Amazon. Google. Coca-Cola. These are some of the companies that funded the end of Roe v. Wade
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At the always-valuable Popular Information, Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby present a list of just 13 companies that have forked over $15 million to Republican committees during and after the Trump era, thus becoming prime funders of the party’s anti-abortion stances (oh, and also that whole attempting to end United States democracy thing.) The word “prime” is chosen deliberately here, because yup: Good ol’ Amazon is among them, responsible for nearly $1 million in donations.
Amazon and other companies have been eager to distance themselves from the end of Roe, since they haven’t forked over cash to make Ron DeSantis president yet and so Ron hasn’t been able to pass new nationwide laws punishing them for doing so. But the talk is empty, and the donations are big. The money trail tracked by Popular Information doesn’t count any of the companies’ individual PAC contributions—it’s just donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Republican State Leadership Committee, and Republican Governors Association, the party’s tools for propping up whatever political grotesqueries the party most wants to inflict on the rest of us.
It’s doubtful that any of the companies are shelling out million-dollar donations to the Republican Governors Association and other Republican groups because they care, even in the slightest bit, about what happens to abortion laws in this country. The dynamic at play is the exact same one that causes these corporate giants to continue shelling out campaign cash to the seditionists responsible for an attempted American coup. They want tax breaks, they want loopholes, they want laws written that protect their captured markets from new competition, they want federal services and consumer protection laws neutered and reworked so that consumers have to pay a higher percentage of their incomes to them, specifically.
If it means donating to traitors or to politicians that look to undermine every civil right Americans think they have, these companies are all for doing it. They’ll put out a press release claiming to be sad about it—and keep lobbying to make sure that no matter how many rights go away or how threatened our elections might become, the new fascists still give their company special treatment.
So let’s take a look at some of the top companies to fund the death of Roe v. Wade. Let’s take a long look.
Amazon: The company responsible for Jeff Bezos now owning both The Washington Post and his own private space program is trying very hard to pretend they had nothing to do with this, despite the company being infamous for its exploitation of workers (to the point of creating real on-the-job threats to worker health) and for its very aggressive efforts to keep government from doing anything about it.
The company was lightning quick to announce, after the Supreme Court leak, that it would pay “up to $4000 in travel expenses annually” for employees that need to flee across state lines to get medical treatments that might soon become illegal in the conservative states it operates from. It will not surprise you to learn that this promise turned out to be somewhat bullshit: The policy excludes part-time warehouse workers and Amazon’s 115,000 delivery drivers that have been put most at risk here. Like other companies, Amazon relies on “contractor” status to dodge labor requirements for large chunks of its workforce, and those Amazon is leaving out get to suck it up and learn to live in the America Amazon helped create as best they can.
Do you think Amazon will be offering paid maternity leave to all the employees that will soon have abortion rights stripped from them? Will Amazon be picking up the tab for warehouse workers that have to travel through multiple states, risking being caught by “bounty” hunters, to end an ectopic pregnancy that would assuredly kill them? Of course it won’t. That’s the whole point of quashing unionization while slathering pro-coup and anti-rights politicians with campaign cash; keep costs low, and screw every American who isn’t on the corporate board. It’s why even after Amazon pledged to stop supporting pro-coup lawmakers, their lobbyists kept right on doing it.
AT&T: I once worked in a consulting capacity for the company that would soon metastasize back into AT&T, thanks to our government’s post-Reagan love for corporate monopolies, and would like to put a small word in here to assure you that no matter how much contempt you might have for this Texas-based den of all possible evils, it ain’t enough. AT&T shelled out nearly $1.5 million to the Republican committees working to enable fascism, strip voting rights, and implement theocratic edicts based on whatever Sam Alito’s personal version of God turns out to be on any given day. They’re in Texas because Texas lets them get away with more exploitation and crookery than other states. It’s not an accident.
AT&T is basically the devil’s personal telecommunications service. Its cell services will not give you cancer, but I guarantee you that it’s only because the AT&T board couldn’t figure out how to make it happen. I’m sure they tried real hard on that, though.
