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Non-Tech : Whole Foods Market (WFM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (395)	8/18/2009 3:04:32 PM
From: Sr K	Respond to of 438

John Mackey’s Wall Street Journal Op-ed Encourages Health-care Conversation - WSJ.com REVIEW & OUTLOOK AUGUST 18, 2009, 1:45 P.M. ET Whole Foolishness The left boycotts a progressive retailer. August is the slowest month for political bloggers, so to chase away the summer doldrums, several on the left have decided to gin up a retail boycott. The object of their wrath: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's op-ed in these pages last week, presenting alternative ideas for health-care reform. Perish the thought. The response to the piece on liberal Web sites has been frothy, with bloggers lining up to reproach Mr. Mackey for his transgression against progressive orthodoxy. A post on the Web site DailyKos called Mr. Mackey a "right-wing zealot," and his opinions "asinine." To punish the op-ed offense, bloggers encouraged shoppers to stay away from Whole Foods and to spread the word through Facebook groups and store-front protests. Those who actually read Mr. Mackey's piece may find the racket puzzling. The CEO suggests ways to reform health care without a new deficit-busting entitlement. He'd equalize tax laws between individual and employer-provided health insurance, make health costs more transparent and let people check off a form on their taxes to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to people who have no insurance. "Like food and shelter," Mr. Mackey wrote, health care is "best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges." These are views held by plenty of voters, but no matter; the hardest cases on the left have had it in for the Whole Foods CEO for a while. Mr. Mackey drew the left's ire for his position against unionization in Whole Foods stores. Instead, the company adopted a raft of its own progressive employee policies, such as letting workers vote on their own benefits packages, including health savings accounts. Too often, business leaders who have useful contributions on a public issue are too fearful or self-interested to say what they really think. Detroit CEOs paid lip service to fuel-mileage standards even as the rules destroyed their business. The pharmaceutical industry after years of defending its business model hopped quickly into line for the Administration's health-care reform. Whole Foods is a publicly traded company, so the effects of a real boycott would mainly damage the pocketbooks of those nice Whole Foods employees and its stockholders. They may have little to worry about. Summer is nearly over and when the weekend farmers markets close, a real protest would require the store's hyperprogressive customers to withdraw forever from the Whole Foods community to get their artisanal foods at the supermarket chain down the block. Meantime, Mr. Mackey's piece has stirred a conversation about health care among people whose first instinct isn't political thuggery. Whole Foods' Web site has its share of angry customers, but they have been joined by many supporting Mr. Mackey's position. His piece has been among the most emailed articles in this paper the past week. Mr. Mackey wrote his op-ed to join a national debate on a subject that will affect his company and employees. He deserves credit for exercising his right to free speech, no matter the risk this currently entails in our politics. online.wsj.com

To: Ron who wrote (395)	8/20/2009 5:39:13 AM
From: Tom Clarke	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 438

Open Letter to Whole Foods Boycotters August 19, 2009, 3:30 pm It is good to see that you have found a tangible way to respond to the editorial written by the Whole Foods CEO. Your ability to pursue such a boycott is one of the great things about a free market. There are literally hundreds of food shopping choices in a large city, with a variety of value propositions from the low-cost but ambiance-challenged Wal-Mart or Target to the farmers market. Its great to see folks exercising their choice in the free market to take their business elsewhere. Besides, if nothing else, it provides the majority of us entertainment value as we enjoy the irony of people exercising their free choice shopping in the highly competitive and diverse grocery marketplace to boycott someone who advocated maintaining choice and a diversity of options in the health care market. Hope all of you have great success boycotting the single payer medical system you long for when you don’t like something it does, and I hope the single one-size-fits-all insurance option you have happens to match your individual preferences. Anyway, I give you an A for political activism but an F for marketing if you believe Whole Foods customer base is all liberal or progressive. It may be so in downtown SF or Seattle. But most of Whole Foods stores are in places like Scottsdale, and Houston, and Dallas. For a large portion of Whole Foods customers, it is not some progressive statement, but it is simply a premium-priced grocery store selling premium quality foods. Though I suppose the Scottsdale country club mom in her new Jag gets some psychic boost from shopping there, kind of like buying a carbon offset. Seriously — I bet that most of Whole Food’s most profitable customers just don’t care about this progressive stuff. They don’t go looking for fair trade coffee, or whatever. They don’t care Whole Foods buys all wind power (in Texas, where the market allows this). They don’t know how the employees are treated and paid. I shop there and I had no clue as to their HR policies until this week when they have been in the news. Whole Foods does this stuff because Mackey and most of his team really believe in it. They are truly passionate about it, not like some company like Kraft who creates an organic cheese SKU because the consultants said there was a market niche for it. Really, are there 5 other corporate CEO’s in the Fortune 500 whose beliefs and the way they manage more closely match what progressives would want to see? Is there even one? But this is the guy y’all are choosing to go after, this one company out of all the Fortune 500, because he disagreed with the progressive orthodoxy on a single piece of legislation? Jeez, this is like conservatives boycotting Fox News because they put a single liberal pundit on from 2-2:30AM. coyoteblog.com