Following is an excerpt from an article from consumerist.com. I think that what it talks about is more than a little important. From now on, where we shop may have a direct bearing on how or even if we and our loved ones get to live our lives.

A brief recap – earlier this year, the incredibly corrupt - don't call it "conservative" - US Supreme Court in a decision which will live in infamy called Citizens United, ruled that corporations can now shovel as much money as they please toward the election campaigns of people who represent their often regressive agendas, as this brief extract explains:

Target gave $150,000. Best Buy chipped in $100,000. Companies supporting politicians or their political action committees isn't new. A quarter-million dollars for Minnesota Forward—a group that supports anti-gay rights candidates like Tom Emmer—... a candidate to be Minnesota's next governor. He's an ultra-conservative with an agenda. Everyone, of course, is entitled to their political views. His include allowing pharmacists to refuse contraception to whomever they want, shuttering the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, and supporting a group that encourages the execution of homosexuals. ...

Minnesota Forward—actually, let's just stop there for a moment. Isn't Minnesota Forward a great name? We can all get behind going forward, right? Breathe it in, hear how wonderful it sounds: Paid For By Minnesota Forward. Ahhhh. ...

The article continues further on by saying what's probably obvious to most of us, but which a lot of people apparently still just don't get:

Corporations have transparent but uniform policy goals: less regulation and lower corporate taxes. Corporations don't want the government telling them how long they can hold passengers hostage on the tarmac. They think the freedom to contract means a freedom to impose early termination fees and the freedom not to disclose of any of their fees at all. Corporations see government as an obstacle, which is partly why they established their own private judiciary. ...

Now that corporations are now free to purchase candidates the way you or I would purchase a suit or a dozen eggs, we can see that all of the rights and protections which we now enjoy are on the chopping block. The only way to stop the ax from falling, apart from committing to direct action (cop-outs like “There's nothing you can do about it” or “You can't fight city hall” don't make it anymore), is to let these companies know in no uncertain terms that messing with these rights and protections will adversely affect their bottom lines. Put another way, didn't BP's stock price drop by half during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

Read the entire article here. As the Gipper was fond of saying, this is not a matter of left and right, but a matter of right and wrong.