Bearing Arms:
Back in February of 2019, footwear company TOMS Shoes cheered the passage of gun control bills in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, and pledged to do all it could to ensure the anti-gun bills became law. Company founder Blake Mycoskie is a big fan of gun control laws, and spent millions of dollars in company funds to help push for the “universal background check” bill passed by the house.
In the wake of the Thousand Oaks, Calif., mass shooting in November, founder Blake Mycoskie pledged $5 million toward organizations committed to gun safety and joined advocates in a countrywide tour that reached its final stop in Washington, D.C.
“We started the End Gun Violence Together initiative to create a safer country for us all and to urge our representatives to finally take action on the gun violence epidemic in this country,” Mycoskie said in a statement. “We join our gun violence prevention partner organizations and over 90 percent of Americans who support this legislation in thanking Congress for reading our postcards, hearing our collective call for change and taking this historic step.”
“Our work is not done,” Mycoskie said. “This legislation is the first step in ending senseless gun violence in our communities. We will continue what we started in November and urge our elected officials in the Senate to pass universal background check legislation into law.”
Well, the Senate still hasn’t passed HR 8, but as it turns out Mycoskie’s work with the shoe company he started may very well be done. According to Reuters, creditors are taking control of the company, which has been losing money and was in danger of being unable to pay a $300-million loan due in 2020. MORE
“Woke” and now bankrupt. You would think progressive corporate elites have figured out by now the consequences – Never. They deserve what they get as a result of continually ruining businesses by using failed, destructive socialist ideologies to create business models.
Way too many of these corporations are run by activists instead of responsible business people. Their shareholders are taking a bath but that won’t slow the lunkheads down any they’ll just move on and leave the ashes behind.
I remember this company. He’s the guy who put consumer virtue signalling on the map. If you bought a pair of Toms shoes, the company would donate a pair of their shoes. I just read the bio of Mykoskie and his company and his business model is called “social entrepreneurship”.
He should have stuck with shoes and coffee (another of his ventures) and left gun-grabbing wokeness alone. Apparently, he did a lot of good with his shoe and other donation ideas, but he’s a limo liberal through and through, with an estimated net worth of over $300,000,000.00. I wonder how those who wear his virtue-signalling shoes and drink his virtue-signalling coffee defend his 1% status and lifestyle.
Venture Capital = Vulture Capital
Basically, venture capitalism is legalized loansharking.
Damn, they really shot themselves in the foot.
Corporate Germany backed Hitler and his gun-grabbing schemes, too.
Corporate Italy backed Mussolini …
Corporations either “go along to get along” or have a decidedly socialist streak.
Seems like few (if any) ever stand up for America and/or Americans.
I think they follow trends set by Academia and the media – take advertising, for instance – can it get more insulting? What imbeciles develop this dreck?
Dude still has his $300 Million (employees be damned) – and THAT’s what’s important to him!
izlamo delenda est …
No “gun law” has ever stopped or even hindered
one criminal.”Gun laws” have helped criminals
make millions$$$ selling guns on the street to
other criminals.
I still don’t get this “gun violence” thing. Do guns just jump up and murder gang members and other criminals? I’ve sat staring at my loaded shotgun for hours just daring it, and it never got violent and shot me. So maybe the problem isn’t guns after all; maybe it’s gang violence, or criminal violence, or dare we say illegal alien violence, or even urban youth violence. Because guns themselves aren’t violent. So in trying to solve the murder problem that plagues certain demographic groups, they’re attacking the symptom, not the problem because that would be very difficult, especially because members of the problems families vote.
@Tim January 3, 2020 at 6:58 am
> Corporations either “go along to get along” or have a decidedly socialist streak.
Of course, that’s wrong.
Why would an organization? Created by the government? Existing as long as it keeps funding the government? According to operating rules? Subject to change without notice? By the government? Having government immunities? Having government powers? Because they’re “private enterprise”? Not (just another) bureaucracy? Of the government? Not oppose the government?
It boggles the mind.
“Shut up and sing”
Gee Wally, why is it some people just can’t take good advice???
“With every TOMS purchase, you stand with us on issues that matter”
They make shoes for about $9.00 in China, Haiti, and Ethiopia and sell them for $100.00, stiffs his creditors and still can’t make money! Even Al Bundy could do a better job than Blake Mycoskie!
Wanna help someone out? Donate a percentage of the profits to a charity AFTER the bills are paid Asshole!! How hard is that?
Mansfield gets teh award for most ignorant comment.
Ugliest shoes ever made.
Of course he had to use company funds instead of his personal funds for his activism. These lefties are hypocrites with no self awareness.
I have always made a point not to buy TOMS or anything that I could tell was associated with that company. I had no interest in supporting their virtue signaling. Besides, the shoes are hideously ugly. I can always spot a leftist or a dummy by those shoes.
