Shop Til He Drops (out of the white house at least)

January 20, 2004 3:39 PM

Hate Bush? Love to Shop?Putting affiliate programs to good use, this site takes the standard affiliate commissions and donates it toward groups working to replace Bush in 2004. To stay within F.E.C. guidelines, none of the money will go directly to our candidate.  Rather, the money will be sent to democratic/progressive/liberal groups such as moveon.org. Quite a range of online stores represented, too.
posted by amberglow (9 comments total)

Consumers Against Capitalist Excess. Heh. I think they should have gone with ShoptillGOPdrops.com.
posted by liam at 3:56 PM on January 20, 2004

That's a pretty clever idea, but I imagine it will violate at least some T.O.S. somewhere, and they could find themselves at least threatened with a lawsuit of some kind.

But like I said, pretty damned clever.
posted by Ufez Jones at 5:03 PM on January 20, 2004

I thought the idea was to get all of the so-called 'Soft' money out to the elections, not just reroute it to outside groups such as moveon.org.


What happened?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 5:24 PM on January 20, 2004

I thought you couldn't give to the candidates themselves, except up to $2000...everything else has to go to a group. (like the group that ran the "new york times reading, latte drinking,bla bla bla....." ad in iowa)
posted by amberglow at 5:36 PM on January 20, 2004

I've seen people use this before for other charitable groups, inserting the charity's code in their links and gateways. This is unique, though.
posted by kickerofelves at 5:51 PM on January 20, 2004

I find the list of stores interesting reading from a business perspective. I would guess that the percentages given to affiliates in a given industry is roughly in proportion to the margins in that industry.

If this is true, the hot industries right now are health, magazines and gifts. The industries you don't want to be in are computers, electronics and travel.
posted by Triplanetary at 5:59 PM on January 20, 2004

I thought the idea was to get all of the so-called 'Soft' money out to (sic) the elections, not just reroute it to outside groups such as moveon.org.

That's first and foremost among my ideas, steve, but until it's legislated and enforced, doing so would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. I'd have voted for McCain had he won the Repub nomination, as I'd have done so for Bradley. I'd take either of them over Bush or Gore, base solely on that principle. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. And in that case, you arm yourself with weapons similar to those of your opponent.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:25 PM on January 20, 2004

I wonder how long it would take to steal their store and change all the affiliate codes to send the money to the GOP, or better yet, to me...
posted by kindall at 8:36 PM on January 20, 2004

I just got a nice email from the guy running it thanking us for the attention..they've gotten a lot of hits (the last time they got so many it was from a freeper attack)
posted by amberglow at 2:19 PM on January 21, 2004