With 2nd quarter profits up, Target gets boost from LA Times
Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 11:40 am
- 12 Comments
Image from a Facebook group urging a Target boycott
Target announced Wednesday that its second-quarter profits of $679 million represent a 14 percent increase compared to the same period last year. The report suggests to some that the chain hasn’t yet been dinged too badly by the nationwide calls for boycotts over its financial support for a conservative PAC backing antigay gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. (News of Target’s gift to MN Forward didn’t break until late July, in the third quarter, although Target expects slight growth over that period too.) Another good sign for Target: The Los Angeles Times editorialized this morning that MoveOn.org’s boycott effort is “distasteful” and “counterproductive.”
The paper’s editorial board writes:
For MoveOn, the fight is at least as much about corporate money as it is about gay rights. The Target contribution is a high-profile result of an overreaching January decision by the Supreme Court that opens the door for more corporate donations to political campaigns. But by pointing out Target’s involvement in Emmer’s campaign and obtaining an apology, MoveOn and Human Rights Campaign had already won; their calls for a boycott and attempt to strong-arm money from the company are deeply counterproductive.
The boycott is a tried-and-true tool of nonviolent resistance, used to powerful effect during the civil rights era. But it is cheapened and ultimately rendered ineffective when it becomes a hair-trigger response by activists irked by minor political transgressions. Target’s contribution to MN Forward was at worst a small error of judgment, and should matter far less than the company’s ongoing and long-term commitment to workplace equal rights and its sponsorship of pro-gay events. Moreover, the attempt to wrangle an in-kind contribution from Target is reminiscent of a tactic that appalled gay rights advocates when it was used against them during the campaign for Proposition 8, California’s 2008 initiative banning same-sex marriage. Proposition 8 supporters sent letters to big contributors for the opposite side, threatening to expose them unless they sent an equal donation to their campaign. It was a distasteful move then, and now.
It’s worth noting that many of the LGBT advocacy groups involved in the backlash against Target’s $150,000 donation to MN Forward acknowledge Target’s leading role in workplace fairness issues for LGBT people. In its open letter to Target (pdf), which ran as a full page ad in the Star Tribune, the national Human Rights Campaign called Target (and Twin Cities-based Best Buy, which also gave to MN Forward but has received less heat for it) are “shining examples of corporations that respected the equality and dignity of every American.” Both companies consistently got perfect scores on the HRC Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index.
Likewise, OutFront Minnesota prefaced its disappointment with Target for its roundabout support of a candidate with a long record of opposition to rights for LGBT familes by stating, “Target Corporation has long been a strong ally of Minnesota’s GLBT community and OutFront Minnesota and many other GLBT organizations have looked to Target as a model of the corporate support for diversity.”
12 Comments
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
Good, L.A. Times is right, but more important, the boycott is illegal.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
How is a boycott illegal, Steve, instead of, say, a consumer’s right to free speech?
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 2:01 pm
I like that Target’s numbers show how weak Moveon.org’s influence is.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 7:10 pm
The LA Times is getting to be a right wing rag.
You wish Dano. I’m done shopping there and really don’t care what they do. They don’t need my money and I don’t need their cheap crap.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 7:13 pm
I believe MoveOn.org is conducting an illegal boycott under FTC Act and also violating its restrictions as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization and action should be taken to stop their campaign against free elections.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 7:35 pm
It’s also an act of boycott, coercion or intimidation. They have a legal right that you are trying to suppress through boycotting, coercion and intimidation. Remember, Paul, this isn’t going to apply just to Target but to all U.S. corporations.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 7:46 pm
Collusion: Collusion is an agreement, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage.
You’re attempting to limit open competition, defrauding the corporations of their legal rights to free speech by giving money to a candidate to promote, by the way, their business interests. You can argue you have some lofty goal like universal marriage but you are using this artifice to limit open competition by Target, and openness in the elections.
It’s also defamatory, since they did not try to give money to violate anybody’s human rights. Stripping away all your excuses, you’re simply colluding to harm a corporation for no good reason except it wants to participate in elections.
Look at it another way. Say you wanted to form a party and a corporation came and somehow fined each one of your party $500. That would be illegal. You’re trying to fine Target potentially millions of dollars. It’s a criminal violation of the 1st Amendment. A Bivens action is usually reserved for state actors or officials, if I recall, but the form is the same, you are harming all corporation for billions of dollars because they follow the law and the constitution. I think collusion is the central aspect of the illegality of the boycott, collusion to violate constitutional rights. If you bring in the IRS regulations that regulate free speech, and MoveOn violates them, then they are not protected against liability by those regs.
I did more research on this, but did not preserve all of it and cannot find it on the internet. Hope this helps.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 7:50 pm
Here, Paul, an on-line dictionary entry: “In the words of the Federal Trade Commission Act, Section 5, the FTC is responsible to “promote free and fair competition in interstate commerce in the interest of the public through prevention of price-fixing agreements, boycotts, combinations in restraint of trade, unfair methods of competition, and unfair and deceptive acts and practices.”
Again, this is what you’re doing, and when the IRS regs strip away the elections privileges you’re left with pure injury to American corporations. If there is any corporate involvement or other covered involvement (I have not researched this) in the prohibited action, they by definition violate the act.
Comment posted August 19, 2010 @ 9:43 pm
Henk,
Meh, I’m sure you and your 5% will make a HUGE impact to their bottom line. I have places I won’t shop b/c of their views/etc and I have no misconceptions that they will still be in business next year. Do whatever feels good to you eh’?
Comment posted August 20, 2010 @ 2:34 am
Be sure to read this story about MN Forward, the pro-Republican group that recently received a large donation from Target:
http://proposition13.blogspot.com/2010/08/news-about-mn-forward.html
Comment posted August 21, 2010 @ 4:24 am
The LA Times used to be one of the best newspapers in the country. Now, it is a Rupert Murdoch style scandal sheet that is venomously heterosexist and rightist.
Comment posted August 22, 2010 @ 12:01 am
Steve, you’re absolutely wrong about a moveon.org boycott being illegal. There is such a thing as an illegal boycott, but consumers telling one another not to patronize a certain business is not such a boycott.
And a boycott like this is not a laughing matter. All of these retail businesses operate on a thin margin of profit. It takes a lot less than you think to hit a margin of profitability and as they say, the “bottom line.”
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