Starbucks on Shaky Grounds With Planned Parenthood
Your tax dollars aren’t the only thing supporting Planned Parenthood — proceeds from your daily coffee may be too!
Your tax dollars aren’t the only thing supporting Planned Parenthood — proceeds from your daily coffee may be too! By now, Starbucks’s grande agenda on social issues isn’t a surprise to anyone, except maybe its CEO. In an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Kevin Johnson seemed completely oblivious to Starbucks’s ongoing relationship with the abortion giant through its matching gift program.
For Johnson, it’s been a rocky few months as the head of one of America’s biggest brands. After an embarrassing scandal in Philadelphia, when a local employee had two African-Americans arrested for sitting in their shop, the damage control was in full swing. Starbucks announced it was closing its 8,000 stores to have a “racial-bias education day” for its army of employees. But, our friend Alveda King says the company will have to do a lot more than that to end Starbucks’s bigotry. In an op-ed that’s gone viral, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. insists racism has been part of the company’s corporate identity long before the PR nightmare in April. She writes:
“Through its corporate donations, Starbucks contributes one of the most racist organizations in our nation’s history. Planned Parenthood, the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S., performs more than 300,000 terminations each year. Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion facilities, and almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. About 13 percent of American women are black, but they have more than 35 percent of the abortions.”
Of course, conservatives have known about Starbucks’s ultra-liberal ties dating back to 2012, when then-CEO Howard Schultz told shareholders that redefining marriage really is “core to the Starbucks brand.” The company went on to sign a string of legal briefs for same-sex marriage, arguing at one point that customers who didn’t like it could take their business elsewhere. Some did. Others broke their Starbucks habit two years ago when 2nd Vote released a list of more than three dozen companies that have been contributing to Planned Parenthood — either directly or through an employee matching gift program. Apart from the more than half-billion-dollar haul from U.S. taxpayers, the group was raking in some hefty financial support from household names like Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, Nike, Pepsi, Tostitos, and more.
After intense public pressure, at least five of those brands dropped their partnership: AT&T, Coca-Cola, Ford, Macy’s, and Xerox. Starbucks, one of the most politically liberal companies on the market, refused — a fact obviously lost on CEO Kevin Johnson. Three times he denied any knowledge of the program in his interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo.
Bartiromo: “I don’t know if you saw [Alveda King’s] op-ed in the Washington Examiner. And she said, ‘If Starbucks wants to end racism it will stop funding Planned Parenthood.’ Are you going to stop funding Planned Parenthood?”
Johnson: “Well, I am not aware that we … fund Planned Parenthood. So, I haven’t read the op-ed and I can’t comment on that.”
Bartiromo: “OK.”
Johnson: “But, I am not aware that we do that.”
Bartiromo: “Well, Alveda King says [so]…
Johnson: "Well, I am not aware of it.”
A few hours later, Starbucks’ corporate office released a statement admitting that there was, in fact, a link. “Starbucks is listed as a donor of an organization because the Starbucks ‘Partner Match’ program provides matched cash awards for contributions made by Starbucks partners (employees). Every fiscal year, funds are available to each partner to request in support of personal financial donations or individual community service efforts.”
Whether Johnson knew or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is what he does with the information now. Planned Parenthood is an organization under federal investigation by the FBI. If Starbucks wants to continue lining the organization’s pockets after the allegations that it traffics in baby body parts, that’s its choice. But know this: it won’t take long for Starbucks to lose bucks. Lining the pockets of the radical Left isn’t good for business. Just ask the NFL, ESPN, Target, Lands End, Kellogg’s, J.C. Penney, and others.
If Starbucks cares about racial bias, prove it. “Stop funding Planned Parenthood’s house of horrors,” Alveda insists. “[I]f you’re really serious about eliminating racism, you will acknowledge that black people, and indeed all human beings, are of one blood and one human race — born and unborn. Racism and abortion are crimes against humanity.” Give Kevin Johnson and team a helpful push. Call (800) 782-7282, email, or tweet them @Starbucks and ask them to stop sweetening the pot for America’s biggest abortion business.
Originally published here.
Planned Parenthood’s War on (Underage) Women
Apparently, Planned Parenthood is so desperate for business that it’ll cover up statutory rape to get it. A new Live Action report exposes another side of the group’s grisly pattern — not only ignoring sexual abuse but exploiting it to get more customers.
