Under the Federal Election Committee’s guidelines re-written in 1993, unions and corporations are forbidden from funneling unlimited contributions to political parties.

So last week when Congress provided immunity for telecom giants, such as AT&T, who are collaborators in the biggest spy bill passed in history, perhaps they weren’t looking for anything in return.

Except the fact that AT&T is now the sponsor of the Democratic National Convention.

Coupled with other winners like Comcast, Motorola, Coca-Cola, Google and a smorgasboard of additional corporate piggy sponsors, AT&T has donated over a $1 million to the DNC in return for “prominent display space and access to elected officials.”

Access to elected officials? Isn’t a corporation forbidden from political charity?

Alas, under an exemption that was created by the Federal Election Commission, which essentially is made up of representatives of the two major parties, “all of this money can be given if it’s given through a host committee under the pretense that it’s merely to promote the convention city.”

Denver 2k8 or bust!

There are 146 company donors, of which nearly 40 are giving to both the Democratic and Republican conventions. Out of the organizational and corporate nasties, only 31 have disclosed information about their contributions, according to a report filed by the Campaign Finance Institute.

According to Stephen Weissman, Associate Director for Policy at the Campaign Finance Institute, this means, “By giving it to these host committees, they assure themselves of gratitude from the national party, from the presidential candidate, because what is a convention except the biggest and longest ad of the presidential election? And to have that speech come off well, to have the lighting and the rigging and all of the sound and the Broadway producers who do it, to have the production and the setting look just right, to have specially built podiums and so forth, that will earn gratitude.”

Funnel man, funnel man, where have you been? Oh I’ve been to Denver, to visit illegal campaign finance!

As Weissman continues, “We’ve shown in our reports that the companies that are supporting these two conventions have already—are companies that have already spent, in the last—since the last presidential election, $1.1 billion lobbying the federal government. So, even if some of them have in part a kind of civic booster notion, obviously these people are very concerned with federal legislation, and in return for this money—we could discuss this, I hope we do—the parties, through the host committees, offer access to top politicians, to the President, the future president, Vice President, cabinet officials, senators, congressmen. They promise these companies who are giving that they will be able to not only get close to these people by hosting receptions, by access to VIP areas, but they’ll actually have meetings with them.”

As Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional law attorney, commented on the ordeal, “In the meantime, privacy groups, like Electronic Frontier Foundation, and civil liberties groups, like the ACLU, and other citizen groups were frozen out of the process completely. The Democrats in Congress literally turned over the process to AT&T, Comcast and others, in order to write this extraordinary law to protect them from consequences for having broken our laws. And so, to read about how at the same time they’re funding to the tune of many, many millions of dollars the Democratic National Convention is just a very potent illustration of this sleazy process that drives our lawmaking process.”

Both the GOP and Dems are equally guilty of this massive state of soiled, transparently illegal conflict of interest.

See you at the convention!