Tag Archives: Whole Foods Market Inc
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey Causes Facebook Boycott
Whole Foods Market Inc. (NASDASQ:WFMI) Chairman John Mackey has drummed up a little bit of controversey by writing a health-care reform piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Whole Foods has about 1.2 million followers on Twitter and has about 100,000 fans on Facebook. Now there is a group dedicated to the boycotting of Whole Foods after the WSJ piece was written. There are 23,000 users that joined the boycott group.
In the WSJ piece he was highly critical of Americans by saying that most of our health-care problems are self-inflicted and that the government should not subsidize healthcare for us. Usually it is not good to diss the people in a country that has made you very wealthy without expecting some sort of a negative response.
Below is an excerpt from the WSJ piece that Mackey wrote.
“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.”
“Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?”
“Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.”
The description of the Whole Foods boycott group is as follows:
John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on August 12, 2009 quoting Margaret Thatcher and suggesting that healthcare is a commodity that only the rich, like him, deserve.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives. Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities.
______________________________
HOW TO CONTACT WHOLE FOODS
Whole Foods Market, Inc.
550 Bowie Street
Austin, TX 78703-4644
512.477.4455
512.477.5566 voicemail
512.482.7000 faxDiscussion forums: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/forums
Your local store: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/all/index.php
Customer service: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/service.phpRemember! Products/companies owned by Whole Foods include the following:
Allegro Coffee, Amrion, Bread of Life, Bread & Circus, Food for Thought, Fresh & Wild, Fresh Fields, Harry’s Farmers Market, Merchant of Vino, Mrs. Gooch’s, Nature’s Heartland, Select Fish, Wellspring Grocery, Whole Foods Market, Wild Oats Markets______________________________
To read more about why we are calling for a boycott and why a boycott will work, visit our blog:
http://wholeboycott.com
Categories Facebook, John Mackey, Whole Foods Market Inc
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Recent Tech Funding: LiveNation, Wallop, CARTASITE, iUpload, Sportsvite, Games2Win, NaturallyCurly, Zaadz, SearchPhysics, Neosaej, TRACE, Fliptrack, Beyond.com, Payoneer
My apologies for the slight delay in updates. I have been travelling a little bit the last couple days to Chicago and Minneapolis. But here’s a fresh update of tech deals:
Dollar Amount Involved: $114 Million
On Friday, March 30, Academy Music Group Holdings, Ltd. (AMG) confirmed that now a majority of the company is owned by Gaiety Investments [no website available] and Live Nation, Inc. Both Gaiety and Live Nation paid $114 million to purchase 56% of AMG from RJD Partners. AMG owns 12 music venues that host over 2500 events and attracts over 3 million in audience. AMG also owns Carling Academy Brixton and Shepherd’s Empire. Live Nation has the technology needed to stream concerts and events live so through this investment, AMG would constantly provide web content as well.
“AMG has one of the strongest live music venue brands in the UK,” stated Live Nation’s CEO Michael Rapino. “The venues that we are acquiring are among the best in the world. The acquisition of AMG will enable us to grow our UK venue network with a brand that music fans know and love.”
Dollar Amount Involved: $1 MillionHercules Technology Growth Capital stated on Friday that they would be investing $1 million into Wallop. Wallop was launched on April 25, 2006 by Microsoft Corporation’s Research division and is based in Silicon Valley. The project is led by Karl Jacob and was backed with $13 million from Microsoft’s IP Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners, and Consor Capital.
Dollar Amount Involved: $4.35 MillionCARTASITE is a Denver, Colorado based company that monitors remote assets in real time and uses a Network Operation Center (NOC) to interconnect with wireless carriers. Last year, authorities in Gainesville, FL recovered $1.5 million worth of art from a Budget truck driver that tried to run away and sell its cargo on eBay. However, the GPS system used in the truck was monitored by CARTASITE.”The irony is that Budget didn’t purchase our system as a theft recovery device,” stated David Armitage, the CEO of CARTASITE. “They are utilizing it as an inventory management tool that allows them to have enough vehicles in the right location at the right time. It’s a huge operational benefit for them. The fact that it can also be used to handle rare situations like this is just a bonus.”It is because of this technology that Canterbury Partners and Arcadia Partners invested $4.35 million Series A into CARTASITE.
Dollar Amount Involved: $7 MillioniUpload is a company that develops content manager, community publisher, and personal publisher online applications. The company is based in Burlington, Ontario Canada and serve major customers such as McDonald’s, Kodak, Northwestern Mutual, the New York Times and Newsweek. iUpload was founded in 1998.The Series A funding comes from Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Many customers are currently utilizing iUpload to set-up wikis, blogs, forms, and workflow diagrams.
Dollar Amount Involved: $2 MillionSportsvite is a New York based company where users can invite each other to participate in various sports events. Sportsvite has roughly 20,000 members. The investor of Sportsvite is Grace Drive Management [no website available]. Although the website was funded last month, the amount was just declared to be $2 million as a first round. Sportsvite was created by 212Media, who also operates 3 other companies: Bodvod, New Play Media, and Conscious Content.
