Posted on 04/11/2012 5:25:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
Let's stipulate: Activists on the left are free to exercise their rights of speech and assembly to boycott businesses whose politics they oppose. Conversely, activists on the right are free to exercise the power of their pocketbooks and refrain from supporting businesses that shun their values.
So, what are you waiting for, conservatives? There are coordinated shakedowns taking place right now that involve some of America's most prominent companies who've chosen to surrender to progressive bullying and race-card opportunism. Silence is complicity.
On Tuesday, McDonald's told liberal magazine Mother Jones that the company had "decided to cut ties with ALEC, the corporate-backed group that drafts pro-free-market legislation for state lawmakers around the country." The fast-food conglomerate follows in the feckless footsteps of Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Intuit (maker of Quick and Quicken Books software) and Kraft Foods -- which have all withdrawn support for ALEC after drum-banging from Color of Change.
That's the minority community activist outfit founded by former Obama green jobs czar and radical Occupy Wall Street supporter Van Jones. Since leaving the White House, Jones has been occupied with railing against capitalism while cashing in on book sales from corporate media appearances.
But I digress.
For years, progressives have sought to take down the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a four-decade-old association of state legislators who believe in "the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty." ALEC's veteran policy experts have successfully teamed with public officials and the private sector on crafting model state bills covering everything from education reform and health care to pensions, public safety and civil justice.
Among the group's greatest heresies in the eyes of the left: support for voter ID laws to protect election integrity, immigration enforcement measures and self-defense legislation to strengthen Second Amendment rights.
The idea that private businesses and public servants could work together voluntarily on public policy is too much for Big Labor and Big Government racketeers. Last fall, leftists from People for the American Way, the Center for Media and Democracy, the Arizona AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers, the Arizona Education Association and Progress Now (a militant group backed by billionaire George Soros) ambushed an ALEC meeting in Arizona to intimidate legislators and corporate backers. In February, the Occupy movement turned from demonizing Wall Street bankers to attacking the policy wonks of ALEC as wretched symbols of "profit and greed."
And now ALEC's race-hustling enemies are piggybacking on the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida. They're shamelessly blaming ALEC for the tragedy by claiming the group wrote the state's "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law. But as ALEC points out:
"(The) law was the basis for the American Legislative Exchange Council's model legislation, not the other way around. Moreover, it is unclear whether that law could apply to this case at all. "Stand Your Ground" or the "Castle Doctrine" is designed to protect people who defend themselves from imminent death and great bodily harm. ... In the end, we will always respect people who disagree with us in matters of policy, but it is simply wrong to try to score political points by taking advantage of a great tragedy like Trayvon Martin's death."
Color of Change is ratcheting up pressure on ATT, one of ALEC's corporate board members, to abandon the group or be forever branded as racists with blood on their hands. These campaigns are of a piece with the pressure campaigns against advertisers of conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh. (Not coincidentally, many of the same groups are involved in both.) The Hush Rush mob has succeeded in finagling anti-free speech declarations from the likes of Arby's restaurant chain and Walgreens drugstores -- two companies that have never been sponsors of Limbaugh's show, but which announced last week that they won't advertise in his time slot on local station ad buys. Note: These are bit cancellations of an ad buy; there's no loss of money. It's pure, progressive gesture politics, astro-turfed by Soros-funded groups, to create the fake appearance of an anti-Rush advertising stampede -- and ultimately, to chill conservative dissent.
McDonald's, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Intuit, Kraft, Arby's and Walgreens have shown their true colors: appeasement yellow. It's time for conservatives to stand their ground and stop showing these corporate cowards their money.
About a year ago I quit using Google after finding out that almost ALL of its management are huge donaters to the democrat party. I find Bing is just as good and in some cases better than Google.
In 1977, my family was staying in a motel in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We made a trip to Nashville and on the way back we stopped somewhere in Tennessee at a Wendy's. There was me, my wife and our two sons, ages 4 & 3. My older son, who by the way, had a voracious appetite usually, was not hungry, we couldn't get him to eat anything at all.
My wife, me and my younger son all ate, that night we spent the night at the hospital in Bowling Green, getting re hydrated with I.V.s, from all the vomiting and diarrhea we were experiencing. My older son, who had refused to eat at Wendy's that day was just fine.
Fortunately for us, my wife's brother lived there at the time and he took care of the older son while the rest of us were in the hospital.
No, we didn't sue anybody but the evidence was pretty clear to me. We haven't eaten from Wendy's since that happened. Of course that kind of thing could happen anywhere but for us it was Wendy's.
I'm not trying to persuade anybody else to boycott Wendy's, if you want to eat there, have at it.
I wondered the same thing. Definitely sends the wrong message.
That’s disappointing. I’ve been using Intuit’s Quickbooks and Proseries in my accounting firm for a very long time. I think I’ll be calling them after tax season is over, and I have the time to do it.
“I hope I can persuade you see to see this differently because your statement implies that if conservatives took back the government socialist-entitlement schools that somehow they would be fixed.”
You raise good points.
If conservatives became involved in public schools, they’d be better, but not fixed. While the same commies that teach now, would still teach, they’d be more supervised with conservatives involved. Teachers tend to be weak, followers. It’s a generalization, about teachers being weak, but I stand by it. Teachers, in general, can be molded and led. So, while teachers may favor socialism, and communism, they will bend to the will of a strong school board.
But that only mitigates the problems, it doesn’t fix them.
An educated populace is critical to our mutual success. Privatize with vouchers? It would help, but there will be “progressive” schools even with privatization.
There is no perfect solution. However, if we all pay attention to what is going on in the schools, it will be better than what we have now... indoctrination facilities.
“I’ve never understood why this works so well for the racist Socialist scum that are the Democrats and not for everyone else.”
Perhaps it is because they are left with more spending money. Thanks to inflation our tiny SS check buys less each month. Still, we choose who gets a part of it. We shop local owned businesses as much as possible. Used/2nd hand items are about all we buy electively.
Go Newt!
Don’t forget Progressive Insurance, and all of hollyweird.....
That’s probably a very good guess. Put another way, Conservatives keep retreating away from institutions the Leftists take over. And it may simply be, as in my families case, there isn’t much for us to boycott because we’re not big consumers. No one in my family drinks Coca Cola; we don’t have smart phones, Apple products, etc. We read paper books.
Another way to say this I guess is; we’re old, we’re out of date and we’re isolated (and largely pretty happy!).
Your story may have more to do with Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Stayed there once with the family and all of us came down with raging food poisoning from a Bob Evans. Later was told by an in-law stationed at Ft. Knox that everyone in the military knew that the restaurants in Bowling Green had a reputation for spreading nasty bugs.
Personally I gave up on The Colonel back in the 70’s after getting food poisoning twice in one summer, from KFC stores in two different states.
The Wendy’s where we ate was in Tennessee, on the way back to Bowling Green. We spent the night in a hospital in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
I love the photos they use for background. Just a much more pleasant site...and like you said, not putting money into those who would throw it 0bama gives me a small sense of satisfaction.
I haven’t had Wendy’s since 1980 when I was a young kid. We were coming home from a baseball tournament when my friend’s mother brought us to Wendy’s to eat. All of our burgers were filled with these hard nerve like things that were over an inch long. It was so gross we all threw our food away and left. I’m always reminded of that day when I drive by a Wendy’s.
I like Doctor Pepper.
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