Call it a phenomenon of the times – a business aimed at people who want to sound off on pivotal issues. It’s a business with little publicity, but one that’s evolving out of enflamed passions about significant social issues. In brief, it’s a pip-squeak industry that sells products sporting strong, pointed messages on issues of national interest, with President Bush in the forefront.

One player is Robert Anbian, a San Francisco poet and fiction writer, who, in March of 2004, joined the entrepreneurial ranks of online merchandisers when he started ProtestWorks.com. Basically, it’s a retailer of T-shirts and buttons that impart provocative views about President Bush and various social issues, among them peace, war, justice, globalization, the plight of the underprivileged, and medical marijuana.

Describing himself as anti-war and anti-Bush – themes that are graphically reflected in the products he sells, many to New Yorkers – Mr. Anbian is off to what he regards as a pretty good kickoff to his online venture, which he said is currently producing start-up sales of about $2,000 a month.

Among his biggest sellers, he tells me, are T-shirts ranging from $14 to $22, including one that features a picture of the president accompanied with the slogan “Liar, liar, world on fire.” Mr. Anbian is also realizing brisk sales on a set of three buttons for $5, each one sporting the president’s picture, that read “Impeach Bush,” “I voted in ’04 and all I got was more war,” and “Support the troops – Impeach Bush.”

What’s intriguing is that rising disenchantment with the war and President Bush’s policies has spawned a growing number of such business ventures around the country, whose chief thrust is the sale of Bush-bashing and war bashing products. In some cases, mail-order firms have also gotten into the act by promoting such merchandise.

Sparked by the ongoing Iraqi conflict, coupled with a rising death toll among American troops (more than 1,800), a bunch of these businesses have sprung up in recent years – about 40 all told, roughly half of them in the last year or two. In aggregate, they’re said to be producing an estimated and growing annual volume of between $20 million and $22 million. That’s said to be around 20% to 25% higher than it was about two years ago.

Mr. Anbian, who donates part of the proceeds to one of the prime organizers of anti-war demonstrations, notes that his business is international, with orders coming in from just about every state in the union, as well as from Europe, notably Britain, France, and Switzerland. His customer base also includes stores and street fairs, as well as some military people, some of whom, he said, have indicated they plan to wear their anti-Bush T-shirts in Iraq. All told, the Web site has slightly more than 1,000 customers, a figure he hopes will swell to more than 5,000 over the next year.

Another player, which is seeing increased sales in Bush-bashing products, is Minneapolis, Minn.-based Northern Sun Merchandising, a 26-year-old mail-order business. “George Bush, or at least his policies, are really good for our business,” president Scott Cramer says. “We did a strong business on products with anti-Bush sayings before the election, then they slumped after the election, and now they’re fairly strong again,” he said. “It tells us there’s an awful lot of anti-Bush sentiment out there, which is probably due to the war.”

The firm’s principal anti-Bush items are T-shirts selling for $16 to $20, bumper stickers at $2 ,posters for $15 to $20, and buttons at $1. Some of the sayings are downright insulting.

“We’re creating walking billboards and giving people the opportunity to express themselves in a way they can afford,” he said. “And that’s why our business works.”

Northern Sun primarily focuses on sales of merchandise that bear progressive social messages – particularly relating to the environment, opposition to the Iraqi war, politics, and women’s issues – and does an annual volume of about $3 million. A big plus for the company’s business this year, Mr. Cramer added, is the aforementioned lively rebound in sales of anti-Bush products, which he characterizes as a national phenomenon.

He’s quick to point out that the sale of products that feature anti-Bush sayings is actually an acceleration of an ongoing trend involving presidents and presidential candidates. Mr. Cramer says he has also sold merchandise with comments critical of such former presidents as Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and the elder George Bush. “I’ve been doing this for 26 years, and there’s no letup in sight,” he says. “As long as a fair number of people believe the wrong person has been elected president or is running for president,” he said, “this business is here to stay.”

One relative new entry into the Bush-bashing ranks is anti-war protester Corey Wendell. He and two friends who share his view on the Iraqi conflict anted up a combined $90,000 in start-up capital and formed Banners, a retailer on the outskirts of Chicago that sells sweat shirts, T-shirts, and posters that bear anti-war and anti-Bush sayings. Among them: “To hell with the Iraq war,” and “End the war now – Send our troops home.” As Mr. Wendell says: “We’re not looking to get rich doing this. We just want to be counted, get our message out there, and we may call it quits when we’re finally out of Iraq.”