Verizon and T-Mobile and Comcast are also big anti-abortion spenders, because the United States telecom monopolies cannot exist without being evil. If they weren’t pro-fascism, or anti-rights, you wouldn’t have crappier internet service than the rest of the developed world for higher prices and it wouldn’t come with the Tucker Carlson White Nationalist Network preinstalled whether you want it or not.
Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola, what the hell are you doing? What taste-testing groups have you been dealing with that sipped one of your flavored sugar syrups and grunted, “It’s okay, but it’d taste better if it tasted like fascism and domestic abuse.”
Food giant Coca-Cola has been one of the biggest wallets for Republicans’ anti-abortion, anti-voting and pro-coup committees, throwing $2.6 million at them while simultaneously promoting themselves as the company of “empowerment” and “equality.” And what do they get out of this deal? What do they get out of curtailing abortion rights?
Is this a “you get to make it illegal for American women to get abortions, but in exchange we want you to stop talking about diabetes” thing? Explain this to me like I’m 12, Coca-Cola. What’s your angle here?
Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo somehow still exists despite being seemingly caught up in every financial scandal that anyone in Wall Street has cooked up since before the Great Recession. How is it possible that this company still remains upright? Why did the federal government not burn this place down and salt the ground rather than prop it up during the financial collapse so that it could go on to defraud its customers again? How the hell does this company still have a half-million dollars to throw toward pro-fascist causes to begin with?
Do not go anywhere near these crooks. If you have an account there, why? After all of the crookedness that Wells Fargo has gotten caught in, you’d be safer keeping your money buried in the backyard. Oh, but you won’t get interest, say anti-money-burying interest groups. Where have you been? When was the last decade your personal savings or checking account gave you more than five bucks in “interest,” after subtracting fees and add-ons and the new “protection” services that your bank added to your bills without your knowledge or consent? What did you spend all that interest on? A pack of gum? The biggest investment needed for burying money in the backyard is a gopher-proof box, which is an absolute necessity, and don’t skimp on that. Banking with Wells Fargo is like putting all your money in Bitcoin, if there was a special Bitcoin clause that said if prices go up some guy named Steve gets to keep all the money and you’ll get a bill for however much it costs to hand-deliver it to him.
Walmart: $1.1 million from the company that perfected a system of exploiting their workers so egregiously that they got government breaks twice. Not content with merely getting the tax breaks that all of America’s richest families and companies get, Walmart engineered their empire so that their frequently impoverished workers would be propped up by federal food stamps programs rather than anything pretending at a living wage. Another company that seems to pride itself on cruelty for cruelty’s sake, there has never been even a slight chance that they wouldn’t support a fascist takeover of America. Walmart is hoping Alito has it in him to reintroduce chattel slavery, and won’t be taking any questions on such trivialities as “supporting a coup” or “ending basic civil rights.”
Who else we got here? Ah, yes, $2.4 million from GM. They’re probably hoping the end of abortion will mean a new supply of fresh abandoned babies they can stuff behind your car’s interior panels to help dampen road noise. Citi is a cipher of a company, a giant behemoth that seems to have no greater purpose than to be the front for a James Bond villain’s private death ray construction efforts. Google long ago gave up on “don’t be evil,” but their half-million in anti-abortion, anti-voting-rights, pro-coup donations suggest that they can’t even handle “don’t overthrow democracy.”
And then there’s CVS and Walgreens, two companies responsible for distributing America’s overpriced and over-marketed drugs. Why are these two companies anti-abortion? What’s with that? What, are they looking to hike up the prices of baby formula now?
RELATED LINKS:
Alito cites racist eugenics theory to support overturn of Roe v. Wade
Texas provides a chilling glimpse into our post-Roe future
From contraception to LGBTQ rights—Alito’s draft opinion on Roe opens the floodgates
If you haven’t already, turn that anger over Roe (and all the other GOP crap) into activism