Would you be interested to know who in the Wal-Mart corporation has contributed more than $1 million to Republican causes?
Or how about the fact that Whole Foods has a history of treating its workers like garbage and using illegal tactics to break unions?
Now, you can check a myriad of different companies on performance, fairness and political contributions through an innovative and useful Web site called BuyBlue.org.
More importantly, the Web site promotes companies that have fair and earth-friendly principles. According to the BuyBlue mission statement, the Web site "supports businesses that share our progressive views and ideals. We believe in a triple bottom line: People, planet and profit."
The statement goes on to say that "BuyBlue.org focuses sharply on businesses that violate the essential values of a sustainable, fair and profitable society through their policies and the politicians they support."
This is information you won't find through normal channels - not without doing a lot of digging. Web sites like this are fantastically useful, especially for those of us who are concerned about what agendas the mega-maxi-corps have for our millions of dollars.
There are still a few humans on this planet who want to support environmental causes, and maybe - just maybe - prevent us from wiping our delicate little species off this planet. But that's somewhat difficult to do if your superstore of choice doesn't give a damn about where it's dumping its garbage.
BuyBlue uses a five-category ratings system to review a company.
It gives ratings on labor and human rights, environment, corporate and social responsibility, employment equality and industry practices.
Each category is listed as either blue or red - blue indicating the company has progressive practices in the area and red indicating detrimental or regressive practices.
Each category rating is supported by news articles, linked from the site, detailing the cases or events that resulted in the rating. The Web site also gives all known contributions to political entities, whether democrats or republicans are favored and how much was donated by whom.
These ratings and articles aren't one-sided, either. BuyBlue seems unconcerned with who it rates, as long as the ratings are accurate and supported by articles.
For instance, e-Bay is rated as blue in labor and human rights, and this information is supported by three separate articles on how well e-Bay treats its employees. These articles are, for the most part, fantastically boring, but they support the rating and provide solid evidence to back up the claims made by the Web site.
Beyond this, BuyBlue provides a summary of the company and its purpose, gives a financial overview of contributions - as well as which individuals made them - and provides a section for individuals to take action against companies with unfair or harmful practices.
If this information interests you, I strongly suggest you investigate this Web site as soon as possible.
In this era of government-controlled information, unchecked persecution and government-supported torture, our leaders won't leave a Web site this candid and informative alone for long.
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