Moron Par Excellence: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we know a moron when we see one! John Mackey, please come to the podium. You have received the coveted "moron par excellence" award from TGAB!

Readers, you know how impossible I find it to link Internet stories to my blog. So, if you want all the facts about John Mackey and Whole Foods and health care, do a quick Google. You'll find the editorial I'm writing about, and the fallout.

First, for those of you who've never heard of the supermarket chain called Whole Foods, let me characterize it for you. There's one near my house. I've shopped there on rare occasions when I needed some esoteric grains that are hard to find elsewhere.

Whole Foods is an "organic" grocery store. It consists of three components:

1. Foodstuffs purporting to be "organic" but that look like they've been coddled since birth in prime conditions of some sort.

2. Foodstuffs that have been prepared in house for people who don't have time to cook. These foodstuffs include such healthy offerings as triple chocolate cake and macaroni and cheese.

3. Neurotic, liberal yuppie shoppers who are simultaneously obsessed with their looks and health and one hundred percent behind Obama's most ambitious initiatives.


Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which he attacks any effort to provide government-funded health care to people who can't afford coverage. You really should read the whole thing, but I'll quickly summarize:

*Whole Foods employees are 100 percent covered for health care after they meet a $2500 yearly deductible that can voluntarily be offset by $1800 Whole Foods gives its staff (30-plus hours per week) in "health dollars" each year. At best, then, a Whole Foods employee must pay $800 out of pocket each year before getting health insurance. Mackey did not say how much a Whole Foods employee earns in yearly wages after taxes.

*If Americans want poor people to have health coverage, American taxpayers should voluntarily add money to their federal income tax returns, money that would be used for Medicare, CHIP, etc.

*Most of America's health problems are self-inflicted by people eating and drinking too much. If everyone adopted a healthy lifestyle, we wouldn't need government-sponsored health care, and everyone would live to be 90 to 100 years old.

But the following quote was the one that earned Mackey the mega-moron designation from TGAB:

"Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America."

This, my friends, is a benchmark of right-wing conservative philosophy. And if it flowed off the tongue of the CEO of Mercedes-Benz, it would be just another "let them eat cake" moment.

Except the majority of Mackey's customers are liberals.

Hey, John Mackey. I have a question. When you shot yourself in the foot, had you already exhausted your $2500 yearly deductible? I ask because you may need some of it for treatment of the depression you will develop when your stores tank.

All across the Internet, blue bloggers are calling for boycotts of Whole Foods. I add my voice, and my consumer dollars, to this boycott.

Perhaps this nation has never recognized an intrinsic "right" to food and clothing. Certainly many Americans have been homeless and starved through the history of this nation. Is that the standard we want to cling to in the twenty-first century? Put it another way. If health care could be covered voluntarily by donations from charitable individuals, why aren't mega-churches sponsoring free clinics?

John Mackey, moron par excellence, I will never darken the doorstep of your store again. You join Wal-Mart on my list of bad stores where nothing will be bought by Anne. Since your store near me is located in a liberal enclave that voted 75 percent for Obama, I daresay I won't be alone.

What. A. Dumbass.