Who’s Paying for the Conventions? Corporate Sponsors Pour Millions into Party Coffers

[Better Believe It]

Democracy Now
July 22, 2008

Who’s Paying for the Conventions? Corporate Sponsors Pour Millions into Party Coffers

Less than two weeks after Congress granted retroactive immunity to telecoms involved in the Bush spy program, it’s been learned AT&T will be emblazoned on every delegate’s bag at the Democratic National Convention. Like Comcast, Motorola, Coca-Cola, Google and a host of other corporate sponsors, the telecom giant has donated over a million dollars to the DNC in return for prominent display space and access to elected officials. But none of these companies have fully disclosed their projected contributions to the convention, according to a new report from the Campaign Finance Institute.

Guests:

Stephen Weissman, Associate Director for Policy at the Campaign Finance Institute.

Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for Salon.com. He is the author of three books. His latest is Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

Rush Transcript:


GLENN GREENWALD: Well, there was a bag that was designed by the convention and reported by a blogger who writes about the convention in Denver that was really just illustrative, more than anything else, of everything that Mr. Weissman was discussing. I mean, it has the Democratic National Committee convention logo on it, and then right underneath, very large, it has an AT&T logo. And that’s the bag that will be given to every delegate and member of the media who attends the convention.

And the reason why that’s just so symbolically interesting is because the Democrats in Congress just last month gave an extraordinary gift of telecom amnesty to most of the entire telecom industry, including AT&T and Comcast, in order to protect them from lawsuits and in a bill that was written by the telecom industry and their lobbyists. So, to turn around and see such a sort of tawdry expression of the very close relationship between the telecom industry and the Democrats, who had just given them an extraordinary gift, was, I thought, quite remarkable.

.... President Bush and the White House have been demanding amnesty for all sorts of lawbreakers involved in torture and rendition and spying programs for many years. But none of that would have happened had the Democratic leadership in the Congress, led by Jay Rockefeller in the Senate and Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, the Democratic House Majority Leader in the House, not gotten together and negotiated a bill that immunized the entire telecom industry for any crimes that they have committed or any violations of the privacy rights of their customers for allowing government spying on their customers without warrants.

And as I indicated, Steny Hoyer and Jay Rockefeller, when they were drafting the bill, were actually negotiating directly with representatives of the telecom industry. They had hired an extraordinarily bipartisan cast of lobbyists, former Clinton officials like Jamie Gorelick and others, who was number two in the Justice Department at the Clinton administration. And they negotiated directly with the telecoms, and the telecoms would give them proposals for how they wanted the amnesty to read.

Please read the entire transcript at:

http://i4.democracynow.org/2008/7/22/whos_paying_for_the_conventions_corporate

[Eric J in MN]

1. We need public financing of national party conventions.

Having corporations pay for them is a big loophole which needs to be closed.

[Better Believe It]

2. Right, And Don't Even Allow Them On The Premises!

They are not welcomed. No corporate suits or "hospitality" suites allowed!

But representatives of consumer organizations, senior citizens, GI's, labor groups, civil rights organizations, women's groups and other progressive organizations would certainly be welcomed to set up displays and hospitality suites.

Oh ... you can also look at the video or listen to the streaming audio of the discussion at http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/22/whos_paying_for_the_conventions_corporate