Common Cause Blog

Are telecom companies funding this convention?

In Denver, it's easy to get the feeling that the telecom companies are funding this convention. And it's pretty close to true. AT&T, Qwest, Verizon, and Comcast are heavily invested in the Denver DNC, and are similarly paying for a good chunk of the RNC next week. If you want to see a big special interest buying its way further into the halls of power, you've got it here. And anyone who cares about the future of the media, the internet, and the election system in this country should be getting mad.

On the ground in Denver, it's the little things that catch your attention - like almost every delegate has a lanyard around their neck that says "Qwest Qwest Qwest" (see the pics). When half the people you see have a Qwest band around their neck, you notice. And it gets in your head.

And then it's the parties. Of course, folks like me can't get in - but delegates, elected officials, lobbyists and their staffs usually can. AT&T is hosting a reception virtually every day, sometimes several. (Check out Sunlight's Party Time blog for some great coverage of the convention parties.) Yesterday I went to see who was at the AT&T-sponsored luncheon for "western delegates" only to get turned away at the door and informed that the event had been moved to a different fancy restaurant on the other side of town. Tuesday night I wandered past a private event sponsored by Verizon for Iowa delegates; they had reserved a café on the main drag through town and locked out the public, as you can see from the photo.

Those are the obvious images, but what's less visible to the naked eye is more significant.

Kicked to the curb

Check out the footage of Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher attempting to talk to attendees of a swanky AT&T sponsored party last night.

AT&T's name is littered across both the DNC and RNC party lists as a host of lavish receptions as well as a major donor to both conventions' Host Committees. AT&T has a lot at stake in Congress in 2009. Smells wrong.

FISA bill passes House; no retroactive legal immunity for telecoms

While the Senate was willing to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that submitted to the White House's request for them to spy on Americans without a warrant, the House today voted to renew the surveillance bill without granting such legal immunity.

The House on Friday narrowly approved a Democratic bill that would set rules for the government's eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails inside the United States.

The bill, approved as lawmakers departed for a two-week break, faces a veto threat from President Bush. The margin of House approval was 213 to 197, largely along party lines.

Because of the promised veto, "this vote has no impact at all," said Republican Whip Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri.

The president's main objection is that the bill does not protect from lawsuits the telecommunications companies that allowed the government to eavesdrop on their customers without a court's permission after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Break the law

UPDATE:The FISA bill that did not contain retroactive immunity for the telecom companies failed in the Senate today, 60-34, and the rest of the debate and voting will take place on Monday.

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In a moment the Senate will take up the issue of FISA--I'm writing this with the hope that the debate takes more than a few minutes, and perhaps stretches into the next couple days. The big question for me and for many of us is whether the bill will contain a provision granting blanket, retroactive immunity to telecom companies that allowed the government to spy on Americans without a warrant.

The issue hasn't changed over the past few months: this is a question of whether it's okay to break the law or not, and whether, if an individual or company appears to have broken the law and violated the Constitution, that person or company will be held accountable. Granting retroactive legal immunity to the telecom industry before the Congress has had a chance to investigate their actions and before challenges to their actions in court have been concluded amounts to undermining the process of justice and rule of law in this country.

That's a big question. Meanwhile, Credo Action (formerly Working Assets) has put together an action center that points a spotlight on the presidential candidates and the debate on FISA. More below the fold.

Telecom amnesty dead, for now

UPDATE (Monday, 9 a.m.): The Washington Post this morning clarifies that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not putting retroactive immunity on hold forever; he's just pushing back that debate by a couple months and may still cave to the White House. Senators Chris Dodd and Patrick Leahy remain vigorously opposed; hopefully they'll spend the next couple months laying out the case to their caucus and the majority leader.

....

Some good news, despite the Wall Street Journal's claims to the contrary: it appears that the Congress will not grant blanket immunity to the telecom industry for allowing warrantless wiretapping by the government.

The temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.

There's no reason for Congress to retroactively grant immunity to a powerful special interest like the telecommunications industry for what appears to be illegal activities. The Bush administration is claiming that simultaneously (1) what they did isn't illegal, (2) they should be given legal immunity anyway, and (3) they can't tell us what they did because it's a national security issue. It seems that they're trying to have it both ways. Congress is wise to delay until this issue can be properly resolved, and questions of executive branch overreach and abuse of power are answered in the light of day.

Opposition to telecom immunity finally growing

Some welcome news: the top Democrat and Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee are cooling to the idea of telecom amnesty.

Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), had said that before even considering such a proposal, they would need to see the legal documents underpinning the program, which began after Sept. 11, 2001, and were put under court oversight in January.

On Tuesday, the committee was given access to some of the documents. But Leahy said yesterday that he had a "grave concern" about blanket immunity, saying that "it seems to grant . . . amnesty for telecommunications carriers for warrantless surveillance activities."

This should absolutely not go through. Granting blanket immunity to the telecoms for permitting warrantless wiretapping by the Bush administration would be doubly tragic: (1) it simply lets the telecoms off the hook for illegal activity, without any due process, a result that can only be seen as an affront to the law and to justice, and (2) it would eliminate the greatest point of leverage in investigating the extent, nature, and legality of the government's domestic spying program. If the telecoms are preemptively off the hook, they have little to fear by blocking investigations into their actions and, by extension, those of the power-hungry executive branch.

We're not out of the woods yet, though. Leahy and Specter are hesitating, but they're not drawing the line in the sand, though Sen. Chris Dodd did that last week. Here's more from the two ranking Senators.

Dodd blocking telecom immunity in Senate

In the evolving fight to preserve the rule of law by not granting retroactive amnesty to the telecom companies who allowed warrantless wiretapping--i.e. domestic spying--on Americans, Sen. Chris Dodd has made a series of bold steps.

He first put a 'hold' on the bill, stopping it from reaching the Senate floor.

Mr. Dodd, announcing his hold on the proposed legislation, described the immunity proposal as "amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the president's assault on the Constitution by providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization."

When the whispers began that Majority Leader Harry Reid might still bring the bill to the floor, Dodd announced that he would filibuster, and has been joined by several other Senators. Thank goodness.

As I pointed out earlier, not only does the notion of amnesty for the telecoms have serious and troubling implications for the basic tenets of law and justice--and that if the telecoms are granted immunity, it's likely that we'll never be able to accurately determine whether and to what extent the Bush administration illegally spied on Americans--but it also ties directly back to the corrupting and overwhelming influence of powerful special interest money in politics.

Note how the Senator who forged this compromise received ten times more money from the telecoms this past year than in the five previous years combined.

Mr. Rockefeller received little in the way of contributions from AT&T or Verizon executives before this year, reporting $4,050 from 2002 through 2006. From last March to June, he collected a total of $42,850 from executives at the two companies.

Two simple takeaways, for me:

1. The telecoms should not receive retroactive immunity, especially when it's still unclear what they're receiving it for, i.e. whether what they did was legal, and what the specifics of the program were.

2. Whether or not his compliance was bought, the clear impression from that spike in campaign cash from the telecom industry to Rockefeller is that he's not an impartial legislator. Until we create a system of full public financing for all races, especially for Congress, we will continue to live with the suspicion--if not the reality--that powerful special interests are buying favors and currying excessive influence with our lawmakers. It is moments like this--when the apparent "best interests" of the people come into conflict with the wishes of major campaign donors--that highlight why having a political system awash in private money is such a bad idea for our democracy and why we must devote ourselves to changing it.