Posted on 08/17/2019 7:06:31 PM PDT by robowombat
Former P&G CEO calls Trump ‘mean’ and ‘cruel,’ renounces GOP
John Pepper was previously CEO and chairman of Procter & Gamble Co. and chairman of the board of the Walt Disney Co. He is co-chairman and former CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Enlarge John Pepper was previously CEO and chairman of Procter & Gamble Co. and chairman of the board of the Walt Disney Co. He is co-chairman and former CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. PROVIDED
By Barrett J. Brunsman – Staff reporter, Cincinnati Business Courier Aug 15, 2019, 11:32am EDT Updated Aug 15, 2019, 12:49pm EDT Former Procter & Gamble Co. CEO John Pepper says he will no longer vote for Republican Party candidates because of President Donald Trump, whom he labeled as a mean and cruel liar.
Pepper, 81, who was chief executive of the Cincinnati-based maker of consumer goods such as Febreze air freshener (NYSE: PG) in the 1990s and early 2000s and later chairman of the Walt Disney Co., suggested he had lost respect for Republicans who don’t speak out against Trump.
Pepper stated in a blog post this week: “When will they stop standing aside to let the meanness and cruelty and lying and rumor mongering of Donald Trump go unchallenged?”
A resident of the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming, Pepper said he grew up in a Republican household and had voted for former GOP presidents as well as Republican senators and governors.
“No longer,” Pepper wrote Aug. 11 in his PepperSpectives blog post headlined “Where did my Republican Party go?”
“When will they again insist that their candidates, especially for the presidency, embody the highest values of our nation – starting with integrity and respecting the dignity of everyone,” Pepper wrote.
In April, Pepper contributed $1,000 to Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican who lives in the Cincinnati suburb of Terrace Park, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Pepper and his wife, Frances, have been among the largest individual political donors in Greater Cincinnati in recent years. The couple gave nearly $255,000 to candidates last year, according to Business Courier research. None of that went to Republicans. More than $222,000 went to Democrats, while more than $32,000 went to non-party candidates.
Their son, David Pepper, has been chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party since 2015. He previously was a Cincinnati councilman and a Hamilton County commissioner.
John Pepper voted in Republican primary elections in 2010, 2004, 2002, 2000 and 1996, according to the Hamilton County Board of Elections. Pepper voted in Democratic primaries in 2018, 2014, 2008 and 2006.
Pepper spent 39 years with P&G, joining the company in 1963 as a staff assistant and rising to CEO and chairman of the board before retiring in 2003. Pepper was CEO from 1995 to 1999 and again from 2000 to 2002.
Pepper was chairman of Disney (NYSE: DIS) from 2007 to 2012. He remains co-chairman of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.
He began writing a blog in 2012 “to share lessons and learnings from my business career and, more generally, from life,” Pepper wrote.
In a June 27 post this year, Pepper wrote: “What is most dangerous in the Trump administration is a lack of respect for truth. A willingness to continue to propound positions which the available body of evidence says are wrong. Like Trump’s claiming more people attended his inauguration than any other, despite the photographic evidence showing the crowd for Obama’s inauguration was larger. Or Trump’s supporting the allegation that Obama was born outside the United States, long after his birth certificate and other evidence indicated this was untrue.
“All this takes me back, chillingly, to what (propaganda minister Joseph) Goebbels said during the Nazi era,” Pepper added. “In so many words, ‘If you keep telling people a lie, again and again, many will come to believe it.’
“The respect for truth – for the objective determination of what is true based on all available evidence – is a foundation for all interpersonal relationships as well as the life of any organization,” Pepper wrote. “What impressed me so deeply in joining P&G over 55 years ago was finding the same commitment to pursue the truth to the best of our ability, no matter where it led.
“Today in this nation, in this world, we must honor, we must insist on the pursuit of truth,” Pepper added. “Its denial must be resisted like the plague.”
In a June 15 post, Pepper noted that the Trump administration has delayed issuance of a redesigned $20 bill featuring an image of Harriet Tubman, who repeatedly guided fellow blacks enslaved in the South to freedom in the North and spoke often of her experiences before anti-slavery gatherings.
“No, this is not the end of the earth,” Pepper wrote of the U.S. not replacing the image of former President Andrew Jackson, a slave holder and oppressor of Native Americans who is nonetheless held in high regard by Trump, with one of Tubman on the front of the $20 bill. “But it is all-too sharply indicative of the Trump’s administration crude lack of appreciation of African-American leadership and the shabby willingness to bury the truth of the matter in facile, unbelievable explanations.
