Ever since Black Tuesday, I've being going Blue. I've been trying to convert all my necessary expenses to blue companies, those that support progressive causes and contribute to Democrats (or to no one at all). Of course we have an entire forum dedicated to this cause. I've also been using
Open Secrets,
Choose the Blue and
Cobb24 as research resources.
One thing I've found is that it's hard to be totally blue. I've yet to find a credit card company that satisfies, although America Express is about 50/50 in its contributions to Dems and Repubs. (Deutsch Bank is very blue but doesn't seem to issue credit cards in the US.)
But I have had some success. I needed some new clothes for work, and found out that Saks Fifth Avenue where I often shop is way too red, so I avoided them, and canceled my Saks card. I ordered some books I wanted from Barnes and Noble instead of Amazon. We canceled both our Comcast cable and our Direct TV and signed up for Netflix, and enjoyed rented DVDs all weekend.
My auto insurance was due for renewal and when I looked up my current carrier, Allstate, I found out they were too red. I started looking around and found a good blue company, Progressive. As a fringe benefit, I got better coverage for a rather substantial drop in my payments.
I also needed a new desktop computer, as my old one was making alarmingly loud whirring sounds. When researching computer makers I almost gave up until I discovered that Sony was true blue. Not only that, but the new Sony computers have an amazing array of multimedia capabilities. We've been wanting to convert our CD and album library to digital formats and connect all of out home entertainment through the hard drive, we had planned to buy a pricey piece of hardware to do this. But this new Sony desktop does everything we wanted, and while it cost a bit more than a run of the mill desktop, it saved us a bundle compared to buying a new computer and a separate piece of hardware to organize the music and media.
So not only can you Choose the Blue, but it just might save you money too!