Whole Foods Founder Says He Regrets Comparing Obamacare To “Fascism”

Posted by | January 17, 2013 09:23 | Filed under: Top Stories


UPDATED: Looks like John Mackey realizes he was a total bonehead:

Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey says he regrets comparing Obamacare to “fascism,” but remains critical of the president’s health care reform law.

Mackey compared Obamacare to “fascism” in a recent interview with NPR, saying that the government controls “the means of production” in health care. The comments sparked an outcry among Whole Foods shoppers, many of whom emailed The Huffington Post to say they plan to boycott the supermarket chain.

“I regret using that word now because it’s got so much baggage attached to it,” Mackey told HuffPost Live on Thursday. “Of course, I was just using the standard dictionary definition.”

Of course, John!

The back story: having once called it “socialism,” Mackey stepped up the crazy earlier this week:

“Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it — and that’s what’s happening with our health care programs and these reforms.”

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Copyright 2013 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.