when faced with the actual choices conservatives present, they aren't buying. The reason is that conservatives have constructed choices that fail to take human nature into account. People like to have choices but feel quickly overwhelmed when they lack the information or expertise to decide confidently, and they turn downright negative when the choices themselves seem to put what they already have at risk. Conservatives were bound to make these mistakes because their very aim has been to transfer more risks from government to individuals so that government's size and expenditures can be cut. That's not a bargain most Americans will accept. They like choice just fine, but they won't trade security to get it.

... Conservatives may have been blindsided by the public's rejection of the president's plan because they assumed that most Americans share their fundamental assumptions about government: that more of it is bad, less of it is good. On an abstract level, many people do feel that way. ... But when forced to consider concrete alternatives, Americans often wind up putting their trust in the collective efforts of government to protect their security rather than in themselves. Though the president succeeded in convincing the public that Social Security has long-term financial problems, he did not convince them that shifting control and choice to individuals was the solution. Rather, polls showed huge majorities favor such measures as raising the income cap on payroll taxes to inject more money into the current system—in other words, making government bigger, not smaller.

Senior Storm

Things are not looking good for the incumbents in Washington. The Wall Street Journal has a new poll showing that, Seniors in particular, are increasingly unhappy.

Christmas Tree Question

Real trees are not the best for the environment, but neither are the plastic ones. What should we do? The SF Chronicle weighs in:

... most Christmas trees are farmed like an agricultural product. "It's kind of like corn," she said. "It would be best to get an organic one, of course."

As an alternative, Sierra Magazine, a Sierra Club publication, suggests: "For a natural look, try making your own tree of trimmed evergreen boughs, a storm-felled branch, or a piece of driftwood."

San Francisco's Department of the Environment began a program this year for those averse to stringing lights on driftwood. For $90, the city will bring a live, 7- to 9-foot potted tree to your home for you to decorate. After Christmas, the city will retrieve it and plant it in one of San Francisco's tree-starved neighborhoods, like Bayview-Hunters Point.

But the city isn't offering pines. Officials said pines don't make the best street trees.

Instead, they suggested hanging tinsel on a primrose, a Brisbane box tree or a fruitless olive tree. The program proved so popular that it sold out its stock of 100 trees in four days. It will return next year.

McLibel

What a funny and inspiring documentary! The McLibel case took place in the UK around 1990. The documentary reviews the events surrounding the case, as well as the latest salvo, involving an appeal filed with the European Court of Human Rights. The film ends when the result of this appeal was released in early 2005.

In the late 80's, London Greenpeace initiated a leaflet campaign against McDonalds, alleging that McDonalds business practices led to the destruction of rain forests, their food was unhealthy, and that the working conditions were unjust. Nowadays, this type of leaflet is what one would expect from an anti-globalization, anti-corporate group. I'm not sure of how it was back then, but McDonalds, being a wealthy corporation, overreached: taking advantage of British libel laws, they sued 5 members of the group for libel. Three of the members decided that the odds were stacked against them and apologized. Two members of the group refused to apologize: for years this pair, have defended themselves against a team of expert lawyers and witnesses.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, points out that this case, in some ways, marked the first-time ordinary citizens used the legal system, to highlight the worst practices of a large corporation. Effectively starting the anti-corporate movement.

Rent it from your locally-owned video store, buy it, or Netflix it.

Ethical Dollars and the Media

A recent roundtable from the Christian Science Monitor:

Can investors help make the media better? Some investment firms are trying to do so in specific niches. For a look at two of them, the Monitor's Laurent Belsie sat down with Dawn Wolfe, social research and advocacy analyst for Boston Common Asset Management, and Chat Reynders, who is starting his own socially responsible investing firm here in Boston.

Hongkong Round: Farm Subsidies

As predicted, farm subsidies will be the main sticking point.

From the CBC, Rich, poor countries at stalemate over farm trade as WTO meets in Hong Kong:

Meanwhile, the WTO meeting opened with rich and poor countries still at odds over agricultural trade, the major sticking point that has held up world trade negotiations for months.

The deadlock threatens to undermine - or even derail - the six-day Hong Kong meeting, which was originally meant to lay the groundwork for a global treaty by the end of 2006 that would cut trade barriers across a wide array of sectors, from agriculture to services.

