Obama’s Lobbyist Connections

We’ve all heard Barack Obama talk about how evil lobbyists are, but I guess some lobbyists are more evil than others.

Democrat Barack Obama opposes a bill that would change the nation’s 135-year-old mining law - the same stance as mining industry executives who employ a Nevada-based lobbyist advising the presidential candidate.

The Obama campaign and Billy Vassiliadis, a longtime Nevada power broker, contend there is no connection, saying they have never discussed Obama’s position on the mining bill.

Sure.

Vassiliadis, a longtime Nevada power broker, is a member of Obama’s Nevada steering committee and has contributed $2,300 to his campaign. He is a lobbyist for the Nevada Mining Association at the state level and the chief executive of the advertising and lobbying firm hired by two mining companies to lobby for them in Washington.

Denver-based Newmont Mining Co., one of the world’s largest gold producers, hired Las Vegas-based R&R Partners’ Washington, D.C. office in January. The firm has represented silver and gold miner Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. (CDE), in Washington since 2006.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said Vassiliadis has advised the campaign only on politics, never policy.

“I have not had a single conversation, not one, with anybody in the Obama campaign about mining,” Vassiliadis said.

You can always trust the word of a lobbyist right? This is getting ridiculous. Between faux-transparency and changing his position on Iraq depending on the political climate, and now this interesting little lobbyist connection he has, how can anyone believe a word he says?

Tags: Iraq Campaign, lobbyists, political climate, transparency

4 comments November 15th, 2007

No Paper Trail For Obama?

There’s been a lot of talk about Hillary’s records from her days as First Lady, but I wonder how much attention is going to be given to this:

Barack Obama, who’s been scolding Hillary Rodham Clinton for not hastening the release of records from her time as first lady, says he can’t step up and produce his own records from his days in the Illinois state Senate. He says he hasn’t got any.

“I don’t have — I don’t maintain — a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn’t have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records,” he said at a recent campaign stop in Iowa. He said he wasn’t sure where any cache of records might have gone, adding, “It could have been thrown out. I haven’t been in the state Senate now for quite some time.”

That’s just too hard to swallow. No records? Eight years in the state senate and we’re supposed to believe there’s nothing he can show?

Now, Obama has based his campaign on him being an outsider, and fixing government, and he’s even made an issue specifically about government transparency. Obama has even suggested that Americans would trust government more if government was made more transparent.

So, since Obama can’t be more transparent, since his records apparently no longer exist, I guess we cannot trust him.

It’s also worth noting that Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, ran on a pledge of openness and transparency, and has since had what could very well be the most secretive governorship in Massachusetts history.

Tags: records, secrecy, transparency

8 comments November 14th, 2007