Everything is for sale, and this summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver is no exception.
More than four dozen national corporations have signed up as sponsors of the convention - everyone from Allstate to Xerox. And almost all of them have the same thing in common: They either have business with the federal government or they lobby on pending issues.
And that prompts a myriad of questions.
Are the big companies simply being good corporate citizens? ...
To date, the Democratic National Convention Host Committee has lined up 56 corporate sponsors.
I thought it was the Republicans who were the party of big business. My bad.
Yes, I'm sure the Republicans will have many (evil) corporate sponsors--the article mentions several companies that are sponsoring both parties' conventions!--but if the lefties are going to cry about large corporations, they need to clean up their own houses.
Update, 5/15/08: I don't usually link to HuffPo articles, but this one relates to the topic at hand.
9 comments:
I've never understood the fear of "big business" and government working together. Unless the government manufactures every object and creates every imaginable job its going to have to happen sometime. The only problem is when such sponsorship, funding, or employment ends up costing additional tax dollars when one company is given a financial advantage over another. Recently with Republicans such unfair ties have been made public and been heavily scrutinized in the media, but until something major is found involving Democrats and then actually picked up by the media they have no reason to be afraid of corporate sponsorship of their convention. The "lefties" will "cry" about large corporations as long as they are not the ones being found making unfair deals with them. I'm not saying they are clean but at least they look less dirty, which is enough to let have sponsorship right now without much worry.
Ronnie, what's that you're wearing? Are they rose-colored glasses, or blinders?
No, clearly you misread what I wrote. I'm saying, if anything, the reason they get away with it is the media's lack of interest and possible bias against covering corporate Democratic scandals as of late. If I walked up to a random person on the street I bet a lot more people would have heard of Halliburton than anything the Democrats have been caught with lately, and that's why they can get away with it. Is it right? No, obviously not, but I never said it was, all I said is it has everything to do with both the media and public's perceptions of each party, and right now the Republicans are viewed as more likely to have corporate scandals, even if that isn't true.
My guess is that people know about Halliburton because the Vice President used to work for them, not because Halliburton has been involved in any scandals. What wrongdoing has Halliburton done?
Now whose wearing rose-colored glasses?
"The company's KBR subsidiary is the main government contractor working to restore Iraq's oil industry in an open-ended contract that was awarded without competitive bidding." - CBS 2003
I'd have to say open-ended no-bid contracts sound like an unfair advantage that ended up costing us tax dollars. There are many reports that they overcharged for various services and took much longer than expected, but what accountability do you get with open-ended no-bid contracts. You can say it was justified by time constraints all you want, but something like that doesn't happen unless someone wanted it to.
You've bought into the left's new bugaboo, Halliburton. Do you know how many companies there are in the world that does what Halliburton does? Do you know how many of them are American?
When you find out, *then* tell me which of the other ones you'd give a contract to--the Russian one or the French one.
I would have liked to hear their bids first and set up some accountability for whoever ended up with the contract in the form of contractual time limits for services and greater oversight. If you want to plead incompetence on the administration's decisions that's fine, but I prefer to think they knew what they were doing by handing out blank checks. But anyway all I was saying is that on average public opinion is that Republicans are more likely to be involved in a corporate scandal, which according to at least 2 poles I found support that claim, and therefore people are more weary of corporate ties with Republicans. Again I'm not saying that weariness is correct or that Republicans actually are more corrupt, all I'm saying is what people believe.
Why do you think people have this perception?
Well that's a whole different question, but I would say it probably has to do with the fact that Republicans are usually pro-business while the Democrats are pro-taxes. One group gives tax breaks and reductions while the other one taxes businesses more heavily, which group would think would be more likely to be involved in helping one particular company over another? I would think the one that is already helping companies in general, but that's just my theory. It could do with just the fact that recently we have had a Republican president and whoever is in power could be more likely to be viewed as corrupt but you would have to talk to some political scientist or a good national poll to find out really why people perceive what they do. Interesting question though.
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