Corporations take over the Democratic National Convention

Americans with political views to the left of Augusto Pinochet have traditionally supported the Democratic Party as their viable option, so to speak. Yet given the Democrats’ intimate relationship with corporate interests it is increasingly difficult to prove how the party is in any significant way politically independent (i.e. democratic) or distinguishable from the Republicans.

As a signal to their left-wing supporters that the Party plans to slap them in the face the moment they are installed in the White House in 2009, the Democrats have sold advertising space for millions of dollars to the usual rogue’s gallery of corporate barons. To underscore the point, telecoms such as AT&T, fresh from the unpopular FISA bill that brought them immunity from violating the civil rights of their customers, will have their logos emblazoned on every available space at the Convention.

It’s been less than two weeks since the Senate voted to grant immunity to phone companies involved in the Bush administration’s secret domestic surveillance program. Now, some of these same telecom companies, including AT&T and Comcast, are focusing their attention on advertising at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

AT&T is the official wireless provider at the 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, this according to a new report from the Campaign Finance Institute. Out of a reported 146 organizational and corporate donors to both the Democratic and Republican conventions, only thirty-one have disclosed information about their contributions, the report says.

Posted by stevenmartin
writer, astronomer, day laborer.

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