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Oil industry says "Thanks, John. Here, take some money.

fff

Well-known member
Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

McCain said the policy reversal came as a response to rising voter anger over soaring energy prices. At the time, about three-quarters of voters responding to a Washington Post-ABC News poll said prices at the pump were causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.

Opening vast stretches of the country's coastline to oil exploration would help America eliminate its dependence on foreign oil, McCain said.

"We have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production," he said. "It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."

McCain delivered the speech before heading to Texas for a series of fundraisers with energy industry executives, and the day after the speech he raised $1.3 million at a private luncheon and reception at the San Antonio Country Club, according to local news accounts.

"The timing was significant," said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan campaign finance reform group that conducted the analysis of McCain's oil industry contributions. "This is a case study of how a candidate can change a policy position in the interest of raising money."

Brian Rogers, a McCain campaign spokesman, said he considers any suggestion that McCain weighed fundraising into his calculation on drilling policy "completely absurd." Rogers noted that oil and gas money in June still accounted for a very small fraction of the $48 million raised by the campaign and by the Republican National Committee through its Victory Fund.

"John McCain takes positions because he thinks it's the right thing to do for America," Rogers said. "He has a long track record of doing that. And he's often made decisions that hurt with his fundraising base."

Oil and gas executives have not traditionally been a major source of campaign money for McCain. A breakdown of giving by the Center for Responsive Politics shows the industry falls 12th on a list of top donors, well behind securities firms, lawyers, banks, and real estate and health professionals.

McCain has historically sided against a number of the industry's interests, opposing efforts to open certain public lands to drilling and embracing proposals aimed at tackling global warming well before oil executives were ready to do so.

Patrick C. Oxford, chairman of the Texas-based law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, said there has been a contrast between the way the industry embraced George W. Bush, a favorite son, and McCain. Oxford said that until recently oil industry officials were motivated to back McCain because of talk by Sen. Barack Obama "about needing to tax the hell out of the oil companies."

That started changing in mid-June, he said. McCain's speech and subsequent visit to Texas served the purpose of reintroducing him to the oil industry. Oxford, whose law firm represents several large oil companies, wrote his first check to McCain on June 27.

Charting the political donations of oil executives may be the best way to evaluate the industry's level of interest in a presidential candidate, said Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, an industry adviser. Unlike other businesses, oil and gas companies do not have a large labor force that can provide a candidate an army of volunteers. And oil and gas concerns are geographically confined, largely in states that are not viewed as central to a presidential election strategy.

"It's for those reasons that the oil industry has always tried to be a substantial contributor," West said.

And West said he thinks McCain gave energy executives what they needed to get more solidly in his corner -- a pledge to reverse a federal policy that has frustrated the industry for years.

"I think people thought it was a sensible thing that was long due," West said. "I think the industry was very appreciative."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/26/AR2008072601891.html
 

Mike

Well-known member
I believ I had rather a campaign receive the larger campaign donations........ At least they are above board and open.

Small donations remind me of this:

Al Gore's Clinton Moment

His protests of innocence about the Buddhist temple fundraiser look very squishy.

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
February 7, 2000
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Vice President Al Gore's visit to a Buddhist temple near Los Angeles in 1996 is the very symbol of campaign-finance chicanery, particularly illegal contributions from Asia. Gore tried to distance himself from the event by claiming at first that it was "community outreach." Eventually he conceded that it was "finance related," but he's always said he didn't know it was a fundraiser. Could that be true? It stretches credulity. Over the years Gore, who rarely signed his own thank-you notes, maintained an extraordinary correspondence with Maria Hsia, a fundraiser who was one of the event's main organizers. "I cannot thank you enough," Gore wrote to Hsia and Howard Hom, then her partner, in 1990. "You two are great friends. See you soon." Six years later Hsia stood with the yellow-robed Master Hsing Yun when Gore arrived at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif.

A little-noticed set of documents collected by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee leaves scant doubt that the event at the Buddhist temple was a Democratic Party fundraiser--and that Gore knew it. These electoral mash notes between Gore and Hsia make clear that Gore saw green whenever he saw Hsia. The deception is so obvious to Republicans that they plan to use the incident to accuse Gore of something worse than campaign-finance finagling. They will call him Clintonesque with the truth.

