By McCleary
For reasons that Radley Balko explains far better than I ever could, the Whole Foods boycott is completely ridiculous, and maybe even counterproductive, even if you support the Obama healthcare plan.
But two other sidebars to the story:
1) Whole Foods stock rose significantly the day the WSJ published the editorial, and it has maintained that price for nearly two weeks (of course, no guarantee that will continue, stock pickers). Third quarter earnings were also up, but the spike was still greater than you would expect.
2) boycotters, if you do a campaign contribution search for Mackey and for competing upscale supermarket chains, such as NC-based Harris Teeter's Tad Dickson, you will see that Mackey never gave money to Republicans, just Libertarians, primarily Harry Browne. The notion that you will find a food provider outside of a farmer's market more socially responsible than Whole Foods is just plain stupid.
