A Truck-Sized Loophole: Corporations, Special Interests to Spend $100 Million on Convention Parties

By Michael Winship, TruthOut.org. Posted August 28, 2008.

Another humid August, a long time ago, and I was working in my father's small-town drugstore, the last summer before my first year of high school. Today, cash registers are as computerized as ATMs and tell you everything instantly, from the change owed and the status of inventory to the date, time and wind chill factor in Upper Volta.

Back then, they were electrically powered, at least, but you still had to do a lot of the calculating in your head, which is why my dad tended to keep his not-so-mathematically-inclined son in the back of the store, away from the receipts. With my nimble fingers on the register keys, I was capable of trying to charge $1,398.06 for a pack of Camels.

(I wasn't allowed to sell condoms or razor blades either, but that wasn't so much because of my inept and callow youth. They carried a sales commission, and it was thought unseemly for the boss' son to traffic in something from which the other employees could receive a cash bonus.)

That summer, New York State and my hometown each instituted a sales tax, a development for which our cash registers were unsuited -- they couldn't calculate percentages. So we had a chart that we'd consult after ringing up a sale, at which point we'd add on the pennies and nickels of tax and throw them, separately, into shoe boxes.

Further jumbling this awkward system was the list of what was or was not taxable, some of which seemed to have been determined by rounds of darts in Albany, the state capital. Medicine was not taxable. That made sense. Chewing gum was taxable, unless it was Beeman's Gum, which was invented by a doctor and contained pepsin -- medicinally good for the digestion, so not taxed. Insulin wasn't taxed either, but the syringes to administer it were.

So, in that spirit of trivial complexity and governmental randomness, as the Democratic and Republican conventions begin in Denver and St. Paul, I give you the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

The law, passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal and the imprisonment of House members Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham (Ney was released just this past Monday), has much to recommend it, outlawing gifts from lobbyists for members of Congress and their staffs. That includes the extravagant parties that trade associations, law firms, advocacy organizations, unions and other lobby groups used to throw at the conventions for the most influential individual senators and representatives.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention here in New York City, for example, among hundreds of parties, the American Gas Association sponsored nine gala events, which included a "Wildcatter's Ball" for Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, then chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Pepsico gave Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur, which then cost $60,000 just to rent for the night. House Speaker Dennis Hastert got a wingding at Tavern on the Green, bought and paid for by General Motors.

So change is good. The problem is that many of the new law's rules are so arcane and convoluted it would take a team of forensic accountants and Talmudic scholars to properly interpret them. The "toothpick rule," for example, bans Congress members and their aides from accepting a free meal, but they can snarf up as many free hors d'oeuvres as they like -- as long as they're standing up and not sitting down. No forks, no chairs and you may be within the law.

Unless. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported one party planner for the Republican convention was told that under the law quesadillas with cheese qualified as legal finger food, but including beef or chicken would make them an illicit meal. According to Tuesday's New York Times, "Depending on the circumstances, breakfasts are limited to bagels, rolls and croissants, while proteins like eggs are prohibited. What is more, rules differ for events that are deemed to be 'widely attended' -- something that has more than 25 diverse attendees but is not a ballgame or a concert.

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Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at the Moyers Blog.

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