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Motherhood Messages from  Mythology:

A study of Four Queens as Mothers in Indian Epics Ramayana and Mahabharata

 

Parenting is generally assumed to be providing the basic necessities, with profound intensity in interest, love and concern in children particularly within the home environment. Providing physical safety, shelter, clothes, nourishment, protecting the child from dangers besides health are primary duties of a parent. Physical and mental well being of the child is as much parental concern as would be their cultivation of good habits and good values. Intellectual security, creating an environment that is conducive for mind to develop, an atmosphere of peace and justice in family are among the prerequisites of good parenting. Intellectual development, emotional security, emotional development and the list goes on…

 

But these are wishful thinking. We live in a world that would deny us even the basic rights to live, as there is no warrantee against terrorism. To live and let live is a thing of the past. The bygone millennia were far more favorable to worldly existence than the present times. What children expect of parents in dutiful bounty but a friendly co-operation. Arguments are best when completely avoided, interaction and guidance offered only when solicited, demonstrating healthy practices without coercion on the part of the other to emulate can aid in establishing a parent – child relationship that transforms a living together of two disparate individuals into peaceful coexistence. Confrontation on the other hand will usher in verbal warfare leading to universal chaos.

 

In these circumstances, it would be interesting and worthwhile to inquire into mythology and note how some of the tallest characters have behaved as parents. The two great Indian Epics The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been treasure houses of information for anything and everything the world could ask for Happy childhood challenged by scheming villains, obedient sons ousted by cunning voices, compassionate parents beleaguered by self-seeking desperados and many more disparities lace these epics.

 

 

The Mahabharata has been rightly hailed as the national epic of India. It is the story of a great war that terminated one yuga and began another. Considered to be the longest literary piece in the world, the most erudite evidence points out that, this great epic was composed between 2500 and 3000 years ago.

 

The Mahabharata is not an arbitrary compilation of tales like the Medieval Legends. Digressions aplenty, do shed light on the main plot and in fact help in maintaining the coherence. The plot revolves around the great battle that was waged at Kurukshetra between the Pandavas, their allies on the one side and Kauravas, their allies on the other. The war proverbially termed Dharma Yudda was the culmination of a whole generation of conflict and diplomatic maneuvering that pitted first among equals against second to none. And this made it all the more devastating eliminating several clans comprising of the best of men. The Pandavas, the sons of King Pandu, won the battle but lost the war that shattered the world they knew only to ruminate the rest of their lives in the emptiness of what they had won.

 

The Ramayana is one of the most well-known stories in the world, is considered to be the earliest epic written several millennia ago. It is a narrative on an exciting adventure tale about prince, Rama, the heir to the throne, banished to the forest for fourteen years, separated from his beloved wife, Sita. He wages a war against the abductor of Sita, Ravana, the King of Lanka, rescues her and returns to Ayodhya, and takes over the reins of the kingdom, to provide what is proverbially referred to as Rama Rajya – a form of governance that hitherto remains unsurpassed and unparalleled.

 

In more ways than one, these epics can be seen as a typically pitting the good against the evil. But they are much richer than these fairy tale tribes. They encompass human knowledge in abundance, lessons for all walks of life. In this article, I intend to take lessons of parenting, particularly motherhood, – the dos and don’ts of effective parenting. I shall be taking up the cases of Four Queens, Sumithra and Kaikeyi from the Ramayana along with Gandhari and Kunti from the Mahabharata.

 

Kunti

 

In the mythologically instructed community, there is a corpus of images and models that provide the pattern to which the individual may aspire, a range of metaphoric identity.
Jerome S. Bruner, psychologist

 

Queen Kunti is easily one of the most prodigious women to be accorded much respect in the Indian tradition. Her activities were that of a very pious and loyal wife and of a person with a great deal of self-control. She has an impressive lineage there. She is the daughter of the Yadava Shurasena and can thus trace her ancestry to such mighty emperors as Puroorava, Yayati and Nahusha, rulers of perhaps India’s largest ever empires. It is the blood of such mighty emperors that runs through Kunti’s veins. And as Shurasena’s daughter, she is Vasudeva’s sister and Krishna’s maternal aunt. In the Bheel version (a tribal version popular in North India)of the epic, she is Shakti herself born as a woman, who lives her human life as the very embodiment of Shakti.

 

She espoused the principles she strongly believed in, irrespective of her position. She accompanied her husband, Pandu when he renounced the throne and left for the forest. Severe austere life devoid of the sophistication of palace did not deter her and she accepted the change in her fortune with poignant and dignified grace. On a later occasion, she joined her sons in their journey towards the forest, and even outlived an assassination attempt in the wax mansion by the Kauravas. Her word was taken seriously both for their wisdom and guidance as in the case of Draupadi marrying her five sons. This is because, without looking at them she asked her sons to share the prize they had won.

 

Despite her sufferings, she found strength in her inner wisdom that carted her sons through crises particularly in the fratricidal war for justice.

 

The negative side of Kunti as a mother is best reflected in her handling of her Kaneena (child born to a woman before marriage) son Karna In spite of all her love for Karna, she was keen to get him out of her life as soon as he was born . So she floated the basket containing the young divine baby on a river and abandoned him completely out of her memory and life.

 

Thus with Karna, Kunti chooses the easy way out. In other words, her interests always preceded karna’s. This led to her abandoning him not just after his birth but repeatedly throughout his life. In the first instance he was saved by a good natured charioteer and his wife. After the floating incident we next see Karna as a young energetic youth qualified to challenge Arjuna in the arena where the Kaurava and the Pandava princes displayed their learning. He was rejected instantly because he was not a Kshatriya. One word of acknowledgement from Kunti could have saved not just Karna but the very Kurukshetra war that erupted later. But Kunti decided to abandon him again. This time Karna fell in line with evil. Duryodhana was quick to capitalize on his strength and weakness to crown him Anga Raja – the king of the Kingdom of Anga.

 

Her own son Bheema calls Karna a charioteer and humiliates him in the most caustic terms and asks him to get hold of his whip to drive chariots. All this in Kunti’s presence, but, for her part, she chooses to remain silent only to desert him.

 

There were numerous occasions when she could have felt the pulse of pride if only she had acknowledged his birth to her. But she refuses to recognize and admit the truth about him publicly.

 

The one occasion that she chooses to meet him and confess the truth of his birth is during the war. Even then it is to obtain something from him and not carry out her duties as his mother. She gets him to promise that he would not kill the Pandavas except Arjuna. By doing so, she makes him betray the man who recognized the dignity of his caliber.

 

In Bheel Bharatha, Kunti is supposed to have dumped Karna as an infant in a rubbish heap. This is both literal and metaphorical. When we look at Karna’s deeds, we wonder if this is true. He does indeed carry out some mean unethical deeds in his life, the meanest of them all is his vigorous incitement of Dushshasana in the act of debasing Draupadi in the Court Hall of Hastinapura. Kunti’s silence even at this moment is as intriguing as her rejection of Karna when he demonstrated his greatness. It could be argued that Karna could have evolved and realized the full potentials of his being if Kunti had not deserted him. She is squarely responsible for his falling into the hands of the Kauravas, ultimately into the darkness and dirt of evil. In effect she discarded an invaluable diamond into a rubbish heap. Which is exactly what the Bheel Bharata claims; she buried him in a rubbish heap.

 

Her attitude towards Karna may be puzzling. Many scholars have stated that there are reasons for her indifference. May be, she was conscious of her honour while dealing with Karna as he was born out of marriage. But when Karna eventually died, in the war, she courageously and whole heartedly acknowledged his valour.

 

Nevertheless, Kunti has her bright side as a mother to Nakula and Sahadeva who are actually Madri’s (Pandu’s second wife) children. In fact this act resurrects her from the sin of rejecting of her own Karna. There are instances when she even exhorts her eldest born Yudhishtra to take extra care of his youngest siblings. Such was her care and concern for them that forms a perfect foil to her treatment of her own Karna.

 

In Kunti, therefore, we see a devoted and none the less inquisitive maiden, a diligent wife, who respects elders and a trustworthy source of comfort to her husband. But she prevails as the archetypal dedicated mother, constantly advising and guiding her children, and ever willing to compromise on her comforts for their well being. Women like her have led and represented the concept of Bharat Mata. As feminist philosopher Judith Butler said, “Gender is a fact rather than an arbitrary set of concepts.” And Kunti’s motherhood stands testimony to it with all its positive and negative sides complementing each other.

Gandhari

Gandhari, often referred to as the ‘model of female propriety’, also considered an incarnation of Mati,(Goddess of Intelligence) is the daughter of Subala, the king of Gandhara,(modern Kandhahar) a region in the northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. A tragic character of Mahabharata, her fearless life and strong disposition is very relevant to the contemporary socio-political context. She was forced to marry, Dhritrashtra, a blind king who was much older to her. This came as a rude shock to her, violating her womanly rights. Gandhari volunteered to blindfold herself throughout her married life which is generally assumed to be an act of supreme self sacrifice. She therefore forced herself into an act of self denial of the power and pleasure of sight that her husband could never experience and relish. Underlying Gandhari’s resolve to remain blindfolded was a silent but a strong protest in opposition to the power games and of course the forced marriage, at once making her enforced blindness both physical and metaphorical. She remained blind to the power games, political manipulations, irrefutable affection for her sons even if they indulge in hatred. The animosity they entertained with their first cousins, the Pandavas, swelled into the great war of Kurukshetra. This also explains her silence when Draupadi was defiled in the court. On hind sight one can see that Gandhari was more of a victim of a society that attempted to endorse male supremacy. Her protest nevertheless was loud, clear and successful

 

As a mother, twice she manifested her affection and concern for her son Duryodhana. Once, when she tried to wrap him with an invincible aura to avert death in the war. To her shock she failed one, because he was on the side of Adharma or evil, two, because he did not obey her words completely. She had asked him to come unclothed. She would see him with her naked eyes to bestow upon him a protective ring. But he appears with a loin around his waist. This repels the power of her vision to fall on his entire body making his waist to knee weak and vulnerable. He was eventually killed by Bheema who broke his thighs. The other occasion when she displayed her wrath for the loss of her children was through a small gap in the cloth with which her eyes were blindfolded; her gaze fell on Yudhisthira’s toe. The toe was charred black reflecting the power of her vision.

 

The boon that will bestow a 100 sons, turned out to be a curse. Her sons much against her wishes perpetrated crime after crime on their cousins, insinuated by her own bother, Shakuni. She remained completely oblivious – or so she claimed –of her sons’ misadventures, as the Kauravas made several attempts to eliminate the Pandavas. She favoured peace, but never reined in her sons to establish peace, blinded by affection. She repeatedly exhorted her sons to follow dharma and make peace with the Pandavas but this was seen as a sign of weakness that was exhaled by her blindness.

 

Her enforced blindness and the lack of ‘eye contact’ with her children left them bereft of humaneness. They were insinuated by their maternal uncle , Shakuni, who was shattered by sister’s condition and held Bhishma squarely responsible for the same. His agenda of eliminating the kuru clan which he equated with Bhishma’s clan, was effected by slow poisoning his nephews into evil ways. He also harboured ambitions to the throne in Duryodhana. All this happened right under Gandhari’s nose. But she continued to remain blind. Several plans were hatched to kill the Pandavas, the attempt at drowning Bheema when they were in their early teens, the infamous wax mansion episode, the game of dice and the eventual banishment, but the perpetrators were never brought to book. She remained blind to all these as well.

 

Gandhari is a powerful character and therefore a role model. Her positive attributes, have often gone unnoticed. Her unconditional love for Kunti is reflected in Dhuryodhana’s unconditional acceptance with Karna though the relationship between the two (Kunti and Karna) remained obscure to them. This is a trait straight from Gandhari’s book. Her love for Draupadi, even though her sons could not win her, was silently registered and best exhibited when she allowed her to curse the Kuru clan. Her silence endorsed the power of women. Her sons failed to understand this silence. They deceived themselves into believing that their mother vouched for their actions. Her blindness now blinded the others.

 

Gandhari was much respected and admired quite deservedly so by all, including the Pandavas. She was endowed with a tough spirit and rationality, that even King Dhritarashtra solicited her sound advice. She never missed an opportunity to urge him to restrain the activities of Duryodhana. She has also insisted that he reinstate the Pandavas. But, never really voiced it out to her sons herself. Her motherliness was best exhibited when she stood for justice and refused to bless the Kauravas before the Kurukshetra war and remained strong and steadfast in her anti-war cum pro-justice position. She sat with the king listening to Sanjaya’s narration of the war. An advocate of peace she was indeed very saddened by the tragic consequence of the war.

 

In the present context, Gandhari’s motherhood can be described as a precursor to the marvels of the modern day natal sciences. Her dedication to duty, family, spouse and dharma, though not necessarily in that order is unparallelled. Her life is an exemplary case for the need for women to be rational and steadfast in their perception and performance of the many roles they play through their lives. A heavy demand indeed, in this cut – throat competitive world.

Kaikeyi

Kaikeyi, in the R?m?yana, was the second of King Da?aratha’s three wives and a queen of Ayodhy?. She was the daughter of the mighty Ashwapati, a long-term ally of Ayodhya. Her marriage to Dasaratha was settled only after the latter promised her father that her son would become the heir apparent to the throne of Ayodhya. Dasaratha little hesitated to this as kauslya, his first wife was issueless. But even Kaikeyi could not beget a son, and eventually Dasaratha married Sumitra, the princess of Magadha, another kingdom with strong political ties to Ayodhya.

