Category Archives: Truth in Advertising

A Fantasy Governmental To-Do List for the Next Two Months

My List

– Nominate and confirm more judges everywhere.
Action Item! The Federal Court currently has 47 judicial vacancies, with 17 nominees pending, and there are also 20 future vacancies, with 11 nominees currently pending. If you have a Democratic senator (or two), please call them and urge them to fast-track hearings and confirmations for these nominees, and to work on filling the other vacancies.*

– Protect all wildlife areas at the southern border. In fact, negotiate international agreements with Mexico to do it.

– On every sign saying “Project funded by Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” include the names of local representatives who voted against it (which would have been better done before the election, but alas I didn’t think of it).

– Endure all DT appointments go through the proper Senate confirmation process.
Action Item! Contact your senators, regardless of party, and demand that they not allow recess appointments at this critical time, so that nominees can get a fair hearing. If you like, you can join the Democratic Coalition’s letter-writing campaign for this. (11/14/24)

– Protect our personal data from seizure without a warrant (source: ACLU)
Action Item! The ACLU is organizing public comments before December 16 on proposed legislation known as the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. (Note: Because I was curious about whether we could make our own comments, I went to the public register website and was unable to find anything relevant. If you find out, let me know!)

– Dissociate the government/NASA/communications from Starlink and muskrats (nothing against actual muskrats).

– Halt arms to Netanyahu to motivate a ceasefire and an agreement with Hamas. (Not sure how to motivate Hamas, who, just like Netanyahu, clearly value the war above their own people’s safety.)

– Make it very, very clear, in all the press, that once again, Trump is inheriting an amazing economy from Biden, just as he did from Obama. (Not stock market but wages, jobs, employment, manufacturing, supply chains.)
Action Item! The to-do item is for the White House but also for the press, so the action item is for contacting your news sources — letter to the editor, emailing journalists you read, comments to people you follow on Twitter or Bluesky, etc. — asking them to do not just an article but a series, before January, on the Biden/Harris economy, including their work on supply chains, the manufacturing jobs from their wide-ranging legislation, higher wages, union support, the soft landing, etc., and to include projections of the ongoing effects this work will have over the next few years. Explain, if you want to, that you want this to be out there to counter the push of the next administration to claim credit.

– Save all White House web pages.

– Protect our right to dissent and organize.

Action Item Successful: H.R.9495! See description

Tell your representatives in the House to vote against H.R.9495.
From the ACLU: “This broad, vague bill is an open invitation for abuse…a bill that would give the incoming Trump administration a new tool they could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents, and punish groups that disagree with them.”
While one section gives tax relief to Americans held hostage, another section gives the Secretary of the Treasury the discretion to declare tax-exempt organizations to be terrorist organizations. (So when I called, I said I was urging my rep to vote no based on that part in particular).

– Raise the cap on the House of Representatives to restore some balance to the electoral college, if we must have it … and if we still have it.

– Expand the Supreme Court and nominate people to serve. Rush the hearings. (Tricky part: Manage this without leaving seats open.)

Well, and if we’re doing fantasy:
– Declare that every law that is passed henceforward must have a clear training portion and no vagueness. If doctors are to make decisions between healthcare and 99 years in jail, they must be told exactly what circumstances are legal or illegal and when they can use their own judgement, none of that “oh, of course we didn’t mean that” afterward. If books are to be banned, they must have transparent, exact standards so that everyone knows and there is no guessing. If families are to be separated, then the roles of everyone involved must be clear and trackable. If people are arriving in the US by airplane and are suddenly banned from arrival while they’re in the air, don’t leave it up to random TSA or airport personnel how to manage them.

Further Resources:

– Elizabeth Warren has a plan. Most of it is broad and procedural, but I’m pleased to see one of her two specific directives is already on my list.
– Here is a cautionary tale, with one takeaway: everyone in government who can push back on or question a policy idea as soon as it comes up must commit to doing so. PBS transcript, How a Trump-era policy that separated thousands of migrant families came to pass.

