Help Stop Bush: Boycott GOP Companies By Bob Schober and Jackson Thoreau Since the 2004 election, many of us have been

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Help Stop Bush: Boycott GOP Companies

By Bob Schober and Jackson Thoreau

Since the 2004 election, many of us have been grasping for something to do. "What's next?" seems to be the question of the day for us liberals, now faced with a presumptive right-wing majority salivating to remake America.

So, while Bob was recently painting, Rosa Parks and the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott came to mind, and it all fell in place - we liberals CAN fight back in terms well understood by the right wing. We can boycott those companies that contributed heavily to the Republican cause. Their money helped the GOP to denigrate liberals; we can use our dollars to hit back where it really hurts - on the bottom line. The time has come to show them that their politics has an economic consequence.

We'd only be following the philosophical footsteps of Ayn Rand, whose protagonist John Galt in Atlas Shrugged convinced the productive, but vilified, members of society to drop out and let the system crash. The right wing glorifies her philosophy, and how delicious that wed be turning it back on them by withholding our dollars. And don't forget the tradition set by this country's forefathers and foremothers, who boycotted another King George and his British Empire business supporters.

We're salivating over the prospect of millions of frustrated liberals, progressives and others who oppose the Bush administration, tired of being slimed by the right-wing media and politicians, individually sending letters to the corporate offices of companies who lend major support to those causes. Imagine the Republican CEOs getting thousands of letters saying, "You have lost me as a customer until you show a balanced contribution to all political parties."

The GOP message during the campaign was that liberals are unpatriotic and anti-American - well, we'll give these companies their wish and, Galt-style, check out. These companies won't have to suffer our tainted dollars anymore. You can get donor information on such Web sites as Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org) and Political MoneyLine (http://www.fecinfo.com), which compile the information from Federal Election Commission databases.

And here is some of what you'll find:

* Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and PriceWaterhouseCoopers were the top three corporate contributors to Bush this cycle.

* Wal-Mart donated 82 percent of its $1.8 million contributions to Republicans this cycle.

* Verizon Communications donated 61 percent of its $1.23 million to the Republicans.

So, guess what? We don't plan to use the financial services of Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch or PriceWaterhouseCoopers. No more Wal-Mart for us, and we're dropping Verizon for Working Assets.

But there are some companies who donated more heavily to Democrats, and for the time being, they will continue to have our support. They include Microsoft (67 percent), whose software we are using to write this column; JP Morgan Chase (55 percent), through which we have credit cards; and Walt Disney (71 percent).

But those credit card and debt financing offers from MBNA (75 percent to the GOP) will now be thrown automatically away. And were send our packages through the U.S. Post Office, where 79 percent of the National Association of Letter Carriers donations went to Democrats, rather than support either FedEx or United Parcel Service, which spent heavily (68 percent and 75 percent, respectively) on Republicans.

Analysis of the data, however, show that corporations almost always hedge their bets by contributing at least something to both sides; no doubt the percentages will change once the Democrats regain political power. The real problem, as we see it, is corporate influence, and if we want democracy long term, we have to cleanse our politics of all such influence, regardless if they support our political causes.

But that's the long-term goal; we see this initial boycott as a way of channeling the political heat to shifting some people away from corporate patronage to local, sustainable businesses.

The following are corporations that mostly support the Republican Party over the Democratic Party in financial contributions, with addresses and other info of some. If you join this boycott campaign, be sure to mail and/or fax them letters saying what you are doing and why. We also included some companies that support mostly Democrats and progressives to purchase their services and products.

Food/Restaurants

Conagra Foods: includes brands like Armour, Banquet, Blue Bonnet, Butterball, Chef Boyardee, Chun King, Decker Eckrich, Fleishmann's, Healthy Choice, Hunt's, Jiffy Pop, Kid Cuisine, Knott's Berry Farm, La Choy, Libby's, Luck's, Manwich, Orville Redenbacher's, Patio, Peter Pan, Ranch Style, Reddi-wip, Slim Jim, Swiss Miss, Van Camp's, Wesson, Wolf.

Flowers Industries:  includes brands like Flowers, Nature's Own, Sunbeam, ButterKrust, Mrs. Freshley's.

Smithfield Foods: includes brands like Smithfield, Farmfield, Cumberland Gap, Krakus, Stefano.

Safeway

Outback Steakhouse: includes Outback, Lee Roy Selmon's, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar.

Brinker International: includes Chili's, Macaroni Grill, On the Border. Tyson Foods

McDonald's Corp.

Health care

Baxter Healthcare Corp.

Phone services

Verizon Communications

1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

Phone: 212-395-2121
Fax: 212-869-3265
Toll Free: 800-621-9900

Ivan G. Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO

MCI/ WorldCom

Energy/Transportation

ExxonMobil - Exxon, Mobil, Esso.

ConocoPhillips Spirit  brands include Conoco, Phillips 66, Kendall.

ChevronTexaco - Chevron, Texaco, Caltex.

BP-Amoco

TXU Corp.

Ford Motor Company - Ford, Volvo, Lincoln, Jaguar, Mazda, Mercury, LandRover, Hertz.
Chrysler Corp.

Toyota Motor

Delta Airlines

Continental Airlines

Goodyear Tire

Halliburton

Banking/Financial services

MBNA Corp.

1100 N. King St.

Wilmington, Del. 19884

Phone: 302-453-9930

Fax: 302-432-3614

Randolph Lerner, Chairman

Bruce Hammonds, President and CEO

Morgan Stanley

Merrill Lynch

PriceWaterhouseCoopers

UBS Americas

Credit Suisse First Boston

Lehman Brothers

American Financial Group

Cigna Corp.

High-tech

Gateway

Texas Instruments

Dell Computer

Hewlett-Packard

EDS Corp.

General Retail

Wal-Mart Stores

702 SW 8th St.
Bentonville, AR 72716

Phone: 479-273-4000
Fax: 479-273-4053

S. Robson Walton, Chairman

H. Lee Scott Jr., President and CEO

http://boycottwalmart.meetup.com

Kmart Corp.

Sears, Roebuck

J.C. Penney Corp.

3M Company - brands include Post-It, Scotch.Pepsi

Coors Brewing

Hallmark Cards

Delivery services

FedEx Corp.

942 S. Shady Grove Rd.

Memphis, Tn. 38120

Phone: 901-818-7500

Fax: 901-395-2000

Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, CEO and President

United Parcel Service

55 Glenlake Pkwy., NE

Atlanta, GA 30328

Phone: 404-828-6000

Fax: 404-828-6562

Michael Eskew, Chairman and CEOEntertainment

Univision Communications

Household products/construction

Home Depot

International Paper - paper products include Hammermil, Great White.

Caterpillar

Cintas

Companies that mostly contribute to Democrats or progressives over Republicans to support:

Food/Restaurants

Albertsons

Ben & Jerrys

Whole Foods Market

Austin Grills

General Retail

Costco Cos.

Family Dollar Stores

Barnes & Noble

Phone services

Working Assets

High-tech

Microsoft

IBM Corp.

Banking/Financial services

Kramer Spellman

JP Morgan Chase

Health care

Solomont Bailis Ventures

Entertainment

Time Warner

Walt Disney

Law firms

Skadden, Arps

Delivery services

U.S. Postal Service

Bob Schober is a free-lance journalist in the Pittsburgh area who has worked for The Dallas Morning News, among other newspapers. Jackson Thoreau worked with Bob at the News and now is a writer/journalist in the Washington, D.C., area. If you have a company to add to this list or a question, they can be reached at boycottgopcos@yahoo.com. An updated list will be at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/boycott.html.

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Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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