 

Kaikeyi has intrigued all scholars, both through her character as a person and as a mother. Therefore it is worth examining her character. A peep into her childhood provides a strong clue to her motives behind her insistence on the banishment of Rama from Ayodhya to the forest for fourteen years. As a young girl she was the only sister to seven brothers. She had no maternal influence in her early childhood as her father had estranged his wife over a trifling issue. Ashwapati could understand the language of the birds. This boon, however had strings attached to it. He was refrained from revealing the contents of their conversation, failing which he would have to lose his life. Once, when the King and his Queen were in the palace gardens, Ashwapati happened to overhear the conversation of a pair of swans. His focus on overhearing the birds betrayed caution, and he laughed aloud. His wife persisted on knowing the reason for his sudden laughter. He feared that he would somehow reveal the idea in some unguarded moment. Hence he felt that Kaikeyi’s mother threatened the happiness of his family and he unjustly banished her from the palace. Kaikeyi never saw her mother again. Having been raised by her wet nurse, Manthara, in the absence of a mother at such a young age, allied with her father’s treatment of her mother chiseled a deep impression on the young mind. She developed a extreme distrust for all men. Her mother’s subsequent exile coupled with Manthara’s constant fuelling of negative impulses harboured a sense of insecurity in her. This is clearly revealed in her disposition as the secondary consort to Dasaratha. She soon realized the depth of Dasaratha’s love and affection for his Queen and Empress, Kausalya. The reason for his marrying her was chiefly to produce the much awaited heir. Manthara’s scheming ideas were of great help to her, particularly to win over the king. This cunningness was aptly rewarded when she earned two boons from him at a very critical juncture.

 

Kaikeyi’s boons turned out to be Kausalya’s bane.

 

Years later, plans were laid to crown Rama, the son of Kausalya, the heir apparent, as King. A true human being that she is when left to herself, Kaikeyi was genuinely delighted . However, Manthara ensured that Kaikeyi fell a prey to her scheming ways. Her own son Bharatha, on hearing about his mother’s evil desires, refused to budge to her demands. Not only did he refuse kingship, he even went to the extent of recalling Rama back to Ayodhya. He agreed to return only after his elder brother parted with his footwear which will govern the empire. This handed out a tight slap on the face to Kaikeyi and Manthara.

 

When we analyse Kaikeyi’s mindset, we realize that much of it stems from her childhood insecurity and total distrust of men in general and husbands in particular. Her mother’s experience at the hands of her father, has engraved deeply in her mind that very often her natural good self gets clouded by these negative motives. Her character as a person and as a mother is greatly influenced by the happenings of her younger days.

 

It is not just for Bharatha that she claims the throne. It is also for her own pride and security as the Queen Mother winning over Kausalya as Dasaratha’s favourite, that her claim seem complete and valid. Her ego is further punctured when she succeeds in neither. Bharatha refuses the throne while Dasaratha, dies exactly six days after Rama’s departure to the forest. Furthermore, Bharatha never addressed her as “Mother” again. Kaikeyi was said to have died a broken-hearted woman in total seclusion, estranged from her son, his wife Mandavi and their two sons, her only grandchildren. She had to blame only herself and perhaps fate for both these events.

 

As a mother, she could have been true but for Manthara’s influence. Her delight on hearing abour Rama’s coronation was spontaneous and genuine. Valmiki describes it as a delight a mother would feel for a happy occurrence to her own son. Such was her affection for Rama. But once triggered, her outpours knew no bounds. She not only demanded the kingdom for her son, but wanted Rama to be banished from the kingdom, to ensure safety for her son. This is not the Kaikeyi who reacted so positively just a little while before. She must have been the very embodiment of humane feelings. But circumstances, fate and Manthara never allowed her to be her own self. Her association with Manthara was far too deep and so was the sway the latter had on her, that it became impossible to disentangle the relationship. A weak childhood rendered a weak mindset that eventually succumbed to Mantahara’s exploitation of her weakness.

 

Sumithra

 

Sumitra, the third queen of king Dashratha, hailed from the ancient kingdom of Kashi. The wisest of the all the wives of Dasaratha, she was the first to realize that Rama was the incarnation of Lord Narayana.

 

In the Puthra Kameshti Yaga, that was performed to beget children, both Kausalya and Kaikeyi offered their second portion of the Kheer to Sumitra.She produced two sons, Lakshmana was born out of the portion given to her by Kausalya while, Shatrughana was born out of the portion given to her by Kaikeyi.

 

Her affection for children is vividly described in the Balakanda of Valmiki’s Ramayana. All the four young princes would choose to remain in Sumitra’s proximity in all their waking hours. Rama and Bharatha would insist on sleeping only on her lap and when they wake up, would persistently cry until they see her. ” Sumitra, here is your son, he does not sleep without your lap, see how red his eyes have become due to his incessant crying.” Kausalya and Kaikeyi would often rush to her with these words. The children would return to switch off mode as soon as she takes them in her arms. Such was the intimacy this Queen and the princes enjoyed.

 

Her relationship with the other queens was equally pleasant. It is believed that she would have prevailed over Kaikeyi when Rama was exiled, if she were given a chance. It is perhaps for this reason that Rama, in one version of Ramayana, sends Lakshmana to get her permission and blessings, since, her favouring Rama would have forced Kaikeyi to change her mind and decision that would make Rama go back on his word to his father.

 

When Lakshma insisted that he would accompany Rama to the forest, he was worried if his mother would not appreciate the idea. But contrary to everyone’s expectations, she tells Lakshmana, ” O son, being far from me, don’t ever think that you are far away from your parents, Sita will be your mother and Rama will be your father because the elder brother is just like a father and do not regret being far away from Ayodhya because Ayodhya is at the very place where Rama resides. You don’t have any business in Ayodhya in the absence of Rama.”

 

Further, she said: ” In this world, only that woman is fit to be called a mother whose son is the devotee of Raghunath, otherwise it would have been better if she were incapable of giving birth to a son”.

 

Her respect for Kaikeyi hardly changed , despite the fact that she was responsible for Rama’s exile. On he other hand she tells Lakshman, ” O son! Only your misfortune is responsible for sending Rama into exile and there is no other reason and you must consider it as your good fortune that you would be getting an opportunity to serve Rama and Sita while in exile.”

 

Sumitra goes a step further. She also envies her own son, considering it his good fortune to remain in the propinquity of Rama and bemoans her own misfortune that she has to remain far away from him. Her next piece of advice was with respect to Lakshmana seeking to serve Rama with his thoughts, words and deeds. She also warned Lakshmana not to act in a manner that could offend Rama.

 

With these words of wisdom she let Lakshmana accompany Rama and Sita to the forest.

During the war with Lanka, when she came to know that Lakshmana was injured, by the ‘Shakti- Bana’ quite unlike any other mother, the first thought that flashed across her mind was about the safety of Rama and not her son. She was more concerned about the fact that Rama was alone. Besides she was also aware of Rama’s love for his younger sibling and hence could understand the pain and suffering he had to endure in his absence. She even asked her second son Shatrughuna to serve Rama in his hour of need.

 

This is the hallmark of Sumitra as a mother. Fully aware that her older son may not survive, she was willing to spare her other son to serve Rama. Such selfless mothers are hard to come by in this wild wicked world.

 

She, never once grieved about her son’s separation. Conversely, she was envious of him in that he could be in close proximity of Rama.

 

Much of her positive attitude rubbed into her children’s temperament.
Lakshmana absorbed these exceptional qualities and quite akin to her personality had an unfailing love for his brother.

 

Towards the end of Rama’s life, Sage Dhurvasa comes to meet Rama. Earlier Rama had told Lakshmana that he should not be disturbed, no matter who comes to meet him. If he is, then Lakshmana would have to end his existence. It is at this juncture that the sage known for his vicious curses, arrived. Lakshmana falls into a serious dilemma. He explains to the sage in a very polite manner the instructions of his brother. To which the sage replies, that if he is not permitted to meet Rama, then the entire clan of Rama would be annihilated. Lakshmana did not wink a moment to decide. He went in and informed his brother of the Sage’s arrival, took his blessings and left for the river Sarayu to complete his mission on earth. Such was his devotion to his brother. He would rather end his existence than allow Rama’s descendents to be annihilated. His priorities cannot be defined any more clearly than this. . ‘Like mother like son’ in the truest spirit of the saying.

 

‘Blessed was the mother’ and ‘blessed was the son’, acclaims Tulsidas, in his description of Sumitra. Her unbounded love and affection for Rama is unparalleled in any mythology. The poet further eulogises this great character, when he says, “Only such type of mothers who is like Sumitra is worthy of being called a mother and a child having taken birth from the womb of such a mother is worthy of being called a son. Salutations to such a mother like Sumitra”.

 

When we look objectively at these women of great substance, we could easily decipher their strength and short comings. While Kunti exercised disparity among her own children, Gandhari, was blind to her own children’s evil ways, While kaikeyi was possessive, Sumithra found ecstasy in sharing. We can also see that their personalities rub into their children’s activities. Karna parted ways with good when he found recognition in evil. Duryodhana was blind to evil just as his mother was blinded by affection. Bharatha refused to respect his mother just as she refused to respect the king and honour is decision. Whereas Sumithra’s show of unlimited and unmitigated affection was perfectly imbibed by Lakshmana who was equally impeccable in his love and service to his brother.

 

The message from these women is loud and clear. Attitudes are engineered into the child’s mind even if they are not articulated. And the mother is that supreme personality whose influence on the child never ends. She influences eternity.

 

References:

 

Justice Sen, Sisir Kumar ICS: Quest for the origin of Bharata Samhita and the Mahabharata Story (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1995).

 

Dandekar, R.N. (ed): The Mahabharata Revisited (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1990).

 

Sirca, D.C. (ed): The Bharata War and Puranic Genealogies
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Katz, R.C. Arjuna in the Mahabharata (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1989)
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Subramanian, M.V. ICS: The Mahabharata Story: Vyasa and Variations
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Padma Sri P. Lal (ed): Vyasa’s Mahabharata: Creative Insights, 2 vols (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1992, 1985)

 

Bhattacharya, Pradip: A Long Critique on the Mahabharata TV Film Script
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http://www.aishveryaanidhi.com/inner/theatre_activity_2005.htm

 

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/04/10/stories/1310017b.htm

 

http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/117.htm

 

Sumathi.S
http://www.articlesbase.com/parenting-articles/motherhood-messages-from-mythology-a-study-of-four-queens-as-mothers-in-indian-epics-ramayana-and-mahabharata-718751.html

As I jetted the streets of Chicago in a perverse attempt to find a liquor store that still carried Mad Dog 20/20, I reflected on how odd timing could be.  Not thirty minutes ago I was a doctoral student sitting in lecture at a prestigious, private university and now I was actively seeking a substance whose sole purpose was the destruction of the brain I was just developing.  Truthfully, this was the first time I was ever looking to buy some Mad Dog; though I do remember it floating around throughout my college years.  So, when I jumped in my car I never thought that this search would be so difficult; I just assumed I could get it anywhere.  But, as I continued to swerve my little Saturn from liquor store to liquor store, I kept receiving the same twisted dirty look from the staff when I asked where they kept their Mad Dog. 

After about an hour of scouring the city streets I hit pay dirt.  The clerk had to go all the way to the back of the store, move some boxes out of the way and dig out my prize.  When I went to the register the second clerk asked to see my I.D.  As I reached for my wallet the first interjected quickly and said, “Now, we don’t need to see his I.D.  I trust him.”  With that he shot me a sly wink and bagged up my three bottles.  He must have thought he was doing some underage kid a favor.  I wanted to scream that I was really over 21 (by quite a many years) and decree the real reason I was purchasing this vile liquor.  But I hesitated and thought, maybe it just makes more sense to him that a youngin’ was buying such an inexpensive, atrocious alcohol.  After all, what respectable doctoral student would?

At this point you may think this article to be about the trappings of a young alcoholic.  Now, while working toward a Ph.D. may drive me into the bottle, I’m not quite there just yet.  In all actuality, I was preparing for a party I hosted on November 2, 2004.  The invitation read as follows:

All people and political parties are welcome to Election Night 2004!!! But, there is an agenda for the evening.  If:
1. John Kerry wins, I will have champagne for all.
2. If Dubya wins, everyone will be required to drink 1 glass of Mad Dog 20/20.
3. If Nader wins, I will personally buy an all-inclusive round-trip package to Hawaii for everyone who comes to the party.
4. If, somehow, the Democrats win the election but the Republicans steal it AGAIN then we all will pile into our cars and make a break for Canada!
Hope you can make it!!!

As I’m sure you can assume, the champagne was decidedly easier and much more expensive to obtain for the festivities.  Also, I didn’t exactly have American Airlines on hold with 20 round trip tickets to Hawaii in anticipation of the greatest political upset in the last 100 years. 

As a reluctant Democrat, I spent the weeks preceding the election debating with my academic colleagues about who was going to win.  With all the higher education Republicans being called into an undisclosed F.B.I. conservative protection program, these discussions were largely one-sided.  The tenor is best characterized as having a measured optimism.  Kerry was obviously intelligent; the fact that he “flip-flopped” on issues only proved he could in fact change his mind if given new evidence.  And, of course, how could the character of a decorated Vietnam veteran ever be tarnished? 

These discussions also provided ample opportunity for Bush-Bashing; I admit that I participated in these sessions with zeal!  Now, our President Bush has never been seen as a flip-flopper.  You either clearly knew his stance on an issue or you clearly knew he had no intention of taking any stance at all.  I think Chris Rock summed it up best:

Reporter:          Mr. President, What about the economy?  When’s it going to pick up?

Bush:                Well, you never know.  We’re talking to people. And economic indicators are indicating that indications are coming to the indicators. You know what I’m saying?  Alright.

Reporter:          Mr. President, what about gay marriage?

Bush:                F— them faggots!

