Powells is "blue."
Amazon is "red" and contributes to whacked-out fundie causes.
James Dobson's War on America
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-157392122x-0Powell's Books, Inc.
Rating: Dark Blue - 100 %
BuyBlue.org's Position:
Powell's Books currently has a 100% BuyBlue rating due to political contributions for the 2003-2004 election cycle. Powell's President and Founder Michael Powell contributed a sizeable amount of money to John Kerry and local Oregon politicians during the last election cycle. Furthermore, Powell is a long time community activist and progressive. Powell's biography is worth a read.
Powell's Books has an online presence in addition to their brick and mortar stores, so they would make a good alternative if you prefer to buy independent and local from a very strong blue company.
More:
http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=42Amazon.com, Inc.
Rating: Light Red - 41 %
BuyBlue.org's Position:
Amazon.com currently has a 41% BuyBlue rating due to political contributions for the 2003-2004 election cycle. The Amazon.com executives made few contributions to politicians during the 2003-2004 election cycle, but they donated significant money to Amazon's PAC. All political contributions to individual politicians were made to local Washington state politicians. Amazon's PAC sponsored politicians that act counter to the interests of their customers.
This PAC
supported politicians that amongst other things supported "safeguards" regulating TV news content, opposed the "freedom to read" amendment allowing federal funds to be used to demand patron records from bookstores and libraries, and sponsored a bill to legalize "censorship software" for stripping "offensive content" out of films.More:
http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=34December 13, 2004
Say it ain't so Jeff
I’m sure many of you will be surprised to see Amazon hit our naughty list for donating 61% of their PAC money to Republicans in this past election cycle. It seems counterintuitive for a company patronized by so many progressives to turn around and donate their money to causes antithetical to their constituents’ values. There are people out there who say that Amazon has every right to donate their hard earned money as they please after all isn’t this kind of patronage just the grease that keeps the wheels of capitalism in motion? I actually tend to agree with Fritz Hollings when he says: The cancer on the body politic is money. Money, Money Money. He said on 60 minutes last night that he had to raise $30k per week just to fund his next campaign! This is how our elected representatives spend the majority of their time. We wonder why our politicians are so devoid of ethics when we have a system that actually rewards them for selling favors to the highest bidder. We will never see meaningful reform, they will just invent ways to circumvent them. The only way to truly reform the process is for us to train millions of eyes on each corporation to make sure that no big favor goes unpunished. We intend to use the free market muscle of millions of progressives to make corporate and PAC donations as transparent as possible so we the consumers can make informed decisions on where our money ultimately ends up. To put it another way: We have financial capital and we intend to use it!
More:
http://www.buyblue.org/archives/2004/12/say_it_aint_so.html