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Angie’s List’s Sanctimony Is a Cover for Frustrated Cronyism

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When the on-line company Angie’s List backed out of a deal to expand its headquarters in Indianapolis, company executives were quick to claim that it was their moral duty not to expand in a state that so intolerantly decided to protect the rights of people of faith to conduct their lives in accordance with their faith.

Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle said his firm will pull out of a pending deal with the state and city to expand its headquarters in Indianapolis because of his disagreement with the state’s passage of the “religious freedom” law.

“We’re going to be very vocal on this issue and I don’t feel we can do that if we are taking state money,” Oesterle said Saturday in an interview with The Indianapolis Star. “We don’t want to be bound by commitments in that deal given the current atmosphere in the state (government).”

And for that, the trained seals of the left applauded them for showing… what do they call it? Good corporate citizenship? Moral leadership?

But the truth is, the city and state had already begun questioning the millions of dollars in subsidies Angie’s List was demanding. And the city council was preparing to vote down the subsidies Angie’s List had demanded. And the real reason Angie’s List wanted to suspend the project had nothing to do with protecting gay people from hurt feelings, and everything to do with not getting their corporate expansion fully subsidized by the taxpayers of Indiana.

Perhaps the most glaring is the fact that in its 20-year history, Angie’s List has never turned a profit. In addition, the company’s stock has plummeted from its initial public offering of $15.80 to this week’s $5.14 per share.

While Angie’s List tempts and teases with the promise of expansion, including adding 1,000 new jobs and relocating 800 of its current employees; we can’t forget the company’s massive layoff just last year.

…

The proposal currently states the city would designate $2 million on streets and other infrastructure work with the remaining $16.3 million going toward building a garage for employees and relocating an Indianapolis Public Schools’ warehouse from the former Ford assembly plant. But the city wouldn’t be alone in its giving. The state would provide $6.5 million in tax credits and $500,000 in training grants.

Thanks, John in Indy, for pretty much writing the story.

Comments

  1. I didn’t know that Angie’s list had tax payer funds. Shameful. I looked at the site once long ago for a one time thing and I was asked to pay a yearly fee before I could look anything up. For a one deal? No thanks. Then I’ve seen Angie’s list bashing republicans, conservatives, Christians, well anyone that has a different opinion than they or she does. Best way to grow customers? Lately I’ve seen constant commercials for Angie’s list, isn’t commercial time expensive? Angie’s list even promoted a boycott of that little pizza shop. Shame on you.

    I use home adivsor, no fee, same reviews. I found an excellent chimney cleaning service on home advisors that I couldn’t be happier with and it didn’t cost me a fee just to find them.

    Now I sound like a commercial, sorry don’t mean that.

  2. This helps solve my puzzlement. There is no business advantage for a CEO to jump into the Religious Freedom Law kerfuffle, particularly when heading a company that is in the business of rating service providers.

    The primary “look for the money” rule applies here in bold capital letters. Look at the numbers Bill Oesterie (CEO) was putting at risk. So it is clear that Oesterie was not taking a principled stand of any sort, he was trying to get his leg out of the quicksand.

    I read a report by Jeff Swiatek of the IndyStar in which Swiatek quoted Oesterie:

    “Employers in most of the state of Indiana can fire a person simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning. That’s just not right and that’s the real issue here. Our employees deserve to live, work and travel with open accommodations in any part of the state.”

    This hysterical claim was way over the top for a legitimate CEO. He wails that under the Indiana Religious Freedom Law his LGBT employees are in peril of not being able to “live, work and travel with open accommodations in any part of the state” of Indiana.

    A basic, reasonable code of business ethics would never permit such deceitful hysteria. Charges of the nature Oesterie unleashed undermine the foundational credibility of any person or corporation.

    One form of lying is given a less pejorative charge; it is called deceit. St. Augustine found “subtilissime” (subtleness) in deceiving because even telling a truth out of context can be a form of deception. So, we must judge the probable deceit by the three ‘Veritastis Splendor’ of morality: (1) intention, (2) moral object, (3) circumstances.