November 2, 2004 finally rolled around.  I was incredibly thankful that my near round the clock vigil of all the major media outlets would soon end; I hadn’t watched this much news coverage since the days following 9/11.  At any rate, I ducked out of work, drove to my polling station and cast my ballot.  Even up until the second I punched out my chad I was conflicted, but ultimately chose to follow my mind rather than my heart.   I make this distinction because if I had voted for who my heart wanted, Nader would have been a single vote greater in Illinois.  But, I bought into the hype that this election was just too important.  As I said before, I am a reluctant Democrat.

The party that evening went well on its way and we watched the events unfold.  Of course nothing surprising initially happened; states were falling where we all new they would.  The northeast lit up blue, the south burned red.  Like clockwork, within 5 seconds of the polls closing in Illinois it was awarded to the Democrats.  I always take it as a matter of pride that my home state is the first blue beacon out to the west. 

My partygoers continued to munch through all the hors d’oeuvres and make small talk since it would be at least a couple hours wait until we started receiving a few of the “toss-up” state election results.  And then it came – Kerry was projected to win Pennsylvania.  Not wanting to fall prey to another Florida fiasco, we quickly checked out all the news outlets for confirmation.  All except Fox News (surprise, surprise) had the same wonderful blue color enveloping Pennsylvania; at that point a Kerry win felt much more tangible.  The South cards all fell for Bush, as expected.  Our numbers looked horrible, but we knew we could add on California’s 55 electoral votes to put us at ease.  Until this point in the evening I was guarded in my optimism, but now I started to allow myself to believe.  Maybe we wouldn’t have four more years of Bush. 

The night rolled on and Florida fell as I expected but along came Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the win column for us.  My eyes began to bore holes into Ohio on the TV map.  I don’t think I moved from my position for sometime as I sat hoping for an answer.

I have never claimed to be a mathematician at any point in my life.  Truth be told, in my first-year of college I was required to take a no-credit, remedial Algebra course.  Nonetheless, on election night I found myself doing incredible calculations effortlessly in my head as I watched the returns come in from Ohio.  It was still too close to call but Kerry was trailing.  None of that mattered, each time I calculated the number of votes we needed I rationalized ways we were going to get them.  After all, Democrats are lazy aren’t they?  I had bet they were lounging around their houses all day, continually putting off going to the polls.  I just knew they were watching T.V. like I was and suddenly realized “Oh damn!  Look at those poll numbers.  We had better go vote!” 

Plus, we were heavily relying on the college vote.  Having worked in colleges for many years now I’ve seen first hand just how adept students are at procrastinating.  They probably were piling out of their residence halls right now and slowly trampsing over to the polls.  Yeah, that must be it.  I pinned my hopes of the election on the fact that lazy Democrats and procrastinating college students from Ohio were going to save the day. 

With fear starting to creep in, some of my companions began speculating about what four more years of Bush really meant.  The realization that we were going to lose continued to seep its way more and more into our psyche.  Needless to say, neither the champagne nor Mad Dog was drunk that evening.  And, my smart-aleck friend who brought with him a packed bag in hopes of a free Hawaiian vacation somberly went home.  The night ended on the familiar note of a build up minus a pay off reminiscent of 2000.  I struggled to stay awake into the night, but eventually fell asleep in my living room with the TV on.

Let me pause for one quick side bar.  If elections are going to keep ending like a Hollywood cliffhanger, can we all decide to move them to Friday?  On the Wednesdays following these sleepless nights I get absolutely nothing done between the frequent dosing off and even more frequent refreshing of every media outlet I have opened up on my desktop.  Days like this I am addicted to these websites even though I can get a better idea about what will be on next week’s “24″ than I can about an election that already happened!

The early morning hours came without any news.  I turned on the coffee pot, no news.  I toasted my bagel, no news.  I showered while occasionally craning my neck out of the bathroom to see the TV, no news.  I was starting to get irritated.

Then came the Kerry concession speech; I knew it was coming, but just didn’t want to believe it.  I wish I could say that he left me with some solace or hope in the future.  I wish I felt united behind President Bush as the justified winner.  But honestly, I cannot remember one word the man said during this speech.  All I remember is thinking that maybe it was a good thing he didn’t get elected.  I mean, for God’s sake, no President of the United States should ever be seen wearing a tie resembling something donated by the makers of Pepto-Bismol!  Come on, you have to agree with me there! 

Of course, this was just my humor consoling the incredible loss I felt in this moment.  How could my calculations have been so off?  Did the unreliable college students of Ohio sell our collective souls down the river because of a good drink special on campus?  The parade of Bush parties all over the nation began to spring up and glow on my television screen.  Bush was then able to give the triumphant reelection speech his father never could.  As Bush supporters throughout the country were chanting enthusiastically “Four More Years” I sat down, put my head in my hands and muttered in a barely recognizable, guttural, pained effort of speech, “four…more…years.”

This article is not about what happened to the Democrats in losing this election.  I merely tell my story of the election to one, set the stage for what we see in liberal America today and two, as a method of cathartic release for the emotions I still have bottled up.  Looking back a year later, I can’t bring myself to hold Kerry solely responsible for this loss even though it seemed like a proverbial slam-dunk.  What concerns me more is the attitude and rhetoric my fellow liberals have employed in the months since November.  A year later I stand aghast at the senseless ramblings of individuals I thought to be patriots of this country.  I believe in many of their virtues and ideals and thought I was standing shoulder to shoulder with them in a fight for what we believed in. 

Unfortunately, many of my liberal co-patriots have gone off the bitter deep end.  It is sad to witness the disgust, bordering on hate, many have expressed for those who dared cast their ballots for Bush.  I even heard remarks after the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe that “those people down South” should blame themselves for President Bush’s slow response in their time of need.  After all, they are the ones who voted for him.  I find such a sentiment revolting.  These are the people we hope to serve and yet we have shown so little respect for them in the wake of this election.  If they do not “get” that we can serve them better than the Republican right, who’s fault is that?

In my junior year in high school, my entire class was unexpectedly called down to our large auditorium.   Not knowing why we were being beckoned, we hastened downstairs knowing the reason could not be good news.  A month or so prior we had all taken the Pre-ACT and evidentially our results had just been received. 

My high school was supposed to be a rigorous college prep program and our combined Math scores were far below the national average.  This is of course a foreshadowing to the future problems I would have in college requiring remedial coursework.  In any case, the school administration had called us down to one, inform us of this fact and two, berate us for so horribly embarrassing the school by our poor performance.  The principal spoke at us.  The dean of students spoke at us.  After about 10-15 more minutes of our own teachers criticizing our work ethic and performance to date I shot my hand into the air.  I just couldn’t take it anymore. 

When I was finally called on I could actually hear the hundreds of heads sweep back in my direction to see what I dared to say.  While what I said next was most definitely rooted in a rebellious, adolescent, smart-aleck rebuke to the administration, it was nonetheless a moment of truth and relatable to our current political situation.  I said, “Now, if I do poorly on a test, then that is my fault.  But, if ALL 400 of us do poorly on a nationally administered test, isn’t that YOUR fault?” as I pointed my finger in the direction of the faculty. 

As I am sure you can imagine, I got into an incredible amount of trouble for my outburst; but that does not mean that I was wrong!  If Red-Staters who have lost their jobs, are having their daughters and sons die in the Middle East and are suffering through a horrendous federal response to a natural disaster are still voting for the man and political party responsible for their plight, how can we place blame for the election at their doorstep?  We evidentially did an outright horrible job at teaching and explaining how we want to work on behalf of these honest, hard-working people occupying the land between Los Angeles and New York City.  We did not show them how we have their true interest at heart and not just interests of the richest 1%.  It isn’t their fault and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them.  The problem lies within our nation of real-life, working liberals.

I absolutely refuse to align myself with rhetoric of dejection, mistrust, and constant bemoaning of how we have been cheated.  I have some news for all my fellow liberals out there…WE WEREN’T CHEATED!  But, even if we were cheated, we cheated ourselves.  I can’t believe that some of the most highly educated and respectable people in our nation are such incredibly sore losers.  We aren’t on the playground anymore folks and there will be another day for another election.  I have no confidence in President Bush either, but I do have confidence in us as a people.  Besides, if Kerry was elected, we have to be honest, we were only hoping for a slightly less screwed up world than we already have.  A messiah sent to heal the wounds in our country he was not.

We liberals here on the ground floor, living real lives, will not have success just happen to us.  We have to create our own fortune.  The Democrats may be the best we have and, unfortunately for us, the only thing they have successfully created is an ocean of failure.  Just take a quick look at the results for the past 10 elections:

                        1968 – Richard M. Nixon (R)

                        1972 – Richard M. Nixon/Gerald R. Ford (R)

                        1976 – James E. Carter (D)

                        1980 – Ronald W. Reagan (R)

                        1984 – Ronald W. Reagan (R)

                        1988 – George H. W. Bush (R)

                        1992 – William J. Clinton (D)

                        1996 – William J. Clinton (D)

                        2000 – George W. Bush (R)

                        2004 – George W. Bush (R)

Are you able to see the problem?  We have elected 2 Democrats to our nations highest office in the past 36 years and one of those was JIMMY CARTER!  There are problems that pre-date the “Dubya” era of our history.  We have to take a critical look into how this history and the Democratic Party has affected the nation of liberals of which I am proud to be a part.  Proud yes, but not satisfied.  We can be better than we have shown ourselves to be this past year.

One, we are not going to win allies by calling people stupid.  It is just that simple.  Liberals are quick to chastise President Bush for pushing around the world like he is Clint Eastwood in some Western.  He is not well liked around the world because he is a bully and thinks he knows what is right; let’s not make the same mistake.  Let’s not assume we naturally know what a family living in Stillwater, Oklahoma wants or needs.  We may share in a collective American culture, but our individual experiences are far removed from one another.

Two, we are not going to win allies by looking down our noses at people.  Do you remember the stuck up professors you had in college who thought they were God’s gift to the world?  Did you like them?  Of course not!  Pretentious academics end their life in the solitude believing that they were always better than everyone else.  Notice closely that I said their story ends in solitude.  An important point here is that solitude doesn’t carry much voting power.

Three, we are not going to win allies by telling people how easy it would be to improve their situation.  First off, I have rarely met a person whose situation was easy to begin with.  Everyone has a story about the hardest thing they have ever had to deal with in their lives.  To them it was difficult and, even if another’s experience was different, no one has the right to pass a value judgment.  Everyone’s story deserves respect.

Many Red-Staters like their “situation” and don’t need people filling their head with the idea that there is something wrong with them.  We have fought and are still fighting hard battles for equal opportunity.  This means all people have the equal opportunity to lead any kind of life they want.  I too get annoyed when NASCAR clogs up my nightly ESPN time, but being a fan of NASCAR does not infer that you also possess a lower I.Q.  Again, I say we have constantly fought for the choice.  Why would we begrudge anyone that? 

We should learn from and show respect to the Republican Party and Red-Staters.  They are ardent Americans and a large section of the population we hope to serve.  Furthermore, when the Republicans took a presidential back seat in the 1990s, never once did I hear that they wanted to flee to Canada as I heard loudly exclaimed from many liberals this past year.  I point the finger right back myself in this instance in reference to my Election Night invitation.  How more un-American and juvenile can a person sound by saying that since I didn’t get my way I’m taking my ball and going home.  If the Left is going to flee the country because the current King of the Right is still in office, I have to respect Republicans even more for deciding to continue the fight and not just BLOW town when Clinton held the same JOB.  Remember, the Right was exactly too ecstatic when we had our president in the 90s. 

Special Note: For those of you who want to move to Canada over election results my first instinctual response is to help you pack.  We don’t need you here; you’re nothing but a pessimistic weight holding us down.  But, if you really are willing to move over this, then could you at least take one for the team and move to Ohio?  We need some more blue voters there.

The point is that I have not seen my peers leading with respect this past year and I call upon them to do so.  I don’t care about the politicians; they are going to do what they are going to do.  I say again that I am talking to the real world, working liberals where the true charge for change falls.  We are better than this and only by being better are we going to reclaim positions of power in politics.  It is 3 more years until the next election and I am guessing it is at least 8-12 more years before Barrack Obama can run.  We need answers and leaders today.  Get your game face on liberals!

Art Munin
http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/election-night-2004-the-liberal-report-a-year-later-3858.html

As I jetted the streets of Chicago in a perverse attempt to find a liquor store that still carried Mad Dog 20/20, I reflected on how odd timing could be.  Not thirty minutes ago I was a doctoral student sitting in lecture at a prestigious, private university and now I was actively seeking a substance whose sole purpose was the destruction of the brain I was just developing.  Truthfully, this was the first time I was ever looking to buy some Mad Dog; though I do remember it floating around throughout my college years.  So, when I jumped in my car I never thought that this search would be so difficult; I just assumed I could get it anywhere.  But, as I continued to swerve my little Saturn from liquor store to liquor store, I kept receiving the same twisted dirty look from the staff when I asked where they kept their Mad Dog. 

After about an hour of scouring the city streets I hit pay dirt.  The clerk had to go all the way to the back of the store, move some boxes out of the way and dig out my prize.  When I went to the register the second clerk asked to see my I.D.  As I reached for my wallet the first interjected quickly and said, “Now, we don’t need to see his I.D.  I trust him.”  With that he shot me a sly wink and bagged up my three bottles.  He must have thought he was doing some underage kid a favor.  I wanted to scream that I was really over 21 (by quite a many years) and decree the real reason I was purchasing this vile liquor.  But I hesitated and thought, maybe it just makes more sense to him that a youngin’ was buying such an inexpensive, atrocious alcohol.  After all, what respectable doctoral student would?

