How much is enough?

[thoreau]

This qoute swirled around the blogosphere this morning:

If you pay your monthly bill to AT&T, does it matter that they have contributed $19.5K to Tea Party Caucus founder Rep. Michele Bachmann?

If you pay your monthly bill to Verizon Wireless, you should know that earlier this year, they contributed $10K to Meg Whitman's campaign for Governor of California.

Is a 10K or a 19.5K enough to... make you switch carriers?

I posted this to Facebook and a friend suggested switching to Credo Mobile. Credo takes any profits from it's businesses - and invests them to further the causes of human rights, LGBT rights, women's rights, peace, environmentalism and an entire progressive agenda. and I was like "hmmm - maybe I should switch" - but then I thought about it some more.

on the flipside - is it worthwhile to make consumer choices based on political contributions considering the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent in politics today. Just considering Meg Whitman's $140 million dollar campaign in CA - the Verizon contribution is .07% of the money spent.

and - the quote about the donation is only part of the story -
as pectopah pointed out:

I looked at Verizon's 2009 Political Contibutions statement (here). They give money to just about everyone, including $50,000 to the California Democratic Party, John Kerry's PAC, and Sen. Leahy's campaign fund. In some states they give more to Republicans, in others to Democrats. I really expect nothing less.

Verizon Wireless is the only wireless carrier that offers seamless cross-border (US/Canada) service and we need that for our business to survive.

To a certain extent - all business are going to contribute to Republicans to soem degree because they're more likely to support business interests.

Once you start doing this, where do you draw the line? Are you going to investigate all music stores, book stores, groceries, clothes stores, etc?

Thoughts?