{"id":408414,"date":"2010-03-09T16:17:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T21:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=78800"},"modified":"2010-03-09T16:17:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T21:17:49","slug":"blanche-lincoln%e2%80%99s-army-of-lobbyist-disciples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/408414","title":{"rendered":"Blanche Lincoln\u2019s Army of Lobbyist Disciples"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been obvious for some time that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) was unlikely to support comprehensive climate legislation. What wasn&#8217;t clear was the extent of her influence, which, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.sunlightfoundation.com\/2010\/03\/09\/the-blanche-lincoln-energy-climate-complex\/\">a new report by the Sunlight Foundation<\/a>, goes well beyond her single vote in the Senate:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Six of Lincoln\u2019s former staffers currently lobby for interests invested  in influencing carbon capping legislation. These interests include oil  &amp; gas trade groups, agriculutural [sic] companies, the airplane industry  and biofuel and bioenergy firms. [&#8230;]<span id=\"more-78800\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The most influential of Lincoln\u2019s former staffers is Kelly Bingel, a  lobbyist for Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti. Bingel is a former chief of  staff to Lincoln and has been called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/issues\/55_63\/lobbying\/41051-1.html\">Sen.  Lincoln\u2019s alter ego<\/a>.\u201d Bingel\u2019s clients include two incredibly  powerful organizations opposed to carbon capping: the American Petroleum  Institute (API), the lead trade group for the oil industry, and Koch  Industries, one of the largest oil manufacturing, trading and investment  companies in the country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>One of the two owners of Koch Industries is David Koch, who has <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/62318\/tea-party-patrons-point-new-recruits-toward-2010\">taken credit<\/a> for sponsoring much of the Tea Party movement &#8212; whose adherents are no great supporters of climate legislation. Other former Lincoln staffers now lobby on behalf of the anti-cap-and-trade USA Rice Federation, the utility-advocacy Edison Electric Institute and the agricultural giant Monsanto. (The latter two have voiced support for climate legislation, but have sought to secure favorable terms for their industries.)<\/p>\n<p>Need further evidence of the massive Lincoln-lobbying-industrial complex? According to Sunlight, Lincoln&#8217;s the top recipient of campaign funds from the oil and gas industries and a variety of agricultural industries.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, given the entrenched history of close ties between lobbyists and the Hill, none of this should come as a surprise &#8212; but it does serve as a reminder of the powerful forces environmental advocates are up against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been obvious for some time that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) was unlikely to support comprehensive climate legislation. What wasn&#8217;t clear was the extent of her influence, which, according to a new report by the Sunlight Foundation, goes well beyond her single vote in the Senate: Six of Lincoln\u2019s former staffers currently lobby for interests [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5443,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5443"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}