Those are small shoes to fill- idiot
…I’ve worked for companies taken over by venture capitalists. The strategy is to “pump and dump”, i.e. load up on management, half-assed implement a bunch of Japanese- sounding programs, pack in customers with overpromises on contracts you have no way to deliver on, all so you can suddenly “look” like a MUCH larger company so they can sell you to the NEXT guy quicky, and be snorting coke with Hunter Biden by the time the contracts blow up on the next guy.
Venture capitalists are in NO way interested in the long-term health of a company, and will actually damage it to save money because they just want to flip it quickly and move on to the next one. High debt loads, ruined corporate reputations, and bankruptcies are the usual result.
In all this, guys like Blake Mycoskie do just fine. You can be sure he’s put quite a pile of money he’s raped from his own company aside for himself, so sheltered and hidden that forensic accountants will still be looking for it in 3020. Also, even if they bounced him, he’d get a super deluxe golden parachute, so you need not worry about Blake Mycoskie, like most liberals, he’s taken care of HIMSELF very well.
Also like most liberals, he could give a shit what happens to his peasants. They existed to serve him, now he can safely spurn the base degrees by which he ascended, and thump his chest about guns while his armed bodyguards no doubt protect him 24/7 from the workers he us busily putting out of a job…
^^^ WOW!
@Lance – it’s not about stopping gun violence, it’s about disarming the populace so we can’t defend ourselves against a fascist govt. takeover. (But you probably already knew that).
If Hillary and her base could get away with it, they wouldn’t think twice about wiping out the 63 million + who voted for President Trump. And they would do NOTHING about illegal invaders violent attacks against US citizens. They would encourage it.
TRF JANUARY 3, 2020 AT 8:31 AM
“^^^ WOW!”
…I don’t know if that is meant to be pejorative or not, but I do know whereof I speak. I’ve worked for companies so small that the owner would sit by the cash register at slow times and play music on the leaves of the plant by the door while his young children studied and played on the rice stacks stored behind my dishwashing station, and companies so large that they spanned continents for 150 years. I worked for KMart 100 years ago before it even merged with Sears, and (unrelatedly) worked at Sears when THEY started to lean over the railings of the Tower in Chicago, making it easy for rapacious CEO pushed them from the observation deck into Hoffman Estates and steep decline, and for a couple of other places since then. I’ve had 2 companies shot out from under me by venture capitalist, and they made a very good try at destroying a third one that was saved only by virtue of Government contracts and the immediate availability of a more sound investor, but that’s a different story for another day.
Capitalism is good, insofar as someone puts up money so they or someone else can start a business they intend to successfully run.
VENTURE capitalism is bad, in that the whole POINT is to make a quick return, damn the torpedoes, get in – get yours – get OUT. it’s like when a wastrel second son was given a temporary holding in Central America that he wasn’t going to live in long or run forever, so he understands that whatever he can pull out of it is his paycheck, and he’ll never see those rubes again. This is why so much of Central America is shitholes as compared to the United States where the colonist leadership was permanent and lived with the people it governed, and it has the same lively results on a corporate level.
So, sorry, I’ve seen the venture capitalism process play out more than once, and beginning to end, it’s a lie. It’s like watching videos of the Enron execs pushing their stock to their employees while they themselves busily divest, it’s just a screw job for the working stiff. They are not my friends, and I am not theirs. Just as people can be good or Democrats, venture capitalists are the Democrats of the investment world.
Unfortunately, many go into ACTUAL politics later, which ALSO explains a lot…
@Supernightshade January 3, 2020 at 9:13 am
> Capitalism is good, insofar as someone puts up money
…
> VENTURE capitalism is bad
Oooh! I bet all the “ladies” “let you” “just put the tip in”!
…Not every capitalist wants to kill the golden goose, @Anon, don’t judge others by yourself…
@Supernightshade January 3, 2020 at 9:39 am
You wound me, sir! Cheapening my vir-too.
…here @Anon, maybe THIS will help. Nice description of how it CAN work at 4:20…
https://youtu.be/mVh75ylAUXY?t=262
“Capitalism” isn’t a philosophy – economic or otherwise.
It is a term coined by Karl Marx to demean anyone doing what he wanted with his own money – a straw man to attack to accentuate the virtues of socialistic tyranny.
The term has been abused so long it’s meaningless.
Confuse, confound, conquer.
This dude is not a “capitalist” as we would like to think of “capitalist” but is a greedy, socialist, petty tyrant who grasps, extorts, and steals all he can – as has done every socialist in the History of the World (sometimes referred to as populist, progressive, leftist, democrat, … whatever).
izlamo delenda est …
appears that hattie has it all figured out!
SNS – No, it is not meant to be pejorative. There is a company out there with that name who is doing exactly what you describe!
Get “woke,” go BROKE! 😆 😆 😆
Their shoes were butt ugly too. Maybe they should have spent more time designing than pandering and trying to influence things outside their business.
We broke em.
Good work, everybody!
Bravo Tim.
There have been practically no capitalists (of magnitude) for a century. Because a capitalist by definition, puts up his own capital.
Today’s ‘private equity’ even used OPM, it’s just from limited pools.
Wish I was reading this about Nike, Or Dick’s.