Tea at Trianon: Hillary and the Oil Industry

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Hillary and the Oil Industry

I thought she was in favor of eco-friendly alternatives. From Fortune:

Hillary Clinton has significantly out-raised Donald Trump in the oil and gas industry, an important venue for campaign financing that has historically served as a boon for Republicans, according to a new Wall Street Journal analysis.

As of the latest fundraising cycle at the end of July, employees in the oil and gas sector had donated $525,000 to Clinton’s campaign, compared with $149,000 to Trump’s team, the newspaper reported. That’s outside of the $470,000 that members of the industry gave to a fundraising account Trump holds with the Republican National Committee. But even that pales in comparison to Clinton’s DNC account, which took in $650,000.

Taken together, oil and gas donors have contributed roughly twice as much to support Mrs. Clinton’s campaign as Mr. Trump’s,” reported the Journal.

Its analysis points to heavy hitters in the typically Republican stronghold of business, such as Exxon Mobil XOM 0.92% , where employees have apparently made 175 donations consisting of $200 or more to the former secretary of state. Only one such donation was made to the GOP nominee, according to the WSJ. In the meantime, members of the American Petroleum Institute, a major lobbying group for oil executives, also have yet to open up their wallets for Trump, said the publication.

Remarkably, this development in fundraising doesn’t appear to be symbolic of a broader trend in the election. Other Republicans have continued to receive money from oil and gas industry employees this year, raising a collective 90% of the total $71 million in donations made so far. What’s significant is that “only a small amount of that is going to Mr. Trump,” noted the Journal. (Read more.)