Free Republic

Whole Foods co-founder and exiting CEO John Mackey has said he is “deeply concerned” that “socialists are taking over” the country. “They’re marching through the institutions — they’re taking everything over,” the 68-year-old executive told Reason magazine in an interview just weeks before he finally steps down from the supermarket giant. “They’ve taken over education. It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military,” he said of his main “concern.” “And it’s just continuing,” he warned. He described himself as a “capitalist at heart” and said he believes in liberty....

“Socialism has been tried 41 times in the last 100 years … and there are exactly 41 failures,” says Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, author of “Conscious Capitalism.” In this interview, filmed at the FreedomFest in South Dakota, I sat down with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey to discuss the deceiving allure of socialism, his philosophy of “conscious capitalism,” and why Nordic countries are actually not socialist, contrary to what many may claim.

As one of football's great tight ends, the Baltimore Colts' John Mackey used to bull his way past the goal line, dragging tacklers on his back. As the first president of the National Football League Players Association, he carried his brethren into the modern era of free agency and big-money contracts. Mackey, whose off-the-field exploits were as important as his accomplishments on it, died Wednesday of frontal temporal dementia, a disease he had battled for 10 years, at Keswick Multi-Care Center in Baltimore. He was 69.

The CEO for Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) is relinquishing his chairman title. John Mackey is not only the CEO but also the co-founder of this company. He also held the title of chairman since 1978. After much petitioning by some of the shareholders, Mackey decided to voluntarily give up the title of "chairman" in an effort to keep peace and to appease the activist group. Taking his place will be John Elstrott, the current lead director. When Elstrott takes over as chairman, his previous position will be discontinued. Mackey will continue to be the company's CEO. One reason for...

There is nothing unusual about Chief Executives Officers of large companies expressing their political opinions in The Wall Street Journal. But recently John Mackey, a founder of Whole Foods Market, made a big splash with his column "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare." Mr. Mackey said he has a problem with socialism, that our country does not need "a government takeover of our health-care system," and that he favors "moving in the opposite direction - toward less government control and more individual empowerment." He proposed eight reforms which could have come from the free marketer's playbook and pointed out that,...

In an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey outlined a seven-point plan for healthcare reform that sought to marginalize the role of government. Conservatives asked themselves: 'Why didn't Republicans think of that?' Mackey's editorial highlights a very disturbing question with the Republicans' "Road to Recovery:" Where are Republicans? It's one thing to take some time off from the political spotlight to get one's priorities in order, but to disappear completely during this perfect opportunity leaves one to question how serious Republicans are about coming back from the political wilderness. Read the...

In response to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Whole Foods’ Chief Executive Officer John Mackey, activists, consumers and labor groups around the country have been organizing in opposition to his efforts to undermine meaningful health care reform. Over the course of the next few weeks, members and staff from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) will be disseminating educational information to Whole Foods shoppers. The purpose of these efforts will be to set the record straight about health care reform and to raise serious concerns about Whole Foods CEO’s position on this critical issue. These events...

This past week, both FOX commentator Glenn Beck and Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey were being targeted by left-leaning organizations for boycotts. Now the boycotts themselves are being boycotted, a response that has cost GEICO Insurance and Sargento Foods a total of 12,500 customers.

An online backlash is building against Whole Foods Market Inc. chief executive John Mackey, thanks to his op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal knocking President Barack Obama's proposed health care bill.

I've written several columns over the last couple months about the attempts by Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress to impose nationalized health-care insurance -- so-called "Obamacare." I've said it's bad for corporate profits, bad for the stock market, bad for the economy -- and even bad for people seeking quality health care. I've never had such a huge volume of reader response to anything I've written here, and never so polarized. To half of you, I'm a messiah. To the other half, I'm a pariah. So I was glad to find support in this perilous position from one of...

As a leftist up until last year, I know what liberals are good at:  emotion and righteous indignation.  And they're experts at channeling that fury into concrete action.  So Moveon.org and other far left groups are e mailing and twittering and Facebooking like crazy to mobilize the troops into doing whatever they dictate. Their tactics can be so cruel and chilling, that those of us with a conscience can be left hanging in the dust.  Meanwhile, a la Saul Alinsky, the Left isolates, demonizes and destroys their "enemies," that is anyone who disagrees with them. When a person or company is...

Around a dozen protesters were in front of the Whole Foods on Route 9 in Framingham this afternoon, handing out fliers calling for CEO John Mackey to be fired. Mackey recently wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that against more government involvement in health care and saying that people do not have an “intrinsic right to health care.” “My heart wouldn’t bleed if he left,” said Dean Ethier, an organizing director with the United Food and Commercial Workers. “You need a compassionate person who’s for reform.” The opinion piece has become a target of supporters of...

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us. While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of...

Last week, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote a gutsy and possibly ill-conceived op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. In The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare, Mackey named “Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.” Sounds great, right? Well, yes and no. By taking on ObamaCare and pushing for less government, Mackey may have risked harming his company’s business by angering its traditionally left-leaning customer base. The blogosphere is having a field day amidst calls for boycotting Whole Foods:

I plan to do a lot more shopping at Whole Foods in the coming weeks. Mostly in response to the moronic boycott of the store now gaining momentum on the left. Let me see if I have the logic correct here: Whole Foods is consistently ranked among the most employee-friendly places to work in the service industry. In fact, Whole Foods treats employees a hell of a lot better than most liberal activist groups do. The company has strict environmental and humane animal treatment standards about how its food is grown and raised. The company buys local. The store near...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 15 — On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog — or the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company. Or so thought John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market, who used a fictional identity on the Yahoo message boards for nearly eight years to assail competition and promote his supermarket chain’s stock, according to documents released last week by the Federal Trade Commission. In one Internet posting sure to enter the annals of chief-executive vanity, Mr. Mackey wrote as Rahodeb, “I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!” ---- Successful executives like Mr....