In 2023, conservative activists have advanced the theory that major corporations are pushing a radical, pro-LGBTQ agenda onto the country. For example, Anheuser-Busch sent trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney a few beers, including one with her face on it, and paid her to post a 60-second video promoting a contest. Anheuser-Busch spends about
How do all these people sleep at night? Well, I am sure. But you know what my gay kid wants? Friends. To not be bullied. To not be othered. He is autistic as well, and as of Friday, we have survived middle school. And I mean that literally.
The energy of hypocrisy matters and thank you for bringing to light where the money goes.
I do political work for my professional organization and I have gotten into it with them over donations to pro Dobbs/anti choice legislators. Their argument is that they need everyone to listen to us. My argument is we are a profession that is 80% plus made up of women, which one of us do you choose as tribute? I got spoken to by a board member 🙄 who tried very hard to put me in my place.
There are issues like human rights and legislating a right to exist that everyone has to speak up on.
Warms my heart to learn of your work and that you persevere and stand your ground. [And, know that you have a team here standing behind you when anyone tries to put you in your place...I guess that would be shrinking away from your true self and deferring to them!]
Again...Money is the key. Corporate sales drives the political policy. When you can engage the public with a trusted source of information to provide them with a road map as to where they need to spend and not spend dollars, given realistic information, program policies will change as the corporations need to protect their bottom lines. Money is the motivator. People need guidance from a Walter Cronkite source. A committee of extremely trustworthy ethical persons whom the public as members of the association can interact with daily as part of a community. You are halfway there. With others you can be there. I will help.
Example: I won't purchase from Home Depot despite the fact that I have a very large credit line and 24 months of 0 percent interest options. Why? They are, from my research...not a very socially responsible company. I am lucky, I have time (3 hours a day) to keep up with world events. Most people don't. They used to rely on Walter (1 hour/day) to provide them with all they needed to know. Walter is gone. Replaced by a group of entertainers juiced to excite the crowd. The slim majority of the responsible public needs Walter. It should be a daily commitment that produces viable results. When the bottom line begins to tank for one or several corporations others will take note and change or fail. Failure is an option as money is their lifeline and knowledge...power.
Playing both sides of the field is how these 1% corporations work. Always AT&T is either the top or near the top of your fist full of dollars lists. Generally it is the same list of corporate characters lying about supporting the subject in ads, while typing out checks to those elected who would take away rights and yes, even criminalize members of the LBGQT community.
Our country is hate ridden and 43 state legislatures are controlled by the GOP. You will see more of these anti LBGQT laws and codes forth coming. Boycott as many on this list as you can. But I am not sure it will make much difference.
Judd and team thank you for throwing the light on this. Happy Pride month.
Exactly. They are all playing both ends against the middle. Yeah, AT&T's $1,500 bucks doesn't really mean much dollar-wise but it exemplifies the lack of true committment to a cause. Intercourse a bunch of advertising slogans.
Be for real. Choose a side and play for keeps. Humans or monsters. It isn't that hard to determine who the humans are.
Why are we assuming that the corporate boards are made up of people who are truly LBGQT, and infavor of women's rights to choose, or even WOMEN? Some may be in favor of freedom to live as you choose, but I suspect some are virulently anti gay and trans.
One place I tend to agree with the conservative point of view: why should children under 13 be taught about gender issues and sexual identity in public schools? Questioning these issues is healthy, but teaching someone's curriculum could be worth a review.
Here's the thing: kids start to understand their own gender and sexuality pretty early on (for some) and later (for others). Nobody's recommending teaching gender or sexuality to first graders. But it is appropriate to acknowledge that families come in all shapes and sizes. GenZ is 25% LGBTQ+ and to forbid any discussion at school, whenever they're ready to discuss it, is to deny their humanity. There are ways to teach middle school kids that biological sex is complicated and more than genitalia, gender is a social construct/ and how someone thinks of themselves, and sexuality is a spectrum of attraction (including none at all) without going into any more detail than I just did. And that can make the difference between surviving Middle School, and not.
Donations expose the truth about the donator. What makes me angry is that many of us don’t have a choice outside of Comcast etc for internet/tv. I despise Comcast & do not want to support it. I never want to see Fox station in my viewing options, yet have no way to eliminate it.
