I hope this doesn't violate the "Repetitive Post" rule and instead falls under "Fresh Perspective." I have to admit when I saw these two articles on Lobbyists and Oil & Gas Company contributors my faith quivered a tiny bit. After all, we are so used to politicians letting us down that we now LOOK for how they are going to let us down before we try at all to believe that they are going to lift us up. However, after close study of these articles I found them absurdly high on the smearing facts / information and disturbingly lacking in the real or relative facts / information. In addition, I think the biggest hypocrisy here is the one practiced by the media... see below for more.
- The media doesn't get to define what it means to take money from Lobbyists, the Obama camp does.
- You may disagree with this at face reading, but my point is... it's THEIR campaign policy. They get to define what it means. Now, the media can pick apart that definition if they like that's certainly fair game, but they can't just say "he says he doesn't take money from lobbyists, but look all these people who raise money for him work for firms that have lobbying operations in Washington" and PRETEND it's hypocrisy. No, you are REDEFINING what it means to take money from Lobbyists.
- It's not a bad START to a dialogue, but it's certainly not the end.
- So, these two articles certainly raise some questions, but don't actually ask those questions outright or answer them. So let's look at a couple statements from the Oil & Gas article first.
It's accurate that Obama doesn't take money from oil companies; neither do his opponents, because corporate contributions are illegal. But Obama, like Clinton and John McCain, has accepted donations from oil and gas company employees — $222,309 in Obama's case from donors from Exxon, Shell, Chevron and others, according to campaign-finance data. Two oil company CEOs have pledged to raise at least $50,000 each as part of Obama's fundraising team
Operative word here "Employees." Guess what... a mailroom employee that works at Chevron is an "Oil & Gas Company Employee" So is someone who works at a gas station - does this mean their contribution is tied to the oil & gas industry? not so much. So the question this raises and DOESN'T answer is WHO are these people and what is the breakdown?? The article mentions that two CEOs have PLEDGED to raise $50k but it doesn't mention whether they actually have, who they are, which companies they represent, what types of companies exactly are included in the "oil & gas industry" the unanswered questions go on and on. This may seem like an inane detail, but it's important because MOST people work SOMEWHERE, but that doesn't mean their contribution is on behalf of the place they work for. Instead it appears that this is clearly calling Obama a hypocrite without any DETAILED information to back up the accusations.
Let's look at another quote from this article:
"The Obama campaign is trying to create a distinction without very much of a practical difference," said a statement on the website of FactCheck.org, an affiliate of the University of Pennsylvania. "We're not sure how a $5,000 contribution from, say, Chevron's PAC would have more influence on a candidate than, for example, the $9,500 Obama has received from Chevron employees."
Okay - now I can't claim to be as "schooled" as the people at FactCheck.org but the difference seems REAL clear to me. I work for a large packaging and forest products company that has a PAC and when they sent around the brochures recruiting employees to join, the materials specifically said the purpose of the PAC was to act politically in the best interests of the company. Now, I did NOT join that PAC because I don't actually believe in acting politically on the behalf of a corporation. I gave an independent contribution (several actually) to the Obama campaign. So I fall into "Packaging & Forest Product Industry" employees, but I am not a member of the PAC and as a moderately low level employee I can tell you my money is not given at influence of the company. I hope y'all are seeing the differences here because they DO exist and they aren't small.
Okay - now let's look at the other article bc I have to paint my bathroom and get my house on the market so I don't have all day.. :)
Barack Obama often boasts he is "the only candidate who isn't taking a dime from Washington lobbyists," yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show.
hmmm... that could be downright misleading. Was it the law firms who were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government or the 38 members of his fundraising team? Not very clear is it - and if you're not reading the rest of the article closely, you might think it's the fundraising team.
And here's another (deliberately?) vague statement up towards the top of the article:
Thirty-one of the 38 are law firm partners, who typically receive a share of their firm's lobbying fees. At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists.