Developing nations accuse the United States, European Union and other rich countries of not cutting agricultural tariffs and farm subsidies enough, keeping out exports from poorer nations.

From Reuters: Food aid fight darkens mood as WTO talks open

The EU, in particular, has faced huge pressure to make deeper cuts in agriculture tariffs than the average 39 percent it has offered. But it has refused to budge without balancing pledges from developing states to open their markets to industrial goods.

"The European Union will not make a new offer," said French Trade Minister Christine Lagarde, whose country has been widely criticised for its determination to protect French farmers.

Hongkong Round: OXFAM Pushing for Fair Trade

If we want poor countries to open up large swaths of their economies to our corporations, why won't we let their products into our markets? Oxfam is a leader in the fight for Fair Trade: can they do something about the European farm subsidies:

Oxfam is in Hong Kong to lobby for fair trade. The charity and campaign group presented a petition signed by 17.8 million people calling for new rules that would help developing countries out of poverty. Oxfam is one of many groups which argue the global trading system is rigged in favour of the rich. WTO head Pascal Lamy said he agreed with some of what they said.

Clemency Denied

The Governator's rationale was ridiculous. Dystopiabustout has a great write-up.

The Prez in a Bubble

In this globalized world, we need a US President who reaches out to hear multiple points of view. Sadly, we have the exact opposite situation:

Clearly, George W. Bush's role model is not his father, who every week would ride down from the White House to the House of Representatives gymnasium, just to hear what fellows like Murtha were saying. Nor is the model John F. Kennedy, who during the Cuban missile crisis reached out to form an "ExCom" of present and past national-security officials, from both parties, to find some way back from the abyss short of war. Nor is it Franklin Roosevelt, who liked to create competition between advisers to find the best solution. Or Abraham Lincoln who, as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in her new book, "Team of Rivals," appointed his political foes to his cabinet.

.. Bush is not Bill Clinton. Bush recoiled from the sloppiness and waffling of his predecessor. He has no use for the kind of endless, circular collegiate bull sessions that characterized Clinton's administration. In 43's White House, meetings start on time, everyone wears a suit and pizza boxes are nowhere to be seen. But Clinton was able to see, in a way that Bush perhaps does not, that the White House can be, as Clinton put it in his sometimes whiny way, "the crown jewel of the federal prison system." Clinton insisted on having his own private phone line and fax line so that he could reach out (often, to the dismay of those on the receiving end, at 2 a.m.).

... In subtle ways, Bush does not encourage truth-telling or at least a full exploration of all that could go wrong. A former senior member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad occasionally observed Bush on videoconferences with his top advisers. "The president would ask the generals, 'Do you have what you need to complete the mission?' as opposed to saying, 'Tell me, General, what do you need to win?' which would have opened up a whole new set of conversations," says this official, who did not want to be identified discussing high-level meetings. The official says that the way Bush phrased his questions, as well as his obvious lack of interest in long, detailed discussions, had a chilling effect. "It just prevented the discussion from heading in a direction that would open up a possibility that we need more troops," says the official.

Bush generally prefers short conversations—long on conclusion, short on reasoning. He likes popular history and presidential biography (Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington), but by all accounts, he is not intellectually curious. Occasional outsiders brought into the Bush Bubble have observed that faith, not evidence, is the basis for decision making. Psychobabblers have long had a field day with the fact that Bush quit drinking cold turkey and turned around his life by accepting God. His close friends agree that Bush likes comfort and serenity; he does not like dissonance. He has long been mothered by strong women, including his mother and wife. A foreign diplomat who declined to be identified was startled when Secretary of State Rice warned him not to lay bad news on the president. "Don't upset him," she said.

South Central Hopes for Clemency

I hope that the Governator grants clemency. Setting aside what you think of the death penalty, or of Tookie Williams' guilt/innocence: the man is doing good things for the youngsters of his old hood, and beyond.

The people of South Central are benefiting from his work with their youngsters: for every person he converts, society benefits immensely. Less gang bangers, means more hope for these kids.

Oh, and dystopiabustout placed a call to the Governator.

