The blatant selling-out of politicians never ceases to amaze me. What is even more amazing is that the electorate seems fairly comfortable with the entire process. The ideal of one-man-one-vote and that average schleps like me might be able to gain access to members of Congress or the executive branch seem far away from today's political antics (perhaps there never was a golden era).

Today's New York Times reports that the Democratic party is having a hard time "raising" the money for its convention in Denver this August. The term "raising" is a bit of a stretch because it doesn't seem like the party is reaching out to the individual party members but to the corporate bigwigs without even attepting to veil their selling-out:

Denver’s mayor, John W. Hickenlooper, has suggested that the Democrats’ long nominating battle has distracted potential donors. But, no matter the obstacles, the Denver host committee is aggressively packaging corporate sponsorships that promise corporate executives access to key politicians in return for writing a check to the host committee.

In addition, the Denver committee is appealing to civic pride.

Hosting a political convention isn't worth much to the local economy in terms of net new spending. As shown in this paper by Dennis Coates and myself, Houston lost approximately $19 million in taxable activity when it hosted the Republican convention in 1992. This negative net result is not refuted by this study by Baade, Baumann, and Matheson [note: incorrect abstract] which shows that hosting a political convention does nothing for employment, per-capita income, or income growth.

Thus the appeal to civic pride, the last bastion of the politician who wants to spend other peoples' money to enlarge their own reputation and stature.

Not to be outdone by the mis-remembering and mis-speaking that the two party candidates seem to engage in on a daily basis, the next paragraph contains a juicy statement by the spokesman for the Denver host committee:

"This is a historic event for Denver," Mr. Lopez said. "It's the first national convention in the interior West. It gives Denver a chance to demonstrate that it can host a national convention and show that Denver has the wherewithal to raise money and be the place where you want to be."

Perhaps Mr. Lopez (no relation, I hope to our co-blogger Ed) doesn't consider the 1908 Democrat national convention in Denver to have been a national convention? Perhaps the convention took place so long ago that no-one remembers or should remember?

My guess is that CNN or Fox or some news network will hearken back to the Denver (19)08 convention to bring up WJB, the platform of the day, and how it relates to contemporary issues. At that point, will anyone remember (or better yet even care) that the spokesman for the Denver hosting committee was so incorrect?