My fellow Democrats, a website to live by

Remove all ads!

I don't have enough time in my day to worry about such nonsense. I'm supporting a red or blue corporation is meaningless to me.

 

Basically -- yes. Why not? After all, a good bribe here, another one there, and you get instant good reviews. It's not rocket science, and the people running that website are not accountable to anyone. After all, upon which do they base the ranking on? How the management voted? (They'll always vote lower taxes.) How the workers voted? (Really nice -- you're not with us? We won't support you, even if we say we work for the common man.) How much and where they donated money? (Say, we donated money to help people in Iraq. Does it count towards supporting red or blue?)
Such a ranking can be easily skewed.

And, one of the pillars of a free society and of free elections is that they are secret (equal and common nonwithstanding). If they are secret, there should be no reason to punish anyone for their choices. Everyone is given the same. This is why I can say that I do not see their actions as being democratic. They are basically doing what communists did: you can vote, but we will denounce you if you support our political opponents. Is this how democracy is to be exercised in USA?

 

Remember W Ketchup?

(The funny thing is that Heinz gave far more money to Republicans than Democrats.)

@toughluck: Voting is secret, and will remain so. However, political contributions by public companies need to be disclosed by law, so they are not secret. Nuff said.

@HS: if Chandos decides to buy Apple instead of Dell, how is he harming workers? He's still buying a computer after all; just from a different company.

Somehow, the boycott of Disney by Dobson, Moral Majority, and the Southern Baptists come to mind. What about all those poor suffering Disney workers? What if, gasp, Dobson calls for a boycott of SpongeBob!

Look, it's not like this website is going to have much of an effect on anything. Most likely someone's working on a conservative version at this very moment.

If a voter can't use political opinions when choosing products, if shopping is "politically neutral," how come corporations are allowed to give so much money to political parties? Should corporations have more rights than citizens (don't answer that...)

 

If you'd bothered to go to the site, they explain how they calculate the ratings...

 

HS - It is my understanding that the family no longer runs the company, but I could be wrong here. I had read about most of this in the WSJ a few years back. BTW, didn't the Coors guy loose?

But I did find out that there is a new boycott; this time started by gays. It seems that Mary Cheney, yes the gay daughter of Dick, was hired by the company and telling everyone who was boycotting Coors that the family no longer runs the company. The AFL-CIO officailly called a successful end to the boycott several years ago, when they received concessions from the company.

In fact, the company is now run by a business group (which is what I had read in the WSJ), but the family still officially owns the company through a trust fund of some sort. The new boycott claims that the Coors family is still anti-gay beause the guy you were writing about, Pete, supports the anti-gay marriage amendment to the Constitution, a charge Pete strongly denies.

 

Me too. That's why I'm not so fond of it.

I'm not saying people don't or shouldn't have the right. I just think that in situations such as this it's beeing exercised...poorly.

Now, if you want to boycott a company because it supports Kim Jong Il or some such thing, I'm right there with you. But America's polarized enough without this sort of thing.

 

AMaster, you are saying that it's okay to boycott one politican, but not another. Democracy at it's finest.

 

Caleb* - Well, Kim Jong-Il is a politician in the same way that Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein were politicians. Not exactly a matter of a popular vote.


This site is, as AMaster mentioned, serving essentially only to polarize even more a divided country. It's foolish, also, to assume that this website will decrease sales to conservative companies. Think of how high the sales would go if Republicans got ahold of the list and turned it around to suit their purposes?

 

Well, Hack, I got to say I like your advice to us liberals: do nothing, cause we might hurt the "little guy"; these must be munchkins, or maybe hobbits. A lot of union members, which I am, think being referred to as a "little guy" is a term of contempt, and I frankly don't like it, but no doubt you have your own agenda and I'll move on.

Boycotts are effective because the "little guy" doesn't make corporate decisions. These are made by people we'll call "big guys". These "big guys" look at things called "profit and loss statements", and if profits are down, they tend to wonder why, and whether something called a "boycott" may be a factor, and whether they should do something about it. To expect them to quit being jerks is probably too much, but they might at least be brought to a sort of equilibrium.

As for the "little guy", when the butchers at ONE Wal-Mart store voted to unionize, Wal-Mart dealt with it by closing ALL of their meat departments. I'm sure you share my concern.

 

Slith, I say that you should polarize the country. USA is too big for one government to handle. split it up in two, three, or maybe ten parts of independent nations, and have an economic union like the EU(which I hate, but it's better than the style of governing USA suffers). If one state don't want to be a part of that union, don't force them.

 

Caleb, the American civil war was just that... and look what happened. The south wanted their own way of doing things...

You could say the same is being discussed in Ukraine. The east and south want to have closer ties to Russia, and heavilly disagree with the west and central regions. At what point is alright for a country to split apart?

 

At points that changes a Human's life enourmosly. If the eastern and southern parts don't want to be a member of the EU, let them vote on it and if they vote for a split, then let 'em split for crying out loud.

 

The USA isn't run by one government. It has a federal government, fifty state governments, and more county and city governments than I can count.

No, it isn't too big to be governed.

 

Caleb -- I am fairly certain that at least some of many country parts would love to secede. You would then have Southern and parts of Western Poland (the richest portions which the capital city is simply draining) wanting to secede from the rest (North, East and Northwest) who drain a large portion of country's budget. Also, I could easily envision the following happen (aside from Ukraine):
-- Moravia breaks away from the Czech Republic;
-- North Italy breaks away from South Italy;
-- Bayern breaks away from Germany;
-- West Germany breaks away from East Germany;
-- Scotland and Wales breaks away from the UK;
-- Catalonia and Basque breaks away from Spain;
-- Russia falls apart.
And all that happens in Europe, or close to Europe. I'm sure everyone would appreciate the need of forging relations with newly founded countries, finding out who is responsible for international debt, who is a member of which international organisations (I can envision that at least Southern Poland could vote against EU, but in favour of NATO), what about companies that suddenly became multinational and subject to multiple tax laws, and having to run subsidiaries instead of a central executive body, or what permits does it hold, and which ones doesn't it. Or, what about countries that would suddenly have no connection with earth gas from source country, and learn that they just got another middleman.

I'm sure everyone would appreciate that new order of things. I am all for the idea of a federated EU, because that could mean that there would be less Social Democrats (Democracy=chair, Social Democracy=electric chair), and Conservative/right wing would win more seats. Under one condition, however. That EU is split into states just like in USA -- less territory than that of original countries. And the same amount of freedom of legislation. I would love to live in a state that I would wind up in (Minor Poland), as there seems to be more level-headed people here than elsewhere in Poland (excluding chev ). I would really love to.

[ January 31, 2005, 09:29: Message edited by: toughluck ]

 

toughluck...I sense that you are a fellow Conservative, so I send you a big group hug...but WTF does any of this have to do with the DNC endorsing a boycott of 'republican' corporations?

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think even Ragusa would have trouble deciphering your last post.

Hang on...I'm going to have some more scotch then read it again.

 

I've replied to Caleb about what I think is wrong, ie. thinking that it should be legally allowed for countries to secede, and stated multiple reasons for why it should not be allowed under any circumstance.

 

Amazon is red-ish.
How will Tal feel about that? He has a pact or somesuch with them, facilitating SPers to that company, thereby funding Bush indirectly. Sort of.

Dont let necessity compromise you, Tal. Stand tall, stand strong.