Crashing the Convention Parties

The Democratic Party Convention is now in full swing. As you might imagine, it's quite the jet-set party scene, with well-heeled lobbyists and corporate CEOs schmoozing with our members of Congress and other luminaries.

Like you, we're sick of special interests coming before voters - just look at the mess we're in thanks to this pay-to-play system. Big Oil, Big Pharma and other corporate titans have had their way with our government for too long.

That's why we're crashing their parties!

A gaping loophole is being exploited and millions of unregulated dollars are being funneled to the national party conventions through so-called nonpartisan "host committees." These committees claim to be helping Denver and the Twin Cities, but they are really just using the sizable donations for political purposes.

As we blogged previously, a new Public Citizen report reveals the extent to which political access is being bought by the "host committee" sponsors. As an added bonus, this type of influence peddling is also tax-deductible for donors like AT&T.

Our campaign finance laws need to be enforced. These loopholes must be closed. There will be dozens of events at both conventions sponsored by deep-pocketed special interests seeking to influence our elected officials. 

As The Hill reports, we've joined forces with other watchdogs to show up at these corporate-sponsored soirees and ask some tough questions about potential violations of our campaign finance and ethics laws.      

You can help. If you can be in Denver this week or the Twin Cities next week, then you can join our other party crashers in making sure the big wigs get the message that it's time to put voters first!

Here's more info on the party scene. Can't make it to the conventions?  You can follow some of the crashing here and at Party Time, throw your own party, or take a few minutes to take action.  To learn more, check out www.SayNoToLobbyists.org.

Comments

[KDelphi]

Um....do you havwe any blogs that aere NOT sucking up to Obama, the DNC, and the two-party sytem tonight?

[Iginio Fontana]

How do we break in through those steeel doors that the politicians have closed? Those that want to avoid lobbyists can't because their opponent is using the lobbyist. Where can the money come from to help the faithful who cannot help themselves?