Boycotting Domino’s Pizza was easy. For one thing, with its carbs, fat and empty though delicious calories, pizza is bad for you. Second, the owner of Domino’s is Tom Monagan, an extreme right-wing Catholic who is a major funder of Operation Rescue and the developer of Ave Maria, Florida, a newly built town in which he allegedly attempted to establish theocratic rule.
But boycotting Whole Foods will be more difficult. While it is way over-priced, it tends to have stuff that is hard to find in regular supermarket chains.
However, not only is the owner of Whole Foods, John Mackey, a libertarian union buster, he has just come out against health-care reform in the Murdoch-owned right-wing press:
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 billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.
There are calls now to boycott Whole Foods, and the momentum is growing:
Joshua has been taking the bus to his local Whole Foods in New York City every five days for the past two years. This week, he said he’ll go elsewhere to fulfill his fresh vegetable and organic produce needs.
“I will never shop there again,” vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published….
Michael Lent, another Whole Foods enthusiast in Long Beach, Calif., told ABCNews.com that he, too, will turn to other organic groceries for his weekly shopping list.
“I’m boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care,” said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods “several times a week.”
“While Mackey is worried about health care and stimulus spending, he doesn’t seem too worried about expensive wars and tax breaks for the wealthy and big businesses such as his own that contribute to the deficit,” said Lent.
Mackey’s specific beef is with a single-payer system, which is odd because there is no proposal for a single-payer plan on the table. But in these tough times, liberals need to be careful about where they spend their money. They should be aware that money they spend at Whole Foods eventually lines the pocket of an opponent of progressive causes.
This could be a particularly good time to get a message to Whole Foods management because sales at the chain have been slipping.
This makes it a good time to support locally owned healthy food markets and progressive-owned chains like Trader Joe’s.
“Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.” (John Mackey)
Whenever I hear anyone say “I want choices” or “Individual empowerment” it’s always coming out of the lips of a wealthy, priveleged person. The truth is for most of us dependent on our employer’s health plan (if we’re lucky to even have that!) is that we have NO choices right now. Give me single-payer anytime!
Jon,
Monagan hasn’t owned Domino’s for years. He sold it several years ago. I stopped buying Domino’s while he did still own the company when I heard he was an ultra-conservative Catholic hell bent on carrying out Vatican dogma worldwide such as trying to stamp out birth control in countries where children were already dying of starvation. But it was easy for me because Domino’s was always a second-rate pizza, in my opinion. It was under cooked and very pedestrian at best. Even though Monagan hasn’t owned Dominos for years, I still don’t buy the stuff because I don’t like it.
Hey Garry – Yeah, he sold it 1998. I try to avoid pizza, as noted, but when we do order in, we buy local. – J
Anyone in support of a single payer system has not considered ANY of the various viable alternatives. Those who support alternatives, that do not force everyone to accept government health care, want reforms! We just don’t believe that the government has any right to invade this industry in the way it invaded the agricultural, financial and automobile industries. It’s like we ignore the gov’t and corporate corruption that creates the problems and then look to gov’t to fix what it screwed up! Are we mentally ill? What part of the US Constitution says that this kind of government take-over is okay? Health care is not an inalienable right despite what many have chosen to believe. We all have a right to life, but we don’t have a right to force someone else to keep us alive for free. That would be called stealing. Where does it end? There are more logical and financially sound reforms out there. You just have to research them and look for them rather than accept the propaganda that is spewed all over the whitehouse.gov webpage. Insurance companies and lawyers need reforming first. The doctor/patient relationship does not.
Salia,
Spoken just like a wealthy, pampered ideologue. While all this talk about “choices” and “doctor patient relationships” may sound great, it’s not going to cover the tens of millions of uninsured. Maybe you don’t think health care is a right because you have enough money to pay-as-you-go but most people don’t. Health reform will have nothing to do with the doctor-patient relationship. If anything, it will improve that relationship because the newly-covered will be able to see any doctor they so choose, a choice most don’t have with the current private health insurance system.
Where does US Constitution say that this kind of government take-over is okay?
Answer: Article 1 Section 8 That’s where! Salia, you should actually read it. The congress shall make laws to help the General Welfare of the people. I bet you didn’t have this opinion when Teri Shivo was being kept alive by the Republicans? Single payer would reform the insurance companies…propaganda…you spew Sean Hanity and Rush Limbaugh chapter and verse.