    Does the LGBT community in Indiana have reason to fear for their right to “live, work and travel with open accommodations in any part of the state” of Indiana without the influence of the Indiana Religious Freedom Law? If yes, then make the case using facts, figures and citations. How, specifically, would the Indiana Religious Freedom Law create the danger?

    So, now we learn that the Indiana LGBT community was used as a dodge for a CEO who is up to his ass in alligators and there is nothing about his troubles which is tied in any way, shape or form to the Indiana LGBT community.

    The Indiana LGBT community has been demagogued by a rank amateur who hopes his pious, righteousness concern will save his bacon.

  3. None of anyone of the “we’ll boycott” have ever read the law im sure, and none have any understanding that it wouldn’t even be needed if not for their own actions. None im sure realize that it protects more than a pizza shop that won’t cater a wedding, and I’m sure none have heard of soap. It’s not a right to blanketly deny service in a public business.

    I don’t feel sorry for the CEO of Angie’s list and I don’t feel sorry for the LGBT community for being used. I agree They for the most part are, but they should speak up against it, a few try but the rest remain silent. Progress is being wiped away by that silence. Yesterday’s We just want to live like everyone else and be free with our own opinion is being buried and replaced with, if you have the nerve to disagree and have your own opinion we’ll shut you down. This is the same civil rights issue that was already fought.

    If these people want to live somewhere that different oppions aren’t alowed, I suggest Cuba or Iran and God bless.

  5. This and that governor saying boycott is disgusting. Because what happened to the UNITED states. Not so much unity with states there.

    Beyond that, why should tax payers be paying for any travel, let alone non essential travel. It’s blue states, highest taxed, being all big and bad.

    I’m so sure Indiana will crumble without their tax payer business.

  6. It’s the modern update of the old Aesop fable about the fox and the grapes: instead of grousing that the grapes are probably sour, the fox shouts, “Those grapes are homophobic! I don’t want them anyways!”

  7. THANK YOU V the K for putting this issue out there. Angie’s Lists hypocrisy needs to be exposed, and I hope all these other CO’s who jumped on the dump Indiana bus will think twice before falling for such buffoonery.

  8. St. Augustine found “subtilissime” (subtleness)

    I thought that “subtilissime” in medieval theology meant being able to walk through walls, like the Flash.

    Aha, here’s a reference — although the quote is from Aquinas, obviously much later than Augustine. In summary, the “resurrected body” was speculated to have the following properties:

    Impassibility: Invulnerable to physical injury.
    Subtlety: Able to walk pass through closed doors or solid walls.
    Agility: Instantaneous travel — i.e., teleportation.
    Clarity: Outward physical body is as beautiful as the inward soul.

    (I only know this because James Joyce made a quip about it and someone far more knowledgeable about the obscure references in Finnegans Wake explained it to me — none of this is still taught to Catholic kids today as part of standard doctrine!)

  10. Mr. McGee, thanks for the education. I was not aware that Joyce had used it.

    As you know, St. Augustine was schooled in Latin and we are left with translating his works within the framework of the common understanding and usage of the language during his time of writing.

    Thankfully, Aquinas had the foundation of scholasticism, the formal university and a long trail of theological thought to sort through and organize. I love Aquinas for his brilliant mind and his ability to sort through the maze of developing philosophy and bring order and reason to the teachings of the church.

    St. Augustine, however, is singular in being the rock upon which much of Western civilization is founded. He missed the mark on some important stuff that had to be sorted out by great minds a thousand years later, but he is the light that brought civilization through to the doorstep of the Dark Ages when Latin literature and contemporary written history went into deep remission. No longer did the the world seem to “follow” St. Augustine’s Six Ages of the World. A new, cultural, world was beginning to bud and people (Petrarch’s words) began to envision a “better age.” The Renaissance and Reformation followed as a natural course of examining, studying and reassessing.

    Those who throw St. Augustine away because of his errors, blind themselves to his bedrock importance in Western philosophy.