Bill Snyder's blog

QotD: Reality TV Star

If you had to be on a reality television show, which one would you pick?

Start-Up Company Survivor. Oh, wait, that's my current role.

QotD: Looking Ahead...

What do you see yourself doing on this day next year?
Submitted by Beautifully Broken.

Answering the QotD.

I'm Being Interviewed This Afternoon!

Hey Everyone. I'm on Inside Mac Radio this afternoon. They're interviewing me at 1:09 PT/4:09 ET. You can listen live or download the podcast.  It's only 11 minutes long, so take a Bill Break this afternoon.

Update: Turns out the term "live" is being used loosely. The interview doesn't air until 12/13 -- though it will probably hit iTunes sooner.

We-Care.com is mentioned in the NY Post!

We-Care.com was mentioned in a NY Post article on charitable giving and holiday gifts!

"'CAUSE'" AND EFFECT: Companies Hope Charitable Gifts Fill the Stockings"

QotD: Color Code

Which color do you think best represents you and why?
Submitted by hocuspocus88.

I'm a rainbow of moods and emotions. A swirling, whirling dance of colors. I am the sky at sunset and the sun reflected in the car oil that leaked out onto the driveway. Or, then again, maybe I'm brown, the color of dog shit, as I seem to be full of it.

We Made USA Today's Tech Blog!

Great news. We-Care.com made USA Today's Technology Live Blog!

QotD: Black Friday -- How You Shop Means as Much as What You Buy

Today is the official start of the holiday shopping season. Are you planning on doing any shopping today? What are you going to buy?

OK. I'm not exactly answering the question, but this is how I'm shopping this holiday season, so it seems approriate.

This holiday season, a lot of nonprofits are feeling the economic pinch -- as we all are. Since February, I've been working on We-Care.com, a painless way to support the organizations you care about while you shop online, and I wanted to make sure you were all aware of it.

We-Care.com is a simple model. If you click through our site before you shop online, a percentage of what you spend at more than 700 partner merchants can be donated to the nonprofit, school, or associaton of your choice. There's no extra cost to you, and you may even save money with special offers available from our site. All purchases are made straight from the merchant's site, so other than adding a couple of clicks, you're shopping as you normally do.

As those of you who follow my blog know, I moved back to NYC in February to start up this site. We put a lot of sleepless nights into it, and I think it shows. Our goal was to open up a new revenue stream for nonprofits while creating a great experience for our users. While I'm sure we'll always be making improvements, I think we've done a great job.

The first time you go to We-Care.com, you choose the organization you want to support. Then you search for the stores or coupons you're looking for, click through to the merchant's site, and shop as you always do. A percentage of what you spend is automatically donated.

We don't want you to buy anything you weren't already planning on, but we do hope you'll add a couple of extra clicks to support a cause you believe in. If you don't see the organization you support already in our database, you can add them and start raising money immediately.

If you're afraid you'll forget to click through We-Care.com, you can install our browser plug-in. If you install the plug-in and visit any of our participating merchants, a dialogue box will remind you to make your purchase count. We've also just added We-Care.com's Shop & Give Gadget, which allows you to shop as a team. You can start a team from our site, and post it on your Vox blog, Facebook and MySpace profiles, and pretty much anywhere else you'd like People join your team when they click on your Gadget to shop or copy it to their blogs and profiles. The Gadget displays how much the team has raised, so when friends add it and thier friends add it, you're team keeps growing and your cause benefits. Both the plug-in and the Gadget are available from our Downloads page.

So, I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday season. And, as you're doing your shopping, please think about the small ways, like We-Care.com,  that you can help the organization that strenghten our communities. It's tough times all around, and this is one way to make your holiday dollars do a little bit more. And please spread the word!

Happy Holidays Everyone.

Bill

Time To Take of the Button?

I stopped in the subway today to give a few bucks to a busker. She looked up at me, thanked me, and noticing my Obama '08 button, told me that he had won.

