A New York Times editorial raises concerns about how this summer’s political conventions are being paid for — and what the payoff will be for the companies footing the bill.

From the editorial: This year the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia will be bankrolled entirely with money from corporations and wealthy individuals. Not since the Watergate era, when a $400,000 pledge to the 1972 Republican convention from ITT Corporation was linked to a favorable outcome for the company in a federal antitrust decision, has this happened. Industries with business before the federal government have long found opening their checkbooks for the conventions to be one of the most efficient means for influencing an incoming administration and Congress in one quick action. A 2014 law that ended public financing “shifted ever-escalating convention costs onto rich donors and corporations like Google, Facebook, Duke Energy, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Bank of America, General Motors and AT&T, which were all past contributors,” the paper opines. “Corporations can give unlimited cash, services and swag to Democratic and Republican host committees for conventions that basically are four-day-long parties. Shareholders in these companies pick up the tab since the money comes directly from corporate coffers.” This is, alas, probably how Americans suspicious of government spending want things these days. The editorial concludes this way: “Convention spending is part and parcel of the creeping corporate buyout of America’s political system. In a year marked by voter anger at a political class out of touch with struggling Americans, one might expect both Republicans and Democrats to rein it in. But as with all political spending, the tendency is always toward more, not less. That publicly held companies seeking favors from the government will underwrite this excess is offensive, and entirely legal.”

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