Updates of work in place:

– I’ve read that Biden is locking in the distribution of funds for the Inflation Reduction Act!
The main source I’ve found is not from this week but from Politico in September.
– Success! H.R.9495, the “Terror Financing” bill, failed to reach 60% in the House.

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* Thanks to Karen Escovitz and Kate Hellenga for bringing this action to my attention.

Vote: Because Others Can’t

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If you, or someone you know, is wondering “Why should I bother to vote today?” my current answer isn’t about the vast sweeping changes across the nation in the past two years and the fate of our democracy. My current answer is this:

Vote today to compensate for those across the country whose votes are being suppressed, some perhaps as “unintended consequences” of apparently well-meaning changes* and some as blatant disenfranchisement:
– For example, in North Dakota, where the Supreme Court** just upheld a Voter ID law that requires a street address in order to vote, and where it is completely standard for the government not to issue street addresses on Native American reservations whose streets often don’t have names or numbers.
– Or in North Carolina, where five years ago — in fact, the very day after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act*** (see p. 10 of the 2016 decision linked in this paragraph) — the state eliminated same-day voter registration and reduced both early voting and Sunday voting, explicitly because counties with strong Sunday voting tended to be “disproportionately” African-Americans who tended to vote Democratic. The law was overturned in 2016, but the justification went viral a few weeks ago.
– Or in Dodge City, Kansas, where the distribution of erroneous polling place information was only adding insult to injury. The notices said that voting would occur at the standard sole polling place in the center of town, but in fact they had already made the actual polling place get out of Dodge. The only place today for the primarily Latin@ city residents to vote is outside of town, 1 mile from the nearest bus stop.
– Or in Georgia, where, among other things, people’s addresses were purged from voter rolls based on when they last voted, and they were not notified. There are also problems with voting machines, absentee ballots, and processing registrations. Also, there are many fewer polling places across the state, something that has been growing since, hm…the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

Some other good reasons to vote:

1) Demographics. Politicians pay attention to who votes in elections, and if you’re part of a demographic that polls as low turnout, the representatives may decide that your issues aren’t the ones to focus on.

2) History. No matter who you are, many of your ancestors have been legally unable to vote in this country. For those who struggled, fought, died, were imprisoned and force-fed, or marched and endured, your use of your vote now can honor their courage.

3) Meanness vs. civility. The vast sweeping changes across the nation in the past two years and the state of our democracy. The fate of America and all the people in it.

4) In case anyone thinks one vote doesn’t make a big enough difference****, I will simply copy some lyrics here from an earlier post:

Step by Step

sign for 2017 women’s march

Step by step, the longest march can be won, can be won.
Many stones to form an arch, singly none, singly none,
And by union what we will can be accomplished still;
Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

As far as I know, the words are from the preamble to the constitution of the United Mine Workers (UMWA), and it was set to music by Pete Seeger. I learned it from Sweet Honey, and I found performances of them both:
Video (Sweet Honey in the Rock): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXwM3pJFqAc
Recording and lyrics (Pete Seeger): https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-step-by-step-lyrics

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*There’s a Reuters quote in the Snopes article (cited later in the post) that says,

“Republicans have said laws like the one in North Carolina are needed to prevent voter fraud. Democrats have said such laws are voter suppression measures intended to make it harder for groups that tend to back Democratic candidates, including black and Hispanic voters, to cast ballots.”

I think this is a problematically complex answer.
My answer would be:
Voter suppression IS voter fraud. Go ahead and prevent that.
And further:
Is fraud prevention worth it if one person is prevented from voting as a result? Ten? 100? How many of your own friends’ or family’s votes would you trade for the “prevention of voter fraud”?

**with Gorsuch, without Kavanaugh, despite my previous belief. The majority included Sonia Sotomayor, however, which surprises me.