This is not very clear at all. So do these partners receive a share of their firm's lobbying fees or not? Or is the article just saying it's "typical" for law firm partners to do so and therefore we should "assume" Obama's fundraisers do? If you're going to smear a candidate, don't you think you should be very CLEAR on that? At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists - I don't even know what this means... are they office managers? What is "some managerial authority?" If you're a manager than you HAVE "managerial authority"... so why say "some" unless you don't have enough of a case to actually say "managerial authority"???
In the chart titled "Lobbyist ties" we see this in small print at the top:
These 38 fundraisers for Barack Obama's presidential campaign work for law firms that have lobbying operations in Washington, D.C. The dollar figure reflects the minimum amount each has pledged to raise for the campaign.
Again, it's raised some questions (and that's not bad), but let's actually ASK those questions instead of just alleging things and hoping people quietly swallow the allegations without asking the questions. So these people work for law firms that have LOBBYING operations in Washington. What sort of work do the individuals actually do? Do they ACTUALLY have contact with these Washington lobbying operations? My company has plants in a number of states and I don't have any contact with those plants in my current capacity working for the company. So I don't think you can say "Joe" works for Starbucks and there's a Starbucks in Seattle so therefore the candidate that Joe raises money for has ties to Seattle. And that's a little different, but it's fundamentally the argument they're making without actually providing the detail.
- At the end of the day we have to be careful how much we want to talk about people who are related to other people who gave money, etc. etc. I think we have to remember - and I say this a little tongue in cheek - that we are a country full of PEOPLE. So, OF COURSE, Obama - who is a lawyer and who's wife is a lawyer is going to have lawyers raising money for him. What the "Obama tied to lobbyists, but boasts of not taking money" article does not tell us is what % of law firms do NOT have any lobbying operations in Washington. And what % of lawyers raising money for Obama work for firms that have lobbying operations in Washington. (Geez...the more I think about this the more ridiculous it gets). Is it all of them? 1% 10%?? And how does it compare across the national average of lawfirms... We have to remember at the end of the day that Obama is not running only on the money of school teachers and not for profit rural clinic doctors. He is running on the money of Americans who want to contribute to him. (This again returns us to the first comment about who gets to define what it means to not accept lobbyist money). And one has to wonder how many rules the media should be able to heap on a campaign for who they can and cannot accept money & support for? And of course, it's only Obama because they want to pretend that because he took an ethical stand on SOME THINGS it's okay to criticize him on EVERYTHING. Why look at all the ways he's upheld his ethical standard, when it's so much juicier to rip him down to the circles of hell we all live in for the imagined instance(s) where he didn't uphold it.
I once saw a movie called "The Corporation" (which was a GREAT movie / documentary about how ridiculously powerful and influential corporations are) and this whole controversy recalls a scene from that movie to me where the CEO of (Shell?? BP??) some not very good Corporation came out to offer lemonade (or tea or something) to a bunch of protesters on their lawn and talked to them a little bit about their concerns... and you see the people sort of left a little confused because they did not want to see this CEO as a PERSON. But - at the end of the day a CEO IS a person (although lets not pretend that all or even most are "do-gooders", but some probably are). A PAC on the other hand is NOT a person. The media, who makes their money from ADVERTISING (and I worked in media buying for two years so I'm no stranger to upfronts or what is said in these sales presentations to agency reps), wants to blur the line here because they're terrified that we're going to elect someone who really wants to change America in a way that DOESN'T benefit the corporate elite pocketbooks.
Thus, in the end you have to decide what you believe on the situation (or write the Obama campaign if it disturbs you so greatly). I know where I stand. I am an Obama supporter so there is definitely some bias and I'm not saying they are WRONG in their accusations - I'm just saying they haven't provided us with enough data (or confidence, with their vague statements, that they're giving a fair reading of the data) to draw any real conclusions from this... Furthermore, I'm more inclined to believe Obama on this then the news media who has been anything but fair and balanced to ANY of the candidates (both bad and good at differing times) throughout this whole process.