From: binkley@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jon Binkley)
Subject: Coors and Politics (Re: Kosher beer?)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: 11 Jan 93 15:40:11 GMT


Joe Coors is a major stock holder in the eponymous beer company
but is no longer involved in its day to day operation.  He is,
by no exaggeration, a right wing zealot.  Among his many publicized
affiliations was one to that group of private citizens funding
the Contras a few years back.  

None of the company's money goes directly into any of Joe's ultra-
right groups.  Obviously, when the company profits, Joe (just as
all its many shareholders do) profits as well, and some of his money
goes to these groups.  I think if you were to examine the major
stockholders of most major corporations in the US as closely as
Joe Coors has been examined, you would find many who are just
as unsavory.  The only difference is that Joe is vocal about it.
This is his right, as is what he chooses to spend his own money on.
For this reason, I do not go out of my way to boycott Coors beer.
Of course, I don't drink the crap very often, but that has to do
with quality, not politics.

William Coors runs the place.  He is politically moderate, and
actually gets along quite well with our Democrat governor.

Organized labor was boycotting the company for a long time, because
in a strike during the '70s they hired all non-union workers.  They
have since allowed unions back in, but the employees have overwhelmingly
rejected them.  Anyway, since the company gave them the option, the
Brewers Union is no longer officially boycotting them.

During the 60's and early 70's local Black and Latino groups
charged the company with racist hiring practices.  These have
since been corrected, to the point where they got an award from
a Latino group for their progressive hiring policies.

I have never heard Coors charged with antisemitism.  I've never
even heard that any of Joe's bizarre groups are blatently antisemitic.

I have two major gripes with Coors.  First, they do some pretty
questionable (in my opinion) stuff to their employees (polygraphs,
background checks, urine tests etc.). Second, their environmental
record is abysmal; they "accidently" release various pollutants
you wouldn't think a brewery needed to use into the neighboring
creek with alarming regularity.  Unfortunately, they are hardly
unique among major American corporations in either of these regards.
If you're going to start boycotting for this kind of stuff, you might
as well go live in a cave.

Sorry to clutter the group with this junk, but whenever the subject
of Coors and politics comes up, we are inevitibly deluged with
all kinds of out-dated disinformation.

You can, of course, bypass the need to boycott Coors merely by limiting
your consumption to good beer.

Jon Binkley

PS: with regards to being Kosher:

The only "unclean" (in the Leviticus sense) products ever added to
beer are gelitine (cow hooves) or isenglass (fish guts), both added
to clarify the beer.  Most micro-brewed beers, and all imports from
Germany still following Rheinheitsgebot, never use these products,
and therefore should be "clean." Coors may be the only brewery to
actually get rabbis to lable them "Kosher."


Newsgroups: alt.beer