Gore and Hsia got to know each other in the late 1980s, when Gore was worried about raising enough money for his 1990 Senate reelection. Hsia, an immigration consultant, was eager to contribute to politicians who could help her clients and associates. One associate was John Huang, who became notorious as an Asian fundraiser for the Democratic Party in 1996. Her clients would later include the Hsi Lai Temple, whose parent was the Fo Kuang Shan Buddhist order. In 1989, Gore was the sole U.S. Senator to accept Hsia's entreaty to visit the temple's Taiwan headquarters on a trip partly paid for by the order.

Prior to that journey, Hsia had donated money to Gore's campaign, and Gore had written to Hsia, "My involvement in the presidential race over the past two years has delayed my efforts to raise money for the 1990 [Senate] campaign and left our coffers empty for the upcoming race.... I appreciate your generosity and hope we can get together sometime soon." And before Gore accepted Hsia's entreaty to go to Taiwan, she wrote to him: "If you decide to join this trip, I will persuave [sic] all my colleagues in the future to play a leader [sic] role in your future presidential race."

Hsia also collected donations for Gore in California, helped organize Asian-American giving in Tennessee, and directed other contributions to his campaign through the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In appreciation, Gore wrote to Hsia in January 1989: "You are a wonderful friend." In December the next year, he hand-wrote "Thanks!" over his signature on a letter to Hsia that said, "You helped make this campaign season an overwhelming success." In a more personal note that same month, he wrote, "Your friendship and your personal commitment to my political endeavors mean a great deal to me."

Gore and Hsia stayed in touch through the years. He co-sponsored part of an immigration bill she favored. She and her partner gave his son an electronic submarine game. She sent material for Gore's book, Earth in the Balance. ("Perfect," Gore aide Peter Knight wrote back.) And, as ever, she raised money. The true test of her fund-gathering skills came in 1995 and 1996 when the Clinton-Gore ticket was battling for reelection and having some difficulty raising money.

Gore had many reasons to believe the Buddhist temple lunch was a fundraiser. He was attending fundraisers often back then. White House memos, including one to him, referred to fundraising goals from the Los Angeles event. The lunch was attended by the Democratic Party's chairman and two of the party's senior fundraising officials, including John Huang. Two people who were there recall explicit references to money raising from the podium. But the giveaway to Gore had to have been the sight of Hsia. There she was once again, greeting him with the yellow-robed Master. Could campaign cash have been far behind? The Senate committee report says it was "improbable" that he didn't know.

Gore certainly didn't know that some of the nuns who made contributions were reimbursed by the temple; such reimbursements violate federal law. Hsia has since been indicted for soliciting those donations (among others), a charge she vehemently denies. Although Gore said in an NBC interview that attending the temple event was "a mistake," he added, "I did not know that it was a fundraiser." Republicans hope the public won't believe him--much as they've learned to disbelieve Gore's boss.
 

VanC

Well-known member
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does a politician take stands on certain issues to solicit money from certain groups, or do those groups donate to the politician because they like his/her stand on a certain issue?
Speaking of special interest groups:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichaelReagan/2008/07/17/the_real_party_of_special_interests
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
VanC said:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does a politician take stands on certain issues to solicit money from certain groups, or do those groups donate to the politician because they like his/her stand on a certain issue?
Speaking of special interest groups:


The getdrunkandgagdownmcCain group figures this is a 3 martini liver wrecker :wink: :lol: :lol:

Democracy Group Gives Donors Access to McCain
By MIKE McINTIRE

Published: July 28, 2008

As Senator John McCain waited to speak at the annual awards dinner of the International Republican Institute, a democracy-building group he has led for 15 years, lobbyists and business executives dominated the stage at a Washington hotel ballroom.

First up that night in September 2006 was the institute’s vice chairman, Peter T. Madigan, a McCain campaign fund-raiser and lobbyist whose clients span the globe, from Dubai to Colombia. He thanked Timothy P. McKone, an AT&T lobbyist and McCain fund-raiser, for helping with the dinner arrangements and then introduced the chairman of AT&T, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., whose company had donated $200,000 for the event.

AT&T at the time was seeking political support for an $80 billion merger with BellSouth — another Madigan client — and Mr. Whitacre lavished praise on Mr. McCain, a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee. When Mr. McCain finally took the podium, he expressed “profound thanks” to AT&T before presenting the institute’s Freedom Award to the president of Liberia, a lobbying client of Charlie Black, an institute donor and McCain campaign adviser.

