Sunday, June 22, 2008

Obama: Just Another Politician Beholden to Special Interests

Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”

Obama’s Campaign Closely Linked With Ethanol
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: June 23, 2008

When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon — and so did Senator Barack Obama.

Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.

Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.


Read the story if you can stomach it. Not surprised that Obama would be associated with a fixer like Tom Daschle.

Apparently there are special interests and special interests. Oil, bad. Ethanol, good. The difference, of course lies on who is lining Obama's (and Daschle's) pockets.

I wonder if liberals are bothered by Obama's close association with Archer Daniels Midland over the years. Probably not.

1 comment:

Jim Rongstad said...

Obama is just your typical run of the mill politician.