Molson Coors Donates Beer-Derived Ethanol to Dems

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  LisaGreim05/21/08 Report as spam
  1

  Molson shouldn't get the credit

  Coors changed its stripes when Pete Coors took over as boss. Joe had been off the board for years by then, and Pete turned it into a much more progressive company than most people give Coors credit for.
  
  Plus, every corporation in Colorado is getting hammered for donations to the DNC effort this summer. An in-kind donation that happens to send a shiny happy sustainability message for a hometown company is a win-win-win.

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  Mike Patton05/22/08 Report as spam
  2

  Regarding Pete Coors' progressivism

  Oh really?
  
  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/7/23/54128/5593
  
  Other self-described progressives might disagree with you.

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  LisaGreim05/22/08 Report as spam
  3

  Coors vs. Coors

  Poor choice of words on my part. Politically progressive, no -- Pete did, after all, run for Senate as a Republican (and got spanked by Ken Salazar). But he's not as scary as Joe was, and what I meant to say is that the Coors of today had stopped being the Coors of old long before the tie-up with Molson.
  
  Coors is a progressive company in the business sense that it's a good corporate citizen and is considered a good place to work (although you can't drink beer on the job anymore). Pete brought in a new regime and better management when he took over as CEO from Bill. They walk their talk on environmental practices.
  
  In the late '90s, my boss at the Rocky Mtn News was having lunch at the Mexico City Lounge, a great little joint in a skeevy neighborhood near downtown Denver. He overheard the waitress tell a nearby table that she couldn't serve beer because the tap was broken. One of the guys at the other table got up and fixed it. It was Pete Coors.

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  DanMitchell05/27/08 Report as spam
  4

  yes...

  You're probably right. But from the historical (and outside-Denver) perspective, Coors donating to the Dems is still mildly amusing. And as you note, while Pete isn't/wasn't rabid like the old man, he is still pretty conservative. I would have been shocked if the independent Coors had given money to the Dem convention. I might say more, but this system, incredibly, doesn't show the post I'm responding to. Yeesh.

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  gnomic@...05/22/08 Report as spam
  5

  RE: Molson Coors Donates Beer-Derived Ethanol to Dems

  HA! Donating "Beer Waste" to the dems? Does this mean that they are stocking the convention with bad beer or that they are hoping the dems drink ethanol - which is poisonous?
  
  Dan - rewriting the press release isn't really journalism.

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  DanMitchell05/27/08 Report as spam
  6

  what?

  Stuff like this is why I might not participate in the online comments here very much. We'll see how it goes, but I'm not sanguine, given what I generally see in comments sections.
  
  If you want to say something is a "rewritten press release," fine. But please back it up with something. How, exactly, is this a "rewritten press release?" Please point to the particulars, the details, of how this is a "rewritten press release." That way, I can address the charge.

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  wmenez@...05/22/08 Report as spam
  7

  More on Coors conservatism

  Further, Coors heir Jonathan Coors is leading the push for a ballot initiative aimed at making Colorado a "right to work" state. Not very progressive. Here's the Denver Post take on it: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9068698

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  LisaGreim05/22/08 Report as spam
  8

  Did you read the story you linked?

  It says right there that Molson Coors management, and CEO Leo Kiely, has officially come out against the right-to-work measure. And it quotes Dan Baum, who wrote a book about Coors, that the beermaker divorced itself from politics in the early 1990s to try to repair the damage to the brand from the family's neocon and anti-union activism.
  
  Molson Coors is pretty OK as corporations go. They treat both blue- and white-collar workers well, by all accounts. What the various cousins, nephews and ex-wives do with their money is not relevant.
  
  The right-to-work bill doesn't stand a chance, by the way. Unions have very little presence in Colorado, and your run-of-the-mill voter doesn't care one way or the other. But the Denver Post's owner, Dean Singleton, is rabidly anti-union, which has colored its editorial stance on the issue.
  
  And I'm a former member of the Denver Newspaper Guild/CWA, not an apologist for right-to-work, if that matters.