Everyone (left, right, center, alien) should be troubled by the development that 100 “corporate leaders” came together “to discuss ways for companies to continue responding to the passage of more restrictive voting laws across the country.”
In what seems to be the largest corporate effort to take over American governance since the 1934 Business Plot, CEOs of notable companies gathered over Zoom after a recent Georgia law was passed to roll back some of the emergency COVID voting provisions and provide for Voter ID.
Apparently, showing an ID to vote is horrifying to the following people:
Attendees included Arthur Blank, owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons; James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn Hufschmid; Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres; Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss; Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments; Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart; Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines; Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines; Chip Bergh, chairman of Levi Strauss Company; Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, multiple people familiar with the meeting told CBS News.
Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, and Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, were also invited but unable to attend, those familiar said.
Bob Bakish, president and CEO of ViacomCBS, also attended the meeting. A spokesman for the company, which operates CBS News, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
“We invited 120 CEO’s with about 50 hours notice. We were praying for 25 and we got 90 CEO’s and another 30 invited guests including legal experts, technology experts and historians,” Sonnenfeld said.
In addition to Sonnenfeld, the meeting was organized by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the founding partner of Inclusive Capitalism LLC, and Leadership Now, a group of Harvard University alums and corporate leaders focused on sustaining democracy.
Among those who spoke on Saturday’s call were Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, who helped organize the drive by 72 Black executives and encouraged participants to do more.
The brazenness of this kind of mobilization is what should be most alarming to libertarians and DSA folks alike – this was published by CBS News with their own president and CEO in attendance.
The Left is still fixated on Citizens United – a decade-old Supreme Court decision that allowed SuperPAC donations.
The Right is widely ignorant of the fact that the first major group to certify Joe Biden’s election “win” was the Chamber of Commerce, who later slammed elected Republicans that dared to question the results.
Keeping corporations at least a step removed from the political process used to be a liberal and a conservative value.
The excuse given now is that corporations are on the frontlines of “democracy”, which would be enough to push Molly Ivins to the edge.