UN Talks on Climate Change

The Bush administration has opted out of the Kyoto standards, and has gone for a non-binding approach:

The Bush administration, which rejects the emissions cutbacks of the current Kyoto Protocol, accepted a second, weaker conference decision, agreeing to join an exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat climate change. However, that agreement specifically ruled out "negotiations leading to new commitments."

Fortunately the rest of the developed world is forging ahead -- with encouragement from Bill Clinton among others. In an earlier post, I noted that some of the largest corporations have decided that climate change is too large a threat to ignore. The Republican stance is no surprise, it is part of their larger, and extremely depressing, War on Science. If you have any doubts that the Republican party has been hijacked by the right-wingers, this book will put all those doubts to rest. Science should be left to the scientists, not politicians beholden to Corporate and Religious interests.

Whole Foods Market

While union activists chastise Whole Foods and other Natural Food Stores for not encouraging their workers to unionize, it is important to understand that Whole Foods is not the worse employer:

Each store had a book in the office that listed the pay of every employee for the previous year. The book was available to anyone -- and was especially valuable if you were promoted or if you relocated, and wanted to see how your pay compared with your colleagues'. The pay book, surprisingly little used, set a tone of what Mackey called "no secrets management."

... Mackey flies commercial and likes to rent the cheapest car. A half-dozen times a year, his two senior operating executives -- A.C. Gallo and Walter Robb, each of whom runs half the country for Whole Foods, from Boston and San Francisco, respectively -- come to Austin and stay at Mackey's house. They make their own beds, and talk shop at 6:45 a.m. over soy yogurt and fruit. Mackey "is hardly a manager at all," says a former executive who reported to him for years. "He's an anarchist."

... executive salaries are now limited to 14 times frontline workers' pay. The salary book is still in every store. If you want to join a team -- including, say, the national IT team -- you still need a two-thirds thumbs-up vote. Nonexecutive employees hold 94% of company stock options. And just last year, the National Leadership Team took the health-insurance options to employees for a vote. (Whole Foods pays 100% of the cost for full-timers.)


The CEO seems quite open-minded and compassionate: read the start of this article to see how a series of email exchanges with an animal rights activist changed his life. Unions are usually good things to have, but is it a high priority to unionize these stores? Walking around Whole Foods, I am struck by how happy and friendly the workers are. From what I've read, workers have plenty of input. "If all you have is a hammer, does everything start looking like a nail?"

Whole Foods nurtures other organic companies as well:

Organic Valley cooperative, a large national supplier of organic milk, grew up alongside Mackey and Whole Foods -- "When they would open a single store, we would increase our production," says Organic Valley's marketing chief, Theresa Marquez. And Whole Foods' markets are still 16% of Organic Valley's business, but no longer its number-one customer. Organic Valley's biggest account is Publix, a classy regional supermarket chain in the Southeast that is five times the size of Whole Foods -- and thoroughly mainstream. "Sixty percent of our business is the mass markets," says Organic Valley CEO George Siemon.

Wow: Organic Valley is a cool company, and they are now supplying Publix! You have to give Whole Foods some credit for helping them grow.

National unions, and labor activists should save their resources for the important battle ahead: unionize Wal-Mart first. You change Wal-Mart, you change the world.

The War on Christmas

This is getting nuts:

• Media Matters on Bill O'Reilly's latest rants.

• Laura Bush prefers "Happy Holidays".
  

KPFA Crafts Fair

Looking to do some Christmas shopping? If you live in the SF Bay area, check out the KPFA Crafts Fair this coming weekend. You need not be into shopping either. They have musical artists scheduled throughout the weekend.

The Economist on the Hongkong Round

The Economist predicts that nothing significant will come out of the Hongkong round:

LONG before any trade minister sets foot in Hong Kong, it has become clear that next week's meeting of the World Trade Organisation will fall depressingly short of its goals. Officially, the gathering is meant to agree on the broad contours of a deal to free trade in farm goods, industrial tariffs and services. Thanks, in particular, to Europe's intransigence over cutting farm tariffs, that will not happen. The ministers may be able to report modest progress (such as a vague promise to accelerate the elimination of cotton subsidies) but the guts of a Doha deal will be delayed yet again.

