Amazon.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/phprint.phpAlso:
As a good example of why we feel this is an important philosophical decision one must only look at a recent article written by Karma Mechanic - Say it ain't so Jeff. Our research, which is based on data directly from the Center for Responsive Politics indicates that Amazon's PAC donated 61% of their money to Republicans in the last election cycle. However, if you aggregate the money donated by individuals within the company, people that generally have absolutely no say in corporate policy, the total comes out on the Democratic side. This proves that Amazon.com is not only acting contrary to the interests of many of the consumers that patronize them, but also the employees that work there. So by employee contributions we would be excusing the actions of the PAC.
More:
http://www.buyblue.org/archives/2004/12/corrections_and.htmlDecember 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!
To show you exactly how this will work we will use Amazon.com as an example:
Dave is a progressive who is thinking about buying a book for a friend at Amazon.com Before he purchases he shoots over to Buyblue.org and types in Amazon into the search engine. Up pops their page. He notices unfortunately that they gave a majority of their donations to Republicans. He checks out the alternatives tabs and sees that there are three or four progressive companies that he can patronize as an alternative but he also wants to lodge a protest at this company he has been supporting for years thinking they espoused progressive values. He looks on the message board and notices that there is a group of people who have already started to protest Amazon’s finance of a right wing agenda. They are upset that Mr. Bezos the CEO has only responded with a form letter and are discussing more creative and organized ways of getting his attention.
Dave clicks on the “Influencers” tab and up pops all the companies that invest with Amazon. Dave notices that his biggest asset – the Janus mutual fund – invests around 650 million dollars in Amazon. Dave decides he will start with an email to Jeff Bezos ( Jeff@amazon.com ) asking him to reconsider his support or he will have to take his business elsewhere. In his email Dave uses the “lifetime customer worth” calculator provided by Buyblue.org to let Mr. Bezos know that he’s not just losing a $20 book sale from this action. Amazon will be losing over $8000 over the next 20 years alone if Dave decides to take his business elsewhere and Dave makes sure to mention that money will be going to Amazon’s top competitor Barnes and Noble. Also Dave decides to inform Mr. Bezos that if he chooses to respond with Amazon’s customary “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” form letter as a reply he will have no other recourse but to call the Janus Fund to inform them of exactly why he is going to liquidate his 20K mutual fund savings from their company. Dave logs his experience on the Amazon message board and also signs up for an email alert to be informed about the more organized boycott others are planning in a couple of weeks if Mr. Bezos continues to ignore them.
That’s how it will work. Right now due to facility we are only focusing on political donations but as we ramp up we will encourage more issue based protests that will span entire industries. The basic fact is that when politicians and corporations collude to form policy very rarely are the long term effects on individuals taken into account. We need to change that and this is our seat at the table. Corporations are profit-making machines that have no allegiance to law or country. The only way to make them act ethically is to make it profitable to do so. By withholding and subsequently returning our revenue we will provide the financial incentive necessary to move corporations toward sustainability. By aggregating our effort through Buyblue.org we will be able to show them the exact amount of revenue they stand to win by acting ethically. This is no different than any other free market business negotiation. It ultimately is in the corporation’s best interest to think long term but there is always that temptation to mortgage the future in the pursuit of quick profits. Our goal is to remove that temptation.
Posted by at December 13, 2004 03:08 AM
More:
http://www.buyblue.org/archives/2004/12/say_it_aint_so.html
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