At this point you may think this article to be about the trappings of a young alcoholic.  Now, while working toward a Ph.D. may drive me into the bottle, I’m not quite there just yet.  In all actuality, I was preparing for a party I hosted on November 2, 2004.  The invitation read as follows:

All people and political parties are welcome to Election Night 2004!!! But, there is an agenda for the evening.  If:
1. John Kerry wins, I will have champagne for all.
2. If Dubya wins, everyone will be required to drink 1 glass of Mad Dog 20/20.
3. If Nader wins, I will personally buy an all-inclusive round-trip package to Hawaii for everyone who comes to the party.
4. If, somehow, the Democrats win the election but the Republicans steal it AGAIN then we all will pile into our cars and make a break for Canada!
Hope you can make it!!!

As I’m sure you can assume, the champagne was decidedly easier and much more expensive to obtain for the festivities.  Also, I didn’t exactly have American Airlines on hold with 20 round trip tickets to Hawaii in anticipation of the greatest political upset in the last 100 years. 

As a reluctant Democrat, I spent the weeks preceding the election debating with my academic colleagues about who was going to win.  With all the higher education Republicans being called into an undisclosed F.B.I. conservative protection program, these discussions were largely one-sided.  The tenor is best characterized as having a measured optimism.  Kerry was obviously intelligent; the fact that he “flip-flopped” on issues only proved he could in fact change his mind if given new evidence.  And, of course, how could the character of a decorated Vietnam veteran ever be tarnished? 

These discussions also provided ample opportunity for Bush-Bashing; I admit that I participated in these sessions with zeal!  Now, our President Bush has never been seen as a flip-flopper.  You either clearly knew his stance on an issue or you clearly knew he had no intention of taking any stance at all.  I think Chris Rock summed it up best:

Reporter:          Mr. President, What about the economy?  When’s it going to pick up?

Bush:                Well, you never know.  We’re talking to people. And economic indicators are indicating that indications are coming to the indicators. You know what I’m saying?  Alright.

Reporter:          Mr. President, what about gay marriage?

Bush:                F— them faggots!

November 2, 2004 finally rolled around.  I was incredibly thankful that my near round the clock vigil of all the major media outlets would soon end; I hadn’t watched this much news coverage since the days following 9/11.  At any rate, I ducked out of work, drove to my polling station and cast my ballot.  Even up until the second I punched out my chad I was conflicted, but ultimately chose to follow my mind rather than my heart.   I make this distinction because if I had voted for who my heart wanted, Nader would have been a single vote greater in Illinois.  But, I bought into the hype that this election was just too important.  As I said before, I am a reluctant Democrat.

The party that evening went well on its way and we watched the events unfold.  Of course nothing surprising initially happened; states were falling where we all new they would.  The northeast lit up blue, the south burned red.  Like clockwork, within 5 seconds of the polls closing in Illinois it was awarded to the Democrats.  I always take it as a matter of pride that my home state is the first blue beacon out to the west. 

My partygoers continued to munch through all the hors d’oeuvres and make small talk since it would be at least a couple hours wait until we started receiving a few of the “toss-up” state election results.  And then it came – Kerry was projected to win Pennsylvania.  Not wanting to fall prey to another Florida fiasco, we quickly checked out all the news outlets for confirmation.  All except Fox News (surprise, surprise) had the same wonderful blue color enveloping Pennsylvania; at that point a Kerry win felt much more tangible.  The South cards all fell for Bush, as expected.  Our numbers looked horrible, but we knew we could add on California’s 55 electoral votes to put us at ease.  Until this point in the evening I was guarded in my optimism, but now I started to allow myself to believe.  Maybe we wouldn’t have four more years of Bush. 

The night rolled on and Florida fell as I expected but along came Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the win column for us.  My eyes began to bore holes into Ohio on the TV map.  I don’t think I moved from my position for sometime as I sat hoping for an answer.

I have never claimed to be a mathematician at any point in my life.  Truth be told, in my first-year of college I was required to take a no-credit, remedial Algebra course.  Nonetheless, on election night I found myself doing incredible calculations effortlessly in my head as I watched the returns come in from Ohio.  It was still too close to call but Kerry was trailing.  None of that mattered, each time I calculated the number of votes we needed I rationalized ways we were going to get them.  After all, Democrats are lazy aren’t they?  I had bet they were lounging around their houses all day, continually putting off going to the polls.  I just knew they were watching T.V. like I was and suddenly realized “Oh damn!  Look at those poll numbers.  We had better go vote!” 

Plus, we were heavily relying on the college vote.  Having worked in colleges for many years now I’ve seen first hand just how adept students are at procrastinating.  They probably were piling out of their residence halls right now and slowly trampsing over to the polls.  Yeah, that must be it.  I pinned my hopes of the election on the fact that lazy Democrats and procrastinating college students from Ohio were going to save the day. 

With fear starting to creep in, some of my companions began speculating about what four more years of Bush really meant.  The realization that we were going to lose continued to seep its way more and more into our psyche.  Needless to say, neither the champagne nor Mad Dog was drunk that evening.  And, my smart-aleck friend who brought with him a packed bag in hopes of a free Hawaiian vacation somberly went home.  The night ended on the familiar note of a build up minus a pay off reminiscent of 2000.  I struggled to stay awake into the night, but eventually fell asleep in my living room with the TV on.

Let me pause for one quick side bar.  If elections are going to keep ending like a Hollywood cliffhanger, can we all decide to move them to Friday?  On the Wednesdays following these sleepless nights I get absolutely nothing done between the frequent dosing off and even more frequent refreshing of every media outlet I have opened up on my desktop.  Days like this I am addicted to these websites even though I can get a better idea about what will be on next week’s “24″ than I can about an election that already happened!

The early morning hours came without any news.  I turned on the coffee pot, no news.  I toasted my bagel, no news.  I showered while occasionally craning my neck out of the bathroom to see the TV, no news.  I was starting to get irritated.

Then came the Kerry concession speech; I knew it was coming, but just didn’t want to believe it.  I wish I could say that he left me with some solace or hope in the future.  I wish I felt united behind President Bush as the justified winner.  But honestly, I cannot remember one word the man said during this speech.  All I remember is thinking that maybe it was a good thing he didn’t get elected.  I mean, for God’s sake, no President of the United States should ever be seen wearing a tie resembling something donated by the makers of Pepto-Bismol!  Come on, you have to agree with me there! 

Of course, this was just my humor consoling the incredible loss I felt in this moment.  How could my calculations have been so off?  Did the unreliable college students of Ohio sell our collective souls down the river because of a good drink special on campus?  The parade of Bush parties all over the nation began to spring up and glow on my television screen.  Bush was then able to give the triumphant reelection speech his father never could.  As Bush supporters throughout the country were chanting enthusiastically “Four More Years” I sat down, put my head in my hands and muttered in a barely recognizable, guttural, pained effort of speech, “four…more…years.”

This article is not about what happened to the Democrats in losing this election.  I merely tell my story of the election to one, set the stage for what we see in liberal America today and two, as a method of cathartic release for the emotions I still have bottled up.  Looking back a year later, I can’t bring myself to hold Kerry solely responsible for this loss even though it seemed like a proverbial slam-dunk.  What concerns me more is the attitude and rhetoric my fellow liberals have employed in the months since November.  A year later I stand aghast at the senseless ramblings of individuals I thought to be patriots of this country.  I believe in many of their virtues and ideals and thought I was standing shoulder to shoulder with them in a fight for what we believed in. 

Unfortunately, many of my liberal co-patriots have gone off the bitter deep end.  It is sad to witness the disgust, bordering on hate, many have expressed for those who dared cast their ballots for Bush.  I even heard remarks after the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe that “those people down South” should blame themselves for President Bush’s slow response in their time of need.  After all, they are the ones who voted for him.  I find such a sentiment revolting.  These are the people we hope to serve and yet we have shown so little respect for them in the wake of this election.  If they do not “get” that we can serve them better than the Republican right, who’s fault is that?

In my junior year in high school, my entire class was unexpectedly called down to our large auditorium.   Not knowing why we were being beckoned, we hastened downstairs knowing the reason could not be good news.  A month or so prior we had all taken the Pre-ACT and evidentially our results had just been received. 

My high school was supposed to be a rigorous college prep program and our combined Math scores were far below the national average.  This is of course a foreshadowing to the future problems I would have in college requiring remedial coursework.  In any case, the school administration had called us down to one, inform us of this fact and two, berate us for so horribly embarrassing the school by our poor performance.  The principal spoke at us.  The dean of students spoke at us.  After about 10-15 more minutes of our own teachers criticizing our work ethic and performance to date I shot my hand into the air.  I just couldn’t take it anymore. 

When I was finally called on I could actually hear the hundreds of heads sweep back in my direction to see what I dared to say.  While what I said next was most definitely rooted in a rebellious, adolescent, smart-aleck rebuke to the administration, it was nonetheless a moment of truth and relatable to our current political situation.  I said, “Now, if I do poorly on a test, then that is my fault.  But, if ALL 400 of us do poorly on a nationally administered test, isn’t that YOUR fault?” as I pointed my finger in the direction of the faculty. 

As I am sure you can imagine, I got into an incredible amount of trouble for my outburst; but that does not mean that I was wrong!  If Red-Staters who have lost their jobs, are having their daughters and sons die in the Middle East and are suffering through a horrendous federal response to a natural disaster are still voting for the man and political party responsible for their plight, how can we place blame for the election at their doorstep?  We evidentially did an outright horrible job at teaching and explaining how we want to work on behalf of these honest, hard-working people occupying the land between Los Angeles and New York City.  We did not show them how we have their true interest at heart and not just interests of the richest 1%.  It isn’t their fault and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them.  The problem lies within our nation of real-life, working liberals.

I absolutely refuse to align myself with rhetoric of dejection, mistrust, and constant bemoaning of how we have been cheated.  I have some news for all my fellow liberals out there…WE WEREN’T CHEATED!  But, even if we were cheated, we cheated ourselves.  I can’t believe that some of the most highly educated and respectable people in our nation are such incredibly sore losers.  We aren’t on the playground anymore folks and there will be another day for another election.  I have no confidence in President Bush either, but I do have confidence in us as a people.  Besides, if Kerry was elected, we have to be honest, we were only hoping for a slightly less screwed up world than we already have.  A messiah sent to heal the wounds in our country he was not.

We liberals here on the ground floor, living real lives, will not have success just happen to us.  We have to create our own fortune.  The Democrats may be the best we have and, unfortunately for us, the only thing they have successfully created is an ocean of failure.  Just take a quick look at the results for the past 10 elections:

                        1968 – Richard M. Nixon (R)

                        1972 – Richard M. Nixon/Gerald R. Ford (R)

                        1976 – James E. Carter (D)

                        1980 – Ronald W. Reagan (R)

                        1984 – Ronald W. Reagan (R)

                        1988 – George H. W. Bush (R)

                        1992 – William J. Clinton (D)

                        1996 – William J. Clinton (D)

                        2000 – George W. Bush (R)

                        2004 – George W. Bush (R)

Are you able to see the problem?  We have elected 2 Democrats to our nations highest office in the past 36 years and one of those was JIMMY CARTER!  There are problems that pre-date the “Dubya” era of our history.  We have to take a critical look into how this history and the Democratic Party has affected the nation of liberals of which I am proud to be a part.  Proud yes, but not satisfied.  We can be better than we have shown ourselves to be this past year.

One, we are not going to win allies by calling people stupid.  It is just that simple.  Liberals are quick to chastise President Bush for pushing around the world like he is Clint Eastwood in some Western.  He is not well liked around the world because he is a bully and thinks he knows what is right; let’s not make the same mistake.  Let’s not assume we naturally know what a family living in Stillwater, Oklahoma wants or needs.  We may share in a collective American culture, but our individual experiences are far removed from one another.

Two, we are not going to win allies by looking down our noses at people.  Do you remember the stuck up professors you had in college who thought they were God’s gift to the world?  Did you like them?  Of course not!  Pretentious academics end their life in the solitude believing that they were always better than everyone else.  Notice closely that I said their story ends in solitude.  An important point here is that solitude doesn’t carry much voting power.

Three, we are not going to win allies by telling people how easy it would be to improve their situation.  First off, I have rarely met a person whose situation was easy to begin with.  Everyone has a story about the hardest thing they have ever had to deal with in their lives.  To them it was difficult and, even if another’s experience was different, no one has the right to pass a value judgment.  Everyone’s story deserves respect.

Many Red-Staters like their “situation” and don’t need people filling their head with the idea that there is something wrong with them.  We have fought and are still fighting hard battles for equal opportunity.  This means all people have the equal opportunity to lead any kind of life they want.  I too get annoyed when NASCAR clogs up my nightly ESPN time, but being a fan of NASCAR does not infer that you also possess a lower I.Q.  Again, I say we have constantly fought for the choice.  Why would we begrudge anyone that? 

We should learn from and show respect to the Republican Party and Red-Staters.  They are ardent Americans and a large section of the population we hope to serve.  Furthermore, when the Republicans took a presidential back seat in the 1990s, never once did I hear that they wanted to flee to Canada as I heard loudly exclaimed from many liberals this past year.  I point the finger right back myself in this instance in reference to my Election Night invitation.  How more un-American and juvenile can a person sound by saying that since I didn’t get my way I’m taking my ball and going home.  If the Left is going to flee the country because the current King of the Right is still in office, I have to respect Republicans even more for deciding to continue the fight and not just BLOW town when Clinton held the same JOB.  Remember, the Right was exactly too ecstatic when we had our president in the 90s. 

Special Note: For those of you who want to move to Canada over election results my first instinctual response is to help you pack.  We don’t need you here; you’re nothing but a pessimistic weight holding us down.  But, if you really are willing to move over this, then could you at least take one for the team and move to Ohio?  We need some more blue voters there.

