Hillary Clinton Shaking Silicon Valley for PAC, Lobbyist Cash

Thanks to Hillary Clinton directing the Democratic National Committee (DNC)to terminate its 2008 ban on presidential nominees taking donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees (PACs), the Clinton campaign has raised $31 million in Silicon Valley.

Barack Obama banned the party’s presidential nominees from taking federal lobbyist and PAC donations as a way to honor his promise to voters that “we are going to change how Washington works.” (He violated his pledge on not hiring lobbyists almost immediately.)

But sometime around the end of 2015, Clinton began changing the rules again. The portion that remains for the 2016 race is a ban on lobbyists and PAC representatives attending events that feature Obama, Vice President Biden or their spouses, according to DNC Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach, quoted by The Intercept:

“The DNC’s recent change in guidelines will ensure that we continue to have the resources and infrastructure in place to best support whoever emerges as our eventual nominee,” Paustenbach said in an email. “Electing a Democrat to the White House is vital to building on the progress we’ve made over the last seven years, which has resulted in a record 71 straight months of private-sector job growth and nearly 14 million new jobs.”

But Breitbart News has reported that Pasustenbach was exposed by WikiLeaks as being at the center of the DNC anti-Bernie Sanders scandal, which has metastasized into the federal class action suit titled Widling v. DNC in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Florida. Plaintiffs claim the DNC “actively concealed its bias” from its donors and supporters backing Bernie Sanders, and that it was coordinating with Hillary Clinton’s campaign from the start of the Democrat presidential nomination process.

Of the $374,585,440 Hillary Clinton has raised, about a third of the $110,211,121 million in PAC and Lobbyists cash she pocketed came from Silicon Valley interests. That is far more than Obama raised in 2008 or 2012 along the San Jose-to-San Francisco strip, according to the non-partisan Crowdpac website, which tracks political contributions.

Hillary talks about how she is a woman of the working class, but only 19 percent of the $264,374,319 she raised directly for her campaign came from donations under $200. Clinton’s average contribution check from Silicon Valley was $1,276.

Despite Hillary Clinton’s prowess at raising money, she has spent 75 percent of all the cash she raised through June 30. Clinton did raise $90 million in July, but her monthly “burn rate” appears to be over $100 million.

When Republican Donald Trump announced at the end of July that he raised about $82 million and is only spending about $25 million a month, the Democrat’s claxon bell went off that Hillary might run out of cash toward the end of the campaign, while Trump had a war chest to finish strong.

Clinton’s campaign director Robby Mook sent out a 750-word letter in early August that Trump’s fundraising “was far more than anyone expected — and should be a wake-up call to all Hillary supporters. We must redouble our efforts in the coming weeks.”

Given that Clinton may be better at spending money than raising it, Hillary is headed back to Silicon Valley on August 24 for an up to $50,000-per-ticket event for her own Hillary Victory Fund PAC, hosted by Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In keeping with Clinton’s focus on fat cats, Cook’s fundraiser lists only three different contribution levels: $50,000, $10,000, and $2,700. The location of the fundraiser is being kept a secret until just before the event to avoid media scrutiny.