I support Bernie Sanders. I don't think Clinton's donations from fossil fuel are a big deal.

[phleshdef]

However, I believe the way she reacted to the girl was pretty bad. She needs to keep that under control.

Look, if you work as a middle class trucker who transports fuel or coal or whatever around, and you donate to someone, that gets counted as a contribution from the "fossil fuel" industry. Having spent my entire childhood in Southern WV, I know a lot of people who are in that boat and at least 2 close friends that have donated to Bernie and are Bernie supporters.

I'm an applications developer so my contributions to Bernie are reported as coming from the information technology industry.

My wife is a customer service/teller at a bank who doesn't get paid a whole hell of a lot. Guess where her contributions are reported as coming from? The banking industry.

We both have contributed to Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Sharrod Brown (Ohio is where we live now), Ted Strickland and a few more local Dems here and there.

I don't really trust Hillary Clinton on some issues. And there are times her demeanor is off putting to me. I don't find her very inspiring. But I'll vote for her in November if she is the nominee because she is more right on the issues than any other viable candidate (ie whoever the Republican is) in November and though I think she is wrong on some things and a bit too opportunistic, I don't believe she is evil.

Regardless, lets treat this contributions from this industry or that industry with a little more fair scrutiny. (And no, I'm not denying that Hillary seems to have huge monetary connections to corporations that I don't care for, but in this case with the fossil fuel thing, I don't think its significant).

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

1. Well the 150,000 talked about is from registered fossil fuel lobbyists

~50 of them with maxed out donations

[phleshdef]

3. How do they know these people are lobbyists? Where is that coming from?

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/12/clinton-and-fossil-fuel-money/

According to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, the Clinton 2016 campaign has received about $160,000 to date from oil and gas company employees. That’s the third highest among presidential candidates — Republicans Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush top the list with $499,000 and $273,000, respectively. (Democrats Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, both of whom agreed to the pledge, have received $13,000 and $6,200, respectively, from employees of the oil and gas industry.)
For some context, the Clinton campaign raised more than $77 million as of Sept. 30, and the fossil fuel industry did not rank among her top 20 donors by industry.

The $160,000 Clinton’s campaign has received from the oil and gas industry comes entirely from oil and gas company employees (her campaign also received $398,000 from oil and gas employees during the 2008 campaign — fifth highest among the presidential candidates). These employees could be executives or merely rank-and-file employees of an oil or gas company. Although the tally includes PAC donations, no PACs tied to the oil and gas industry have donated to the Clinton 2016 campaign, researchers at the Center for Responsive Politics told us.

[liberal_at_heart]

5. Here is an article that discusses the list of donors.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/07/hillary-clinton-bundlers-fossil-fuel-lobbyists

[phleshdef]

7. Yea, the whole bundled contributions thing is a little shady.

But those are bundled from actual employees. And considering that it makes up a fraction of the over all contributions haul, I still don't see it as a big deal. I still THINK that Hillary Clinton would support, as a matter of policy, advancing the agenda away from fossil fuels in a realistic way and supports carbon-reduction regulations. I don't trust her on the financial industry and the war machine.

[liberal_at_heart]

10. Then I as a Seattlite can count on her support to prevent coal trains from going through

Seattle and coal ports being built on WA coast? I kind of doubt it. She is pro-big business no matter what that big business is.

[phleshdef]

15. She certainly is. And thats why I already cast my vote for Bernie.

[liberal_at_heart]

2. I'm guessing your wife is not a lobbyist or a hedge fund manager who may have to change

the way they do business if gambling with people's mortgages is separated from regular banking.

[phleshdef]

4. LOL, sometimes I wish. Not really... but you know what I mean.

Nah, she is making 12 bucks an hour plus a small bonus every quarter depending on how her branch is doing.

[libdem4life]

6. They really aren't, for a Centrist or Corporatist. That's true.

It's just when she tries to plant a political foot in the Progressive/Left Camp that she gets tripped up and gets all defensive. She can't understand why she can't be all things to all people all the time...hard as she tries.

[liberal_at_heart]

8. I remember a few years ago I saw several tv commercials of both the fracking industry and

the fossil fuel industry attacking each other. It was hilarious.

[phleshdef]

9. I'm not a centrist or a corporatist. I'm a New Deal Democrat who already cast his vote for Bernie.

[libdem4life]

12. I Like the New Deal phrase. I call myself an FDR Democrat.

I'll be darned if I'll give up my party even if it has listed dangerously to the right. Cycles...and this one's about to start it's return trip.

I hope some Independents/former Democrats will join the Left to help us.

[phleshdef]

14. I use to say FDR Democrat.

But the stigma of certain domestic security decisions that FDR made during WW2 kinda tainted that for me, the more I thought about it. No President is perfect, of course. But that was pretty bad. So I chose to describe myself as something GREAT FDR accomplished instead.

[libdem4life]

16. I hear you...good point. It was a very "eventful" time. n/t

[Vote2016]

11. Donations aside, Hillary supports fracking, offshore drilling, and pipelines, which Sanders opposes.

Plus, Sanders supports a carbon tax that Hillary opposes.

If there wasn't such a huge gap between Hillary's policies favoring the fossil fuel industry over our environment versus Sanders' policies protecting our environment from energy sector predation, I could overlook Hillary's donations, but the quid pro quo suggested by the cash-to-policy link makes the donations suspicious.

[phleshdef]

13. Yea, I agree. Though I believe she wants to move beyond fossil fuels, but not aggressively enough.

But I think that has less to do with money and more to do with lack of vision. Sanders is a visionary that recognizes that we have enough national capital, in terms of work-force, know how and monetary resources to take things to the next level. The only obstacle is people who don't want to do that. Hillary Clinton would prefer to surgically work through that opposition while Bernie would prefer to get shit done ASAP because lives are at stake.

[Vote2016]

17. I think Hillary is a liberal like G W Bush was a conservative. Both talk the talk for the party base

but catering to the base is a distant secondary priority to smoothing the path for corporate profit as the top priority.

Whereas Bush might talk about faith or guns or abortion, that was all blather for the base that may or might not get addressed after deregulation and corporate tax reduction and "free" trade agreements were taken care of as his top priority, Hillary will talk about children, wages, and equality for the base but won't even waste any political capitol to accomplish anything meaningful until after deregulation and corporate tax reduction and "free" trade agreements have been taken care of as a top priority.

I don't like her chances in a general election if we nominate her, and I will vote for her if it comes down to that, but I don't see much difference between her and, say, George Pataki or other moderate Republicans. Sure, her state of the union rhetoric would be better but she wouldn't accomplish anything much better than what Pataki would have accomplished.

[phleshdef]

18. I think she would hold together the good things Obama has done.

She would definitely be better for women's rights, LGBT rights and on the right side of many other social issues that we prefer. As far as taxes and social safety nets, I believe she would be preferable to any given Republican candidate on any given social safety net program. She would likely function as a moderate hawk on issues of war and peace and that sucks... the same goes for big financial.

[pantsonfire]

20. I think she would not....Bernie has a better record on LGBTQ and Women's rights (controversial!)...

....she'd work better with the current congress because she's more like republicans than liberal............progressive democrats, you realize she was open to stopping abortions under "special circumstances"....look that up.

[pantsonfire]

19. Greenpeace activist + reaction + #tonedownforwhat = hypocrite.....look at the bigger picture n/t