... Europe is shamefully reluctant to cut its farm tariffs, even though poor countries would gain more from better access to rich-country markets than from lower rich-country farm subsidies. Outrageously, Europe's negotiators are touting their protectionism as a gift to the poor. Some of the world's poorest countries already get preferential access to Europe's markets. Lower tariffs for everyone, argue the negotiators from Brussels, would reduce this preference, leaving the favoured few relatively worse off. That may be true, but preferential tariff schemes are often less generous than they appear. Moreover, the countries that suffer from seeing their preferences eroded need financial compensation, rather than to be used as an excuse for stymieing a deal that, if it is ambitious enough, could help many more poor people.

I pointed out earlier, that things did not look promising. We may all be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it.

The Automobile Market and Product Research

We are in an information age, and consumers are using everything available to get the best deal. The US carmakers are in deep trouble, but so are all manufacturers.

The Internet allows consumers to save on average 1.5% when they buy a new car. There are two ways in which the Internet benefits buyers - surprisingly, helping them to find the best deal is none of them. First, the Internet provides information on the invoice prices manufacturers charge to dealers: this information allows consumers to bargain over the price knowing the lowest price that the dealer will accept. Second, online buying services help consumers to pool demand and exercise market power: such services can in fact threaten to avoid dealers offering higher prices. The former mechanism benefits only bargaining-averse consumers, whereas the latter benefits all consumers.

It is imperative that we allocate some of our collective purchase power to support companies who value sustainability and social justice. So some of our product research should cover factors besides price.

This might mean higher prices, for some purchases. But not all the time: choose Costco over Wal-Mart, for example. In the long run, the companies who look beyond profitability, will have sufficient demand. Look at the dollars spent on Organic produce and Fair Trade coffee. Fair Trade chocolate is staring to gain traction as well. If we spend wisely, we can replicate those successes in other parts of the consumer economy.

On the marketing side, Fair Trade companies should make sure they have an online presence. For most people Search and Search Engines are the starting point for product research or purchases: make sure you can be found in the first page of search engine results.

Mondovino and Wine for The Confused

Mondovino is one of my favorite documentaries: it uses the Wine industry as a prism upon which to view globalization. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check it out over the holidays.

Prior to watching Mondovino, you may want to learn some basic things about Wine, Wine-Making, and the Wine Industry. I recently saw a John Cleese documentary, that is a great primer on all things related to Wine: a Wine DVD for Dummies . It is set in the Central Coast, and reminded me of a recent post I had on the Santa Barbara Wine industry. A perfect movie to watch with friends and family over the holidays. Rent it at your local vide store, or Netflix it. A perfect companion to Mondovino, and what better teacher than a member of Monty Python.

Marin County

Just across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, Marin County is the foodie capital of the US:

The Bay Area is setting an example for the rest of the country with many of its ranchers and farmers already off the commodity market grid. In 2004, Marin and Sonoma County started the country’s first certification program for grass-fed beef. (Marin County is also the only U.S. county to have 100 percent of their produce farms certified organic.)

This article is an interesting overview of the "healthy beef" industry that is thriving in Northern California: small farmers and ranchers who have chosen sustainable and just methods of production.

Ebay Co-founder and Hollywood

Jeff Skoll believes in socially responsible films, and he is putting his money on the line. He was also a major funder of the PBS series, The New Heroes.

Three films that are considered serious Oscar contenders -- "North Country," "Good Night and Good Luck" and "Syriana" -- have one thing in common. They are all bankrolled by one man, a man whose life story might be said to share a title with a less prestigious film -- "Revenge of the Nerds." He's the 40-year-old mogul who heads Participant Productions, Jeff Skoll.

In under a year, this unlikely Hollywood hotshot has attracted big stars and big buzz.

"I tip my hat to him. It's amazing to find somebody who wants to do socially responsible films. Very cool. Very rare," said actor Woody Harrelson.

Feature films and documentaries are a great way to get a message out. If we support these types of films, Hollywood may start paying attention. Heck, this format is relatively inexpensive compared to those blockbusters Hollywood cranks out.

Lots more cool projects being funded by the Skoll Foundation: great to see some of these ideas and projects getting funded.

