Readers' Comments

At first I thought this might be a centrist web site but now I know you support the radical left. Too bad. I was looking for something to give me balanced information.

An “octopus wrapped around the face of humanity” as one journalist put it; the New World Banking Order has arrived. In 2009 speculative, uncontrolled derivatives were the Worlds largest market at an estimated 600 Trillion. The Worlds total economic output was an estimated 58.07 Trillion and the total World bond market was an estimated 82.2 Trillion. Yet, there is no “crime” that the bankers can be charged with as they bankrupt citizens and Nations into the New World Order?
The appropriate criminal charge should be Treason to the American People and our Democratic Republic and Constitution. The members of the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group in government and banking who conspired to overthrow our soverenity as an independent nation, who conspired to bankrupt our Treasury with three unjust Wars and multinational corporate “rolling” bailouts, conspired to control mass media “free Press” propaganda, conspired and manipulated “financial crisis” for their own gain, conspired to “relocate” American industry and technology, conspired to offshore “American Income Tax”, and who have conspired to enslave American citizens with National debt (about $64,000 per citizen) and personal debt. Deserve the death sentence by firing squad for Treason.
Obama, your New World Order is Totalitarian and we Patriots, American free citizens, will fight for our Democracy, Independence and Freedom.

Hmm. Not sure I want to contribute to organizations who create such alliances like those with KFC and such.

REAL PREVENTION
In fact THE best cancer prevention (besides plain ole' healthy eating and living) is maintaining proper vitamin D levels. Having a Vitamin D blood level of 40 or above has shown to reduce breast cancer (as well as colon cancer and maybe others as testing goes on) by 78%.) Testing continues and if the results of these tests continue along the same arc, more vitamin D may increase that prevention figure even more.

Breast cancer virtually “eradicated” with higher levels of vitamin D
http://healthfreedoms.org/2010/02/11/breast-cancer-virtually-eradicated-with-higher-levels-of-vitamin-d/

BIGGER QUESTIONS
What aren't these breast cancer prevention campaigns focused on making sure everyone knows about the significance of VitaD on cancer and are getting tested and supplementing (which costs about $0.05 a day or less)

VIDEO
Vitamin D Prevents Cancer: Is It True?
http://www.ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16940

ARTICLES
Is vitamin D deficiency casting a cloud over your health?
http://www.womentowomen.com/healthynutrition/vitamind.aspx
Vitamin D Scientists’ Call to Action Statement
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/documentation-scientistscall

You are completely right. This is much more disgusting than a German TV-advertising where a beer brewery collects money for saving the rain forest. Don't stop thinking before helping. Most of the times there is a better way to help.

I never said raising money for cancer research was "idiotic." What I did is point out the irony of selling junk food -- which is already a well-established contributor to a host of diseases, including obesity and heart disease -- to raise money to fight yet another disease: cancer. I also pointed out how, if people really care about funding cancer research, they could do substantially more good by simply giving their money directly to cancer research, instead of purchasing a product and only having a tiny part of their purchase go to help the cause.

Anne Landman

Let's not forget Avon and the cosmetics companies. Even supposedly "green" companies like Aveda, that finance "research" denouncing products containing e.g. parabens, HAVE THEM in their products"""

I am an Italian doctor working in Tanzania.
I could not be physically present, but count on my moral participation.
Thanks.
Leopoldo

What the Cluck? Tell KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure to stop pinkwashing!
With their "Buckets for the Cure" campaign, KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure are telling us to buy buckets of unhealthy food to cure a disease that kills women. When a company purports to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribboned product, but manufactures products that are linked to the disease, we call that pinkwashing. Make no mistake--every pink bucket purchase will do more to benefit KFC's bottom line than it will to cure breast cancer. Join us in telling KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure to rethink this pinkwashing partnership.

