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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Corporate Donors Behind a Republican Power Grab
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/09/opinion/wisconsin-republicans-walgreens-campaign-finance.htmlWalgreens and other major companies are key supporters of the Wisconsin legislators now trying to undermine democracy.
David Leonhardt
Walgreens portrays itself as the friendly neighborhood drugstore. It gives flu shots to children, helps communities after storms, donates to charity and makes feel-good advertisements trumpeting its various good deeds.
But Walgreens also has a tougher side, one you wont see in those ads. To protect a tax break, the company has allied itself with Wisconsins brutally partisan Republican Party. That party is now in the midst of a power grab, stripping authority from Wisconsins governor and attorney general solely because Republicans lost those offices last month. The power grab comes after years of extreme gerrymandering, which lets Republicans dominate the legislature despite Wisconsin being a closely divided state.
Wisconsins Republicans really are trying to undo democracy. When I asked Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt the political scientists who wrote the recent book How Democracies Die about the situation, they agreed that the Wisconsin power grab was the sort of move their book describes. If it continues, it can lead to the breakdown of a political system.
So you might think that an organization that claims to care about community values would speak up. But Walgreens has not. Neither have other corporate supporters of Wisconsin Republicans, like Microsoft, Dr Pepper Snapple, J.P. Morgan Chase or Humana. Its yet another example alongside soaring C.E.O. pay and stagnant worker wages of corporations abdicating the leadership role they once played in America.
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guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Profit is the only consideration.
All else is public relations.
Gregory Peccary
(490 posts)exists only to protect profits and/or be an advertising arm.
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,505 posts)moondust
(20,006 posts)Revolt as necessary. See: France.
CaptYossarian
(6,448 posts)If we boycotted every company that was immoral and unethical, we'd be walking everywhere, our houses wouldn't have any power, and the only food we'd eat would be Ben & Jerry's. There would be no medicine either.
I live in Wisconsin. Since the appointment of the orange goon (he came in second), I've boycotted almost everything from those red, "David Duke" states (including Wisconsin) and buycotted neighboring states Minnesota and Illinois (where Walgreens is headquartered) for voting blue.
Why should we punish the working class of blue states who did the right thing by voting for Hillary? The bastards at the top who get their millions anyway won't suffer in the least. Even the owner of my beloved Chicago Cubs is a Walker donor, but I root for the team and my birth city, not Ricketts himself.
I also root against the Packers--not because of my Chicago background--but because of that contract they gave Favre many years ago of $10 million per year, when the annual budget at my wife's school district (1,000 students) was only $9 million.
I hear righties b*tching about teachers only working half a year, but Favre, using the same logic only worked 8 hours a year. You see, there are 16 1-hour games in a regular season. The offense is on the field for half a game. Half of 16 hours is 8. Do these Joe-6 packs doing all the b*tching about teachers make $10,000,000 in an 8-hour shift?
in an 8-hour shift? They probably don't know how many zeroes are in that number.
moondust
(20,006 posts)Boycotts and activism may only stand a slim chance of having a desired effect on a business, but doing nothing is even less likely to change anything.
See post #5.
LakeArenal
(28,847 posts)If they didnt cheat they would have been gone two elections ago.
erronis
(15,355 posts)They'll change their tune if there's enough bad publicity.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,447 posts)NYT has this wrong: "Its yet another example alongside soaring C.E.O. pay and stagnant worker wages of corporations abdicating the leadership role they once played in America." That's pure bullshit.
This promotes the rather strange idea that, once upon a time, America's leaders were corporations. This is particularly bizarre in an article about a corporate-sponsored GOP trying to destroy democracy.
These corporations are taking a leadership role in attacking democracy. A democracy represents the threat of taxation and regulation to these corporations.