The book was pulled because is been on Costco's book shelf for 2months. All have a date that they are pulled from the shelf, and retuned to the publisher. Its time was up. Costco Was not the big donor to Obama the CEO (now retired ) was.
That's a neat trick since the book was released only 5 weeks ago.
That shoots your theory to hell.
The former CEO, Sinegal,was one of the co-founders of Costco and attempting to separate the two entities is laughable.
Also covering for Costco's obvious political hackery is feeble.
BTW, I suppose that you have seen that Costco reversed course, now that the film has come out and sales have shot up. The CFO explained that the book was not making money -- and now it is.
I know a lot about Costco's management and the Sinegals. They are decent folks.
Keep in mind that Jim is from California, where goofy politics is not unusual. He supported Obama in the last election and even spoke at the Democratic National Convention. But let's face it, people have different views. That does not mean the Costco is a bad company or that it is heavily involved in liberal politics. It's a business company -- and looking at its business model, it much more favors the upper middle class customers that it aims at.
Don't forget, its board are guys like Charlie Munger (Buffett's closest partner) and Tony James, President and COO of Blackstone Group, the big private equity group. I've met Tony and even worked with him -- or should I say, against him. Tony is another big Obama supporter, as many rich PE guys are, but Steve Schwarzman, his chairman, donated big time to Romney and held fundraisers for him, so they hedged their bets. In that level of big leagues, it is not uncommon to support both sides, since money and influence are at stake.
Again, that has little to do with how Costco, the company, runs. It carries great products at low, low prices, offers far better quality, service and customer support than its competitors and has very loyal, well-paid employees. As a company, it is darned good.
The member fee is a brilliant stroke and for a long time kept out the riffraff. The only reason they started accepting food stamps on a limited, trial basis was because of federal political pressures. You can figure out what that means. Management was even quoted as saying they did not have any customers on food stamps, so why bother. Well, when you can reach the Pentagon warehouse from downtown DC on the Metro, the pressure started. At least that's my speculation.
