On May 1, left-wing vigilantes will target companies across the country that have committed a mortal sin: sending donations to GOP governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Rest assured, such intolerable acts of political free speech will not go unpunished by tolerant Big Labor activists. They’re calling for both a national boycott of Walker’s corporate donors and a coordinated sticker-vandalism campaign on GOP-tainted products.
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The Wisconsin Grocers Association is bracing for the anti-Walker witch hunt. Anonymous operatives have circulated sabotage stickers on the Internet and around Wisconsin that single out Angel Soft tissue paper (“Wiping Your [Expletive] on Wisconsin Workers”), Johnsonville Sausage (“These Brats Bust Unions”), and Coors (“Labor Rights Flow Away Like a Mountain Stream”). Earlier this week, a “Stick It to Walker” website boasted photos of vandalized Angel Soft tissue packages at a Super Foodtown grocery store in Brooklyn, N.Y.
This destruction of private property is illegal. Not that it matters to anti-Walker protest mobsters, who trampled Wisconsin’s capitol at an estimated $5 million in security, repair, and cleaning costs to taxpayers. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “the identity of the backers of the sticker effort is unknown, although many assume it is being orchestrated by public employee unions. This latest effort follows boycotts organized by members of the Wisconsin State Employees Union AFSCME 24.”
AFSCME 24 is the same union affiliate that recently disseminated intimidation letters throughout southeast Wisconsin, demanding that local businesses support unions by putting up signs in their windows. The letter threatened not just Walker supporters, but any and all businesses that have chosen to sit on the sidelines and stay out of politics altogether: “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but [to] do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.” Others on Big Labor’s hit list: Kwik Trip, Sargento Foods Inc., and M&I Bank.
Walker, of course, has been at the forefront of government-pension and budget reforms. Similar measures are being advanced by Democratic governors and Democrat-run legislatures from Massachusetts to New York to California. But union bosses have yet to sic their goons on individual and corporate donors to Democratic politicians imposing long-overdue benefit and collective-bargaining limits on public-employee unions.
How convenient, yes? Just as they secured a big fat waiver from the federal health-care mandate and tax scheme they lobbied to impose on the rest of America, Big Labor is giving Democratic legislative water-carriers who have been forced to adopt cuts and cost controls a big fat waiver from their organized wrath and vandalism.
Now, a few hundred or thousand ruined grocery-store items may not seem to matter much, but this little property-destruction campaign spotlights a nasty tactic increasingly employed by the Left: campaign-finance disclosure as a speech-squelching weapon.
We saw it last fall when Democratic operatives targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for donating to Obamacare opposition ads.
We saw it in 2008 when a top MoveOn.org alumnus launched attacks on Republican donors with the express purpose of “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.”
We saw it when Obama campaign-committee lawyers lobbied the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute a GOP donor for funding campaign ads exposing Obama’s ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
We saw it during the Proposition 8 traditional-marriage battle in California, where gay-rights avengers compiled black lists, harassment lists, and Google target maps of citizens who contributed to the ballot measure.
We saw it when “progressive” zealots smeared Target Corporation and Chick-fil-A for daring to associate with social conservatives.
And we’re seeing it again this month as the Obama White House readies an executive order that would force federal contractors to disclose all political donations to candidates and independent groups in excess of $5,000 made not just by a corporate entity, but by all of its individual executives, directors, and officers.
Former Federal Election Commission official Hans von Spakovsky obtained the sweeping draft executive order, which — surprise, surprise — exempts unions and predominantly left-wing federal-grant recipients from the mandate. On Wednesday, GOP senators spelled out the bullying agenda in an open letter objecting to the Obama order: “Political activity would obviously be chilled if prospective contractors have to fear that their livelihood could be threatened if the causes they support are disfavored by the administration.” Join the club.
When disclosure’s a bludgeon, all but Obama’s cronies are nails.