Monopolies are always bad but extra dangerous in the hands of fascists.
Hence the legalized bribes, SeekingReason. They keep paying legislators to ensure that a favorable business climate for them, one that continues to lock out competitors who will customize a package for you without Faux, is what you will have for the foreseeable future. They're also counting on no one taking the time that Judd, Tesnim and Rebecca took to diligently dig into how their bribes split from their insipid PR proclamations.
Look around us. Most industries have about 4 - 5 companies at best, sometimes 2 or 3 of those roll up under the same corporate awning and in services like cable or internet people often have only one viable choice. The bland statements claiming to stand for something will continue; as will the payoffs to the people helping them stifle competition, imprison customers, drive profits and boost their valuations.
C Jacobs, So true. The term legalized bribes is perfect. Criminal & unethical acts should have been punished years ago. That we failed to see TFG handcuffed & taken to prison and then allowed by technical law to put his name on the ballot showed us that all the talk of “checks & balances” was based on ethical behavior, a sense of decency, & love of country. None of these qualities are exhibited in any republican nor a portion of the Dems.
70% of US voters are under decades long minority rule…but we kept letting it slide until we got to this.
Legalized bribery has been around way too long. But never under U.S. fascism as it is today. The elements of fascism were always here, now they are armed like the military & face zero consequences.
I have directv and I have a default favorite channel lineup I created where I eliminated all religious, news, and informercial channels—can you set that up in your system?
One way to do it is to cut the cable and do YouTube TV or streaming services, and use the company only for your internet access. That way you're not supporting Fox news with your cable fees, at least.
Didn't know that. Local appliance store uses them as a creditor to purchase over time. We've done that multiple times. Seemed logical, it's interest free. We'll buy outright next time.
We have no option other than Comcast for cable. My husband's insurance is United Health Care. We're small (pop 7900) and rural. At least AT&T doesn't work around here. Only Verizon. If Verizon is on the list, we're pretty much dinked. Oh, we only have HD within a 65 mile radius, too. I don't like them, but I don't like Menards more. Ugh
I know—it’s practically impossible to boycott all the bad ones! I do my best, and also like to spread the word so people are aware and armed with information.
Yes, thank you! With HD, I was always told that the company doesn't donate money, the guy who started HD or the former CEO, whoever he is, is the guy who did the donating. I see that's one big fat lie. My God, I hate liars.
I avoid HD too, and when I need to buy something that can be delivered, I get it from Lowe's and have it delivered. For small stuff I go to the corner hardware store (which isn't locally owned anymore, but you can't do it all).
I posted the link to Judd’s article on the Facebook page comments of Comcast, Home Depot, UnitedHealth, Deloitte and called them out for their hypocrisy. Perhaps some of you will do the same.
I think this is great information to share. But (and NOT siding with the corporations!), I'm going to guess that every one of them also donated to PACs and politicians who aren't anti LGBTQ, because they hedge their bets. That information would be good to have as context. Again, not siding with the corporations, just think you should tell the whole picture of donations.
You are correct that many corporations support "both sides" but the context is clear, one side is pro-democracy and the other is fascist. Why do they even give a penny to fascists?
The tax cuts and relaxed regulatory climate these corporations and their shareholders want come with the nasty side effect of being anti-LGBTQ. As always, the corporations will pick the money.
These recent “woke” efforts of corporations to appear as allies are just cynical and disingenuous dodges and distractions. On the one hand they commodify every cultural and social identity they “colonize”, transforming it into a relatively impotent disempowered product suffused with their neoliberal capitalist ideology in order to sell back to each identity group at a profit to their corporations. And by controlling the narrative of social emancipation their capitalist controlled corporate media arms insure that little or no economic class consciousness gets introduced into the discussion of “social justice” and no critique of neoliberal capitalism itself is ever possible within mainstream “liberal” or “conservative” discussions of social justice, because all media liberal and conservative share the capitalist ideological assumptions. The only corporate record that matters is the corporate record with respect to how a company treats the working class. And they almost all fail miserably on that score. So do almost all our politicians of both political parties. Any discussion of social justice that omits economic justice is a waste of time. The culture war is a waste of time whether you’re liberal or conservative. We should be embracing our working class conservative brothers and sisters and clue them in to this fact; the culture war is a sick joke perpetrated on all working people by a wealthy oligarchy. The right has long ago abandoned any good faith with respect to “values” they purport to represent. But even our alleged buddies on the left … news “commentators” Colbert … Noah … Stewart … Handler … SNL … etc. whose satirical send ups of bureaucrats and especially of the right and its heroes we on the cultural “left” lap up night after night after night and now year after year … by solely engaging in culture war and culture identity issues ... and by consciously steering clear of issues of economic justice, economic class consciousness and avoiding engaging in a focused relentless critique of capitalism itself and never openly declaring for the working class not for capital … one suspects that our beloved political “satire” itself has become a neutered capitalist commodity being cynically sold to us every night by wealthy comedians and celebrities with little or no interest in upsetting the wealth generation system that makes them rich.
