Shop At Target And Beat The Soros Backed Boycott

Extortion, by any other name, is extortion. Target did not give in, but how many other businesses have pulled back their contributions to political candidates because of this threat? Labor unions, the biggest contributors to the Democrats, are immune to these far left attacks. These threats are intimidating and should be illegal.

Excerpt: Swooping in like carrion-sniffing vultures, folks associated with "gay rights" tried but failed to shake down Target Corp., the nation's second largest retailer, amid live threats -- now carried out -- of a nationwide boycott. This is all based on legal political contributions the company gave to a pro-business group in its home state (and mine), Minnesota.

A "human rights group" tried to pressure the company to hand over at least $150,000 for its cardinal sin of giving that amount to a business-favoring group. By any other name, it amounted to a variation of that old protection racket: You pay us, you're home free.

Thanks to Target's resoluteness, the gambit failed. Meanwhile, ultra-liberal billionaire George Soros-backed MoveOn, as Left as it gets, made its move on the 1,700-plus Target stores in 49 states.

Boycott is the name of its tawdry game. To date, the MoveOn effort has failed, even touted by patently false advertising. Same-store Target sales are up. There is simply no stopping the back-to-school shopping crowds. Target earnings, even in an economic slump, continue strong in the latest quarter, with no signs of slowing.

MoveOn's TV spot in support of its boycott brazenly appropriates Target's trademarked red bullseye logo and depicts a stick man loading an American flag, of all things, into a shopping cart. A doomsday voice-over at the end warns, "... Target and other companies are trying to buy elections."

Not true. Not even close. Closer to reality, if that matters to anyone at MoveOn, are efforts of trade and teachers' unions, spending millions upon millions to influence politics, if not to "buy elections." But then, the loonier elements of the Left never did let truth interfere with their attacks. Liberal lies will do, just as any port in a storm.

Target did not knuckle under to the bold attempt to extract money from its corporate coffers under threat of a nationwide boycott. In another context, what "gay rights" activists did in Minnesota would be, yes, criminal and mobster-like. Also counterproductive for them.

"Protection rackets" might fall under the public radar screens, and certainly those of liberal see-no-evil news media. But that does not make the demands to muzzle a company, or extract money from it, any less repugnant morally, if not legally.

Now faced with a boycott not taking root -- fizzling, in fact -- the ethical Minnesota-based retailer has endured a shot across its bow designed, likely, to silence other corporations' giving to pro-business candidates of any stripe. In this, MoveOn might be successful. (Will Walmart be their next object of hate? Or Sears?)


Read the American Thinker article here.