McCain's Oil Money Gusher Spreads Cross Country
On Sunday I wrote about the spike in donations to John McCain from Texas oil executives following a June 16 speech in which he reversed his longstanding opposition to offshore drilling.
In fact, no fewer than 85 Texas-based donors connected to the oil and gas industries gave $1,214,100 to McCain in June, with 73 percent of those donations occurring in the second half of the month. But it wasn't just Texas oil donors getting into gear. Our new report, It's A Gusher, released today by my organization, Campaign Money Watch, reveals that oil executives from around the nation cheered McCain's policy reversal by opening their checkbooks.
The most egregious example? Within about a week of McCain's reversal on offshore drilling, ten Hess executives or family members from New York and New Jersey maxed out to the RNC by writing identical $28,500 checks, for a total of $285,000.
The oil money gushed in from coast to coast, with donations to McCain's victory fund from:
• Gary and Carolyn Chouest ($100,000) from Louisiana. Gary Chouest is CEO of Edison Chouest Offshore
• Stephen Chazen ($5,000) from California, who works for Occidental Petroleum
• Frederic Hamilton ($39,300) from Colorado, the CEO of Hamilton Oil Company
• Onajite Okoloko ($30,000) from Florida, the CEO of Ocean and Oil Services
• Rich and Ann Calhoon ($71,600) from Mississippi. Rich Calhoon is CEO of Pruet Oil.
These increasingly cozy ties between McCain and big oil should come as no surprise, since the Straight Talk Express is full of oil lobbyists.
Campaign Money Watch found that 33 staffers or fundraisers on the McCain campaign have earned $19.3 million in lobbying fees from at least 30 oil and gas industry corporations and associations. Just four top lobbyists for McCain -- Wayne Berman, Charlie Black, John Green, and Steve Phillips -- account for $11.5 million of that total.
Exxon Mobil, which set a record today for the largest quarterly profit by any U.S. corporation, has paid $1.26 million to lobbyists currently working on the McCain campaign.
While economists agree that offshore drilling will have no effect on gas prices for years -- McCain admitted in June that any effect would be primarily psychological -- it is an easy way to boost the already outrageous profits of these oil companies and their executives.
The long and short of it is this:
John McCain's position won't reduce gas prices anytime soon, but it will increase the oil companies' profits. These lobbyists and the donors from Big Oil may want you to believe they think John McCain is the best candidate for the country, but what is really happening is that their financial future is at stake. He's the best candidate for Big Oil. That's why the checkbooks are out.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkUj9EIINIs
as one of the folks who works in oil offshore platforms said: "we are working as fast as we can".
This will make NO DIFFERENCE.
Take a walk on a Texas or Alaska Beach. You will need to carry a can of kerosene to clean the tar off your feet when your done. Is this what you want for Florida?
That said, I would let them drill, but I would add 2 new restrictions to the lease.
1. Any product that comes from drilling on federal land may only be sold and consumed in the USA. That would include every drop of oil, every cc of natural gas, every product of any kind that comes from federal land.
2. If there is a spill, They will completely clean it up. All of it; not give it a reasonable effort, not give it their best effort; They will completely clean it up, Even if the CEO and all other company officers have to empty their personal bank accounts to do so. If they do not clean it up, then we can sell their assets to pay for cleaning it up ourselves.
If they dont like the terms, they dont have to sign the lease.
Why should we let them turn Florida and Cape Cod into a tarball just so they can sell the oil to China?
Excellent points. I TOTALLY agree. On my first visit to South Padre Island, I was horrified by the black sand. The idea of the beautiful powder-sugar sand on the west coast of Florida absolutely breaks my heart. All for ONE reason only. Greed has proved to be a worse drug than crack.
For the next ten or twelve years, the biggest economic impact of offshore drilling, if approved today, will be:
Oil company contributions to the McCain campaign.
And they already have offshore leases, plenty of them, that they are NOT using. They do not need additional areas.
This information needs to be in national ads.
They bought Bush- Cheney and now McCain - if Americans are foolish enough not to see through their influence on our political system and vote him into office - well we deserve what we get.
Rush, Sean, OReilly - are all puppets of this system.
Let's nationalize oil companies and put an end to this. We did after all spend $US 3 trillion already on a War for which these oil companies are getting no-bid contracts.
And what about Congress - we do not have an environmental policy and are facing serious drought and global warming issues - in fact it is the biggest story of our lifetime and is being totally ignored by Congress and the Press. The fact GLOBAL WARMING and Al Gore have been DEMONIZED to such an extent - is because what they are saying is so completely TRUE.
Too much carbon-diaoxide in the atmosphere caused by burning carbon based fuels like oil and coal causes global warming - there is no 'ifs, ands or buts' about this and it is what the oil companies have been trying to hide from the US consumer.
They run our country - not Bush or Cheney or anyone else.
Wendy: You propose nationalizing oil companies. Fine. Do it. Who is going to find, drill, produce, refine and deliever the fuel that everyone, well, maybe not you in NYC, uses?
Have you ever seen a government function effiiciently on anything?
You do realize that CO2 represents something on the order of 0.04% - that is 4 hundredths of 1 percent of the atmosphere?
Another campaign of fear? The boogeyman is going to take away YOUR oil.
Muwahahaha!
McCain = the best government money can buy.
Big oil has got the whole world by the balls right now and almost everyone on the planet is harmed by them.
Their lobbyists are smart, immoral, and extremely well funded. And they have congress in their pockets. Cheyney is nothing more than a big oil lobbyist who happens to get paid by the same people big oil porks.
Does anyone think that things will be different with JMac in charge?
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