Liberal Businessman Bears False Witness

President Barack Obama was recently in pulpit mode while slamming grassroots conservatives for showing up at staged pro-government health planning town hall meetings. He accused these "operatives of the right wing conspiracy and the Republican Party" of "bearing false witness." But conservatives are not the only blasphemers. One major liberal business figure is now on the receiving end of leftwing anger.

John Mackey, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods Markets is now is the cross-hairs of the frothing-at-the-mouth left. He is a leader in the organic food movement. He is a self-proclaimed vegan, although he does occasionally eat eggs, so in the hierarchy of non-meat eaters, that makes him an ovo-vegetarian (don't ask me how I know these things). But he only eats eggs from the free range chickens he raises at his Texas ranch. He practices yoga. Last year he gave slightly over a million dollars to animal welfare programs. He has supported liberal and Democratic causes, but calls himself a Libertarian.

As for his business, Whole Foods carries only organic foods. The few animal products carried are gleaned from producers who have signed a humane-treatment pledge. And animal welfare is not his only concern. He takes very good care of his employees, who are among the highest-paid workers in the retail food arena. He offers a very low-cost, high-benefit medical plan for every employee. Without any need for the government to step in, Mackey built in salary and bonus caps on his executives. In 2005, Whole Foods was one of only two Fortune 500 companies to be listed in the top 25 best companies to work for.

He made a decision a few years back that he loved his work more than he loved the wealth he was creating, so he simply reduced his salary to $1.00 per year, and accepts minimal bonuses (last year it was about $34,000, all of which he gave to charity). The sums equal to what he would have made under his old bonus plan are now distributed to the employees at all levels, as well as to multiple charitable causes.

I don't have a dog in this hunt. I have been forced on a few occasions by friends and family members (who never asked a second time) to accompany them to our local Whole Foods store. I usually embarass them by asking loudly where I can find the products with a minimum of 15% preservatives by volume. Or "Where is the MSG aisle?" Or "What's all this brown bread crap? Where's the good white bleached flour Wonder Bread?" Or "Have they washed the caterpillar droppings off these sickly sprouts?" Or "Can you explain to me what unnatural foods are?"

So obviously, a man with Mackey's credentials needs to be vilified by the left. "Traitor!" "Deviant!" "Fascist!" And why is he suddenly so loathsome to the left? He made the fatal error of publicly opposing Obama's public health care proposals (aka nationalized and socialized medicine). In fact, his very public disagreement with the single-payer advocates and single-payer obfuscators includes his own plan which sounds a great deal like our own CommentaramaCare. He made the fatal mistake of promoting and discussing his plan in the Wall Street Journal on August 11 of this year.

He isn't opposing some government regulation. He isn't screaming communist at anyone who proposes Congressional action on getting medical insurance for those who have earned it but for some reason can't afford it under the current chaotic system. He just doesn't want a government takeover, single-payer, British-style National Health Service. He knows the market invariably works better than anything the government can do. And that, according to the followers of High Priest Obama, is heresy.

A growing group of leftist organizations, including ACORN and the SEIU are promoting boycotts against Whole Foods. A company which provides better health benefits for its employees than any government program anywhere in the world has ever provided is now to be punished because its CEO disagrees with the Obamassiah. The HuffPo and DailyKos are in high dudgeon. Although Obama himself has not spoken about Mackey specifically, several of his storm troopers have. They've called Mackey pretty much everything but a Republican, but it's still early in the game. Can "enemy of the people" and "destroyer of children" be far behind?

OK, now let's analyze this. Mackey makes $1.00 per year. He donates all his other income to charity. He is fabulously wealthy. How is Mackey going to be hurt personally by a boycott? The answer, obviously, is he won't, unless you consider harming his company something personal. But a great many other people will be hurt. Whole Foods has thousands of employees nationwide, particularly after the company purchased the Wild Oats Natural Food stores. Mackey won't be out of a job or impoverished if the boycott is successful. But many of those workers will. If stores start closing, the locals may have to buy the vile meat and unnatural vegetable products that people like me buy at Safeway.

Mackey's bonuses are based on profits. If those profits go down, so does Mackey's charitable work. Sorry, Fido and Puff, but we'll have to gas you instead of fixing you up and getting you a good home. And as the largest natural foods chain in the nation, it is also the nation's largest purchaser of natural products from the wholesalers. Who do those producers sell their products to when Whole Foods cuts its purchases by 15% to 25%? More bankruptcies and more payroll cuts will result.

But what are a few hundred or a few thousand ruined livelihoods and businesses when doctrinaire Obamacare is at stake? Who cares about unemployed workers when "principle" is being questioned? And how dare anyone, anyone, question Obama's New Testament? It is far more important to promote half-assed European style government-run health care than it is to support a company which provides some of the best medical care in the world to its employees and provides good, healthy and politically-correct food products.

I will be shopping at Whole Foods for the foreseeable future, also as a matter of principle (certainly not because I want to shop with those natural food creeps). I can always buy a few rabbits and feed the Whole Food products to them while I continue to consume my Wonder Bread sandwiches, pig-pen bacon, chicken-coop chicken, and Oreos.

And while doing the research for this article, I found another reason to love Mackey (and at the same time to wonder what took the SEIU so long to join in a boycott of Whole Foods). Mackey has described unions in terms I only wish I had thought of. "The union is like having herpes. It doesn't kill you, but it's unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover." Mackey prefers "company unions," which are illegal in America, but work very well in Japan, Germany and many other countries.

America requires that all unions be formed outside of the company, thus producing massive unions with little knowledge of any individual company, huge needs to support leftwing political causes and candidates, and strong associations with criminal enterprises and international socialists. For example: the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). Company unions bring labor and management together to work out common goals for the actual employees and actual management of the actual company. Everybody wins, and not a dime of union money leaves the possession of the union employees. So of course, the left hates the very concept of company unions. It's hard for doctrinaire leftists to convince well-paid, generally satisfied employees that they have "nothing to lose but their chains." It's hard to convince employees with excellent medical benefits that they should give their money involuntarily to a distant union to support political causes and candidates they despise and pay for public endorsement of candidates who support partial-birth abortion along with cost-benefit bureaucratic control of their personal health.

God love John Mackey, and to hell with High Priest Obama.