“Harriet Tubman has been a personal inspiration to me and countless others for decades,” Pepper added. “The story of her going back to Maryland almost 20 times to help enslaved men and women to escape, being aided financially by a white business man, Thomas Garrett, was a driving, lifting example for me as I worked with others to create the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. I hope I live to see her life properly recognized for the lesson of courage it will always teach.”
In a June 15 post, Pepper noted that the Trump administration has delayed issuance of a redesigned $20 bill featuring an image of Harriet Tubman,
One can only hope this something else that will vanish after 2020. Tubman is at best a marginal figure in American history and much of her story seems to have been embroidered as time went by. The Underground Railroad is largely legendary and grew bigger and bigger as 1865 retreated into the past.
Boy, this chump really cites some badass quotes as lies huh?
Inauguration crowds? Lol.
Meanwhile he voted for The Most Corrupt Woman on Earth
And a traitor
No wonder P&G is all Fup
So he started voting democrat in 2006. At the latest. Probably voted for Kerry in 2004 if I were to guess. He’s a Democrat. Not a recently converted republican.
UseLESS fidiot!
Ive read the $20 bill being held up by Trump is a complete lie. This guy is old and someone wrote it for him.
That is disappointing. It should be sent down the memory hole.
Harriet Tubman was a Republican who helped blacks escape from their Democrat slave masters. If this guy is a Democrat then he be a raciss.
Good gosh, he’s as interesting and relevant as Homer Simpson’s fictional cartoon dad.
so glad Pepper is gone. What a failure.
so glad Pepper is gone. What a failure.
John Pepper; your mind reconditioning is complete. Go forth and spew garbage everywhere like you were brainwashed to do.
Interesting. He is presented as a water walker in this rag.
Wasn’t Proctor & Gamble accused of satanism a few decades ago? And we all thought that was completely harebrained?
P&G’s problems might have something to do with the Gillette ‘toxic masculinity’ campaign.
Jus’ sayin’...
Based on his FEC records, he stopped contributing to Republicans, apart from Rob Portman, when Obama got elected.
It’s not that he stopped making political contributions. Those contributions continued but only, with the Portman exception, to Democrats. So he’s been a Democrat since 2009, a full decade. When Democrats like Pepper lie, they assume, quite reasonably, that no (typically liberal) reporter will call them on it. And yet he’s calling Trump a liar.
“All this takes me back, chillingly, to what (propaganda minister Joseph) Goebbels said during the Nazi era,” Pepper added. “In so many words, ‘If you keep telling people a lie, again and again, many will come to believe it.’
...and Pepper is proof that it works. Dumbass.
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THE PROCTER & GAMBLE COMPANY AND SUBSIDIARIES |
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(Amounts in Millions Except Per Share Amounts) |
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|
Consolidated Earnings Information |
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|
|
|
|||||
|
|
Three Months Ended June 30, 2019 |
|||||
|
|
Net Sales |
% Change Versus Year Ago |
Earnings/(Loss) from Continuing Operations Before Income Taxes |
% Change Versus Year Ago |
Net Earnings/(Loss) from Continuing Operations |
% Change Versus Year Ago |
|
Beauty |
$3,190 |
3% |
$696 |
(2)% |
$555 |
2% |
|
Grooming |
1,596 |
(3)% |
583 |
34% |
467 |
35% |
|
Health Care |
2,038 |
13% |
413 |
24% |
309 |
42% |
|
Fabric & Home Care |
5,653 |
5% |
1,209 |
33% |
934 |
58% |
|
Baby, Feminine & Family Care |
4,501 |
1% |
900 |
16% |
682 |
41% |
|
Corporate |
116 |
(3)% |
(8,866) |
N/A |
(8,184) |
N/A |
|
Total Company |
$17,094 |
4% |
$(5,065) |
(321)% |
$(5,237) |
(377)% |
They took a writedown because when they bought Gillette, they thought they could inject some of that P&G magic and supercharge its sales. Turns out that magic was a dud, and the premium P&G paid for Gillette was a complete waste. But Gillette itself remains solidly profitable, with the company making profits equal to 30 cents out of every sales dollar. Practically *nobody* else gets these margins, not even Coca Cola. By comparison (i.e. % net margin-wise), every other P&G division was a dog.
“Former” doesn’t mean jack. All it means is that you’re unemployed. Who cares what this chump thinks.
So, his son, the Chairman of the Ohio Democrat Party (and a Yale grad), wrote a book called “The People’s House.” Oddly, the plot was Russian interference in American Elections. It was published well before the 2016 election.
How very odd.
Why are so many rich, white capitalists turning into leftists? Is it because they worked for Disney? Just asking.
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