A few people have remarked that it's a bit late to still be wearing a campaign button, but it's hard for me to take off. In December, I turn 42, and I've voted in every presidential election since I turned 18. I've voted for winners and losers, more of the latter, but this is the first time I felt my vote actually counted for something.

I volunteered hours upon hours for the Kerry campaign, but only in hopes of defeating Bush. I don't think I met anyone on that campaign who was excited about Kerry.

The Bush years were the obscene, overblown, excessive culmination of the Reagan revolution. That is, the policies of 43 were the worst of the Reagan policies take to their extreme. It was the culmination of a Me Generation in American politics. It was tax cuts for the wealthy, cutting safety nets for the needy, and deregulating. It was the belief that an absolute free market system would yield the best results -- capitalism as an ideology rather than a practical economic system. It was the belief that those who had did so because they earned it, and those who didn't have simply hadn't worked for it.

I owe 43 my thanks. It took two wars, an unprecedented economic crisis, and massive layoffs among the former have as well as the  have nots to remind this country what the Regan Era made us forget: We are all in this together, or, as they once said "divided we fall." If the past 27  years made us forget anything, it is that we as Americans sink or swim together.

I don't mean this in a patriotic way. Oh, we never stopped saying we were united. I mean this in the most practical way. If power and money are concentrated in a handful of people; if barriers are erected to keep the less fortunate disenfranchised; if we perpetuate the myth that the wealthy and the poor started from a level playing field; and if we fail to provide the basic needs for those who are struggling, we are not a united nation. If the tax burden continues to shift from the rich to the middle class and poor, we are  not a united people. if the gap in pay between the highest paid exec and the lowest paid worker continues to grow at the rate it has since the 70s, we're not only not united, we've lost our morals.

But two wars and an economy broken by greed have lead us to a point where we are all suffering together. If this election was held two years earlier, McCain's rant against "redistributing the wealth" would have won him points. But today, even those who prospered through the past 27 years -- the barons Tom Wolfe mocked in The Bonfire of the Vanities  back in the 80s -- and who still run Wall Street today, the execs and CEOs who have reaped bonuses well beyond their worth while cutting jobs (and I don't intend this to be a rant against all execs and CEOs, just the bad ones), if they're now as vulnerable as the rest of have been, then we're all forced to change our thinking. (Though some may not be changing it fast enough.)

At 11:15 ET on election nigths, the streets of my Brooklyn neighborhood were filled with dancing and singing like I've never seen. It was at that time, I realized we had done something I'd never thought I'd seen, elected a black president. (Truthfuly, I never thought I'd see a president who wasn't a white male, but I also didn't think I'd see the fall of the Berlin Wall.) I'd been fairly certain for some time that Obama would win, but the racial signifcance didn't set in until after the election. That's because, as important as it is historically, skin color had nothing to do with my support of Obama (which started before the primaries).

I supported Barack Obama because he spoke to what was best in America, the need for us all to put aside our smaller differences and work together for our common interests. It was a swtich from devisive politics to inclusive politics. I supported Barack Obama because he was the first president since Carter who seemed to sincerely understand and emphasize with the plight of those who weren't wealthy. (Others felt sorry for the poor, but pittying is not the same as empathizing or understanding.) And he's the first viable presidential candidate since RFK, who has inspired Americans to pull together.

If you have followed his post-election speaches, you'll notice a common thread. Barack Obama isn't offering to fix our problems. He's offering to lead us through difficult times. He's offering vision. But he's not kidding anyone; we still need to do the work. After 9/11, we were told to go about our lives as normal, because if we didn't shop, the terrorists had won. This is just the opposite message. And it goes farther. It's not just a shift from Me to Us in the USA; it's about re-engaging in the global community. If this current financial crisis has taught us anything, it's that we sink or swim as a planet. (Economics taught us a lesson that Global Warming couldn't.)

So, I continue to wear my Obama '08 pin, because I finally made a presidential vote that stood for something. And I want others to remember that we, as a nation, made a commitment to a new direction on election day. And this isn't a commitment for Barack Obama to keep for us; it's one we all need to keep.