***Apparently SCOTUS felt that the southern states in question had been behaving well enough that there was no longer a need to require federal oversight of new changes in voting law. Within a day, as I recall, there were six new changes in voting law among the previously constrained states.

****Also, there is somewhere a list of major historical decisions decided by very few votes. I’ll try to find it. I mean, besides the 2016 Presidential. Oh, here’s one.

Some Scissors Do Go Both Ways (But Not Any You’re Likely to Come Across)

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left-handed scissors, in Wescott package, with LEFTY in big letters on the packaging I recently requested, and acquired, a pair of left-handed scissors for my office. I was pleased to discover, with a quick search, that it was possible to order explicitly left-handed titanium-bonded scissors that exactly matched the scissors in the copy room cabinets. In fact, as I discovered when they arrived, they say “LEFTY” only on the package and not on the scissors, which say merely “Westcott titanium” and are therefore indistinguishable from the right-handed scissors except for the orientation of the blades. I held them up together to check. And then, alas, I had to check the other right-handed scissors in the cabinet to make sure I took my own set back to my office.

So here’s a thing about myself that I find frustrating: in spite (or possibly because) of the fact that I can read upside down and backwards,* I have a really hard time holding onto pattern changes in three dimensions. I turn something over, and, poof, everything I know about it vanishes. I’m not good with Rubik’s cube (I can get one side, but then I lose track), not good with folding washcloths so they face the same way when they’re done (actually, I can do this now, if I concentrate), and not good at remembering how the blades of scissors should be oriented to each other. I say things like, “okay, so the bottom blade is on the left,” and then I pick up a different pair of scissors and suddenly I’m not sure whether I’m holding them the same way, or which blade is now on the bottom, or whether I really was talking about the handle. I think it’s because I don’t have words for the transformation. Which means I can’t trust myself to look at scissors and know whether they’re for left- or right-handers. I have to trust other people, or the marketing.

right-handed scissors for kids, poorly marketed by Westcott as "left or right handed" And why shouldn’t I trust the marketing? I’m so glad you asked. I don’t trust the marketing because Things Have Changed in scissor handedness world. For example, I’ve asked whether there are left-handed scissors available for my kid in a craft situation, and I’ve been told that all the scissors should work for both hands. And when I dismiss this as ridiculous, and go off to find scissors (for kids or grownups) in an office supply store, I find packages that actually, explicitly say “left or right handed”.** I look at the scissors. They look like scissors. They are oriented only one way. There is no possibility that they can work the same way for right-handed and left-handed people. This is what we call creative marketing – or, possibly, lying.

And no one would have made these claims when I was a kid. Either they’d have the little scissors with the green covered handles and “LEFTY” carved into the blade, or they’d apologise and say I’d have to use the right-handed ones. None of this “don’t worry; they’re the same” nonsense.

Just to be clear, the reason it’s important to have left-handed scissors for left hands is that the angle of force is reversed when you switch hands. It’s possible – and often necessary – for a lefty to use right-handed scissors (or vice-versa; if you haven’t tried it, you might find it educational, particularly with older scissors), but instead of the natural movement of your thumb forcing the blades against each other, the natural movement forces the blades away from each other. So if there is any give in the joint at all, you have to work to counter that force – resulting in awkward cutting and generally a slight gouge in your thumb where you have to pull back against the metal. At the time, I believed this to be generally known … and yet, over time, this knowledge seems to have dissipated.

I have a hypothesis as to why this is, and it is twofold:
1) Right-handed scissors (and scissors in general) are now better made. Better joints, smoother motion, less awkward angling, fewer gouges. No problem. At least…no obvious problem. And this is certainly preferable to the earlier models. It’s just not accurate to claim, in one’s marketing, that these scissors are made for both hands.
2) The gouges were, of course, much clearer when scissors were made just with metal. And then there were plastic-coated handles, and then thicker plastic handles. At some point, there came a craze for scissors with big, swooping, molded plastic handles that were ergonomically designed and only faced one way. So then OF COURSE they could only be used for one hand. And I have several pairs of lovely left-handed scissors at home that I have loved and cherished and would never offer to my right-handed spouse except in times of dire need.

left-handed scissors with ergonomic handles

But then, according to my hypothesis, people shifted their understanding to fit the new reality and came to believe that the problem with right-handed scissors was that left-handed people couldn’t get their hands into them properly. Take away the ergonomically exclusive handles and, voila! They can be used with both hands.

