(Photo credit: Flickr user KB35)
Over at The Nation, Lee Fang has a great piece about how foreign money is finding its way into our elections.
Although most of the nation’s attention has been focused on the rise of Super PACs, Fang looks at how another group is impacting the nation’s elections: trade associations. The author finds that one trade association in particular, the American PetroleumAi??InstituteAi??(API), has been spending money in our elections, and this money isn’t necessarily American.
Fang lays out how API is partly funded by the U.S. subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, which also stands to benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline the organization has committed itself to pushing. Additionally,Ai??Tofiq Al-Gabsani, an executive at the company, sits on API’s board. He also happens to be a registered lobbyist for the Saudi government.
The author reminds us that API ads were critical in defeating Joe Sestak in his bid for U.S. Senate, and that they’re now targeting Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and others on behalf of anti-environment candidates. This is an important detail because while U.S. law still prohibits foreign corporations from donating to political action committees, they are still free to back trade associations, including ones like API that intervene in elections.
We encourage you to read Fang’s full piece here. It’s really great.
If you think all of this is as wrong as we do, you can do something about it. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy Campaign.
The Saudis are just lucky they found themselves standing on the world’s greatest oil reserve about 5 decades ago. They are the biggest whores around and the primary problem in the Middle East. Internally they knew that were a Muslim country with a growing Wahabbi sect. The Wahabbis are the most fanatic of religious groups in the world. The Royal family knew that the main threat to them keeping power was the religous in their country so they struck a deal with the Wahabbis that they would give the religious sect control of the internal life of the citizens, of course exluding the royal family. So the country is basically poverty strickend, uneducated with the only education being sitting in madrasses (their version of yeshivas) and to only learn 3 things; the Koran, hatred of the USA and fanatic hatred of Israel. They are a breeding ground for suicide bombers as the easiest ones to convince to perform the act are the least educated who are so fanatic they dare not question. Today, I who am Jewish, cannot even step into their country. Anyone who sees them as our allies is smoking something illegal. But nothing made me cringe more than when Bush walked on the Rose garden while holding the hands of the King of Saudi Arabia.