So, there was sex before the web.

A friend just sent me a scan of this old album cover, and it had me rolling. L.R. O'Connoer's Tourist Guide to the Sex and Sin of Stockholm, Sweden.

In case you can't read the tiny print, the cover says:

Hear the actual sounds of

• Being hustled by two Stockholm prostitutes posing as models!
• A cab driver revealing the inside "low-down" on Stockholm's Nightlife!
• A Live sex  show in a Swedish basemen!
• A full length secret recording in a Swedish sex and massage parlor!
• Plus, much, much more in well over one full hour of the most exciting sound you ever heard.
  

image.jpg

Sadly, all I have is a scan. To the best of my knowledge, this critical proof the sex happened before the internet has been lost forever.

Spreading the Wealth Around

McCain is grasping right now. Bill Ayers didn't turn the tied, nor did ACORN. So, the focus is now taxes. Yes. The horror of it. Barack Obama wants to "spread the wealth around" as he told "Joe the Plumber."

"Spreading the wealth around" sounds like a pretty awful thing. Yes, it means that the government is going to take my money and your money and give it to other people. I work hard. They don't work. But at the end of the day, we all have the same amount of money. Yes, it sound horrible, but that's not what Obama is talking about, and John McCain knows that full well.

As Colin Powell pointed out, all taxes are spreading the wealth around. What Obama is talking about — and it's been a long held tenet of U.S. tax policy — is using taxes to fulfill the beliefs spelled out in the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. I'm starting here with the preamble because it lays out the spirits and the goals of the Constitution. I'm not claiming that Obama's plan is a Consittution mandate, merely that it is in keeping with thespirit of the Consitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, ^{promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.}

Let's be honest: justic, domestic tranquility, common defense, and general welfare all cost money. Now, over the past eight years (and arguably every year since WW2), defense is the one place that America doesn't mind spending money. That said, since the Reagan Revolution, cut taxes has become a mantra. Very simply put, you can cut taxes in economic townturns only if you boost them back up when the economy is strong. You can only keep cutting taxes so long until, inevitably, this country is bankrupt.

Let's be honest here. Everyone gets fired up about cutting taxes, but if we really look at what we lose if we don't tax, it's far worse.

Let's just look at the current financial bailout. $700 billion. Granted, most of this will be borrowed, and that's a bigger problem in itself. But that money had to be spent. (The merrits of the bailout are another discussion, but I do believe it was necessary). That is "general welfare."

Roads, regulations (like the ones that could have kept us out of this financial mess if they had been in place), FEMA, National Guard, medical research, police and fire fighters, roads, social security (a tax seperate from income tax, but a tax nonetheless), medacare and medicaid, schools (and our economic future is currently threatened by the state of our schools, airport security in a post-9/11 world ... the list can go on. This is all imporving the general welfare, and it all requires tax money.

Justice: A justice and judicial system isn't cheap. One  that truly functions is even worse.

Of course, there are the more controversial areas. Ones that I support, but others really find to be unfair -- welfare programs. Providing a basic safety net of food, housing, and medical care for those who fall on hard times, that's not even questionable to me. It's a matter of our basci humanity. Providing eduction for those who can't afford it, well that's investing in the economic future (and tax base) of this country. The McCain camp is talking about Obama's tax plan as if it were Hardcore Communism. As if the rich will work hard, the poor willnot work, and in the end, everone will have the same amount of money. What Obama is talking about is staying true to our basic humanity. As many on Wallstreet recently realized, none of us are immune ot hard times.

The small investment in providing a basic safety net for the people fo this country, of being able to respond to national crisis, of being able to have a justice system with integrity — all of that costs money, and that means borrowing or taxing, and let's be honest, youcan only borrow so much for so long. This is the kind of spreading the wealth around I believe in. Perhaps those were not the best words possible, but I do believe in it. I believe we are a great nation of people who care about people, and that protecting the vulnerable and providing for the impoverished are moral imperatives, worth paying taxes for, and promoting the general welfare.