Just a reminder: A Lot of the SuperDelegates Are Paid Lobbyists for HRC

[amborin]

this has been posted before, but it's worth repeating:

Lee Fang at The Intercept has already highlighted several pro-Clinton superdelegates who are registered lobbyists.

For example: This includes people like Bill Shaheen, who is registered to lobby for a company called Pain Care, which has “faced increasing scrutiny as local officials have noted that eight of the 10 most prolific opioid prescribers in New Hampshire’s Medicaid program worked for PainCare.”

(Bill is also the husband of N.H. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who's already endorsed Hillary for president.)

Snip

Not everyone who does what most of us would think of as lobbying is registered as a lobbyist.

Individuals only have to register if they spend more than 20 percent of their time lobbying, and the number of registered lobbyists has actually declined as the disclosure requirements increased.

Instead, these individuals might now describe themselves as a “policy adviser” or “government affairs specialist," and there is little enforcement against those who don’t register but still perform lobbying activities.

(If you want to understand the world of shadow lobbying, you probably can’t do better than to start with Fang’s piece at The Nation from 2014.) This is a very complicated and murky area — it’s really hard to draw clear lines on what counts as lobbying when the range of advocacy activities that happen in Washington is so great — but it seems clear that there’s a lot of lobbying activity that goes unreported and a lot of lobbyists who go unregistered.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2016/02/25/help-us-track-which-democratic-superdelegates-are-lobbyists/

The list contains lobbyists for Keystone XL, private prison group Geo, American Council of Life Insurers, News Corp (yeah, them, as in Fox News), Enron, Countrywide, U.S. Telecom Association, Coca-Cola, CitiGroup and others.

..... When we vote, we are not just voting for a candidate, but for a network of relationships which will be brought to bear on the governance of the country. It is determines who gets access, how agencies are staffed and, as the study shows, what actually gets done.....

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/17/1486673/-When-Lobbyist-Become-Superdelegates

[AgerolanAmerican]

1. pretty nifty

How many lobbying dollars do you think it takes to buy the actual privilege of voting as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention these days?

[grasswire]

2. OMG, the info about the lobbyist for Paincare....just disgusting

I find this extremely shocking.

And I thought Shaheen was a good guy.

[SFnomad]

3. The only person singled out, Bill Shaheen, isn't a Superdelegate because he's a lobbyist ...

With just a small amount of research, you find out he's the NH representative to the Democratic National Committee. Key personnel like that get Superdelegate status.

http://nhjournal.com/updated-state-democrats-choose-bill-shaheen/

You would also notice that he's filling the remaining 16 months of a term since December 2014. That would mean his term is up about May 2016. If he doesn't get re-elected to that position, he will lose his Superdelegate status and the person that replaces him would get Superdelegate status.

And calling people "Paid Lobbyists for HRC" in the OP is either poorly worded or deliberately misleading. I didn't realize that HRC herself had any "paid lobbyists".

[Skwmom]

4. Don't you love how many spouses and family members feed at the public trough.

This election cycle has been a real eye opener.

[djean111]

5. If those superdelegates throw it to Hillary, then Hillary had better hope she can buy a whole lot

of votes in the GE. I don't see my self voting for someone given the candidacy by her paid lobbyists.