Did Sanders Lie About Clinton’s Oil Money? NPR Factchecker Can’t Be Bothered to Check

[Octafish]

You'd think someone actually checking out the facts would be part of a story on "fact checking."

Did Sanders Lie About Clinton’s Oil Money? NPR Factchecker Can’t Be Bothered to Check

By Jim Naureck
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, April 1, 2016

EXCERPT...

But what about “lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry”—isn’t that what Sanders is supposed to be lying about, to the point of making Hillary Clinton sick? To give him credit, Overby is good enough to tell us what he isn’t telling us:

The industry total here doesn’t include lobbyists with fossil-fuel clients, and it doesn’t do what the Republican opposition research group America Rising did: include corporate money to the Clinton Foundation. The presidential campaign cannot raise corporate money.

Well—why not include lobbyists with fossil-fuel clients, since that is what the Sanders campaign, like other critics, was explicitly talking about? According to Greenpeace, Clinton has gotten “$1,465,610 in bundled and direct donations from lobbyists currently registered as lobbying for the fossil fuel industry.” That’s quite a bit more string.

And corporations can’t give directly to campaigns, but they can give to Super PACs that support campaigns. Greenpeace cites “$3,250,000 in donations from large donors connected to the fossil fuel industry to Priorities Action USA, a Super PAC supporting Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”

That works out to $5 million altogether. It’s hard to say what the going rate for buying a presidential candidate is, but unlike Overby, I wouldn’t refer to Clinton’s fossil-fuel-industry contributions as “paltry.”

And even though Overby warns you away from looking at the Clinton Foundation—because it’s the sort of thing a “Republican opposition research group” would do—you don’t need to go to a middleman; the Clinton Foundation lists its donors on its website. There you can learn that the Foundation has received at least $10 million from Saudi Arabia; at least $5 million from Kuwait, as well as from oil-refining billionaire Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi; at least $1 million from ExxonMobil, natural gas-producer Cheniere Energy, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Foundation, “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” etc.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://fair.org/home/did-sanders-lie-about-clintons-oil-money-npr-factchecker-cant-be-bothered-to-check/

When the most important part gets left out of a story, it causes people to be more than uninformed. When done by a professional propagandist, it causes people to be misinformed and disinformed, depending on the purpose of the omission.

[Fumesucker]

1. Still part of the reality based community, eh?

It's going on fifteen years since the reality based community died and it still hasn't figured out it's dead yet.

[Octafish]

3. It is so cool when we say something over and over and it becomes true.

Like Iraq was about WMDs.

So Iraq Was About the Oil

By Robert Parry
November 8, 2005

When Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly decried the Bush administration’s bungling of U.S. foreign policy, the focus of the press coverage was on Wilkerson’s depiction of a “cabal” headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that had hijacked the decision-making process.

Largely overlooked were Wilkerson’s frank admissions about the importance of oil in justifying a long-term U.S. military intervention in Iraq. “The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption,” the retired Army colonel said in a speech on Oct. 19.

SNIP...

After al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush had the political opening he needed to turn his designs on Iraq into reality. Though there was no credible evidence connecting Hussein to al-Qaeda and Sept. 11, Bush and Cheney made the linkage anyway.

Active preparations for war with Iraq were soon underway. Behind the scenes, O’Neill said he watched as the administration refined its plans for how to divvy up Iraq’s oil reserves after the invasion.

“Documents were being prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld’s intelligence arm, mapping Iraq’s oil fields and exploration areas and listing companies that might be interested in leveraging the precious asset,” Suskind wrote in The Price of Loyalty.

Beyond giving U.S. firms access to Iraq’s oil, the Bush administration recognized how the oil could help induce both allies and rivals to back broader U.S. policies.

“One document, headed ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,’ lists companies from 30 countries – including France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom – their specialties, bidding histories, and in some cases their particular areas of interest,” Suskind wrote in recounting O’Neill’s observations.

“An attached document maps Iraq with markings for ‘supergiant oilfield,’ ‘other oilfield,’ and ‘earmarked for production sharing,’ while demarking the largely undeveloped southwest of the country into nine ‘blocks’ to designate areas for future exploration.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/110705.html

It's like David Suskind became Billy Mummy just to send people to the cornfield.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Center for Public Integrity: Inside Hillary Clinton's big-money cavalry

They come in a variety of organizational flavors: political action committees, super PACs, corporate entities, “social welfare” nonprofits — even 501(c)(3) nonprofits, best known for performing charitable or educational work.

Some take advantage of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions and billionaires and spend the cash to directly advocate for or against political candidates.

Among the most notable pro-Clinton organizations in operation this election:

.... Extensive article must read

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/07/19528/inside-hillary-clintons-big-money-cavalry

[Octafish]

5. About the Center for Public Integrity

The Center for Public Integrity was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis. We are one of the country's oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations. Our mission: To serve democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.

They also have helped get the word out about Offshoring, via the Panama Papers:

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is an active global network of 160 reporters in more than 60 countries who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories.

Founded in 1997, ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to extend the Center’s style of watchdog journalism, focusing on issues that do not stop at national frontiers: cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power. Backed by the Center and its computer-assisted reporting specialists, public records experts, fact-checkers and lawyers, ICIJ reporters and editors provide real-time resources and state-of-the-art tools and techniques to journalists around the world.

https://www.publicintegrity.org/icij/about

Thank you, Ichingcarpenter! Many people -- including quite a large number of very rich people -- put INTEGRITY ahead of money.

[djean111]

4. So, really? No one is supposed to say anything truthfully bad about Hillary because the GOP might

not have found it yet?

That is so fucking pathetic. Not to mention fatuously assuming and entitled.

And even though Overby warns you away from looking at the Clinton Foundation—because it’s the sort of thing a “Republican opposition research group” would do—you don’t need to go to a middleman; the Clinton Foundation lists its donors on its website. There you can learn that the Foundation has received at least $10 million from Saudi Arabia; at least $5 million from Kuwait, as well as from oil-refining billionaire Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi; at least $1 million from ExxonMobil, natural gas-producer Cheniere Energy, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Foundation, “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” etc.

[Octafish]

6. That's the idea.

Otherwise people wouldn't get the facts, or, as they say in the news biz, the story, or for us who care about such things, the truth.

All told, the campaign to elect Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 has received more than $4.5 million from lobbyists, bundlers, and large donors connected the fossil fuel industry. -- Greenpeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaign-updates/hillary-clintons-connection-oil-gas-industry/