When BP CEO Tony Hayward testified before Congress this morning, many expected to hear him apologize for the disaster his company has caused which is destroying the gulf of Mexico and the southern coast of the United States, and may also soon spread to the east coast. Instead, Republican Congressman Joe Barton was the one saying he was sorry — to BP.
In his opening statement, Barton, the top Republican on the committee overseeing the oil spill and its aftermath, delivered a personal apology to the oil giant. He said the $20 billion fund that President Obama directed BP to establish to provide relief to the victims of the oil disaster was a "tragedy in the first proportion." Because, as a typical Republican, he is more interested in representing industry and big oil corporations, not the American people he is supposed to represent.
Other Republicans are echoing his call. Republican Sen. John Cornyn said he "shares" Barton’s concern. Republican Michele Bachmann said that BP shouldn’t agree to be "fleeced." She feels making BP take responsibility to compensate those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by BP is a bad idea. Rush Limbaugh the king of promoting corporate America over its citizens, called it a "bailout." How about that for typical Limbaugh irresponsible and backwards thinking!? The Republican Study Committee, with its 114 members in the House, called it a "shakedown." BP is not eve and American owned company so these Republican are not even taking the side of Americans corporations over American people. They are taking the side of foreign corporations, careless foreign corporations who are destroying our nations coastline at that, over the interests of the American people!
This fund is a major victory for the people of the Gulf. It’s a key step toward making them whole again. BP has a responsibility to those whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated by the disaster. And BP oil executives don’t deserve an apology — the people of the Gulf do.
Now if we can just get the Republican Party to think about the needs of the American people for once and stop BSing us and selling the US out to corporations, foreign or domestic!
The families and businesspeople in the Gulf region want leadership, accountability and action from BP and the Administration. It is unacceptable that, 59 days after this crisis began, no solution is forthcoming. Simply put, the American people want all resources, time and focus to be directed toward stopping the spill and cleaning up the mess.
It was perfectly predictable, which is what makes Barton’s gaffe so excruciating. If you know the left is desperate to change the subject in the press, why make it easy for them? And why, oh why, frame your criticism of Obama and the escrow account as an apology to BP? He could have knocked the escrow fund independently before or after the hearing, at a press conference or in a written statement or an interview or various other ways. As it is, I can only assume that he was trying to pander to the right and that he’s willing to take on Obama’s White House even if it means siding — on national television — with the perpetrators of the oil apocalypse in the gulf. Red meat for grassroots conservatives, poison for everyone else in America. Maybe there was something to that “epistemic closure” criticism after all.
The other pity of Barton’s sympathy act is that it obscures the fact that he has a legitimate complaint about the escrow account. It’s time for this distraction-on-a-silver-platter to end. o_O