Costco CEO's Compensation Package

The amazing tidbit: his employment contract is only ONE page long. You can bet that most CEO contracts are massive documents, just the amount of money a typical CEO receives when they sell their company, is outrageous:

Even as many investors assume that they've seen the end of the executive-pay excesses that flourished during the late-1990s bubble, a new Gilded Age is under way. The explosion of merger-related payouts raises the question of whether CEOs are doing deals more for their own benefit than for their shareholders, says James P. Melican, president of Proxy Governance Inc., which advises pension funds and other institutional investors. "Mergers are tarnished when it appears that managements have negotiated lucrative employment contracts for themselves with the acquiring company."
Here is the 20/20 piece on Costco CEO Jim Senegal:

Sinegal says he's also built a loyal workforce. In fact, Costco has the lowest employee turnover rate in retailing. Its turnover is five times lower than its chief rival, Wal-Mart. And Costco pays higher than average wages -- $17 an hour -- 40 percent more than Sam's Club, the warehouse chain owned by Wal-Mart. And it offers better than average benefits, including health care coverage to more than 90 percent of its workforce.

Costco doesn't have a P.R. department and it doesn't spend a dime on advertising. There's a real business advantage to treating employees well, Sinegal said. "Imagine that you have 120,000 loyal ambassadors out there who are constantly saying good things about Costco. It has to be a significant advantage for you," he explained.

Many Costco workers have been with the company since it was founded in 1983. Once hired, they rarely leave.

... In an era when many CEOs are seen as greedy and sometimes corrupt, Sinegal is proving that good guys can finish first -- and without all the corporate frills. Sinegal even sends out his own faxes from his bare-bones office-without-walls at company headquarters near Seattle. But the most remarkable thing about Sinegal is his salary -- $350,000 a year, a fraction of the millions most large corporate CEOs make.

"I figured that if I was making something like 12 times more than the typical person working on the floor, that that was a fair salary," he said.

Of course, as a co-founder of the company, Sinegal owns a lot of Costco's stock -- more than $150 million worth. He's rich, but only on paper.

Nell Minow, editor and founder of the Corporate Library and an expert on corporate governance, said she was shocked to discover that Sinegal's employment contract is only a page long. "I would love to clone him," she said.

"Of the 2,000 companies in our database, he has the single shortest CEO employment contract. And the only one, which specifically says, he can be -- believe it or not -- 'terminated for cause.' If he doesn't do his job, he is out the door," Minow said.

Analysts and journalists have the habit of claiming that the Wal-Mart employment model is the only sure path to profitability. In a previous post, I pointed out that, the Costco approach is not only better for workers, its improves profitability. Hopefully, Costco takes another step, by carrying SOME Fair Trade products. As examples, I'm confident that their clientele will support Fair Trade chocolate and coffee.

Corporations and Climate Change

While the Bush administration remains skeptical of climate change, some of the largest Corporations not only believe in the science behind it, they are taking steps to reduce their energy consumption. Another great piece from Business Week:

The world is changing faster than anyone expected. Not only is the earth warming, bringing more intense storms and causing Arctic ice to vanish, but the political and policy landscape is being transformed even more dramatically. Already, certain industries are facing mandatory limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in some of the 129 countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol. This month representatives of those nations are gathering in Montreal to develop post-Kyoto plans. Meanwhile, U.S. cities and states are rushing to impose their own regulations.

A surprising number of companies in old industries such as oil and materials as well as high tech are preparing for this profoundly altered world. They are moving swiftly to measure and slash their greenhouse gas emissions. And they are doing it despite the Bush Administration's opposition to mandatory curbs.

... The pressure is forcing more players to wrestle with environmental risks, even if the coming regulations aren't right around the corner. As the debate over climate change shifts from scientific data to business-speak such as "efficiency investment" and "material risk," CEOs are suddenly understanding why climate change is important. "It doesn't matter whether carbon emission reductions are mandated or not," explains David Struhs, vice-president of environmental affairs at International Paper Co. "Everything we're doing makes sense to our shareholders and to our board, regardless of what direction the government takes." The nation's biggest paper company, with $25.5 billion in sales, IP has upped its use of wood waste to 20% of its fuel mix, from 13% in 2002. That's cut both net CO2 output and energy costs.

