15 Feb 2015 TV Host Amato Takes Up National Center Cause, to Announce Campaign Against Costco Tuesday Night

After his interview with the National Center’s Justin Danhof, nationally-seen television talk show host Rick Amato wants his viewers to help him take on retail giant Costco for actively fighting against the political freedoms of its employees.  Watch on this coming Tuesday to see Amato when he brings Justin back on his programs and announces what he wants his viewers to do.

Will it be a boycott?  Will it be a mass cancellation of existing membership?  Tune in to find out on 2/17/15 at 10:00PM eastern to find out and when he has Justin on again.  The “Rick Amato Show” can be seen on the One America News Network.  OANN is found on Verizon FiOS channel 116, AT&T U-Verse channel 208 and CenturyLink Prism channel 209 as well as many local cable providers.

Justin, the director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project, was on Amato’s 2/11/15 edition to discuss the FEP’s many shareholder proposals to protect private sector employees nationwide from being able to be fired at will for their political beliefs.  While political speech of private sector employees is protected in some states, the National Center has been seeking changes in corporate employee policies so, as Justin explained, “that no supervisor can come to you and say, ‘I don’t agree with your politics – you’re out of here.”

Justin further explained on the program:

A lot of folks just instinctively think, “Wait a minute, don’t I have First Amendment protections?  You’ve got to remind folks, of course, that the First Amendment protects you against the government.  It doesn’t protect you against private action.  And your employer, in this situation, is the private actor.

While many companies already accepted the National Center proposal and either amended or are in the process of amending their codes of conduct, the retail giant Costco fought the National Center to keep the proposal off the agenda at their recent shareholder meeting and were allowed to do so by the Obama Administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission.  Justin noted:

So the shareholders didn’t even get to vote at Costco on our proposal.  So I flew out to Washington State and I asked the chairman of the board, Jeffrey Brotman, why in the world would Costco fight to retain the right to fire its employees for their private political actions.

The answer I got was similar to something you’d hear from the Obama Administration.  It was essentially: We know better.  [Costco leaders] don’t want the shareholders, even though we’re a publicly-held company, to have any say in this matter whatsoever.  So Costco, as it stands, has retained the right to fire its employees for their private political actions.

And this should be very concerning for all Costco employees – particularly because the leadership of Costco, including the chairman, Jeffrey Brotman, is a well-known progressive.  The former CEO, you may recall, Jim Sinegal, spoke at the 2012 Democrat National Convention, where he echoed President Obama’s statements on “you didn’t build that.”  It came right out of the Democrat Party playbook.  And, so, if you a conservative worker at Costco, you have some cause for concern.

Sharron Angle, the 2010 candidate challenging incumbent senator Harry Reid (D-NV), who was in the studio with Amato, said she was not surprised by what Justin explained.  She said:

What happens with the law is this: If it isn’t against the law, people do it until it pushes somebody to do just what Justin has done.

This can’t be something you can do with impunity.  You have to go ahead and give people their civil rights.  And this is right up there with freedom of religion.

Angle and Amato immediately suggested making a plea to the millions of viewers of the network to consider making an economic decision to not do business with Costco because it will not protect all of its employees from potential political retribution for their beliefs.  In teasing what might be in store on the 17th, Amato said during this interview segment that he would like “to make life a little bit uncomfortable for the management at Costco for not being sensitive to the needs of their employees.  Let’s put it this way, sensitive it a nice word – for being fascist toward the needs of their employees.”