The Phenomenon of Carrottmob

Brent Schulkin had a novel idea. If you want change. If you want a person, business or corporation to do something positive to help clean the environment. If you want to change a negative to a positive then use incentives instead of punishment. PBS has the story:

If you want to get an uncooperative donkey to move, the old adage says that you can coax it with a carrot. This philosophy is at the heart of Carrotmob, a San Francisco-based movement that’s reinventing the time-honored protest technique of the boycott. Carrotmob works like a boycott in reverse, providing incentive — the “carrots” — to businesses in exchange for reform.

As part of our Agents of Change series, Need to Know talks to Brent Schulkin, the brainchild behind Carrotmob, about how he’s growing this new model of protest into a global movement.

Watch a cartoon explanation. Check out the website.

How Organized Consumer Purchasing Can Change Business from carrotmob on Vimeo.

This is change that works.

Another Example of GOP Hypocrisy

In August 0f 2007, GOP RNC chairman Mike Duncan had sent an email to supporters. He claimed that Democrats wanted Bush to lose the Iraq war.

The Democrats are hoping our troops fail in the War on Terror in the craven desire that it will boost their party's electoral fortunes in 2008.

It is unconscionable that Democrat leaders are hoping for our troops to fail so their party can gain a political advantage.

That's right, the GOP found it repugnant that the Democrats didn't support the President.

It is now 2009 and the tables have turned. Only now the GOP, through their new spokesman, Rush Limbaugh, actually wants President Barack Obama to fail.

Americans United for Change have a new radio ad "Here We Go Again" calling out the legislative representatives who support Limbaugh's position. The ad basically says that opposing Obama’s budget would be tantamount to embracing Rush’s desire for failure.