The point is that I have not seen my peers leading with respect this past year and I call upon them to do so.  I don’t care about the politicians; they are going to do what they are going to do.  I say again that I am talking to the real world, working liberals where the true charge for change falls.  We are better than this and only by being better are we going to reclaim positions of power in politics.  It is 3 more years until the next election and I am guessing it is at least 8-12 more years before Barrack Obama can run.  We need answers and leaders today.  Get your game face on liberals!

Art Munin
http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/election-night-2004-the-liberal-report-a-year-later-3858.html

An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life.

He said to them, “A battle is raging inside me….it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, friendship, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. “This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather,

“Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee replied: “The one you feed.”

Let’s spend the next few minutes feeding the good wolf.

As a Doctor of Natural Health, a lot of people have asked me about how to feel better. People just want to feel better. Now, what did they mean by feeling better? Did they mean physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or all of the above?

While we’re talking about feeling better, let me give you some statistics on three common conditions – depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and hypertension or high blood pressure.

These statistics come from such sources as the Harvard University, the World Health Organization, The National Mental Health Association, and The National Institute for Mental Health.

We’ll start with depression. Depression or some depressive disorders affects about 18.8 million people. That’s about 9.5 percent of the entire population 18 years or older. Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants. That’s incredible to me. At least 4% of the preschoolers (that’s over 1 million kids) are clinically depressed.

15% of the population of most developed countries has some form of severe depression. So it’s not just an American problem. It’s global. 15% of depressed people will commit suicide. 80% of depressed people are not currently having any treatment whatsoever. And depression results in more absenteeism than any other physical disorder. It costs employers more than 51 billion dollars per year in absenteeism and lost productivity. And that 51 billion dollar figure does not including the high medical costs and the pharmaceutical costs that are related to depression.

As far as anxiety goes, 1 in every 8 Americans between the ages of 15-18 suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder. That’s over 19 million people. That’s everything from obsessive-compulsive, to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, any kind of phobias, or panic disorders.

Research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health shows that anxiety issues are the number one health issue among American women and are second only to alcohol and drug abuse among men. Women suffer from anxiety almost twice as much as men. It’s the most common mental illness in America and it surpasses depression. It’s the most common mental illness in adults 65 years or older and it costs the United States 46.6 billion dollars every year. Anxiety sufferers will see an average of 5 doctors before somebody even diagnoses them properly. Panic attacks occur to about 1.7% of the population. That’s 4.6 million people.

Hypertension—that’s one you hear about all the time. High blood pressure killed over 50 thousand Americans in 2002. About 65 million Americans age 20 and over have high blood pressure. That number translates to nearly 1 in 3 adults having high blood pressure. Of those people with high blood pressure, only about 65% of the people were aware of it and less than 50% are under any kind of treatment. Of the people in treatment, only about 30% of them have it under control.

The cause of about 90 to 95% of cases of high blood pressure isn’t known according to the statistics. The death rate from high blood pressure increased 29.3% from 1993 to 2003. So, in a ten year period, it rose 30%, roughly.

To better understand what’s going on with all these conditions and why people want to feel better, we need to look at the bigger picture. Quantum Physics has showed us that everything in the universe is composed of energy whether it’s the electricity running through wires or whether it’s electrical current that runs through our nervous system and sparks movement, or whether it’s the electrical impulse that beats the heart. Whatever it is, there’s an energy charge to it. So, one of the best ways to think of the body is as an open energy system. An open energy system that takes the energy coming from the universe, takes the energy from the food, takes the energy from its surroundings, and sends that energy back into the universe as work, love, movement, etc.

Again, as we can see from Quantum Physics, everything is energy. Anytime that we interact with something or someone, we interact with its energy field. One of the laws of Quantum Physics states that once two energy fields intermingle, they can never fully separate. So, we need to take that into account when we look at everything that we do, everything that we say, everything we read, every TV show we watch, everything we listen to, everything we smell, everything we touch, everything that we eat, and every person that we come into contact with is all part of the energy of the universe and our own personal energy as it flows through us. The key to feeling better is to have the energy in a positive form instead of a negative form.

Many people that want to feel better are feeling pretty negative right now. And the negativity is controlling their lives. It’ll show up in their relationships, it’ll show up in their health. So, let’s talk a little bit about positivity and negativity and give you some background on that. There was a study done at the Chicago School of Psychology that took two groups of people – 1 group in Mexico City, and the other in Chicago, both with people between 20 years old and 65 years old. They discovered that BOTH GROUPS of people had more negative words than positive words or even neutral words.

People in general know more negative words than they do positive or neutral words. The proportion basically comes out to be 50% of the words we know are negative, 30% of the words are positive, and 20% are neutral. What happens throughout daily life is that you don’t much attention to the positive words, when you’re talking with people. That’s because positive words pretty much mean that things are okay and as a result, you don’t have to pay much attention to it. It’s the negative words that give us a signal that something is wrong and so we start spending more time, paying more attention, and giving more detail in our thinking in a negative form. Overall, we end up living our lives on more negative words.

Did you ever notice how the negative people in your lives are the ones that get the most attention and cause you the most tension? 20% of the people that we interact with in an average day are negative. They’re the ones that stir up all the trouble, and we spend 90 to 92% of our day paying attention to them. The positive people in our lives are about 20% of our friends, relatives, and colleagues at work. We spend about 1% of our time with them. The in-between type people are about 60% of any group. And we spend about 7% of our time with the in-between group.

A little bit more of the negativity is the average amount of negative input that you have in an average day. There was an experiment conducted by Dr. Lacey Hall that concluded that most people experience 90% of negative input in an average day. That’s a whole lot of negative thinking or negative input.

Let’s put it into perspective. Now, our verbal conversation, when we’re talking with an average person, is about 300-500 words per minute. Internally, you and I talk to ourselves at an incredibly fast speed. It’s somewhere about 3000 to 5000 words per minute; that’s 10x faster. And all that chatter goes on in our heads constantly. Now, here’s the really scary part – it’s estimated that most of your self-talk is somewhere around 60-85% negative. That’s just the talk that you give to yourself.

Motivational speaker Zig Ziegler says that the most influential person that you’ll talk to all day long is you. So, you should be particularly careful about what you say to YOU. The answer to all your problems is right under your nose – Your mouth controls your life by what comes out of it and by what you put into it. The answer really is right under your nose.

This material is a part of my ongoing 8-week e-Class called The Answer is Right Under Your Nose. It is available through the ‘Personal Coaching’ section of my website at www.JerryRyanPhD.com.

Jerry Ryan, Ph.D.
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/the-importance-of-words-124603.html

An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life.

He said to them, “A battle is raging inside me….it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, friendship, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. “This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather,

“Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee replied: “The one you feed.”

Let’s spend the next few minutes feeding the good wolf.

As a Doctor of Natural Health, a lot of people have asked me about how to feel better. People just want to feel better. Now, what did they mean by feeling better? Did they mean physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or all of the above?

While we’re talking about feeling better, let me give you some statistics on three common conditions – depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and hypertension or high blood pressure.

These statistics come from such sources as the Harvard University, the World Health Organization, The National Mental Health Association, and The National Institute for Mental Health.

We’ll start with depression. Depression or some depressive disorders affects about 18.8 million people. That’s about 9.5 percent of the entire population 18 years or older. Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants. That’s incredible to me. At least 4% of the preschoolers (that’s over 1 million kids) are clinically depressed.

15% of the population of most developed countries has some form of severe depression. So it’s not just an American problem. It’s global. 15% of depressed people will commit suicide. 80% of depressed people are not currently having any treatment whatsoever. And depression results in more absenteeism than any other physical disorder. It costs employers more than 51 billion dollars per year in absenteeism and lost productivity. And that 51 billion dollar figure does not including the high medical costs and the pharmaceutical costs that are related to depression.

As far as anxiety goes, 1 in every 8 Americans between the ages of 15-18 suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder. That’s over 19 million people. That’s everything from obsessive-compulsive, to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, any kind of phobias, or panic disorders.

Research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health shows that anxiety issues are the number one health issue among American women and are second only to alcohol and drug abuse among men. Women suffer from anxiety almost twice as much as men. It’s the most common mental illness in America and it surpasses depression. It’s the most common mental illness in adults 65 years or older and it costs the United States 46.6 billion dollars every year. Anxiety sufferers will see an average of 5 doctors before somebody even diagnoses them properly. Panic attacks occur to about 1.7% of the population. That’s 4.6 million people.

Hypertension—that’s one you hear about all the time. High blood pressure killed over 50 thousand Americans in 2002. About 65 million Americans age 20 and over have high blood pressure. That number translates to nearly 1 in 3 adults having high blood pressure. Of those people with high blood pressure, only about 65% of the people were aware of it and less than 50% are under any kind of treatment. Of the people in treatment, only about 30% of them have it under control.

The cause of about 90 to 95% of cases of high blood pressure isn’t known according to the statistics. The death rate from high blood pressure increased 29.3% from 1993 to 2003. So, in a ten year period, it rose 30%, roughly.

To better understand what’s going on with all these conditions and why people want to feel better, we need to look at the bigger picture. Quantum Physics has showed us that everything in the universe is composed of energy whether it’s the electricity running through wires or whether it’s electrical current that runs through our nervous system and sparks movement, or whether it’s the electrical impulse that beats the heart. Whatever it is, there’s an energy charge to it. So, one of the best ways to think of the body is as an open energy system. An open energy system that takes the energy coming from the universe, takes the energy from the food, takes the energy from its surroundings, and sends that energy back into the universe as work, love, movement, etc.

Again, as we can see from Quantum Physics, everything is energy. Anytime that we interact with something or someone, we interact with its energy field. One of the laws of Quantum Physics states that once two energy fields intermingle, they can never fully separate. So, we need to take that into account when we look at everything that we do, everything that we say, everything we read, every TV show we watch, everything we listen to, everything we smell, everything we touch, everything that we eat, and every person that we come into contact with is all part of the energy of the universe and our own personal energy as it flows through us. The key to feeling better is to have the energy in a positive form instead of a negative form.

Many people that want to feel better are feeling pretty negative right now. And the negativity is controlling their lives. It’ll show up in their relationships, it’ll show up in their health. So, let’s talk a little bit about positivity and negativity and give you some background on that. There was a study done at the Chicago School of Psychology that took two groups of people – 1 group in Mexico City, and the other in Chicago, both with people between 20 years old and 65 years old. They discovered that BOTH GROUPS of people had more negative words than positive words or even neutral words.

People in general know more negative words than they do positive or neutral words. The proportion basically comes out to be 50% of the words we know are negative, 30% of the words are positive, and 20% are neutral. What happens throughout daily life is that you don’t much attention to the positive words, when you’re talking with people. That’s because positive words pretty much mean that things are okay and as a result, you don’t have to pay much attention to it. It’s the negative words that give us a signal that something is wrong and so we start spending more time, paying more attention, and giving more detail in our thinking in a negative form. Overall, we end up living our lives on more negative words.

Did you ever notice how the negative people in your lives are the ones that get the most attention and cause you the most tension? 20% of the people that we interact with in an average day are negative. They’re the ones that stir up all the trouble, and we spend 90 to 92% of our day paying attention to them. The positive people in our lives are about 20% of our friends, relatives, and colleagues at work. We spend about 1% of our time with them. The in-between type people are about 60% of any group. And we spend about 7% of our time with the in-between group.

A little bit more of the negativity is the average amount of negative input that you have in an average day. There was an experiment conducted by Dr. Lacey Hall that concluded that most people experience 90% of negative input in an average day. That’s a whole lot of negative thinking or negative input.

Let’s put it into perspective. Now, our verbal conversation, when we’re talking with an average person, is about 300-500 words per minute. Internally, you and I talk to ourselves at an incredibly fast speed. It’s somewhere about 3000 to 5000 words per minute; that’s 10x faster. And all that chatter goes on in our heads constantly. Now, here’s the really scary part – it’s estimated that most of your self-talk is somewhere around 60-85% negative. That’s just the talk that you give to yourself.

Motivational speaker Zig Ziegler says that the most influential person that you’ll talk to all day long is you. So, you should be particularly careful about what you say to YOU. The answer to all your problems is right under your nose – Your mouth controls your life by what comes out of it and by what you put into it. The answer really is right under your nose.

This material is a part of my ongoing 8-week e-Class called The Answer is Right Under Your Nose. It is available through the ‘Personal Coaching’ section of my website at www.JerryRyanPhD.com.

Jerry Ryan, Ph.D.
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/the-importance-of-words-124603.html

Socially Responsible Investing for Idiots

Sí, Money! (http://simoney.us)
By Michael Grodsky

If I have to be an idiot, at the least I’m a green idiot. I believe in clean air, corporate responsibility, community activism, licorice, pizza and Thai food. And healthy living, freedom, and of course freedom raisins.

Shiny happy raisins

I love trees, sky, and ah, the OXYGEN! But I’m worried about the dismal state of health care, education funding, the ozone hole, the Medicare donut hole, and your little dog too! Did you know the North Pole is melting? That really scares me. Plus I need to cut down on my Chunky Monkey intake.

In everything I do, in every move I make, it seems that I’m part of the worldwide web of production and consumption. So I pertly place my recyclables in the blue bin, our family uses reusable grocery bags, and I vote. What more can a light-switch thumping, gasoline-pumping 21st century fox do?

C’mon, baby, light my SRI fire…

 

It was only a couple of years ago a friend remarked to me that real estate was the only investment that made any sense, as if his seat on the Ferris Wheel of investments, propelled by an invincible source, would forever be going up, up, UP! Instead, what happened was “up, up and away.”

