New Balance - Jim Davis, you've lost my business forever

New Balance Distances Itself From Donation to Romney

to: Jim Davis, Chariman, and Rob DiMartini, President:

I have been a big supporter of New Balance since the late '70s.

I appreciate your commitment to keeping some manufacturing in the United States. I recently purchased a pair of custom 574s and couldn't be happier with your service, quality, and design.

Mr. Davis, your recent contribution of a half million dollars to the Romney-supporting PAC Restore Our Future has forced me to pledge to never buy another New Balance product, and to encourage as many people as possible to follow my lead.

A PAC like this shouldn't be allowed to exist - only a bought and paid for Supreme Court could establish corporations as persons and money as speech. This is in opposition to our Democracy and counter to the interest of 99% of your consumers.

A donation to a political group or candidate in this amount shouldn't be allowed. That this is in-part MY money, since I've purchased products that generate revenue that pay your salary, I'm ashamed. Can I get my share back?

To think that you can afford to throw money at a candidate so full of hate as Mitt Romney, money that I helped give you, makes me physically sick.

I wish you, your family, and everyone at your company good health and happiness. How can you expect to be entitled to either of these as you run your life hell bent to destroy everything that is good about America?

Sincerely...

peter.w.thonis@verizon.com

Your stakeholders aren't your C-Level execs, boardmembers, or shareholders (including me!).

Your stakeholders are your consumers, your employees, and their families. You are nothing without them.

Cultures and industries change all the time. When you game the system by buying legislators and legislation to promote your changing business, we all suffer. Learn how to run Verizon to compete on a level playing field. Learn how to compensate your lowest-paid employee first.

If your business is truly changing, lets reflect that change in compensation from the top! That's capitalism, as well as common sense.

...

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 2:14 PM,  wrote:

Thank you for your email to the COO's office.

Verizon remains committed to working with the unions to negotiate a fair and reasonable contract. Our intent is to secure a new contract that ensures Verizon employees will continue to receive competitive pay and benefit programs, while also providing a fair return to our shareholders. Our wireline business has declined significantly in the last few years and we need a new contract that reflects today’s economic and business realities, as well as the needs of all of our stakeholders.

Our goal is to keep Verizon strong now and in the future for our employees, shareholders and customers.


Peter Thonis
Chief Communications Officer
Verizon

To Lowell McAdam, Verizon

Dear Mr. McAdam,

I stand in solidarity with the 45,000 workers who are on strike.

I am a long time customer. I give you quite a bit of money each month for a 3-phone VZW unlimited family plan, and a nearly-loaded FiOS triple play. For each of these services, you have competitors and I have no problem switching my service to a company that behaves as a good citizen.

I grew up in a time when my father could work as a CWA member for Ma Bell to feed, clothe, house and educate a family of four, while providing for a secure retirement for him and my mother. Corporate behavior such as yours now is designed to destroy that way of life. I want a road back, and you can help.

Over the past four years alone, Verizon has made $19 billion in profits while paying its top five executives $250 million in compensation and bonuses. It’s outrageous that you are demanding huge givebacks from workers at the same time.

With middle-class families already struggling, it’s time for Verizon to share its success with the hardworking Americans who made it possible. This is not a time for corporate greed. It is time to do the right thing.

Verizon kicked off bargaining with dramatic concessionary demands and has not budged. And you continue to refuse to bargain seriously with the CWA and the IBEW.

That’s why 45,000 of your employees aren’t at work but will return once you agree to bargain fairly.

Please drop your unfair demands and return to the bargaining table to negotiate a new contract in good faith.

Uncertainty is in the Eye of the Billionaire

Role Reversal...

We have turned into a nation that worships billionaires and personifies corporations. When did these titans of the universe suddenly become scared little children?

We have demonized our government, which is US, as well as teachers, people who work for a living, etc. - why have we, for 30 years, distracted ourselves from doing true work that helps people?

We let politicians, elections, and legislation be bought by wealthy and powerful interests, and these interests can't see fit to invest in anything but their own short term profits?

The lack of confidence that people have toward the Republican Party as they cheerlead the destruction of our Democracy has created a great deal of concern and IS the reason why cash from corporations is not being used to help grow the economy.

Billionaires and Corporations have NOTHING without the work and wealth of millions. We must turn this country around to show that these millions are not beneath the Billionaires and Corporations, but we are their bosses. An uncertain economic future can only be turned around when we get the Billionaires and Corporations to do their patriotic duty and invest in Americans.

Why THIS Filibuster?

The Super Committee Precedent: Why End The Filibuster Just For Deficit Reduction? | OurFuture.org

Every tax cut, deregulation, privatization, and budget cut destroys jobs, families, and lives.

The filibuster has made a mess of our democracy during the last few years, and yes, this Super Committee is another facet.

To accept as fact that our debt is our number one problem plays into the hands of a few billionaires no matter how you look at it or how it is approached.

Pay down the debt, and you redistribute the wealth of the many - the Middle Class - to the few. This will have zero stimulative action and would simply serve to divide America further into a wealthy class and a huge poor class. It would create no new jobs - direct government jobs would be destroyed, along with secondary and tertiary employment from the business these cuts would eliminate. This austerity would create further pressure on governments to support people as we stir up discontent, and stir up extremist feelings in voters to keep racist, extremist groups like the TeaParty in some position of influence.

If we stop creating debt and spread out payments, interest (admittedly low these days) goes to the very banksters who willfully destroyed our global economy, and received the assets of smaller institutions along with taxpayer bailouts.

What should be filibustered is anything anti-stimulative. Any House or Senate bill that spends money that doesn't create jobs. Any bill that spends money that goes into the hands of billionaires without benefiting the MOST of us. Any bill that allows billionaires to send money overseas whether this creates jobs there, wars there, or fortunes there.

Instead, we live with our broken, FOX and KOCH poisoned system, and we accept it.