... A handful of big coal burners have also leaped to the forefront. American Electric Power, Cinergy, and TXU all did detailed studies of the risks posed by climate change -- and by expected new rules. Their biggest challenge: planning new power plants for an uncertain future. At some point in the next 40 years -- the operating life of a plant -- the U.S. is certain to join in a round of international greenhouse discussions, says Michael G. Morris, CEO of AEP, the nation's biggest coal consumer: "That's clear in my mind, and in our board's mind." If the U.S. rules are similar to Europe's, where it already costs a company more than $20 to release a ton of CO2, utilities and rate payers could face billions in expenses.

That would force utilities to invest more in lower-carbon alternatives such as wind power, "clean" coal, or natural gas, which emits one-third as much carbon per kilowatt as coal. But executives need to know soon what rules they will have to meet. That's why many are in favor of mandatory limits -- though they hesitate to say it publicly because of the opposition in Washington.

These companies are realizing that sustainability and environmental stewardship, makes business sense:

This change isn't being driven by any sudden boardroom conversion to environmentalism. It's all about hard-nosed business calculations. "If we stonewall this thing to five years out, all of a sudden the cost to us and ultimately to our consumers can be gigantic," warns Rogers, who will manage 20 coal-fired power plants if Cinergy's pending merger with Duke Energy is completed next year.

... Insurers in particular are staggered by their mounting bills for hurricanes, floods, fires, hailstorms, disease, heat waves, and crop loss. Many scientists agree that higher temperatures are causing more powerful storms and perhaps intensifying extreme weather events, ranging from drought and wild fires to ice storms.

... That's why climate change is causing insurance companies to ally with institutional investors, banks, and rating agencies. Together they are pushing companies to start thinking about greenhouse emissions as a material risk, just like other forms of financial risk that can impair future earnings. JPMorgan Chase & Co., for instance, is helping analysts and bankers model the impact of carbon on the banks' clients. "Global warming is on the radar screen of a lot of financial institutions," said Denise Furey, senior director of Fitch Ratings Ltd., at a recent climate conference.

The current administration? Still in denial:

The President remains opposed to any policy that would require carbon cutbacks. Instead, the White House asserts that climate change can be tackled with voluntary action and with major investments in alternatives to fossil fuels, such as hydrogen.

Yet the White House is growing increasingly isolated. U.S. public opinion is shifting. In October, a Fox News poll found that 77% of Americans believe global warming is happening, and of those, 76% say it's at least partly due to human activity. That's making greenhouse gas reductions trendy: The 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit, for one, aims to offset all of the new CO2 the championship generates by planting thousands of trees in the hills and towns near Ford Field.

... Some evangelical Christian groups, traditional allies of the Bush White House, have joined the call for action. "This used to be seen as just the passion of a few environmentalists on the left," says Jim Jewell of the National Association of Evangelicals, which includes 52 denominations serving 30 million parishioners. "But support on the issue has broadened. God's call on his people is to care for his creation."

Global Tobacco Treaty

This is an amazing development:

Key requirements of treaty

* Ban tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion, where constitutions allow, within five years.

* Tobacco packaging must include health warnings covering at least 30% of packet within 3 years.

* Introduce measures to protect people from second-hand tobacco smoke in public places.

* Draw up strategies to combat smuggling.

* Adopt tax policies which discourage smoking .

Hmmmm, I wonder why the US has not ratified this treaty: the UK, Australia, and India have, along with close to 60 other countries. The current US administration doesn't exactly have a track record of: (a) being cooperative with international bodies, (b) reining in Corporate influence. The key requirements look so reasonable, this should be a no-brainer. Even if you ignore the obvious benefits, consider how not signing, impacts future Medicare and Health care costs, and how those increase the budget deficit. Corporate and Business leaders, outside of the tobacco industry, should be up in arms.

So, why hasn't the U.S. ratified?

After the American government sabotaged its own six-year tobacco industry lawsuit last spring, the answer became painfully clear: "Big tobacco" still has a stranglehold on top-level U.S. officials. Big tobacco and its executives reported $3.7 million in political contributions during the 2004 election cycle and more than $45 million over the past decade.

And as we know from the past six decades of tobacco industry deceit, reported political contributions are only the tip of the iceberg.

While the majority of the world moves forward with this historic victory for health and corporate accountability, the U.S. remains on the sidelines, giving in to its deadly tobacco addiction.