“Aiding Abusers: Planned Parenthood’s Cover-up of Child Sexual Abuse” details decades of the organization’s neglect and opportunism in dealing with victims — including preteens. Despite Planned Parenthood’s public rhetoric as well as laws requiring it to report suspected abuse, its failure to report has been deliberate and widespread, said Live Action President Lila Rose. Time and again, rather than reporting abuse to authorities, Planned Parenthood has repeatedly looked the other way and performed abortions on victims as young as 12 years old. These girls deserved advocacy but instead Planned Parenthood staff ignored their abuse and returned them to the waiting arms of their abusers.
The timing of the document, which helps build the president’s case for defunding the group, couldn’t be better. Planned Parenthood is required by law to report cases of sexual assault — and that, along with the FBI’s criminal investigation into baby organ trafficking, ought to build a case that Congress can no longer ignore.
At most clinics, Lila explains, there’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the sexual abuse of children. Planned Parenthood has proven that its priority is selling abortions, not caring for the most vulnerable of girls, Lila argues. Planned Parenthood’s culture of cover-up must end, the cycle of abuse of innocent children must end, and Planned Parenthood’s half a billion dollars in annual federal funding must end. Taxpayers cannot be forced to subsidize these abuses of children.
Several years ago, when Live Action exposed Planned Parenthood for covering up statutory rape in eight separate clinics, liberals said it was an anomaly. Then, there were the seven tapes of Planned Parenthood aiding sex traffickers and enabling pimps. Abortion activists insisted they were isolated incidents. But when David Daleiden blew the lid off of the group’s black market of baby body parts, suddenly people started seeing Planned Parenthood for the greedy opportunist it is. Because of flagrant violations like these, the proposed Title X rule tightening on reporting abuse is absolutely necessary, Lila points out. So is defunding the group altogether. Let’s hope Live Action’s testimonies and FRC’s analysis, “The Real Planned Parenthood: Leading the Culture of Death,” shows Americans where Planned Parenthood’s real priorities lie.
Originally published here.
Home Is Where the Classroom Is…
There’s a lot to dislike about many public schools — and right now, student safety is at the top of the list. “After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida,” a new Washington Times feature explains, “the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven’t stopped yet.”
Like so many state organizations, the Texas organization was used to a certain number of inquiries about homeschooling. President Tim Lambert says they usually averaged about 600 calls a month — a number he watched double over the past several weeks. “When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails exploded.” And they’re not alone.
“I think what happens with these school shootings is they’re the straws that broke the camel’s back,” Christopher Chin, the president of Homeschool Louisiana, told the Times. “I don’t think it’s the major decision-maker, but it’s in the back of parents’ minds.” In general, he thinks, the violence, bullying, and dangerous environment is tipping the decision for families who were already sick of the lack of quality instruction and liberal indoctrination.
More families are angry about what their kids are learning, and they’re pulling their kids out of public school to prove it. Over the last four years, reporters have seemed surprised by the mass exodus of children from traditional education settings. The homeschooling movement has ballooned from 1.5 million to estimates of more than two million now. Since most states aren’t required to count the number of homeschooling families, it’s still a guessing game. But there’s one thing everyone agrees on: More parents are making the leap — and fast.
Based on the crackdown on faith, the out-of-control sex ed, and genderless chaos, who can blame them? “Most parents homeschool for more than one reason,” Brian Ray points out at the National Home Education Research Institute. When he asks families, he hears these issues over and over again: “a desire to provide religious instruction or different values than those offered in public schools; dissatisfaction with the academic curriculum, and worries about the school environment.”
In some states, like North Carolina, the number of kids in home schools is actually growing faster than private school enrollment. At least at home, parents can take back the control that schools are stealing from them. Of course, not everyone is happy about the shift — least of all Big Government bureaucrats, who are worried they’re losing their grip on students. Or local school districts, who lose a significant chunk of funding with each departing student. But what are moms and dads to do when the place they send their kids to learn is punishing their religion, denying them privacy, and forcing them to sit through sex ed curriculums so pornographic you couldn’t read it on the evening news?
When President Obama forced schools to open their bathrooms and locker rooms to kids of both genders, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick warned that it would “be the end of public education, if this prevails. People will pull their kids out, homeschooling will explode, and private schools will increase.” Looking back, Patrick was prophetic.
But, as usual, as the number of homeschoolers grow, so do the legislative threats. States like California would like nothing better than to clamp down on the families who want to take full responsibility for their children’s education. Parents, state legislators and groups like the Homeschool Legal Defense Association need to be on their toes, as liberals try to fight back with tighter restrictions and more regulations on homeschoolers. In the meantime, maybe more school districts will get the message: If they stop being hostile to most Americans’ values, fewer parents would be running for the exits.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
