A Greenpeace activist recently went to Hillary Clinton’s public appearance and angered Hillary by asking her to pledge not to accept any more fossil fuel money, which her opponent, Bernie Sanders, had already agreed to.
Among the responses were ones like this, from the Washington Post’s Philip Bump (who even my hero, Mark Shields, seems to have been taken in by on this question), who claims that she only gets .15% of her donations from fossil fuel employees, $308,000 to Bernie Sanders’ $54,000. However, these are INDIVIDUAL donations.
Of far greater concern are the monies from fossil fuel industry lobbyists who even Philip Bump admits do bundle large donations for Hillary (he links to this HuffPo article as backup). But he obscures the question by failing to include the bundlers’ amounts in his “.15%” figure. Greenpeace claims that Hillary’s campaign has been given $1.5 million in donations from these fossil fuel lobbyist bundlers. However, a further so-called “fact check” by the Washington Post cites claims that this is disingenuous, because lobbyists may work for more than one industry:
“When a lobbyist represents a number of different kinds of clients, it’s a little disingenuous to say that the money was bundled by ‘lobbyists for the oil and gas industry’ without a big caveat,” said Viveca Novak, editorial and communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics.
So? Who’s right? Well, there’s a beautiful thing—Greenpeace’s source for their claim is easy to check. Greenpeace’s claim listed several dozen lobbyists, which is a lot, but not too much to check. They got their information that these are fossil fuel industry lobbyists from the Senate’s own website, which lists lobbyists. So, take the first nine lobbyists, the in-house lobbyists, listed in Greenpeace’s list of bundler lobbyists. They are NOT PART OF VIVECA NOVAK’S “BIG CAVEAT.” Here are results for the first few of them, from the Senate website:
Susan Carter: Exxon/Mobil ONLY
Theresa Fariello: Exxon/Mobil ONLY
Ben Norris: American Petroleum Institute AND Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling, Inc.
Kevin Avery: Conoco Phillips AND Marathon Oil Corporation/Marathon Petroleum Corporation
It’s ALL fossil fuel money and clients, then, for those first nine people Greenpeace mentions.
As to the others? Take Anthony “Tony” Podesta, for instance (the Greenpeace site lists him as “Tony,” but you have to search him as “Podesta, Anthony” on the Senate’s lobbyist listing site). Does HE represent lots of different industries? Well, yes; but does that mean that the more than $200,000 that he got from BP was just actually 7,000 or 12,000 or 2,000 from BP, and the rest from those other industries? NO. NO IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT. Understand this: neither the Philip Bump article, nor the so-called “fact check” pretending “three pinocchios” for the Sanders campaign partly because of this, deny Greenpeace’s accounting of that $1.5 million that was bundled for Hillary. The “fact-check” article says—for some reason—that it’s “misleading” to call out these contributions as being fossil fuel contributions, simply because those lobbyists ALSO have clients in OTHER industries. Uh… but...
...erm, none of the WaPo’s writing on this denies the fact that lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry bundled $1.5 million for Hillary. Because the bundlers DID do that.
Do the bundlers have other clients? Yes. So? Does that mean that all those clients shared that $1.5 million in contributions? No, it doesn’t. The whole $1.5 million Greenpeace mentions came from the fossil fuel industry. You can check each name on that list of lobbyists at the Senate’s site here, and each one will show DISCRETE amounts from the fossil fuel companies, AND the rest of the companies each lobbyist represents, as separate entries under “amount reported”:
soprweb.senate.gov/…
And one more little note: since they don’t deny that that $1.5 million came from the fossil fuel companies straight into the pockets of lobbyists for their industry, is the Washington Post really trying to sell us a heaping pile of “well the fossil fuel companies paid lobbyists $1.5 million, but then nothing happened”? What? So that money was given to those lobbyists, but then they… did nothing but say “hey, thanks!” and tip their hats and drive off with the money sacks?
Ridiculous. The Washington Post (who recently ran 16 articles slamming Bernie Sanders in 16 HOURS) is a fine source to claim anyone’s a liar.
Sunday, Apr 3, 2016 · 6:02:14 AM +00:00
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Whamadoodle
Hey, cool! Made the Rec List. Thanks so much for the honor, y’all! You are great.
And even for people who disagree with the diary, do feel free to disagree—but please point out WHAT you disagree with. Did you go to the Senate lobbyists site, enter “search by name,” and enter Podesta, Anthony (or another lobbyist’s name), sort by date, and NOT see that Mr. Podesta got paid over $200,000 in this campaign by the oil company BP? Or did you find that MANY companies contributed to the $200,000+? I didn’t. That website’s search results were very clear. BP paid him $250,000. Just like Greenpeace said (they even under-reported it a bit).
Post your results: if you’re seeing Greenpeace listing “Tony Podesta, $200,000+, all from BP,” and you run the search and find that he DIDN’T get $200,000 from BP, please post your result and let everybody try. In fact: let me invite ALL of you to try. Did Podesta get that $250,000, or not?
Thanks again, y’all! Love ya!
Monday, Apr 4, 2016 · 1:55:50 AM +00:00
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Whamadoodle
Clarification: there has been some confusion as to the distinction between money paid to the fossil fuel lobbyists for their lobbying, and the donation money that those lobbyists bundled for the Clinton campaign. These are two separate things: 1) fossil fuel companies pay fees to lobbyists, so that the lobbyists will push politicians to enact policy that is friendly to the fossil fuel industry. Some of these lobbyists work ONLY for the fossil fuel industry; some work for just four or five other companies besides their fossil fuel company; and some work for many more. The Senate website shows the money paid by the fossil fuel companies to the lobbyists, for lobbying. Some of my posts may have been in error on that point. My apologies if so.
2) BUNDLING of donations, which is what the Greenpeace site is pointing out, happens when those fossil fuel lobbyists round up donors, to gather donations for the Clinton campaign. Those moneys are NOT reflected on the Senate website.
The Washington Post’s “Pinocchios” article claimed that there was a tenuous connection between the lobbyists' receiving fossil fuel money, and their bundling of $1.5 million for Clinton. However, note that first, a full $161,000 of the bundled money was raised by two such bundlers alone, both of whom ONLY work for fossil fuels; and second, almost $300,000 was bundled by lobbyists representing five or fewer companies (therefore, the fossil fuel companies they represent would be one of only five clients paying them). This seems clearly to balloon the amount of fossil fuel lobbyist help Clinton is receiving.
However, if, as some have maintained, it’s such a small amount of money, then—one wonders why she simply didn’t say “yes” to the Greenpeace activist, and do without it.