The parade of lobbyists and fund-raisers at the dinner is emblematic of Mr. McCain’s tenure at the institute, one of a pair of nonprofit groups — taxpayer-financed and each allied with one of the two major political parties — that were created during the Reagan era to promote democracy in closed societies.

Over the years, Mr. McCain has nurtured a reputation for bucking the Republican establishment and criticizing the influence of special interests in politics. But an examination of his leadership of the Republican institute — one of the least-chronicled aspects of his political life — reveals an organization in many ways at odds with the political outsider image that has become a touchstone of the McCain campaign for president.

Certainly the institute’s mission is in keeping with Mr. McCain’s full-throated support for exporting American democratic values. Yet the institute is also something of a revolving door for lobbyists and out-of-power Republicans that offers big donors a way of helping both the party and the institute’s chairman, who is the only sitting member of Congress — and now candidate for president — ever to head one of the democracy groups.

Operating without the sort of limits placed on campaign fund-raising, the institute under Mr. McCain has solicited millions of dollars for its operations from some 560 defense contractors, lobbying firms, oil companies and other corporations, many with issues before Senate committees Mr. McCain was on.

Recently, he has drawn criticism for involving lobbyists in his presidential campaign; under Mr. McCain, 14 of them have served on the institute’s board, some representing governments or organizations in countries where the group was carrying out programs.

These are sensitive issues for Mr. McCain, who as a champion of campaign finance and lobbying reforms has made a point of eschewing unlimited “soft money” contributions to his political committees. During his Senate investigation of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Mr. McCain highlighted the risks of business interests’ use of donations to nonprofit organizations as another way to gain access to a member of Congress…

http://getdrunkandvote4mccain.com/
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Operating without the sort of limits placed on campaign fund-raising, the institute under Mr. McCain has solicited millions of dollars for its operations from some 560 defense contractors, lobbying firms, oil companies and other corporations, many with issues before Senate committees Mr. McCain was on.





"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of displaced power exists and will persist."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
VanC said:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does a politician take stands on certain issues to solicit money from certain groups, or do those groups donate to the politician because they like his/her stand on a certain issue?
Speaking of special interest groups:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichaelReagan/2008/07/17/the_real_party_of_special_interests

Long time no see Van!

I figured you would be supporting your home town boy Obama? :wink: :lol:
 

VanC

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
VanC said:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does a politician take stands on certain issues to solicit money from certain groups, or do those groups donate to the politician because they like his/her stand on a certain issue?
Speaking of special interest groups:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichaelReagan/2008/07/17/the_real_party_of_special_interests

Long time no see Van!

I figured you would be supporting your home town boy Obama? :wink: :lol:

Good to be here. I finally decided to follow your lead and have a little fun without worrying about something getting locked. From what I've seen things can get pretty lively around here so I'll put in a word or two once in awhile. As for Obama, you can bet he'll win Illinois, but it won't be because of me. :wink:
 

Mike

Well-known member
VanC said:
aplusmnt said:
VanC said:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does a politician take stands on certain issues to solicit money from certain groups, or do those groups donate to the politician because they like his/her stand on a certain issue?
Speaking of special interest groups:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichaelReagan/2008/07/17/the_real_party_of_special_interests

Long time no see Van!

I figured you would be supporting your home town boy Obama? :wink: :lol:

Good to be here. I finally decided to follow your lead and have a little fun without worrying about something getting locked. From what I've seen things can get pretty lively around here so I'll put in a word or two once in awhile. As for Obama, you can bet he'll win Illinois, but it won't be because of me. :wink:

It's hard to beat that "Chicago Election Machine" they have there.
 

VanC

Well-known member
Mike said:
VanC said:
aplusmnt said:
Long time no see Van!

I figured you would be supporting your home town boy Obama? :wink: :lol:

Good to be here. I finally decided to follow your lead and have a little fun without worrying about something getting locked. From what I've seen things can get pretty lively around here so I'll put in a word or two once in awhile. As for Obama, you can bet he'll win Illinois, but it won't be because of me. :wink:

It's hard to beat that "Chicago Election Machine" they have there.

Yup. After I die, I'll become a registered Democrat whether I want to or not. :lol:
 
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