Culture and social “satire” is not enough.
Economic justice AND social justice.
Left and right are economic NOT social or cultural political positions. Left are for working people. Right are for the rich.
Citizens United is not only a perversion of the 1stA it’s a violation of Human Rights. If there’s one thing we should be united on and marching against in massive numbers it’s that. It’s ushered the Twilight Zone into our politics and cultural evolution.
These numbers are, for sure, extremely distressing. That said, it would important to compare them with those of donations by those same corporations to supporters of equality. It is common for large companies to donate to members of Congress and candidates across the political spectrum, "covering the waterfront," so to speak. So it would helpful to be able to compare the numbers.
That, of course, should cause us to also look at the bigger picture of our flawed campaign finance system and how it enables corruption. And to continue efforts to fix it.
How do all these people sleep at night? Well, I am sure. But you know what my gay kid wants? Friends. To not be bullied. To not be othered. He is autistic as well, and as of Friday, we have survived middle school. And I mean that literally.
The energy of hypocrisy matters and thank you for bringing to light where the money goes.
I do political work for my professional organization and I have gotten into it with them over donations to pro Dobbs/anti choice legislators. Their argument is that they need everyone to listen to us. My argument is we are a profession that is 80% plus made up of women, which one of us do you choose as tribute? I got spoken to by a board member 🙄 who tried very hard to put me in my place.
There are issues like human rights and legislating a right to exist that everyone has to speak up on.
Good to know you stand up for what is right even to board members. I salute you.
Michele, you are spot on with your comments. Giving donations to Dobbs/anti choice supporters is total BS as a way to get them to listen.
I recently saw this quote:
“Bigotry is an opinion the way arsenic is a flavor”
Middle school is indeed a matter of survival for many & adding autism or LGBTQIA+ only multiplies the stress of it all.
Your quotation: Bigotry is an opinion the way arsenic is a flavor...LOL Wow! And, to the opinionated, "please, help yourself!"
Warms my heart to learn of your work and that you persevere and stand your ground. [And, know that you have a team here standing behind you when anyone tries to put you in your place...I guess that would be shrinking away from your true self and deferring to them!]
This is the kind of journalism the conservatives want to eliminate. This is the truth they do not want the public to know. Thanks Judd!
Is anything more meaningless than statements from corporate PR departments?
Mea culpas from televangelists?
Just another reminder that corporations are not your friends.
Judd,
Again...Money is the key. Corporate sales drives the political policy. When you can engage the public with a trusted source of information to provide them with a road map as to where they need to spend and not spend dollars, given realistic information, program policies will change as the corporations need to protect their bottom lines. Money is the motivator. People need guidance from a Walter Cronkite source. A committee of extremely trustworthy ethical persons whom the public as members of the association can interact with daily as part of a community. You are halfway there. With others you can be there. I will help.
Example: I won't purchase from Home Depot despite the fact that I have a very large credit line and 24 months of 0 percent interest options. Why? They are, from my research...not a very socially responsible company. I am lucky, I have time (3 hours a day) to keep up with world events. Most people don't. They used to rely on Walter (1 hour/day) to provide them with all they needed to know. Walter is gone. Replaced by a group of entertainers juiced to excite the crowd. The slim majority of the responsible public needs Walter. It should be a daily commitment that produces viable results. When the bottom line begins to tank for one or several corporations others will take note and change or fail. Failure is an option as money is their lifeline and knowledge...power.
Playing both sides of the field is how these 1% corporations work. Always AT&T is either the top or near the top of your fist full of dollars lists. Generally it is the same list of corporate characters lying about supporting the subject in ads, while typing out checks to those elected who would take away rights and yes, even criminalize members of the LBGQT community.
