Many Wisconsin businesses are feeling pressure to respond to current and threatened boycotts. Thanks to campaign donor records available to the public, unions and their supporters have distributed boycott lists of the largest contributors to Scott Walker.
Many businesses, including M&I Bank and Metcalfe’s Sentry (a Madison grocery store), have issued statements that claim they did not contribute to any campaigns, but many of their individual employees did, and that their employees contributed to both Republicans and Democrats.
The statements include a few allusions to the first amendment, freedom of speech, healthy debate, and lists of various local charities they have supported.
That is not enough.
Here is a portion of a letter written by Tim Metcalfe, one of the owners of the Sentry store:
Metcalfe's is apolitical and has not made any contributions to any
political candidates or parties. The leadership of our company has made
personal contributions to candidates in both political parties.
Personally I contributed to Walker in 2009 in the primary against
Neumann, $500, but did not contribute to any gubernatorial candidate in
the general election in 2010.
In the 2010 general election I contributed $450 to State Democratic
Representative Brett Hulsey, $250 to State Democratic Senator Jon
Erpenbach, and $500 State Assembly Democrats only. My Brother Kevin did
contribute to Walker along with Hulsey in the general.
In addition I have contributed to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk,
City of Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, State Senate Democrats and was a
major contributor to Governor Doyle, and countless other Democrats and
Republicans over the years.
As a progressive grocer, we work very hard to connect with our customers
and support our local community.
And here is a portion of the statement issued by M&I:
M&I has not taken, and will not take, a position either for or against the budget repair bill. As M&I has publicly stated before:
* M&I has not contributed to any candidate and did not contribute to Governor Walker or Mayor Barrett in the last gubernatorial election.
* M&I has over 6,000 employees in Wisconsin, and, in the great tradition of political freedom in this country, those employees have the right to contribute to the candidate of their choice.
* M&I employees contributed to both Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates in the last election.
What is particularly obnoxious about the M&I statement is that they issued big bonuses to their executives before paying off their TARP bailout. Those executives then donated tens of thousands of dollars to Scott Walker. For M&I to claim that they haven’t contributed to Walker is true only in the most technical sense. A case can certainly be made that their funneling of contributions through their executive staff is a blatant money-laundering operation, especially since the bank was still under TARP rules when the bonuses were paid and the funds donated to Scott Walker’s campaign.
For Tim Metcalfe and his brother,the owners of the Sentry store, to say that their "business" is apolitical is nonsense. They are the business. I won't go too deep into the local politics, but their contributing to Brett Hulsey, the new Democratic assembly representative from their district, is simply acknowledging the reality that their business is in a neighborhood that hasn't elected a Republican in like...forever.
Waving the flag and claiming that your business’s employees paid protection money to both sets of gangsters is not an excuse, and it’s not enough to call off the boycotts.
Any business owner or top executive that does not demand a refund of their
contribution from Scott Walker’s campaign is simply a coward. Any business that does not make a firm and forceful display of their opposition to Walker’s budget and his union-busting law remains on the s**t list. No compromise, no negotiations. You’re either with Walker or against him. You can’t be both.
Here’s what our family has done so far:
* We canceled our reservation for the all-electric Nissan Leaf. That hurt, but the cars will be manufactured in a non-union plant in a right-to-work-for-less state. I let them know why I canceled, in blunt but polite language.
* We renewed our lapsed membership in the Willy Street Co-op, which recently opened a store in Middleton, Wisconsin and is only a few blocks out of the way on my commute. I told them why we were re-upping, which delighted the person at the service desk.
* I’ve stopped buying lunch from Metcalfe’s Sentry, which is within walking distance of my job.
* We’ve stopped using our NEA Mastercard, which is serviced by Bank of America, and our Sears Mastercard, which is serviced by Citi. We plan to cancel them entirely, but haven’t had the chance to call and punch through the various menus to get to a live person.
* We also have stopped spending except for the necessities. Part of this is uncertainty over how much my wife’s paycheck from the Madison school district will shrink, but we also want to send the message that labor dollars are a major driver of our local economy.
There is more we can do, and we will.
What are you doing? Tell me in the comments.