Give us one logically sound reform other than the one you choose to ignore, single payer?
What Garry and DLawand said. What’s scary here is that the right wing has convinced its followers that the role of private health insurance companies is somehow sacrosanct, when, in fact, these companies are blood-sucking leeches that produce nothing.
More often than not, insurance companies stand in the way of care in order to protect their profitability. They certainly ration care, and have for years, by over-ruling doctors when they order tests and prescribe treatments and by refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions — a bizarre practice that we take for granted but that happens in no other country on the planet — and by kicking people off their rolls when they have accidents or receive a bad diagnosis.
The fact that 50 million or so people are uninsured is not an accident. It’s the insurance company’s system for remaining profitable. They have deliberately created this piece of the crisis. They could insure everyone tomorrow if they chose to, but they won’t.
The United States operates under a regulatory capitalist system. When industries perform well and contribute to the health and well-being of the nation, they receive little or no regulation. But when they perform badly and are a detriment to the safety and productivity of the nation, they have to be regulated. In extreme cases, they must be nationalized, at least temporarily.
The health insurance industry raked in $240 billion in 2008, essentially for doing nothing, for which they took 40 cents of every dollar spent on insurance premiums in profits and to pay the salary of their bureaucrats. The industry could have reformed it by now. It could have solved this crisis, but they have chosen not to. It’s cheaper for them to pay Republicans to make up shit and send it out as propaganda that their Dittohead-Teabagger-Birther-Deather base will buy into, hook, line and sinker, than it is to clean up their collective act.
how is it that people were so united and furious in their hatred of “big oil”, and yet big pharma and big insurance remain anonymous and safely peeking out from behind the curtains ?
is the right to cheap oil more precious than the right to health for americans?
Sorry right-wing-rabble-rousers, you are STILL the minority, vocal as you are, and the tide is turning; gov’t sponsored healthcare improvements ARE coming down the pike. But, fear not! They will not be anywhere near dreadful as you imagine (or pretend to imagine), as the ultra-wealthy, ultra powerful insurance industry won’t allow any major changes. Bottom line, there will be some small imrpovements that will barely cut into insurance companies bottom lines, and in fact will actually help improve insurance companies through competition, which is the bedrock foundation of capitalism. In another year or two people will wonder what all the fuss was about.
[...] but also to a very conscientious clientele, don’t write to a very conservative publication to take a position against a progressive ideal, because then your customers might freak out and find some place else to get their organic [...]
I’m shopping at WF and will continue to do so. Ths thing about this country is that we have the awesome freedom of voicing our opinion. He has a right to feel this way…
I’m not going to try to censor people for not agreeing with me.
But Sheryl, we serfs should not line the pockets of our oppressors. That’s what this is really about.
I can’t believe anyone out there thinks the government can actually improve anything. So far, everything the government becomes involved in goes to hell. The public education system is a very good example of that. If we are going to start reforming healthcare then start with medicare. Medicare dictates what is and is not covered, paid, etc… then the other insurance companies follow. Our President could do a lot for the uninsured just starting there. We cannot afford what has been proposed and therefore doesn’t make sense to implement. The fact that its being shoved down everyone’s throat before they even have time to read it tells me there is something wrong with it. The government also has a history of implementing programs that they do not monitor, like welfare, which has become a way of life for so many, instead of just a helping hand like it was supposed to be. Welfare reform has helped some there but it sure took a while just for that. I believe the more you ask the government to do for you, the more freedoms you give up. The real problem is people not wanting to have to do for themselves. Too many people think they are owed something. People want the government to save them from their own bad choices. We have the power to help ourselves if we would just exercise it. We don’t need a government telling us what to do in every facet of our lives.
It’s sad that so many right-wingers like you hate this country and its government so much, Betsy. Here’s a news flash: Your side ran the government for 30 years, and your side and its trickle-down, gusher-up policies have put this great country in the fix it is in.
You need to get other facts straight, too. Medicare doesn’t dictate what “other” health insurance plans do. Only Medicare Part B has a private component, and those companies are free to do what they want to with the 99 percent of their business, which is covering people under 65.
The proposed bills are online and have been up since July. That’s plenty of time for anyone — even people educated in public schools — to read them.
There is also no truth — no proof in real world experience — that the more govt does for you, the more freedom you lose. That’s just right-wing radio propaganda that you have apparently swallowed without chewing.