Our country is hate ridden and 43 state legislatures are controlled by the GOP. You will see more of these anti LBGQT laws and codes forth coming. Boycott as many on this list as you can. But I am not sure it will make much difference.
Judd and team thank you for throwing the light on this. Happy Pride month.
Exactly. They are all playing both ends against the middle. Yeah, AT&T's $1,500 bucks doesn't really mean much dollar-wise but it exemplifies the lack of true committment to a cause. Intercourse a bunch of advertising slogans.
Be for real. Choose a side and play for keeps. Humans or monsters. It isn't that hard to determine who the humans are.
Why are we assuming that the corporate boards are made up of people who are truly LBGQT, and infavor of women's rights to choose, or even WOMEN? Some may be in favor of freedom to live as you choose, but I suspect some are virulently anti gay and trans.
One place I tend to agree with the conservative point of view: why should children under 13 be taught about gender issues and sexual identity in public schools? Questioning these issues is healthy, but teaching someone's curriculum could be worth a review.
Here's the thing: kids start to understand their own gender and sexuality pretty early on (for some) and later (for others). Nobody's recommending teaching gender or sexuality to first graders. But it is appropriate to acknowledge that families come in all shapes and sizes. GenZ is 25% LGBTQ+ and to forbid any discussion at school, whenever they're ready to discuss it, is to deny their humanity. There are ways to teach middle school kids that biological sex is complicated and more than genitalia, gender is a social construct/ and how someone thinks of themselves, and sexuality is a spectrum of attraction (including none at all) without going into any more detail than I just did. And that can make the difference between surviving Middle School, and not.
Why not? It's like health or sex Ed ever goes into detail 🤷♀️
Donations expose the truth about the donator. What makes me angry is that many of us don’t have a choice outside of Comcast etc for internet/tv. I despise Comcast & do not want to support it. I never want to see Fox station in my viewing options, yet have no way to eliminate it.
Monopolies are always bad but extra dangerous in the hands of fascists.
Always follow the money..thanks Judd.
Hence the legalized bribes, SeekingReason. They keep paying legislators to ensure that a favorable business climate for them, one that continues to lock out competitors who will customize a package for you without Faux, is what you will have for the foreseeable future. They're also counting on no one taking the time that Judd, Tesnim and Rebecca took to diligently dig into how their bribes split from their insipid PR proclamations.
Look around us. Most industries have about 4 - 5 companies at best, sometimes 2 or 3 of those roll up under the same corporate awning and in services like cable or internet people often have only one viable choice. The bland statements claiming to stand for something will continue; as will the payoffs to the people helping them stifle competition, imprison customers, drive profits and boost their valuations.
C Jacobs, So true. The term legalized bribes is perfect. Criminal & unethical acts should have been punished years ago. That we failed to see TFG handcuffed & taken to prison and then allowed by technical law to put his name on the ballot showed us that all the talk of “checks & balances” was based on ethical behavior, a sense of decency, & love of country. None of these qualities are exhibited in any republican nor a portion of the Dems.
70% of US voters are under decades long minority rule…but we kept letting it slide until we got to this.
Legalized bribery has been around way too long. But never under U.S. fascism as it is today. The elements of fascism were always here, now they are armed like the military & face zero consequences.
I have directv and I have a default favorite channel lineup I created where I eliminated all religious, news, and informercial channels—can you set that up in your system?
I’ll look that up online to find out. That would be the perfect set up for me too!
I’d have to figure out how I display that and not see the hated channels. I have reliable news sources & only use local channel for weather/traffic.
Thank you!
Sure thing—and good luck!!
One way to do it is to cut the cable and do YouTube TV or streaming services, and use the company only for your internet access. That way you're not supporting Fox news with your cable fees, at least.
Great report, Judd. Thank you for exposing corporate hypocrisy, which is one of the principle reasons we are in this mess of qualified “democracy.”
For other reasons, I'm finally working on killing my WF account. This is further cause.
Wells Fargo is a criminal organization disguised as a bank.
Yes, I thought everyone knew that.....dang!
I got rid of them years ago, never looked back!
Didn't know that. Local appliance store uses them as a creditor to purchase over time. We've done that multiple times. Seemed logical, it's interest free. We'll buy outright next time.
