New app tells you which party a company donates to - before you buy their products

By Robert Laurie —— Bio and Archives August 13, 2014

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Have you ever purchased a product and wondered about the political leanings of the company that made it? Chances are, if you're a political junkie, you have - and perhaps you'd prefer not to support companies that donate to candidates and causes you oppose. Unfortunately, if you're in the middle of Target, there's no way to know if the bar of soap you just dropped into your basket will end up funding Debbie Wasserman Schultz's re-election campaign. That is, there was no way to know. Thanks to a new app called "BuyPartisan," that's changing.

According to the Washington Post, it was developed by Matthew Colbert, a former Hill staffer, and it's being offered for free on the IOS platform. Once it's installed, you can scan the barcode on the item of your choice, and it will break down the company's political donations by category. For example, here's the barcode I scanned from the back of a Led Zeppelin album. It's manufactured and released by Atlantic Records:

As you can see, the Board of Directors is overwhelmingly donating to Democrats, while the rank and file employees favor the GOP. Here are the results from a pack of HP Photo paper: Nicely done, HP! It's a shame that not all companies can be as politically savvy as HP. Here's Costco, scanned from a box of diapers: ...And this is where we start to run into the questions surrounding "BuyPartisan." Costco's CEO and Board of Directors are both missing. Since we know James Sinegal, Costco's CEO and founder, is a huge Democrat booster, there's a good chance the company should be further in the blue than it is. Other companies have no data available at all, leading one to wonder just how bi-partisan "BuyPartisan" really is. According to Matthew Colbert the app uses data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the Sunlight Foundation and the Institute for State Money in Politics. However, data can be skewed by presentation, and when you hear that Colbert will neither confirm nor deny that he's related to Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, alarms start going off. Skepticism about the app's "truthiness" aside, it's an interesting idea, and it's fun to zap your favorite products and get an idea where they land on the political spectrum. Just, as with all things political, take the results with a grain of salt.