Desparation continues from the left. The number of states that are adopting reasonable fiscal policies to rein in the spending on public employment continues to rise. I think the noise level is not indicative of the actual support...thanks to the mainstream media. Remember that the unionized public employees represent only a small percentage of the overall work force in the US
This morning on government radio I heard that in Minnesota Target Corp was forced to apologize for donating to the campaign of Tom Emmer for Governor.
The point of all of this is to slowly and steadily cast conservatives as being a shunned minority that is outside the pale. Tom Emmer got 49.9% of the votes! And now supporting him is a sin that must be absolved?
Why would they do this when all we heard during the fist weeks of the Madison protests was that Walker had done a huge service to the union cause. I thought that the public would now be overwhelmingly on their side. Maybe they have some internal polling that suggests a different reality?
Not a big Coors & brats guy, but I think I'll take one for the country this weekend!
Vandalism is obviously wrong, but what is the problem with boycotting a company whose policies you disagree with? Isn't that called voting with your dollar? Isn't that capitalism at work?
Shouldn't these intimidation tactics be considered "Hate Crimes"?
Congress needs to add politically motivated attacks to federal hate crime law and threaten a complete loss of funding for each day the DOJ drags its feet pursuing these criminals.
Everytime a company gets targeted for not being liberal, we need to aggressively support them where it matters most- the cash register. That sends a stronger message than some slacker putting obscene stickers on a couple dozen packages.
Perhaps the unanswered question is: When will law enforcement finally decide to act and prosecute these leftists for blatantly criminal behavior? They made death threats against lawmakers and nothing happened. Now they commit vandalism and nothing happens. If they cross state lines in theory this could become a federal issue but even then would anything happen? And forget law enforcement for a moment...
...where his Paul Krugman. When Rep Giffords was shot he issued his first tweet less than 30 minutes in. Did he forget his login and password perhaps?
@Mike B: You can always bring the pencil back. However, you may not be able to remove the political bumper sticker from someone else's property without damaging the underlying surface. That latter part is called vandalism you see and in this case what makes it especially egregious is that it is politically motivated*. By contrast, walking away with someone else's pencil although wrong is a simple mistake easily remedied.
* Politically motivated like the death threats unionistas made against Wisconsin lawmakers. Also a crime. Also far more egregious than walking off with a pencil.
Ultimately what this story illustrates is the inability of the left to legitimately function within our political system. When they lose a ballot initiative they rush to the 9th Circuit in San Francisco to sue it into law. When they run a candidate for election their finances are questionable, their voters cast multiple ballots, and they fill Democrat voter rolls with the names of persons deceased, incarcerated, or non-existent. When all that fails and their candidate loses they again take it to the courts, insist upon recount after recount, and entrust their sycophants in the media to author op-eds and books adhering to the "hey hey, ho ho, this is where the catchy slogan goes" model that grafts a catchy phrase on to their erroneous allegation.
Nov 4, 2012 is coming up. ARRA monies remain unspent. We need to keep a sharp eye out to see what Obama's folks are doing between now and then based on the left's track record.
Sorry, Andy D, I was just trying to inject a little realism here.
If someone puts a sticker on a six pack of Coors, it's not such a big deal. A bumper sticker on someone's car or on a store window? Yeah, that's really nasty.
I'd probably take the six pack home and say to my wife, "Look at this!"
Kinda like the difference between being struck on the head and being struck on the head:
Property damage is unacceptable but the rest of it is free speach. There is absolutely nothing wrong with boycotting a company who you believe is working against your intersts. Both sides do it, and well they should.
It gets tiresome to hear both sides whine about this every time the tables turn. When your side does it it's a rousing example of an engaged citizenry. When the other side does it it's intimidation.
Boycotting is protected free speech and there is not a darn thing wrong with it.
@tflavin: The problem is not a boycott, it's the intimidation tactics used. And, things like these stickers are an intimidation tactic. The idea is to attach a stigma to those items (along with the sticker) so that the stores will simply stop carrying them out of frustration of dealing with the vandalism.
