Buy Blue (states), shop at Costco

[hoosier]

Backing Blue With Green?
A pair of new sites, BuyBlue.org and ChoosetheBlue.com, encourage Democrats to base their consumer decisions on companies' political activity. Thus, according to BuyBlue, you should shop at Costco, which gave 98% of its $208,000 in political donations to Democrats, rather than Wal-Mart, which gave 80% of its $2 million plus to Republicans (though this still means it gave about twice as much to Dems as Costco did).

ChoosetheBlue.com thinks this could make a big difference: "If each American who voted 'Blue' in 2004 spends $100 in 2005 on products of a corporation that by reason of its employees' or connected political action committees' political contributions supported 'Blue' over 'Red,' $5 billion in revenues would be shifted to 'Blue' supporting corporations!" Well, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, you'd be able to buy them in bulk at Wal-Mart.

These efforts seem unlikely to have much effect, for several reasons. Very few people care so much about politics that they give it a higher priority than things like convenience, value and quality when deciding where to shop or what to buy. Even most Democrats would probably shop at Wal-Mart if, say, going to Costco entailed driving an extra 10 miles (though at least those who do the latter would be contributing to global warming).

Besides, two can play at this game. Republicans who want to boycott gripes can avoid blue companies and favor red ones--and, as an added bonus, the folks at these liberal sites have already done the research for them. If members of both parties do this, the Republicans have to win, for there are more red voters than blue ones, and they have more economic power, since the Dems represent the poor and downtrodden while the GOP is the party of the wealthiest 51%.

Still, it's pleasing to see that even some liberals seem dimly aware that economic freedom and political freedom are of a piece.

- from Opinion Journal