Breast Cancer Action
bcaction.org

Thanks for the thoughtful article on cause marketing and me. Your points are well taken. I began linking companies and causes and causes with companies in 1982, first helping the Rockport Shoe Company to authentically promote walking for health and fitness to raise awareness of the nation's first walking shoes. From the very beginning of my quest to educate and lead companies to use social issues to build bridges to stakeholders, my philosophy then and today is about genuine ties to a social issue and a deep/long term commitment. Rockport invested considerable $ to modernize walking and make it fun, scientific (it could help your heart health) and a bit more hip for all ages to adopt. I helped them to conduct series of scientific investigations into this activity, renamed it Fitness Walking, and encouraged Rockport to invest in R & D to develop shoes --athletic and everyday types made to encourage walking. This may seem obvious, but it wasn't at the time. Rockport lead with walking as their issue, created a fitness test that when unveiled on Good Morning America, generated 60,000 requests for it in pre internet days no less! These actions birthed the walking movement in the US, and yes too it helped Rockport grow from an unknown $20 million company to over $125 million in five years. It was a win for society and a win for Rockport. This type of relationship is what renowned Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter calls "shared value. where companies find the intersection of a social issue that is deeply relevant to its business, then makes a strategic investment for the long term. I do the work that I do with great pride. Yes I am called by some, the "mother of cause marketing," and no matter what the label, since I started this type of work in 1982, I have committed myself and the work I do with companies to be highly strategic, (and yes it does take a lot of work to do it right and "institutional will" of people and $ and senior leadership). When I led Cone, we helped the American Heart Association refocus their extensive efforts in four campaigns: Go Red for Women attacking the #1 cause of death in women; the Alliance for a Healthier Generation fighting youth obesity; the Power to End Stroke fighting stroke for African Americans and START! promoting walking to adults. These campaigns have a variety of partners and yes some of not perfect, like the Rite Aid example you mention. The AHA does have vetting procedures that review partners before signing on. These campaigns have raised awareness, the engagement of new more healthy behaviors and have raised more than $250 million for heart disease research. Creating movements, like preventing heart disease, obesity, breast cancer, walking takes many -- for profits and nonprofits-- coming together to create awareness, education, raise funds for research and services and ultimately change behaviors. The road to creating these movements winds considerably. There is much learning along the way. Some missteps and some crashes. What is so encouraging is that companies today realize they do have a social contract to fulfill, with employees, consumers and communities, here as well as abroad. How they deliver on that contract varies broadly. Some companies do it superbly, with nary a problem along the way. Others are laggards and do it slowly, externally sometimes before addressing issues internally. And yes some do it only for window dressing. I led Cone for 29 years and as a team we help lead companies and nonprofits from Rockport to Avon, ConAgra, PNC, Western Union, among others to support social issues from health to early childhood education, to the environment among others. They have raised more than $1.2 billion for various causes. I have also helped countless colleagues teach their managements that this is a required strategy and the ways to do it well so both sides win. I left Cone to join one of the world's leading strategy and communications firms -- Edelman -- because of their deep and genuine commitment to moving social issues engagement forward through thought leadership, programs, products and services. Their global reach through 52 offices, 3200+ and 1000+ clients, will help to spread the strategy of well thought out, authentic engagement with causes to benefit society, employees, companies, ngo's and consumers. Again thanks for your thoughtful commentary. We must all work to raise the bar on great strategy and execution and shine a light on actions that are poorly done.

Do these tea bag folks realize the that the American revolution had nothing to do with taxes and nothing to do with representation.

Americans in the 18th century were not concerned about a tiny tax England was putting on tea.But the Masons,who were spread over all the colonies,saw that England was going to impose there banking system in the states.
The tea party folks ,who were the Masons, were about putting a bug in England's bonnet.
Not taxes.

In other words:

Its the Banks stupid

The current Tea Party movement started on Feb 20, 2009 after a phone call with about a dozen high-profile, conservative grassroots people (a couple ppl from that original group have slid from grassroots to astroturf, unfortunately) who were energized by Rick Santelli's "let's have a tea party in July" rant the day before. The intention was to use social media to spread the word in a modern grassroots fashion and have Tea Parties the following week in a few dozen major cities. About 800 tea parties were conducted the following week starting on Feb 27th. How do I know? I've been involved since day one. I was on that first call on the 20th and I organized the first L.A. tea party Feb 27, 2009. The rest is history.

There have been a few Tea Party "movements" in history, including the original. This particular tea party movement has nothing to do with the one Ron Paul and his supporters tried to get going a few years ago. That one fizzled out and died in short order.

Politico didn't "break" this story about Tea Party Express. Most of us in the movement have been calling out the shysters since they first attempted to slither onto the scene. But...many conservatives still think you shouldn't publicly out other self-described conservatives. Let's just say there's been a lot of back-channel bitching about the inanity known as Tea Party Express.

Regarding Judson Phillips and Tea Party Nation, I called him out too: http://brooksbayne.com/post/358255069/national-tea-party-convention-falling-apart-oh-when

The latest travesty is the attempt to fully align the tea party movement with beltway interests via this group they're now calling the National Tea Party Federation. When this idea was proposed, most of the teapartiers quickly severed ties with those involved. TPE, TPN and NTPF are not grassroots supported and are widely disliked in the movement.

I'm not "down" with the ideology most of you here cling to, but I thought it important to pop in and point out that the "real" tea party movement knows full well who's who and who isn't.

None of this is any surprise to anyone that has looked beyond the idiot baggers themselves to see who was standing behind them. I wrote two pieces in January that pretty much spells all this out.

http://www.smackontheweb.org/fparchive1.htm#tpp1
http://www.smackontheweb.org/fparchive1.htm#tpx1

The only people who do not understand this are those who simply do not want to understand or are plainly too stupid to understand what it means.