(We should ALL be apologizing to BP. Right? Right? – promoted by Colorado Pols)
The oil-industry’s dupe congressman from Texas, Joe Barton, who apologized in the House chamber to BP for the White House’s asking the company to put up $20 billion in escrow for the victims of the Gulf disaster has apologized again. His dramatic very plain spoken theatric apology was somehow misconstrued– either that or it was too plainly understood.
“I apologize for using the term ‘shakedown’ with regard to yesterday’s actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP,” he said in his latest statement. “As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident. BP and the federal government need to stop the leak, clean up the damage, and take whatever steps necessary to prevent a similar accident in the future.“I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident.”
Now that’s conviction.
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Nate Silver has the scoop:
Wow. Seriously, this Barton dude is a PR disaster for House Republicans; his buddies must be pretty pissed at him for shilling for his biggest donor.
is that Republican leadership not only told Barton to retract his “apology to BP” immediately, but also threatened to remove him from a leadership position on the committee if he didn’t. Apparently a few Repubs recognized that Barton had become the story – made it more difficult for them to keep blaming the Prez for everything.
Really folks, how many more illustrations do we need to understand that big corporate contributions (more than $300,000 from Big Oil to Barton) to Congressional candidates and members of Congress has an impact on public policy! This is the elephant (sorry, it fits) in the room that so many do not want to talk about. Instead, many insider politicians and operatives want to brag about their candidates’ corporate haul. Running for Congress is all about big money, and too many cheer that fact. We have to change how we elect people to Congress, AND how we elect our President, or we will have Joe Bartons to last us ’til eternity, or ’til our country folds, whichever comes first.
From Business Week:
Rep. Price (R-GA): Obama’s insistence on creating an escrow fund was an example of his administration “exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics.”
Rep. Bachman (R-MN): criticized the idea of an escrow fund as a “redistribution-of- wealth” fund at a Heritage Foundation forum this week.
Fmr. Rep. Dick Armey: a Republican and a leading funder of the Tea Party movement, said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week in Washington that Obama lacked the constitutional authority to set up such a fund.
Republicans are trying to back away from these comments, but it’s great tea party red meat, so they’re having trouble finding a consistent message.
…for what obviously was the script until people started thinking. Or is it a coincidence they both said “shakedown”?
Money makes politicians do weird things. Obviously Romanoff understands the influence of money on politicians. I also liked Bennet’s proposal to ban Congressional representatives from becoming lobbyists.
A total ban on PAC money isn’t going to happen but the one proposal that I would like to see put in place is that our representatives can’t take PAC money from companies in industries that their committee is regulating. Members on the banking committee can’t take PAC money from banks. Members on the energy committee can’t take money from oil companies. There is just too much conflict of interest in having someone taking money from companies in an industry that they are responsible for overseeing.
You can’t kill off PAC money but you can maybe try to clean it up so that there are no obvious Bartons on the dole.
PACs are like Credit Unions used to be — there had to be a “common bond”. Now credit unions are much like other S&Ls or even banks.
If you banned industry-specific PACs from giving to their Representatives and Senators due to direct conflict of interest rules, they’d simple organize a generic PAC, but it would still contain the usual suspects as individuals.
We really need a better public financing model to eliminate the option of targeted donations by special interests.
I agree money is toxic to the process, but short of drafting our representatives to serve (like jury duty), campaign funding evils and abuse will always be with us.
It is a very tough environment for Dems, starting with the fact that midterms usually go against the president’s party, and continuing with the bad state of the economy and the oil spill. Dems have made some missteps as well, and Dem enthusiasm isn’t good.
But if anything can save the Dems from themselves and circumstances, it is going to be the Repubs. The are staking out a position that there is something wrong with convincing BP to pay for the damage caused by their oil spill? That plumbs new depths of dumb.
if the Repubs’ stupidity on this issue actually delivered the South to the Dems again?
Of course, it won’t happen. But we can always imagine …
Werbeagentur MГјnchen
Deal with it.