(Facepalm here, with either hand, or, indeed, both.)

However, there is no way to make regular scissors symmetrical (without a special patent; see below), which means there is no way they can be used equally with both hands. If the companies want to go ahead and make them all left-handed and then claim that they are “for left or right hand,” then I might be on board with it. While I have not been able to tell by looking so far (for reasons mentioned above), I think it is a pretty fair guess that no, this is not what they’re doing. And for this reason, I wrote the following in my request for the scissors, along with the link I had found:

“IMPORTANT: Whatever brand it is, it actually has to have the blades reversed to be for lefties. Anything that says it works “for both hands” is basically saying “we’ve made these right-handed scissors that left-handed people can use if they don’t mind using right-handed scissors.” So, not that. (-:”

However, about the title of this post: In my most recent search for the “either hand” marked scissors, I discovered that there is in fact a patent from the 1970s for ambimanual scissors.*** These are scissors that can actually be used in a symmetrical way by either hand. Here is the abstract (emphasis mine):

sketch from US Patent US 3978584 A

“Scissors which may be used with equal ease and efficiency by either a left-handed or right-handed person. The scissors include two generally flat rigid, blade portions which are each sharpened on both edges to provide two sets of cutting edges. The blade portions are pivotally connected to one another and each includes a handle portion on one end. One of the handle portions is adapted to fit the thumb of the user while the other handle portion is larger to permit engagement of two or more fingers of the same hand in the normal fashion of scissors use. The thumb handle is pivotally mounted to its respective blade portion to permit pivotal movement from one selected position at one side of the finger handle as used during right-handed operation to a second selected position at the opposite side of the finger handle for use during left-handed operation. A detent or lock is provided to secure and hold the thumb handle in either of the selected positions.”

Clearly one has to be careful, what with the double edges. But I think it’s pretty cool.

By the way, I have also found that Wikipedia has a nice, brief description of the symmetry issue (including reference to the aforementioned patent). I actually had forgotten the bit about the visibility of the cutting edge!
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* The reading upside-down and backwards thing has caused other problems, as in my early trips to England, where people drive on the other side of the road, and where (since, despite believing that we all have learned to “look both ways” before crossing a street, we actually tend to look only one way at a time) crossing the street can be treacherous. Many London streets kindly warn foreigners where the traffic will be by having very clear “look left” or “look right” signs, with arrows, painted into the road as you step off the curb (sorry, kerb). And this is lovely, and entirely useful. The problem for me comes when there’s a median in the road. For then they have a new sign, just after the median, telling you to look the other way. Which is also fine, except if you happen to read upside-down automatically and therefore don’t particularly distinguish between the sign after the median, which is for you, and the one right before it, which is for people coming the other way. Oops… Fortunately, I never actually got hurt (or picked up as a spy) due to this problem.

** I was pretty disappointed to look back in my notes from such a trip back in August and to learn that the offending scissors were *also* made by Westcott.

*** They are in fact called Ambidextrous scissors, but I prefer to use the alternative I was offered in adolescence by my friend Anna Licameli, summer program roommate, whom I credit with leading my second foray into identity politics. (The first, much earlier, was my beleaguered dad saying, “Why do you keep saying the tooth fairy is female?”) Within our first hour of meeting, she demanded to know why I was wearing my watch on my left arm if I was left-handed, and soon afterward pointed out to me that “ambidextrous” glossed as “right-handed on both sides” and should therefore be avoided.

Word Matters … Because Words Matter

A blog on words and the work they do, by Jennifer Sheffield