Dollar Amount Involved: $5 MillionGames2Win is a company based in Bombay, Maharashtra India that designs Adobe Flash games with comedic twists. Clearstone Venture Partners partnered with SVB Financial Group and led the $5 million recent investment into Games2Win. Games2Win also plans on launching multiplayer Flash games. Games2Win was founded by Mahesh Khambadkone and Cyrus Oshidar. “Internet users in India are still highly underserved when it comes to online entertainment that’s relevant and compelling. With its unique blend of topical, irreverent and action-packed games we are confident that Games2win will be a dominant player in the rapidly growing online gaming marketplace in India. With Clearstone’s track record of building category leading consumer internet businesses like Paypal, MP3.com and Etoys we look forward to building Games2Win into a globally recognized brand” stated Clearstone Director, Rahul Khanna.
Dollar Amount Involved: $600,000
Austin, TX based company, Naturally Curly (www.naturallycurly.com) has recently announced that they have raised $600,000 from Jim Trebig,, Dr. Philip Sanger, and Tim Wall. The website was founded 9 years ago and has about 10,000 daily visitors.NaturallyCurly.com will use the funding for technical development and marketing. “Companies like NaturallyCurly have been able to see opportunities that have gone unnoticed by high-tech nerds like me,” stated Treybig. “The movement to communities like NaturallyCurly is the foundation for the future of advertising.”The founders of NaturallyCurly are Michelle Breyer and Gretchen Heber, who have also launched CurlyKids.com. NaturallyCurly.com was nominated in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition in Austin.
Dollar Amount Involved: UndisclosedJohn Mackay, the CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc. financed spiritual social network, Zaadz. Zaadz is based in Los Angeles and Brian Johnson is the founder and CEO. The social network has close to 50,000 users and calls itself a “place of political refuge for MySpace immigrants.”
Dollar Amount Involved: UndisclosedSearch Physics is a startup that has developed a search engine capable of extracting content from websites, store additional information, classify links, and narrow down search results.Search Physics is based in San Francisco and raised an undisclosed amount of funding. The investors of Search Physics are Stanley Wong and David Shen, both from Yahoo! The founder of Search Physics is Dr. Minh Duong-van, a theory of chaos and quantum theory physicist.
Dollar Amount Involved: $505,000
NeoSaej Corporation is a start-up that is currently in “stealth mode” (quiet about its idea for now). The company is based Burlington, Massachusetts. NeoSaej is looking to address “the severe inefficiencies in current online marketplaces, and greatly improves the e-commerce experience for all participants.”NeoSaej has received $505,000 of a $1 million Series A, led by Stata Venture Partners. The company was founded by Rohit Goyal in August 2006. Goyal is a former network engineer at Enterasys Networks.Another investor in NeoSaej is NeoNet Technologies, LLC.
Dollar Amount Involved: UndisclosedTRACE.TV has recently made a new partner: Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group will be providing TRACE with music and video rights. Universal will also provide TRACE.TV a weekly slot in Universal’s International Music Feed. TRACE was launched in 2003 in Paris, France and started out as True Magazine in London.TRACE is looking to expand to U.S. markets next year. Goldman Sachs is a previous investor.
Dollar Amount Involved: $1.53 MillionFliptrack is a website where users upload photos and videos and sync it with music provided. To keep the audience captive, the music is mainstream. Fliptrack is based in Mountain View, CA and has raised $1.53 million Series A funding by Mohr, Davidow Ventures, and other angel investors. Fliptrack raised $500,000 in angel funding. Fliptrack was founded by Stewart Putney.
Dollar Amount Involved: $13.5 MillionSafeguard Scientifics has announced that it has provided $13.5 million in funding to Beyond.com. Beyond.com is based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and has more than 15,000 online communities. Beyond.com is aligned with Safeguard’s focus to partner with entrepreneurial technology companies that have a competitive advantage in Software as a Service (SaaS), Technology-Enabled Services and Internet-based businesses, stated Peter J. Boni, the President and CEO of Safeguard Scientifics. We’re executing upon our game plan to deploy capital in innovative and attractive companies to generate increased value for our shareholders. We welcome Beyond.com to the Safeguard team.”
See [Pulse 2.0 - Greylock Partners Leads $4 Million Series A Investment In Payoneer]
[Information Source: Alarm Clock]
Categories Academy Music Group, Arcadia Partners, Bay Partners, Beyond.com, Canterbury Partners, Cartasite, Clearstone Venture Partners, Consor Capital, CurlyKids, Fliptrack, Gaiety Investments, Games2Win, Grace Drive Management, Greylock Partners, Hercules Technology Growth Capital, iUpload, LiveNation, Microsoft Corporation, Naturally Curly, NeoSaej Corporation, North Bridge Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Payoneer, RJD Partners, Safeguard Scientifics, Sportsvite, SVB Financial Group, Trace.TV, Universal, Wallop, Whole Foods Market Inc, Zaadz
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