Mindful Spending Can Amount to Billions

Free Trade works: it allows developing countries to use their Comparative Advantage, usually labor costs, to lift huge segments of their population out of poverty. This blog supports Fair Trade, but is NOT anti Free Trade. The blog promotes the simple idea that through Mindful Spending, we can use our purchase power to support companies who go beyond the short-term bottom line approach. Depending on our means, realistically, this might mean budgeting anywhere from 0-20% of our spending towards Mindful purchases. In earlier posts, I cited Costco and Nike as examples of major companies who are taking modest steps towards including sustainability and/or social justice in their long-term strategy.

That might mean higher prices for some purchases, but in the process we are helping create and nurture the companies of the future. In 2004, Online spending alone was estimated at $15B. The LATimes reports that "... the National Retail Federation, the industry's largest trade group, raised its holiday projection last week, saying it expected sales to rise 6% this season to $439.5 billion". Let's assume that 2005 Holiday spending totals $450B. If we can carve out 5-10% of all those purchases and allocate them to Mindful Spending, we are talking $22B to $45B. Even 1% translates to $4.5B! Enough to demonstrate serious demand for companies and products who take the environment and social justice into account.

As Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, is fond to point out, we consumers need to take some responsibility and support the companies that are making the changes we envision. Corporations have no problem telling China to get its act together and enforce the Intellectual Property laws they have on the books. Unfortunately, most Corporations will not go out of their way to raise environmental or fair labor issues: in their short-term thinking, they view these dimensions as not relevant to their bottom line. But as the news out of China highlights, the lack of transparency and environmental emphasis, is an emerging issue there as well.

Craig and Citizen Journalism

Craig Newmark (of craigslist) is featured in this article on the impact his list is having on the bottom line of newspapers, and his efforts to nurture various Citizen Journalists ventures.

I am somewhat skeptical that a bunch of amateurs can replace professional writers: investigative writing requires time, money, contacts, and persistence. Blogging is starting to challenge the dominance of the op-ed pages. Other parts of a newspaper will be harder to replace. Just compare wikinews to say the NYTimes, the LATimes, the Washington Post, or the SF Chronicle. Writing a high-quality and engaging article is hard, and it takes some journalists years before they really hone their craft. Having software tools and algorithms in place will cut down the noise and may keep off the spammers, but algorithms once understood can be gamed.

The newspapers are hurting, whatever emerges, I think ordinary citizens will play a larger role. That in itself is a good thing. The hybrid model that we are seeing -- citizen journalists along with traditional media -- can hopefully be sustained. I remain hopeful that the newspapers will be able to adjust to the economic pressures, and continue to produce high-quality journalism.

Citizen Journalism is part of the general trend towards decentralization. In the area of Trade and Commerce, scale still matters. In small towns across the US, small businesses and thriving downtowns, are being overwhelmed by large centralized big-box retailers. A small portion of our collective purchase power can go a long way towards slowing down this trend.

Competitive Broadband Markets

Consumers always benefit from having several providers. Cable TV and Local Phone franchises never made sense to me: hopefully we will see technical breakthroughs to challenge those monopolies as well.

"A broadband market can be considered competitive when there are at least four providers: prices differ very little between a market with four providers and one with more than four. Prices are not likely to fall in markets with less than four ISPs because incumbent firms are going to make it difficult for new providers to enter and offer broadband services at better terms. Moreover, we should expect a more competitive broadband market in richer and more densely populated areas. The composition of the population also matters, with areas with more Asians or singles attracting more ISPs.
Sattelite TV has technical problems to overcome, although some local Bells are trying to roll out TV services:

"The problem at the heart of DIRECTV's model is that it can't yet offer the two-way technologies that are so hot now -- from Voice over Internet Protocol to VOD. Satellite's one-way feed can send shows to TVs, but there's no path back to the satellite, making its pay-per-view offerings much less popular since they start at scheduled times. Plus, cable is a more attractive platform for ads because it can target spots to specific neighborhoods. "Last year satellite had all the advantages. Now cable has attacked them on just about every one," says Craig E. Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Looming but still a bit distant are threats from phone giants Verizon Communications Inc. () and SBC Communications Inc. (), which are gearing up to offer programming services. With its first trial under way in Keller, Tex., Verizon is offering a full menu of TV channels, part of a bundle with its own high-speed Internet services."