Links of the Day (052605)

One of the worries I had originally was whether there would be enough business-related items to blog about on any given day. Today, as usual, not to worry:

• Buy one, buy two, bank red, buy blue: Some supporters of (take your pick) Democratic, progressive, liberal, and/or leftist candidates and organizations have decided to stop patronizing companies that give to (take your pick) Republican, reactionary, conservative and/or right-wing candidates and organizations. One such web site is Buy Blue.

  Staying true to blue companies, or even finding them in some cases, has proven difficult. Currently, Buy Blue is picking on the “progressive” purchasing program know as Working Assets because its affinity credit card program is with MBNA (scroll to bottom), which has been a very prominent GOP donor.

  Working Assets has definitely taken notice–you won’t find anything on their site about MBNA unless you read the fine print in the actual online credit application.

  There’s one problem, though: Any attempt to find an alternative bank forces you to face the fact that (surprise-not) almost all bankers give more money to the GOP than to Democrats. The one exception noted in the list at the bottom of this link is (relatively small) Providian Bank. And before you “progressives” move all your card business over there, note that Providian in 2001 was involved in the largest class action settlement at the time for consumer fraud.

  It’s not easy being blue.

• Minor spyware violations: Instapundit stumbled across this despicable problem earlier this week with his daughter’s computer: mainstream companies involved with pumping adware and spyware onto computers from web sites for kids. This is one more bit of proof that John Dvorak’s proposed law should be passed:
  

  “Any person who knowingly writes or reads files from another person’s computer by personal or robotic means for whatever reason whatsoever and without the permission of the party involved, with full knowledge of the activity each and every time the action is performed, is guilty of a felony and subject to fine and imprisonment not to exceed $10,000 and one year in prison for each offense.”

  That, or get a Mac, and hope that Apple’s market share stays low.

• Two consequences of the San Francisco-San Jose area’s sky-high home prices: unprecedented risky borrowing (”Roughly two-thirds of the home mortgages in the San Francisco Bay area are interest-only mortgages.”) and families with children fleeing.