Obama Tries to Mislead Voters About the Energy Bill and Big Oil
John Adams said that facts are stubborn things...
Picking on the energy industry is a standard part of Obama's stump speech, where he harshly criticizes the 2005 energy bill and the Vice President Dick Cheney's efforts in passing it.
"Exxon Mobil reported more than $10 billion in quarterly profits," Obama told a town hall in Greenburg, Pa. today. And then referring to Cheney, he added, "He met with the oil and gas companies 40 times. So is it any wonder than that the energy laws that were written were good for Exxon-Mobil but they are not good for you?"The Problem...in 2005, Sen. Obama voted for the very same Dick Cheney energy bill, written in secret with the oil industry.
DOH!!!
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Factheck via the pittsburghchannel.com:
"It is true that President George W. Bush and Cheney supported the bill. It's also true that Clinton opposed it and Obama voted for it.
When grateful oil company CEOs start twisting the arms of their employees to bundle campaign contributions for Obama you can bet the farm that the CEOs will be knocking on Obama's door for more political favors if he is elected..
A new memo out from the Clinton campaign:
False Advertising: New Obama Ad Falsely Claims He Does Not Accept Money From Oil Companies
Phil Singer: "It's unfortunate that Senator Obama is using false advertising to explain why he can be trusted to do something about energy prices. Senator Obama says he doesn't take campaign contributions from oil companies but the reality is that Exxon, Shell, and others are among his donors. I wonder if they'll fix the ad."A new ad by Sen. Obama running in Pennsylvania falsely claims that Sen. Obama does not accept money from the oil industry. In the ad, Sen. Obama says "I'm Barack Obama and I don't take money from oil companies or lobbyists and I won't let them block change anymore."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Obama has received over $160,000 from the oil and gas companies. Two major bundlers for his campaign -- George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar - are oil company CEOs. Sen. Obama has accepted money from Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron and just about every other major oil company. Just last month, Sen. Obama accepted another $8,400 from ExxonMobil, $12,370 from Chevron and $6,500 from British Petroleum.
In 2005, Sen. Obama voted for the Dick Cheney energy bill, which was written in secret with the oil industry. Hillary Clinton opposed Cheney's energy bill, has a plan to eliminate oil industry tax breaks, and would require oil companies to contribute to a $50 billion strategic energy fund to jumpstart research and investment in clean energy technologies.
The cute little analogies Obamaites use of employees not companies donating money, doesn't fly when you have major players in the companies donating. It's a slick way to get around the rules and at the same time allows Obama to claim he doesn't take money from lobbiest etc
No one can show an oil company, itself, giving donations. But, we have to assume that if the chief officers of a company are giving money, then it might be coming from that industry.
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Here are the searches for obama contributions from exxon, bp, shell from the opensecrets donor tracking service:
shell: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.asp?txtCID=N00009638&name=&employ=shell&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A.
bp: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.asp?txtCID=N00009638&name=&employ=bp&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A.
exxon http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.asp?txtCID=N00009638&name=&employ=exxon&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A.
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One of the Obamamyths is that his campaign is solely funded by the piggy banks of ordinary Americans--that he's too pure of heart to associate with lobbyists and PACs. This has been a carefully constructed pose for his campaign. But before the campaign started, he was happy to build a lucrative PAC of his own thanks to a network of DC lobbyists. It takes money to *begin* to run for president. And Obama's been positioning himself for this run since the moment he landed in DC--all of three years ago:
Obama uses a loophole wherein he can accept bundled donations from individuals within lobbying firms, without it being technically labeled as donations from lobbyists.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/11/0081275.
Additionally, looking at Public Citizen's list of bundlers for the Obama campaign (people soliciting donations from others), 27 are employed by law firms registered as federal lobbyists. The total sum raised February 16-29, 2008 by bundlers for Obama from these 27 firms: $2,650,000. (There are also dozens of high powered bundlers from Wall Street working the Armani-suit and red-suspenders cocktail circuits, like Bruce Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs; J. Michael Schell, vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup; Louis Susman, managing director, Citigroup; Robert Wolf, CEO, UBS Americas. Each raised over $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)
Senator Obama's premise and credibility of not taking money from federal lobbyists hangs on a carefully crafted distinction: he is taking money, lots of it, from owners and employees of firms registered as federal lobbyists but not the actual individual lobbyists. But is that dealing honestly with the American people? According to the website of Akin Gump, it takes a village to deliver a capital to the corporations: ...
...When queried about this, Massie Ritsch, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, says: "The wall between a firm's legal practice and its lobbying shop can be low - the work of an attorney and a lobbyist trying to influence regulations and laws can be so intertwined. So, if anything, the influence of the lobbying industry in presidential campaigns is undercounted."...
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