The first Ferris wheel, from 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago

The desire for a sure thing is hard to resist. Albert Einstein, succumbing to pressure to support the idea of a static universe, in his 1917 paper added an adjustment number called the “cosmological constant” to his equation for general relativity. In 1931 he publicly renounced this static cosmology and endorsed the Big Bang expanding universe model, ditching the cosmological constant and returning to his original equation. He later called his bowing to peer pressure the greatest blunder of his entire life. You can read about the adventure in author Simon Singh’s “Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe.”

Many philanthropic foundations have long drawn a wall between their socially conscious mission statements that drive grant making, and the investment holdings of their endowment. There is a truism that investing for social benefit results in lower returns. But just as scientific peer consensus eventually embraced the Big Bang theory, so has the thinking of philanthropic foundations changed. The reasons are twofold: A recognition that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are valid parts of investment decisions, (1) and a growing number of academic studies have demonstrated that socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds perform competitively with non-SRI funds over time. (2)

For example, according to University of Maastricht and Erasmus University Rotterdam economists in their prize-winning paper, “we find little evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds for the 1990-2001 period.” (3)

Foundation investment choices seem to be increasingly guided by effect upon society as a whole, not just financial gain, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. (4) Fresh thinking in the nation’s largest foundations may be driving the impetus ever faster: The $8.5-billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park), the $6.1-billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), the $7.8-billion W.K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle Creek, Michigan) all have made recent changes to improve the social effect of their investments. (5)

SRI assets are also growing faster than assets as a whole: according to the non-profit Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report, SRI assets rose more than 258 percent from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. Over those ten years, SRI assets grew four percent faster than the entire universe of managed assets in the United States. (6)

Some have already been on the SRI track: the nation’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, along with others such as the F.B. Herron Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Nathan Cumings Foundation, have for a long time aligned their charitable and investment practices.

What is Socially Responsible Investing?
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a broad-based approach to investing that now encompasses an estimated $2.3 trillion out of $24 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today. (7) The release of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment–subscribed to by some of the world’s largest institutional investors, asset managers, and related organizations representing over $9 trillion in assets as of mid- 2007–underscores the widespread acceptance of the principle that investors cannot, in the long run, achieve their goals by investing in corporations that externalize their costs onto society. (8)

How do I research SRI funds?
A good place to start is the Social Investment Forum (http://www.socialinvest.org). Look at the resource list at the end of this article too.

How do I start investing?
If you participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, there may be SRI funds already available to you. If you manage your own IRA or other plan, look into what’s available. But don’t just go adding a fund without considering the entire makeup of your portfolio.

The key to earning decent long-term returns and limiting overall risk is to have a proper asset allocation, meaning you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. For do-it-yourself-ers, check out the government’s website about asset allocation (http://tinyurl.com/2825hw), or purchase “All About Asset Allocation” by Richard A. Ferri ($13.57 at Amazon), a great introduction to the topic. Your personal financial advisor or company where you have your investment or retirement accounts can help.

How do I know which funds will produce the highest returns?
You don’t, you can’t, and you won’t, so just forget about it because past performance doesn’t predict future results. The day-to-day ups and downs of the market receive the media attention, but the daily, quarterly, or even yearly returns are largely irrelevant in constructing an individual’s portfolio whose objectives are long-range.  What you want to look for are funds that perform well over the long run within their particular sector, as compared to the appropriate benchmark indices. Various areas of the economy are always moving up and down and sideways, and so far no one has ever been able to know ahead of time what the pattern will be. Asset allocation, I’ll say again, may be the key to long-term success in building a financially secure future. Not panicking helps too!

What makes an SRI fund different?
If a prospective company is a fit according to a fund’s stated objectives, research is performed to determine whether or not it’s a good idea to buy stock at the current offering price. It boils down to the question “Within the guidelines of the stated objectives of the fund, will this purchase help to achieve the highest possible return for the fund’s shareholders?”

The three core socially responsible investing strategies are screening, shareholder advocacy, and community investing. Screening means a fund will include or exclude companies based upon criteria such as alcohol, tobacco, animal testing, and human rights, among others. These screens can be positive (e.g., including companies that treat employees well) or negative (e.g., excluding companies who do business with disturbed musicians).

Keep in mind that, as with all mutual funds, SRI funds have no guarantees of future return.

In any case, you’d better take this lad’s offering of raisins!

If you use electricity, drive a car, and participate in many other activities of daily living, in a very true sense you are already investing in the companies that allow and encourage your consumption. In other words, you are part of the “market” whether or not you actually own stocks or mutual funds. Socially responsible investing can be a way to make your dollars work toward something in which you believe, and support those companies you believe have a vision in line with your own.

Resources and suggested reading

1.    “The Mission in the Marketplace: How Responsible Investing Can Strengthen the Fiduciary Oversight of Foundation Endowments and Enhance Philanthropic Missions.” Social Investment Forum Foundation’s resource guide for foundations to manage risk and leverage their investment assets more fully with their core philanthropic purpose, while creating lasting value. http://tinyurl.com/35t49h
2.    “10 best” list of companies. Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine rates the citizenship disclosures, policies and performance of large-cap, public companies in the following industries: Auto & Vehicles, Paper, Technology Hardware, Technology Software, Transport, and Travel & Lodging industries, Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries. http://www.thecro.com/node/580
3.    Social Science Research Network. http://www.ssrn.com/
4.    United Nations’ “The Principles for Responsible Investment.” An investor initiative in partnership with UNEP Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact. http://www.unpri.org/
5.    The Social Investment Forum; national membership association dedicated to advancing the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. http://www.socialinvest.org/
6.    Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report. http://tinyurl.com/258794
7.    Sristudies.org, a resource for quantitative aspects of socially responsible investing. Includes an annotated bibliography of studies of socially responsible investing. A project of the Moskowitz Research Program, which is affiliated with the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
8.    Socially Responsible Mutual Fund Charts of Financial Performance. http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/mfpc/
9.    SocialFunds.com, an advertising-driven website with information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news.
10.    “Handbook on Responsible Investment Across Asset Classes.” For asset allocation junkies, individuals and institutional investors the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship created this work. http://tinyurl.com/2ffqbu

Footnotes

1. The Maturing of Socially Responsible Investment: A Review of the Developing Link with Corporate Social Responsibility by Russell Sparkes and Christopher J. Cowton. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 52, Number 1 / June, 2004.
2. SriStudies.org
3. International Evidence on Ethical Mutual Fund Performance and Investment Style, paper by Rob Bauer, Kees Koedijk, Rogér Otten. Limburg Institute of Financial Economics, November 2002. (socialinvest.org/resources/research)
4. Foundations align investments with their charitable goals by Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2007. Section C, p 1.
5. Ibid.
6. 2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. Social Investment Forum. (www.socialinvest.org)
7. Socially Responsible Investing Facts. Social Investment Forum. www.socialinvest.org
8. PRI Report On Progress 2007. PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment), United Nations. (www.unpri.org)

Image credits

Sun-Maid/George Bush composite image
•    First Sun-Maid packaging to feature a likeness of Lorraine Collett as the “Sun-Maid Girl,” 1916. Designer unknown, incorporates painting by Fanny Scafford. Public domain in the United States.
•    Photograph of Bush speaking. Brazil, November 6, 2005. Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency, produced photograph. Published under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil.

Fox/Morrison composite image
•    Foxes by Franz Marc, 1913. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. Public Domain.
•    Jim Morrison portrait, 2007, by Amadeu.taradell. Released by author into public domain.

Ferris Wheel/Superman composite image
•    The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The New York Times photo archive. Public Domain.
•    Screenshot of 1941 cartoon Superman. Fleischer Studios. This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, and its copyright was not renewed.

Musician holding Valentine’s Day raisins composite image
•    Photo of musician Jeff Hawley, 2007.  Manager, Marketing Content Pro Audio and Combo Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. Courtesy of Mr. Hawley.
•    Photo, August 3, 2005 by Mazbln. Halberstadt, Klosterkirche St. Burchardi, Ort des John-Cage-Projektes “As slow as possible.” Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
•    Original painting of Lorraine Collett by Fanny Scafford, 1915, later used on Sun-Maid raisin packaging. Public domain in the United States.

This column is meant to provide general information, and should not be construed as providing investment, legal, or tax advice. There is no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the information in this article. There are no guarantees of future return for any fund, nor an endorsement of any investment product. Mutual funds are sold by prospectus only. For complete information on mutual funds including sales charges and expenses, call your financial professional for a prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Links are provided herein as a courtesy, and no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of the content on the referenced websites.

Sí, Money! – Vol. 2, No. 1  February 2008 – http://simoney.us

Michael Grodsky, AIF®
http://www.articlesbase.com/investing-articles/socially-responsible-investing-for-idiots-745542.html

Socially Responsible Investing for Idiots

Sí, Money! (http://simoney.us)
By Michael Grodsky

If I have to be an idiot, at the least I’m a green idiot. I believe in clean air, corporate responsibility, community activism, licorice, pizza and Thai food. And healthy living, freedom, and of course freedom raisins.

Shiny happy raisins

I love trees, sky, and ah, the OXYGEN! But I’m worried about the dismal state of health care, education funding, the ozone hole, the Medicare donut hole, and your little dog too! Did you know the North Pole is melting? That really scares me. Plus I need to cut down on my Chunky Monkey intake.

In everything I do, in every move I make, it seems that I’m part of the worldwide web of production and consumption. So I pertly place my recyclables in the blue bin, our family uses reusable grocery bags, and I vote. What more can a light-switch thumping, gasoline-pumping 21st century fox do?

C’mon, baby, light my SRI fire…

 

It was only a couple of years ago a friend remarked to me that real estate was the only investment that made any sense, as if his seat on the Ferris Wheel of investments, propelled by an invincible source, would forever be going up, up, UP! Instead, what happened was “up, up and away.”

The first Ferris wheel, from 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago

The desire for a sure thing is hard to resist. Albert Einstein, succumbing to pressure to support the idea of a static universe, in his 1917 paper added an adjustment number called the “cosmological constant” to his equation for general relativity. In 1931 he publicly renounced this static cosmology and endorsed the Big Bang expanding universe model, ditching the cosmological constant and returning to his original equation. He later called his bowing to peer pressure the greatest blunder of his entire life. You can read about the adventure in author Simon Singh’s “Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe.”

Many philanthropic foundations have long drawn a wall between their socially conscious mission statements that drive grant making, and the investment holdings of their endowment. There is a truism that investing for social benefit results in lower returns. But just as scientific peer consensus eventually embraced the Big Bang theory, so has the thinking of philanthropic foundations changed. The reasons are twofold: A recognition that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are valid parts of investment decisions, (1) and a growing number of academic studies have demonstrated that socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds perform competitively with non-SRI funds over time. (2)

For example, according to University of Maastricht and Erasmus University Rotterdam economists in their prize-winning paper, “we find little evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds for the 1990-2001 period.” (3)

Foundation investment choices seem to be increasingly guided by effect upon society as a whole, not just financial gain, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. (4) Fresh thinking in the nation’s largest foundations may be driving the impetus ever faster: The $8.5-billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park), the $6.1-billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), the $7.8-billion W.K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle Creek, Michigan) all have made recent changes to improve the social effect of their investments. (5)

SRI assets are also growing faster than assets as a whole: according to the non-profit Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report, SRI assets rose more than 258 percent from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. Over those ten years, SRI assets grew four percent faster than the entire universe of managed assets in the United States. (6)

Some have already been on the SRI track: the nation’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, along with others such as the F.B. Herron Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Nathan Cumings Foundation, have for a long time aligned their charitable and investment practices.

What is Socially Responsible Investing?
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a broad-based approach to investing that now encompasses an estimated $2.3 trillion out of $24 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today. (7) The release of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment–subscribed to by some of the world’s largest institutional investors, asset managers, and related organizations representing over $9 trillion in assets as of mid- 2007–underscores the widespread acceptance of the principle that investors cannot, in the long run, achieve their goals by investing in corporations that externalize their costs onto society. (8)

How do I research SRI funds?
A good place to start is the Social Investment Forum (http://www.socialinvest.org). Look at the resource list at the end of this article too.

How do I start investing?
If you participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, there may be SRI funds already available to you. If you manage your own IRA or other plan, look into what’s available. But don’t just go adding a fund without considering the entire makeup of your portfolio.

The key to earning decent long-term returns and limiting overall risk is to have a proper asset allocation, meaning you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. For do-it-yourself-ers, check out the government’s website about asset allocation (http://tinyurl.com/2825hw), or purchase “All About Asset Allocation” by Richard A. Ferri ($13.57 at Amazon), a great introduction to the topic. Your personal financial advisor or company where you have your investment or retirement accounts can help.

How do I know which funds will produce the highest returns?
You don’t, you can’t, and you won’t, so just forget about it because past performance doesn’t predict future results. The day-to-day ups and downs of the market receive the media attention, but the daily, quarterly, or even yearly returns are largely irrelevant in constructing an individual’s portfolio whose objectives are long-range.  What you want to look for are funds that perform well over the long run within their particular sector, as compared to the appropriate benchmark indices. Various areas of the economy are always moving up and down and sideways, and so far no one has ever been able to know ahead of time what the pattern will be. Asset allocation, I’ll say again, may be the key to long-term success in building a financially secure future. Not panicking helps too!

What makes an SRI fund different?
If a prospective company is a fit according to a fund’s stated objectives, research is performed to determine whether or not it’s a good idea to buy stock at the current offering price. It boils down to the question “Within the guidelines of the stated objectives of the fund, will this purchase help to achieve the highest possible return for the fund’s shareholders?”

The three core socially responsible investing strategies are screening, shareholder advocacy, and community investing. Screening means a fund will include or exclude companies based upon criteria such as alcohol, tobacco, animal testing, and human rights, among others. These screens can be positive (e.g., including companies that treat employees well) or negative (e.g., excluding companies who do business with disturbed musicians).

Keep in mind that, as with all mutual funds, SRI funds have no guarantees of future return.