We have no option other than Comcast for cable. My husband's insurance is United Health Care. We're small (pop 7900) and rural. At least AT&T doesn't work around here. Only Verizon. If Verizon is on the list, we're pretty much dinked. Oh, we only have HD within a 65 mile radius, too. I don't like them, but I don't like Menards more. Ugh
I know—it’s practically impossible to boycott all the bad ones! I do my best, and also like to spread the word so people are aware and armed with information.
Yes, thank you! With HD, I was always told that the company doesn't donate money, the guy who started HD or the former CEO, whoever he is, is the guy who did the donating. I see that's one big fat lie. My God, I hate liars.
I avoid HD too, and when I need to buy something that can be delivered, I get it from Lowe's and have it delivered. For small stuff I go to the corner hardware store (which isn't locally owned anymore, but you can't do it all).
I posted the link to Judd’s article on the Facebook page comments of Comcast, Home Depot, UnitedHealth, Deloitte and called them out for their hypocrisy. Perhaps some of you will do the same.
I think this is great information to share. But (and NOT siding with the corporations!), I'm going to guess that every one of them also donated to PACs and politicians who aren't anti LGBTQ, because they hedge their bets. That information would be good to have as context. Again, not siding with the corporations, just think you should tell the whole picture of donations.
You are correct that many corporations support "both sides" but the context is clear, one side is pro-democracy and the other is fascist. Why do they even give a penny to fascists?
These same corporate names...over and over and over again. Shameful that they own government. Hypocrisy at its best.
The tax cuts and relaxed regulatory climate these corporations and their shareholders want come with the nasty side effect of being anti-LGBTQ. As always, the corporations will pick the money.
These recent “woke” efforts of corporations to appear as allies are just cynical and disingenuous dodges and distractions. On the one hand they commodify every cultural and social identity they “colonize”, transforming it into a relatively impotent disempowered product suffused with their neoliberal capitalist ideology in order to sell back to each identity group at a profit to their corporations. And by controlling the narrative of social emancipation their capitalist controlled corporate media arms insure that little or no economic class consciousness gets introduced into the discussion of “social justice” and no critique of neoliberal capitalism itself is ever possible within mainstream “liberal” or “conservative” discussions of social justice, because all media liberal and conservative share the capitalist ideological assumptions. The only corporate record that matters is the corporate record with respect to how a company treats the working class. And they almost all fail miserably on that score. So do almost all our politicians of both political parties. Any discussion of social justice that omits economic justice is a waste of time. The culture war is a waste of time whether you’re liberal or conservative. We should be embracing our working class conservative brothers and sisters and clue them in to this fact; the culture war is a sick joke perpetrated on all working people by a wealthy oligarchy. The right has long ago abandoned any good faith with respect to “values” they purport to represent. But even our alleged buddies on the left … news “commentators” Colbert … Noah … Stewart … Handler … SNL … etc. whose satirical send ups of bureaucrats and especially of the right and its heroes we on the cultural “left” lap up night after night after night and now year after year … by solely engaging in culture war and culture identity issues ... and by consciously steering clear of issues of economic justice, economic class consciousness and avoiding engaging in a focused relentless critique of capitalism itself and never openly declaring for the working class not for capital … one suspects that our beloved political “satire” itself has become a neutered capitalist commodity being cynically sold to us every night by wealthy comedians and celebrities with little or no interest in upsetting the wealth generation system that makes them rich.
Culture and social “satire” is not enough.
Economic justice AND social justice.
Left and right are economic NOT social or cultural political positions. Left are for working people. Right are for the rich.
Solidarity for all working people.
Class struggle not culture war.
Citizens United is not only a perversion of the 1stA it’s a violation of Human Rights. If there’s one thing we should be united on and marching against in massive numbers it’s that. It’s ushered the Twilight Zone into our politics and cultural evolution.
These numbers are, for sure, extremely distressing. That said, it would important to compare them with those of donations by those same corporations to supporters of equality. It is common for large companies to donate to members of Congress and candidates across the political spectrum, "covering the waterfront," so to speak. So it would helpful to be able to compare the numbers.
That, of course, should cause us to also look at the bigger picture of our flawed campaign finance system and how it enables corruption. And to continue efforts to fix it.