Speaking out against your government? You make it sound like a crime!

If instead this were an oil company talking about wanting to open up the Alaskan wilderness for drilling you wouldn't blink an eye. But if a company takes a progressive stand that calls on the government to do better -- to be more resposive to its people -- why all of a sudden that's overtly political.

Get a grip.

This is called freedom of speech. Other CEO’s do this all of the time; the corporate drumbeat leading up to the Iraq War is one of the reasons we ended up in this fiasco in the Middle East. I think it is also part of Ben & Jerry’s image to be socially responsible and progressive. Critiquing the fact that the U.S. spends more on defense than any other country in the world, and in fact spends more than the next 20 countries combined (and this includes China and Russia, as well as France, Britain, etc.), instead of increasing the well being of Americans, is definitely in line with progressive beliefs.

At least they had the courage to speak out directly and not hide behind some public relations effort whose goal was to "soft sell" a point of view, which governments and big business do all of the time. Our responsibility to each other, the planet, our children and the future of mankind doesn't begin or end with us an individuals ... but includes all aspects of our lives as people. That can be delivered via a business, local sports league, church involvement ... the list is endless. I am amazed that this has to be discussed at all, especially by this magazine.

Do we ask CEOs to stay away from commenting on governmental fiscal/economic policy? That happens every day on Wall Street, etc. I fail to see the difference.

Hmm... not sure if these questions you raise are intended to be serious or not Kevin. Are you suggesting that business leaders should stay quiet in lieu of speaking about how the government uses tax revenues?

Are you suggesting that business leaders have no place in that discussion? Last time I checked, if business leaders don't talk about that subject, no one that is of any consequnce will.

You can do a better job than throwing out that worthless hailmary just to get some worthless response fodder... mine included.

How about you say something worthy...or just stop typing. We dont want anyone to get the wrong idea that this is the new state of intelligence.

Ben has been doing this for at least the past decade, so it really can't be called the "new state" of anything.

Leading up to and throughout the 2000 election, Ben made numerous appearances doing his "famous" Oreo cookie budget presentation, through which he demonstrated the disparities between the military budget and just about everything else. He eventually came out vocally as a Nader supporter that year and in 2004 he came out as a Kerry supporters -- although he disagreed with his views on the war.

Ben (less so Jerry) has made his views on issues clear. It's not about speaking out against the government for the sake of speaking out against the government. In order to change the issues that Ben cares about, he recognizes that the government will need to change policy. In other words, it's not enough to say you're AGAINST global warming, you need to say you are FOR developing policies that will help to reverse or diminish the destruction that we have caused through our irresponsible practices. And if this government isn't going to do it, you need to say that you want another government that will.

I live in the UK so this is really none of my business, but something that no-one has queried is whether the '50% of the budget goes to the Pentagon' is correct.

I thought that it was a pretty amazing proportion, so had a quick look on the net and discovered that your total budget for 2007 is $2.4trn of which Defence gets $481bn or about 18% as opposed to 21% for Social Security and 24% for Medicare + Medicaid.

So it seems that Ben is good at making ice cream, but not so good at maths.

Re: Mark Wheeler

I didn't see the spot, but I think he was probably referring to the discretionary spending budget, which excludes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt (since these expenses are "entitlements" or interest payments, fixed by law, and generally not subject to the same discretion as other spending programs).

So if Social Security+Medicare+Medicaid get (21+24)% x $2.4trn = $1.08trn, and the national debt interest is $405bn, then the total discretionary budget is only $915bn, of which $481bn (52.56%) goes to defense.

It is the discretionary budget. Sorry for the confusion.

I wasn't saying it was wrong for companies to deal with government -- lobbying happens everyday. And I believe speaking against the government is not wrong.

I am wondering if this is what social capitalism has become. Companies, rather than doing something to address a social problem, speak-out and work against the government and what they perceive as the negative actions or short-comings of the government.

Um, if the "social problem" is federal discretionary spending, what can Ben & Jerry do to "address" the problem other than to criticize the government's actions and encourage the election of people who will have the power to change it?

In addition, with respect to social problems generally, *why* should companies set out to solve "social problems" when a governmental framework exists to deal with those specific issues? Are you suggesting some "thousand points of light" thing? Been there, done that, didn't really work.

Finally, why do you think it's "business as usual" for companies to take overtly self-serving public stances on certain issues (through lobbying or otherwise) but odd/alarming/disturbing for a company to take a more altruistic political stance?