Hillary's Scary Lobbyists

Remember when the Democratic Party dropped its ban on lobbyist donations so Hillary could beat Bernie? Bernie petitioned the DNC to urge them to stop rolling back their bans. The petition fell on deaf ears. Here's a bit of background if you are unfamiliar with this news.

DNC rolls back restrictions on lobbyist donations - The Hill

So what has been the result? Well, here's a sampling of some of Hillary's lobbyist donors.

-Michael Pease who lobbies for Goldman Sachs and was once barred from communicating with the House Financial Services Committee.

-Joe O'Neil who lobbies for Bain Capital. Yes, that Bain Capital.

-Theresa Fariello and Lai King Lam who lobby on behalf of Exxon-Mobile.

-Jerry Crawford who lobbies on behalf of Monsanto.

-H. Benson Dendy III who lobbies on behalf of several companies including Raytheon Inc. who makes tactical munitions for drones, and DJI Technologies who makes drones.

-Joseph Pigg for the American Bankers Association.

-The in-house lobbying staff of Commerce Bank.

-Langston Emerson representing private equity firms.

-Thurgood Marshall Jr. who represents the Corrections Corporation of America-- private prisons.

-Michael Driver-- who represents the Red Flat Nickel Corporation that wants to develop nickel laterite mines on thousands of acres of National Forest and BLM land in Southwest Oregon.

-Stuart Eisenstat for the private American military company and security consulting firm Blackwater.

-Ameren Corp which lobbies on behalf of electric companies.

-Sabrina Campbell who lobbies for her client American Electric Power.

-Janet Boyd who lobbies for Dow Chemical.

-Melissa Lavinson who lobbies for Pacific Gas & Electric. Yes, Erin Brockovich's PG&E.

-James Allen who lobbies on behalf of big coal plant owner Puget Sound Energy.

-Bradford Cheney of Glover Park Group who have been criticized for their anti-ethanol lobbying.

-Lobbyists for the Podesta Group, whose clients include Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Monsanto, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, big health insurers, big pharma, and much more.

-Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP who represent big media conglomerates.

-Raul Tapia, Melissa Maxfield, Phil Tahtakran, and Edolphus Towns all from Comcast.

-Kenneth D. Salomon who once worked for the FCC but now lobbies for telecommunications companies.


-Vic Fazio from Phillip Morris.

-Shanti Stanton who represents nearly $750 million in dark money, and over a billion dollars in all representing big pharma, Wall Street, and others.

These are just a small sampling, and what it means for our country is just business as usual. If these lobbyists get their way, and they likely will to some extent, then we will have no advancements in alternative energies, no tightening of restrictions on polluters, mining in our national forest, expansion of private prisons, and possibly even net neutrality itself is under threat. And I don't even want to envision the consequences of Blackwater's lobbying efforts.

SOURCE: OpenSecrets