In any case, you’d better take this lad’s offering of raisins!

If you use electricity, drive a car, and participate in many other activities of daily living, in a very true sense you are already investing in the companies that allow and encourage your consumption. In other words, you are part of the “market” whether or not you actually own stocks or mutual funds. Socially responsible investing can be a way to make your dollars work toward something in which you believe, and support those companies you believe have a vision in line with your own.

Resources and suggested reading

1.    “The Mission in the Marketplace: How Responsible Investing Can Strengthen the Fiduciary Oversight of Foundation Endowments and Enhance Philanthropic Missions.” Social Investment Forum Foundation’s resource guide for foundations to manage risk and leverage their investment assets more fully with their core philanthropic purpose, while creating lasting value. http://tinyurl.com/35t49h
2.    “10 best” list of companies. Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine rates the citizenship disclosures, policies and performance of large-cap, public companies in the following industries: Auto & Vehicles, Paper, Technology Hardware, Technology Software, Transport, and Travel & Lodging industries, Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries. http://www.thecro.com/node/580
3.    Social Science Research Network. http://www.ssrn.com/
4.    United Nations’ “The Principles for Responsible Investment.” An investor initiative in partnership with UNEP Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact. http://www.unpri.org/
5.    The Social Investment Forum; national membership association dedicated to advancing the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. http://www.socialinvest.org/
6.    Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report. http://tinyurl.com/258794
7.    Sristudies.org, a resource for quantitative aspects of socially responsible investing. Includes an annotated bibliography of studies of socially responsible investing. A project of the Moskowitz Research Program, which is affiliated with the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
8.    Socially Responsible Mutual Fund Charts of Financial Performance. http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/mfpc/
9.    SocialFunds.com, an advertising-driven website with information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news.
10.    “Handbook on Responsible Investment Across Asset Classes.” For asset allocation junkies, individuals and institutional investors the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship created this work. http://tinyurl.com/2ffqbu

Footnotes

1. The Maturing of Socially Responsible Investment: A Review of the Developing Link with Corporate Social Responsibility by Russell Sparkes and Christopher J. Cowton. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 52, Number 1 / June, 2004.
2. SriStudies.org
3. International Evidence on Ethical Mutual Fund Performance and Investment Style, paper by Rob Bauer, Kees Koedijk, Rogér Otten. Limburg Institute of Financial Economics, November 2002. (socialinvest.org/resources/research)
4. Foundations align investments with their charitable goals by Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2007. Section C, p 1.
5. Ibid.
6. 2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. Social Investment Forum. (www.socialinvest.org)
7. Socially Responsible Investing Facts. Social Investment Forum. www.socialinvest.org
8. PRI Report On Progress 2007. PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment), United Nations. (www.unpri.org)

Image credits

Sun-Maid/George Bush composite image
•    First Sun-Maid packaging to feature a likeness of Lorraine Collett as the “Sun-Maid Girl,” 1916. Designer unknown, incorporates painting by Fanny Scafford. Public domain in the United States.
•    Photograph of Bush speaking. Brazil, November 6, 2005. Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency, produced photograph. Published under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil.

Fox/Morrison composite image
•    Foxes by Franz Marc, 1913. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. Public Domain.
•    Jim Morrison portrait, 2007, by Amadeu.taradell. Released by author into public domain.

Ferris Wheel/Superman composite image
•    The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The New York Times photo archive. Public Domain.
•    Screenshot of 1941 cartoon Superman. Fleischer Studios. This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, and its copyright was not renewed.

Musician holding Valentine’s Day raisins composite image
•    Photo of musician Jeff Hawley, 2007.  Manager, Marketing Content Pro Audio and Combo Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. Courtesy of Mr. Hawley.
•    Photo, August 3, 2005 by Mazbln. Halberstadt, Klosterkirche St. Burchardi, Ort des John-Cage-Projektes “As slow as possible.” Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
•    Original painting of Lorraine Collett by Fanny Scafford, 1915, later used on Sun-Maid raisin packaging. Public domain in the United States.

This column is meant to provide general information, and should not be construed as providing investment, legal, or tax advice. There is no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the information in this article. There are no guarantees of future return for any fund, nor an endorsement of any investment product. Mutual funds are sold by prospectus only. For complete information on mutual funds including sales charges and expenses, call your financial professional for a prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Links are provided herein as a courtesy, and no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of the content on the referenced websites.

Sí, Money! – Vol. 2, No. 1  February 2008 – http://simoney.us

Michael Grodsky, AIF®
http://www.articlesbase.com/investing-articles/socially-responsible-investing-for-idiots-745542.html

Socially Responsible Investing for Idiots

Sí, Money! (http://simoney.us)
By Michael Grodsky

If I have to be an idiot, at the least I’m a green idiot. I believe in clean air, corporate responsibility, community activism, licorice, pizza and Thai food. And healthy living, freedom, and of course freedom raisins.

Shiny happy raisins

I love trees, sky, and ah, the OXYGEN! But I’m worried about the dismal state of health care, education funding, the ozone hole, the Medicare donut hole, and your little dog too! Did you know the North Pole is melting? That really scares me. Plus I need to cut down on my Chunky Monkey intake.

In everything I do, in every move I make, it seems that I’m part of the worldwide web of production and consumption. So I pertly place my recyclables in the blue bin, our family uses reusable grocery bags, and I vote. What more can a light-switch thumping, gasoline-pumping 21st century fox do?

C’mon, baby, light my SRI fire…

 

It was only a couple of years ago a friend remarked to me that real estate was the only investment that made any sense, as if his seat on the Ferris Wheel of investments, propelled by an invincible source, would forever be going up, up, UP! Instead, what happened was “up, up and away.”

The first Ferris wheel, from 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago

The desire for a sure thing is hard to resist. Albert Einstein, succumbing to pressure to support the idea of a static universe, in his 1917 paper added an adjustment number called the “cosmological constant” to his equation for general relativity. In 1931 he publicly renounced this static cosmology and endorsed the Big Bang expanding universe model, ditching the cosmological constant and returning to his original equation. He later called his bowing to peer pressure the greatest blunder of his entire life. You can read about the adventure in author Simon Singh’s “Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe.”

Many philanthropic foundations have long drawn a wall between their socially conscious mission statements that drive grant making, and the investment holdings of their endowment. There is a truism that investing for social benefit results in lower returns. But just as scientific peer consensus eventually embraced the Big Bang theory, so has the thinking of philanthropic foundations changed. The reasons are twofold: A recognition that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are valid parts of investment decisions, (1) and a growing number of academic studies have demonstrated that socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds perform competitively with non-SRI funds over time. (2)

For example, according to University of Maastricht and Erasmus University Rotterdam economists in their prize-winning paper, “we find little evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds for the 1990-2001 period.” (3)

Foundation investment choices seem to be increasingly guided by effect upon society as a whole, not just financial gain, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. (4) Fresh thinking in the nation’s largest foundations may be driving the impetus ever faster: The $8.5-billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park), the $6.1-billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), the $7.8-billion W.K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle Creek, Michigan) all have made recent changes to improve the social effect of their investments. (5)

SRI assets are also growing faster than assets as a whole: according to the non-profit Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report, SRI assets rose more than 258 percent from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. Over those ten years, SRI assets grew four percent faster than the entire universe of managed assets in the United States. (6)

Some have already been on the SRI track: the nation’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, along with others such as the F.B. Herron Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Nathan Cumings Foundation, have for a long time aligned their charitable and investment practices.

What is Socially Responsible Investing?
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a broad-based approach to investing that now encompasses an estimated $2.3 trillion out of $24 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today. (7) The release of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment–subscribed to by some of the world’s largest institutional investors, asset managers, and related organizations representing over $9 trillion in assets as of mid- 2007–underscores the widespread acceptance of the principle that investors cannot, in the long run, achieve their goals by investing in corporations that externalize their costs onto society. (8)

How do I research SRI funds?
A good place to start is the Social Investment Forum (http://www.socialinvest.org). Look at the resource list at the end of this article too.

How do I start investing?
If you participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, there may be SRI funds already available to you. If you manage your own IRA or other plan, look into what’s available. But don’t just go adding a fund without considering the entire makeup of your portfolio.

The key to earning decent long-term returns and limiting overall risk is to have a proper asset allocation, meaning you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. For do-it-yourself-ers, check out the government’s website about asset allocation (http://tinyurl.com/2825hw), or purchase “All About Asset Allocation” by Richard A. Ferri ($13.57 at Amazon), a great introduction to the topic. Your personal financial advisor or company where you have your investment or retirement accounts can help.

How do I know which funds will produce the highest returns?
You don’t, you can’t, and you won’t, so just forget about it because past performance doesn’t predict future results. The day-to-day ups and downs of the market receive the media attention, but the daily, quarterly, or even yearly returns are largely irrelevant in constructing an individual’s portfolio whose objectives are long-range.  What you want to look for are funds that perform well over the long run within their particular sector, as compared to the appropriate benchmark indices. Various areas of the economy are always moving up and down and sideways, and so far no one has ever been able to know ahead of time what the pattern will be. Asset allocation, I’ll say again, may be the key to long-term success in building a financially secure future. Not panicking helps too!

What makes an SRI fund different?
If a prospective company is a fit according to a fund’s stated objectives, research is performed to determine whether or not it’s a good idea to buy stock at the current offering price. It boils down to the question “Within the guidelines of the stated objectives of the fund, will this purchase help to achieve the highest possible return for the fund’s shareholders?”

The three core socially responsible investing strategies are screening, shareholder advocacy, and community investing. Screening means a fund will include or exclude companies based upon criteria such as alcohol, tobacco, animal testing, and human rights, among others. These screens can be positive (e.g., including companies that treat employees well) or negative (e.g., excluding companies who do business with disturbed musicians).

Keep in mind that, as with all mutual funds, SRI funds have no guarantees of future return.

In any case, you’d better take this lad’s offering of raisins!

If you use electricity, drive a car, and participate in many other activities of daily living, in a very true sense you are already investing in the companies that allow and encourage your consumption. In other words, you are part of the “market” whether or not you actually own stocks or mutual funds. Socially responsible investing can be a way to make your dollars work toward something in which you believe, and support those companies you believe have a vision in line with your own.

Resources and suggested reading

1.    “The Mission in the Marketplace: How Responsible Investing Can Strengthen the Fiduciary Oversight of Foundation Endowments and Enhance Philanthropic Missions.” Social Investment Forum Foundation’s resource guide for foundations to manage risk and leverage their investment assets more fully with their core philanthropic purpose, while creating lasting value. http://tinyurl.com/35t49h
2.    “10 best” list of companies. Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine rates the citizenship disclosures, policies and performance of large-cap, public companies in the following industries: Auto & Vehicles, Paper, Technology Hardware, Technology Software, Transport, and Travel & Lodging industries, Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries. http://www.thecro.com/node/580
3.    Social Science Research Network. http://www.ssrn.com/
4.    United Nations’ “The Principles for Responsible Investment.” An investor initiative in partnership with UNEP Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact. http://www.unpri.org/
5.    The Social Investment Forum; national membership association dedicated to advancing the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. http://www.socialinvest.org/
6.    Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report. http://tinyurl.com/258794
7.    Sristudies.org, a resource for quantitative aspects of socially responsible investing. Includes an annotated bibliography of studies of socially responsible investing. A project of the Moskowitz Research Program, which is affiliated with the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
8.    Socially Responsible Mutual Fund Charts of Financial Performance. http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/mfpc/
9.    SocialFunds.com, an advertising-driven website with information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news.
10.    “Handbook on Responsible Investment Across Asset Classes.” For asset allocation junkies, individuals and institutional investors the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship created this work. http://tinyurl.com/2ffqbu

Footnotes

1. The Maturing of Socially Responsible Investment: A Review of the Developing Link with Corporate Social Responsibility by Russell Sparkes and Christopher J. Cowton. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 52, Number 1 / June, 2004.
2. SriStudies.org
3. International Evidence on Ethical Mutual Fund Performance and Investment Style, paper by Rob Bauer, Kees Koedijk, Rogér Otten. Limburg Institute of Financial Economics, November 2002. (socialinvest.org/resources/research)
4. Foundations align investments with their charitable goals by Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2007. Section C, p 1.
5. Ibid.
6. 2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. Social Investment Forum. (www.socialinvest.org)
7. Socially Responsible Investing Facts. Social Investment Forum. www.socialinvest.org
8. PRI Report On Progress 2007. PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment), United Nations. (www.unpri.org)

Image credits

Sun-Maid/George Bush composite image
•    First Sun-Maid packaging to feature a likeness of Lorraine Collett as the “Sun-Maid Girl,” 1916. Designer unknown, incorporates painting by Fanny Scafford. Public domain in the United States.
•    Photograph of Bush speaking. Brazil, November 6, 2005. Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency, produced photograph. Published under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil.

Fox/Morrison composite image
•    Foxes by Franz Marc, 1913. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. Public Domain.
•    Jim Morrison portrait, 2007, by Amadeu.taradell. Released by author into public domain.

Ferris Wheel/Superman composite image
•    The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The New York Times photo archive. Public Domain.
•    Screenshot of 1941 cartoon Superman. Fleischer Studios. This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, and its copyright was not renewed.

Musician holding Valentine’s Day raisins composite image
•    Photo of musician Jeff Hawley, 2007.  Manager, Marketing Content Pro Audio and Combo Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. Courtesy of Mr. Hawley.
•    Photo, August 3, 2005 by Mazbln. Halberstadt, Klosterkirche St. Burchardi, Ort des John-Cage-Projektes “As slow as possible.” Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
•    Original painting of Lorraine Collett by Fanny Scafford, 1915, later used on Sun-Maid raisin packaging. Public domain in the United States.

