by Damozel | As Barack Obama receives praise from Dems and progressives for his speech and his new energy policy, McCain seems to be getting all the benefits of having an oil policy that the oil executives---in his own words---support. One type of support deserves another. The non-partisan watchdog group Campaign Money Watch sent TPM a heads up about this, er, badly timed set of contributions.
Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain's reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000. (TPM)
As FactCheck.org reminds us, oil companies can't give direct donations. (Fact Check.org) As it says, "The ad refers to donations from executives and employees of oil companies, given either directly or through company-sponsored political action committees, or PACs." TPM has a nice little list of donors and their donations. Some are quite interesting.
A Hess office manager and her husband, an Amtrak worker, each chipped in $28,000 apiece, too.
Late Late Late Update: Turns out that the office manager and her Amtrak husband rent their home in Flushing, Queens.
Still Later Update: It's likely that the Amtrak worker makes considerably less than $100,000 a year. (TPM)
TPM points out that since McCain unveiled his energy policy, money from the oil companies has been pouring in. (TPM) Greg Sargent has more on this rather suspicious donations by the office manager and her insistence that they came from her.
At Carpetbagger, Steve Benen comments:
The timing is especially significant. This isn’t an instance in which Big Oil was just supporting the Republican candidate because of partisan and/or ideological loyalties — this is Big Oil rewarding John McCain for reversing course and telling voters exactly what the industry wants the public to hear.
Take a look at the chart Ali at TP posted the other day, documenting McCain’s financial support from the oil industry over the years. It’s genuinely remarkable: “In Texas alone, June oil and gas-connected donations to McCain’s Victory ‘08 Fund, his hybrid fundraising venture with the RNC and state committees, reached $1,214,100. Of that total, $881,450, or 73 percent, came after June 15. McCain announced his position in favor of offshore drilling on June 16.” [More]
Obama's campaign jumped on this information a bit precipitately, producing an ad claiming that McCain got donations of $2 million.
Kevin Drum---who opposes Obama's windfall profits tax---feels that this ad is a promising start.
[T]his is, I hope, just a taste of things to come. If Obama bangs away on why McCain has flip flopped so much and who benefits from virtually every one of his changes of heart, it makes a great story. Stay tuned.
Sullivan says tersely: "This Obama ad suggests he's not going to play pretty. Kevin Drum is impressed." Elsewhere, Sullivan comments on the dire state of the economy, saying "Meanwhile, Obama and McCain are playing the kind of politics that will only make things worse." I take it he's not that pleased with the negative tone of his ad.
But there has been a bit of an "oopsie." Fact Check.org reports that the actual amount is $1.3 million. They also point out an inaccuracy in Obama's framing of the issue:
Sen. Barack Obama's campaign released the ad Aug. 4. Its core claim is that McCain accepted $2 million in campaign contributions from "Big Oil" and is "in the pocket" of the industry. The Obama campaign even named the ad "Pocket."...
The Obama campaign said it cobbled together its $2.1 million figure by adding one total from a report in the Washington Post, which said oil and gas donors gave $1.1 million to McCain in June, and an older total from CRP, which put the McCain campaign's total at just over $1 million through May 30. But that turns out to be adding apples to oranges, and it does not give an accurate figure for money that went directly to "John McCain's campaign," as the ad puts it. Much of the money given in June went to a joint fundraising venture of the McCain campaign, the Republican National Committee and several state GOP committees, an unknown portion of which was passed through to the McCain campaign itself....
We judge the $1.3 million figure from the Center for Responsive Politics, which includes any money transferred to McCain's campaign, to be the most authoritative tally of oil and gas donations to the campaign. And we conclude that the $2 million figure in Obama's ad is the result of counting some donations raised during June that actually went elsewhere. [More]
FactCheck also questions the assertion that McCain wants to give the oil companies another $4 billion in tax breaks.
The ad's claim that "McCain wants to give [oil companies] another $4 billion in tax breaks" is also somewhat misleading. McCain is not proposing any special tax breaks for the oil industry. What he's proposing is a reduction in the corporate income tax rate for all companies. The $4 billion figure that Obama and many Democrats have constantly repeated recently is their estimate of the amount by which oil company taxes would be reduced should this proposal be enacted without any additional offsets, such as closing of existing preferences or "loopholes." [More]
And FactCheck.org again calls out the Obama campaign for being what it calls "a little too slick."
Both candidates accept donations from individual employees of oil companies. In fact, when Obama claimed in an ad last March that "I don't take money from oil companies," we criticized him for being a little too slick. The CRP puts Obama's total from oil and gas donors at $394,465. (Fact Check.org)
On the other hand....
Based on CRP's figures, McCain's oil and gas donations account for just 0.9 cents out of every $100 he's raised. Obama's oil and gas total comes to 0.1 cents per $100. That's a significant difference between the two candidates, and it's clear that the industry is favoring McCain with its donations. Whether that puts him "in the pocket" of the industry is a judgment we'll leave to our readers. (Fact Check.org; emphasis added)
McCain's proposal would be helpful to all companies, not merely oil ones. But the oil companies would certainly benefit.
McCain's proposal would cut the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It also would allow for immediate write-offs for companies buying new equipment and technology, and a tax credit of 10 percent of the amount companies spend on wages devoted to research and development.
The Obama campaign points to an analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund from March 27, which estimated that the McCain plan would be worth a total of $3.8 billion per year to the five largest U.S.-based oil companies... That was based on 2007 earnings and tax figures. Since then, the industry's profits have risen substantially, so the reduction in corporate tax rates might benefit them even more by the time it could be enacted in a McCain administration. But the benefit would go to all companies, not just those in the oil business. [More]
In a fit of inspiring campaign rhetoric, John McCain today announced that he would actually be willing to fulfill his Constitutional duty as a lawmaker in service to getting oil companies more reserves for their stock portfolios....
McCain hasn't been willing to come off the campaign trail since April, the last time he cast a vote in the US Senate (that's called value, Arizona constituents!). In that time he's missed dozens of energy-related votes - including one to stop tax break giveaways to oil companies where he would have been the deciding vote. ...
Obama made a speech that has given a degree of relief to progressives. More on that next.
Memeorandum blogger round-up is here.
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This really is an incredible story - the blatant nature of the corruption and the circumvention of campaign finance is really too obvious to deny. I really hope that, assuming the MSM continues to leave it alone, Obama or his surrogates keep hammering it until others are forced to take notice.
Posted by: Adam | August 05, 2008 at 01:08 PM