Big Oil Lobby Announces It Will Start Donating Directly To Candidates

[ProSense]

Big Oil Lobby Announces It Will Start Donating Directly To Candidates

The American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil industry’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertisements and Astroturf campaigns to support the the oil industry agenda. As CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote, API “wants to drill in fragile, sensitive places, keep government tax breaks, expand offshore drilling without reforms, and block global warming pollution reduction requirements.”

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According to the Center for Responsive Politics, API spent $6.7 million on lobbying alone last year, after clearing $7 million in 2009. In 2010, API was the seventh most prolific spender in the oil and gas industry, following ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Koch Industries and BP.

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In its proposed 2012 budget, the Obama administration suggested, once again, removing the billions in subsidies that taxpayers give oil companies every year. API has been at the forefront of the lobbying fight to preserve Big Oil’s subsidies, demonizing the removal of them as new “energy taxes,” even while admitting that cutting the subsidies and plowing the money back into clean energy technology would create “a lot more jobs.”

[midnight]

1. I guess we know that this is going to work out real well for the elite...

[Bryn]

2. We can protest, take down the elites, repeal corporate personhood ...

Egyptians have done it, more have followed and more will. Wisconsin is doing it.

98% vs 2%

Remember that we used to have millionaires and middle class, now? We have billionaires and working poor ... getting worse. Greed & Power have gone to the Elites' heads. It won't last.