This column is meant to provide general information, and should not be construed as providing investment, legal, or tax advice. There is no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the information in this article. There are no guarantees of future return for any fund, nor an endorsement of any investment product. Mutual funds are sold by prospectus only. For complete information on mutual funds including sales charges and expenses, call your financial professional for a prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Links are provided herein as a courtesy, and no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of the content on the referenced websites.

Sí, Money! – Vol. 2, No. 1  February 2008 – http://simoney.us

Michael Grodsky, AIF®
http://www.articlesbase.com/investing-articles/socially-responsible-investing-for-idiots-745542.html

Socially Responsible Investing for Idiots

Sí, Money! (http://simoney.us)
By Michael Grodsky

If I have to be an idiot, at the least I’m a green idiot. I believe in clean air, corporate responsibility, community activism, licorice, pizza and Thai food. And healthy living, freedom, and of course freedom raisins.

Shiny happy raisins

I love trees, sky, and ah, the OXYGEN! But I’m worried about the dismal state of health care, education funding, the ozone hole, the Medicare donut hole, and your little dog too! Did you know the North Pole is melting? That really scares me. Plus I need to cut down on my Chunky Monkey intake.

In everything I do, in every move I make, it seems that I’m part of the worldwide web of production and consumption. So I pertly place my recyclables in the blue bin, our family uses reusable grocery bags, and I vote. What more can a light-switch thumping, gasoline-pumping 21st century fox do?

C’mon, baby, light my SRI fire…

 

It was only a couple of years ago a friend remarked to me that real estate was the only investment that made any sense, as if his seat on the Ferris Wheel of investments, propelled by an invincible source, would forever be going up, up, UP! Instead, what happened was “up, up and away.”

The first Ferris wheel, from 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago

The desire for a sure thing is hard to resist. Albert Einstein, succumbing to pressure to support the idea of a static universe, in his 1917 paper added an adjustment number called the “cosmological constant” to his equation for general relativity. In 1931 he publicly renounced this static cosmology and endorsed the Big Bang expanding universe model, ditching the cosmological constant and returning to his original equation. He later called his bowing to peer pressure the greatest blunder of his entire life. You can read about the adventure in author Simon Singh’s “Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe.”

Many philanthropic foundations have long drawn a wall between their socially conscious mission statements that drive grant making, and the investment holdings of their endowment. There is a truism that investing for social benefit results in lower returns. But just as scientific peer consensus eventually embraced the Big Bang theory, so has the thinking of philanthropic foundations changed. The reasons are twofold: A recognition that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are valid parts of investment decisions, (1) and a growing number of academic studies have demonstrated that socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds perform competitively with non-SRI funds over time. (2)

For example, according to University of Maastricht and Erasmus University Rotterdam economists in their prize-winning paper, “we find little evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds for the 1990-2001 period.” (3)

Foundation investment choices seem to be increasingly guided by effect upon society as a whole, not just financial gain, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. (4) Fresh thinking in the nation’s largest foundations may be driving the impetus ever faster: The $8.5-billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park), the $6.1-billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), the $7.8-billion W.K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle Creek, Michigan) all have made recent changes to improve the social effect of their investments. (5)

SRI assets are also growing faster than assets as a whole: according to the non-profit Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report, SRI assets rose more than 258 percent from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. Over those ten years, SRI assets grew four percent faster than the entire universe of managed assets in the United States. (6)

Some have already been on the SRI track: the nation’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, along with others such as the F.B. Herron Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Nathan Cumings Foundation, have for a long time aligned their charitable and investment practices.

What is Socially Responsible Investing?
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a broad-based approach to investing that now encompasses an estimated $2.3 trillion out of $24 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today. (7) The release of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment–subscribed to by some of the world’s largest institutional investors, asset managers, and related organizations representing over $9 trillion in assets as of mid- 2007–underscores the widespread acceptance of the principle that investors cannot, in the long run, achieve their goals by investing in corporations that externalize their costs onto society. (8)

How do I research SRI funds?
A good place to start is the Social Investment Forum (http://www.socialinvest.org). Look at the resource list at the end of this article too.

How do I start investing?
If you participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, there may be SRI funds already available to you. If you manage your own IRA or other plan, look into what’s available. But don’t just go adding a fund without considering the entire makeup of your portfolio.

The key to earning decent long-term returns and limiting overall risk is to have a proper asset allocation, meaning you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. For do-it-yourself-ers, check out the government’s website about asset allocation (http://tinyurl.com/2825hw), or purchase “All About Asset Allocation” by Richard A. Ferri ($13.57 at Amazon), a great introduction to the topic. Your personal financial advisor or company where you have your investment or retirement accounts can help.

How do I know which funds will produce the highest returns?
You don’t, you can’t, and you won’t, so just forget about it because past performance doesn’t predict future results. The day-to-day ups and downs of the market receive the media attention, but the daily, quarterly, or even yearly returns are largely irrelevant in constructing an individual’s portfolio whose objectives are long-range.  What you want to look for are funds that perform well over the long run within their particular sector, as compared to the appropriate benchmark indices. Various areas of the economy are always moving up and down and sideways, and so far no one has ever been able to know ahead of time what the pattern will be. Asset allocation, I’ll say again, may be the key to long-term success in building a financially secure future. Not panicking helps too!

What makes an SRI fund different?
If a prospective company is a fit according to a fund’s stated objectives, research is performed to determine whether or not it’s a good idea to buy stock at the current offering price. It boils down to the question “Within the guidelines of the stated objectives of the fund, will this purchase help to achieve the highest possible return for the fund’s shareholders?”

The three core socially responsible investing strategies are screening, shareholder advocacy, and community investing. Screening means a fund will include or exclude companies based upon criteria such as alcohol, tobacco, animal testing, and human rights, among others. These screens can be positive (e.g., including companies that treat employees well) or negative (e.g., excluding companies who do business with disturbed musicians).

Keep in mind that, as with all mutual funds, SRI funds have no guarantees of future return.

In any case, you’d better take this lad’s offering of raisins!

If you use electricity, drive a car, and participate in many other activities of daily living, in a very true sense you are already investing in the companies that allow and encourage your consumption. In other words, you are part of the “market” whether or not you actually own stocks or mutual funds. Socially responsible investing can be a way to make your dollars work toward something in which you believe, and support those companies you believe have a vision in line with your own.

Resources and suggested reading

1.    “The Mission in the Marketplace: How Responsible Investing Can Strengthen the Fiduciary Oversight of Foundation Endowments and Enhance Philanthropic Missions.” Social Investment Forum Foundation’s resource guide for foundations to manage risk and leverage their investment assets more fully with their core philanthropic purpose, while creating lasting value. http://tinyurl.com/35t49h
2.    “10 best” list of companies. Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine rates the citizenship disclosures, policies and performance of large-cap, public companies in the following industries: Auto & Vehicles, Paper, Technology Hardware, Technology Software, Transport, and Travel & Lodging industries, Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries. http://www.thecro.com/node/580
3.    Social Science Research Network. http://www.ssrn.com/
4.    United Nations’ “The Principles for Responsible Investment.” An investor initiative in partnership with UNEP Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact. http://www.unpri.org/
5.    The Social Investment Forum; national membership association dedicated to advancing the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. http://www.socialinvest.org/
6.    Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report. http://tinyurl.com/258794
7.    Sristudies.org, a resource for quantitative aspects of socially responsible investing. Includes an annotated bibliography of studies of socially responsible investing. A project of the Moskowitz Research Program, which is affiliated with the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
8.    Socially Responsible Mutual Fund Charts of Financial Performance. http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/mfpc/
9.    SocialFunds.com, an advertising-driven website with information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news.
10.    “Handbook on Responsible Investment Across Asset Classes.” For asset allocation junkies, individuals and institutional investors the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship created this work. http://tinyurl.com/2ffqbu

Footnotes

1. The Maturing of Socially Responsible Investment: A Review of the Developing Link with Corporate Social Responsibility by Russell Sparkes and Christopher J. Cowton. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 52, Number 1 / June, 2004.
2. SriStudies.org
3. International Evidence on Ethical Mutual Fund Performance and Investment Style, paper by Rob Bauer, Kees Koedijk, Rogér Otten. Limburg Institute of Financial Economics, November 2002. (socialinvest.org/resources/research)
4. Foundations align investments with their charitable goals by Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2007. Section C, p 1.
5. Ibid.
6. 2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. Social Investment Forum. (www.socialinvest.org)
7. Socially Responsible Investing Facts. Social Investment Forum. www.socialinvest.org
8. PRI Report On Progress 2007. PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment), United Nations. (www.unpri.org)

Image credits

Sun-Maid/George Bush composite image
•    First Sun-Maid packaging to feature a likeness of Lorraine Collett as the “Sun-Maid Girl,” 1916. Designer unknown, incorporates painting by Fanny Scafford. Public domain in the United States.
•    Photograph of Bush speaking. Brazil, November 6, 2005. Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency, produced photograph. Published under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil.

Fox/Morrison composite image
•    Foxes by Franz Marc, 1913. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. Public Domain.
•    Jim Morrison portrait, 2007, by Amadeu.taradell. Released by author into public domain.

Ferris Wheel/Superman composite image
•    The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The New York Times photo archive. Public Domain.
•    Screenshot of 1941 cartoon Superman. Fleischer Studios. This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, and its copyright was not renewed.

Musician holding Valentine’s Day raisins composite image
•    Photo of musician Jeff Hawley, 2007.  Manager, Marketing Content Pro Audio and Combo Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. Courtesy of Mr. Hawley.
•    Photo, August 3, 2005 by Mazbln. Halberstadt, Klosterkirche St. Burchardi, Ort des John-Cage-Projektes “As slow as possible.” Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
•    Original painting of Lorraine Collett by Fanny Scafford, 1915, later used on Sun-Maid raisin packaging. Public domain in the United States.

This column is meant to provide general information, and should not be construed as providing investment, legal, or tax advice. There is no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the information in this article. There are no guarantees of future return for any fund, nor an endorsement of any investment product. Mutual funds are sold by prospectus only. For complete information on mutual funds including sales charges and expenses, call your financial professional for a prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Links are provided herein as a courtesy, and no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of the content on the referenced websites.

Sí, Money! – Vol. 2, No. 1  February 2008 – http://simoney.us

Michael Grodsky, AIF®
http://www.articlesbase.com/investing-articles/socially-responsible-investing-for-idiots-745542.html

If you are going to visit Chicago, you got to experience visiting the icon and leader in aquarium and zoo profession – Shedd Aquarium.

Shedd aquarium was made possible by John G. Shedd wherein he envisioned it to be one of the grandest aquariums in Chicago and was officially opened on May 30, 1930, which became one of Chicago’s historic landmarks.

Shedd aquarium success lies on its founder’s leadership about shaping the future and followers incorporated by collaborative, supportive, strong, inquisitive, creative, energetic and persistent outlook.

Shedd Aquarium primary goal is to give information, inspiration and entertainment to people interested about animals, their habitat and relations to humans. They are promoting animal conservation, provides teaching and learning resources and support global environmental awareness.

Shedd Aquarium’s mission is to let animals connect people into the living world giving inspiration by starting to make a difference. They educate people in a more interesting way having stewards with dedication on caring animals and people.

Shedd Aquarium is supporting global programs regarding conservations. They are also the first aquarium to have an educational department, a textbook itself exploring life and expanding horizons about the animals in their sanctuary taught by their cool teachers within classes.

Shedd Aquarium is a sanctuary with different animal species that people could explore and learn about. They provide itineraries for visitors regarding Shedd Aquarium explorations through their site maps.

You cannot tour the entire Shedd Aquarium in just a day so instead join their membership to visit it often. Some foundations offer discount days upon visiting Shedd Aquarium giving free general admissions.

Inside the vast Aquarium and Oceanarium, you will find to a close of 8,000 marine animals that represents 650 species of reptiles, fish, invertebrates, amphibians, mammals, and birds from the waters around the globe. The Aquarium contains to over 1.5 million gallons of water while the Oceanarium contains to a close of 3 million gallons of water so it’s like you’re under the ocean water.

Looking in the oceanarium, you will find all the Pacific inhabitants, from beluga whales, white-sided dolphins, Alaskan sea otters and seals, to penguins. Watching these mammals in a recreated Pacific coastal surrounding is fun. While in the Aquarium, the 90,000-gallon Caribbean-like Reef in the central part shows to a wide range of aquatic mammals that include sea turtles, sharks, and to more than 250 species of tropical Caribbean animals.

There is no problem upon visiting the Shedd Aquarium because:

- Lockers, which are coin-operated, are available for storing coats however they are not

responsible for luggage or package that does not fit into the lockers.

- Picture takings of animals are allowed by only turning off the flash for comfort and safety

purposes. Tripods are not allowed as well as taking pictures in restaurants and Oceanarium.

- Handicapped parking area are available but wheelchairs can be rented on a first come first basis only.

- Nursing area is also available. You can either eat at Dining at Shedd or simply carry a bag lunch where you can eat on the tables and chairs located in vending areas.

If you wish to visit, the Shedd Aquarium and Oceanarium is open to all from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays and selected holidays. If Memorial Day and Labor Day fall on weekdays, it’s open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. only. The place charge adults for $11, $9 to children ages 3-11 and free to children under the age of 3. Access to both the Oceanarium and Aquarium on Mondays charge adults $6, $5 to children ages 3-11 and seniors and is free to ages under 3. Entrance to the Aquarium only is free on Mondays.

The best time to visit Shedd Aquarium is to arrive early or on Sunday mornings because it is least crowded. Shedd is a popular place and can easily get crowded during summer, weekends or holidays.

Low Jeremy
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/amazing-facts-about-shedd-aquarium-in-chicago-100229.html