[Edit: More information, replies to e-mails, etc over here.]
Yesterday, I had a friend point me to “The Tea Party Exchange“. It’s a local (to me) website where you can see if a particular business supports the Tea Party and shop there (or, ahem, not).
My point isn’t whether or not this website (or the Tea Party) is a good idea. In case the page has been changed by this point, let me point you at a few things from the home page. (The landing page has audio flash without warning, so I linked above past that.)
In Donald L. Hutchinson’s story of why he created the site, he said (emphasis mine):
I asked the [Tea Party] members that night this question: “How many of you by a show of hands would prefer to shop at a local, tea party owned small business, if that business would agree to donate 5-10% of the proceeds to the Dayton Tea Party?”
And yet, if you scroll down the page and look in the bottom right corner, you see this (screengrab from 8/12/10 @ 1850 EST):
What, you may ask, is DESIGN Web Graphic? Where is this website outsourced to? According to their site, DESIGN Web Graphic:
We will be your offshore web design partner in India. Save up to 70 to 80% expenses by outsourcing web development projects to India.
Dayton has plenty of web designers here. It’s nice to see that the Tea Party (or at least, this guy) is so committed to local businesses that he outsourced a site designed to promote local businesses to India.
Kudos, Donald Hutchinson. I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Edit (8/14/10): You gotta give them credit for being bold. Sometime after I posted the screengrabs above, the Tea Party Exchange changed the LIVE link above to the one below:
Cute, right? And yes, I’m asking them for a comment.