Biden Thread

[ReluctantSamurai]

@ Monty

It just gets dirtier and dirtier:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exxon...b09f0145f5075f

New analysis of campaign disclosures found the six Democratic senators ― Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Chris Coons (Del.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) ― received a combined total of nearly $333,000 from lobbyists, political action committees and lobbying firms affiliated with Exxon over the past decade.

“This is a story about how lobbyists curry favor, and specifically about how Exxon’s current lobbyists have spent decades currying the favor of these six Democrats to position themselves to do things like safeguard fossil fuel subsidies and pare down infrastructure packages,” Rees said. “Exxon has hired these firms and lobbyists because they’ve contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Democrats, both before and after they were hired by Exxon.”

“On the Democrat side, we look for the moderates,” McCoy said. “So it’s the Manchins. It’s the Sinemas. It’s the Testers.”

Seems like petty cash, right? But:

But a 2017 Ohio State University study indicates the donations have a measurable effect, particularly as they enter the five-figure range. For every $10,000 a lawmaker received from a major industrial polluter like Exxon Mobil, their probability of voting for pro-environmental legislation decreased by 2%, according to the study of donations between 1990 and 2010 published in the journal Environmental Politics. For Democrats, the effect of the donations was even stronger, reducing likelihood of a pro-environmental vote by 3%.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the watchdog Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said corporate lobbyists “expect something in return” when they make political donations.

“As a result, when Exxon’s lobbyists, PACs and lobbying firms make donations to particular senators, we have to ask ourselves what do they expect and what did they get in return,” said Canter, a former ethics counsel for the Obama and Clinton administrations.

An expansion of the earlier NPR link:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-m...b001b8d59bbbd8

And the hits just keep on comin'...