THE GOP & JOE BARTONīS APOLOGY
Gary Ater
June 23, 2010
...House Minority leader, John Boehner, had the Texas Rep. Joe Barton quickly reverse his apology to BP.
Itīs amazing how so much of the media had initially treated the BP apology of Texas Representative, Joe Barton, as a singular comment from a single GOP member of the US Congress.
But they quickly realize that it was not an off-the-cuff, Joe Barton comment. It was a prepared statement, while the term "shakedown" was already a Republican "talking point" that had earlier been heavily distributed to every right-wing pundit and radio talk show host. (Virtually everyone from Limbaugh & Gingrich to Michael Savage had already commented on BP being so called, "shaken down" by the president.)
One day before Representative Barton made his now famous apology gaffe, Representative Tom Price (R-GA.) had issued comments from the Republican Study Committee. This is a large group of House conservatives whose web site claims 115 members. Priceīs statement was that there is "no legal authority for the president to compel a private company to set up or contribute to an escrow account". And he then accused the Obama administration of "Chicago-style shakedown politics".
As expected, at no time did the Republicans mention that Barton was the previous CEO of ARCO Petroleum, just prior to its acquisition by BP. In addition, there was no mention that Representative Barton is currently the largest congressional recipient of oil industry campaign donations, ($1.4 million to date).
After all of my years in the electronics industry, I find it interesting, and it is common knowledge, that if any electronics company should cause a local area to become polluted with their industrial chemicals, it was the companyīs sole responsibility to right the wrong and pay for the clean-up. (Many of us remember when Fairchild Semiconductor in California, was found to have had some chemical leaks that made it into the local water supply. These leaks were later also found to have been blamed for the many local and multiple birth defects. Fairchild closed the facility and paid dearly for years regarding this problem. And of course, letīs not forget the New York state, Love Canal / Hooker Chemicals debacle. )
But, Republicans in the House have taken the position that President Obama was wrong to demand that BP set aside money to guarantee that those whose livelihoods were being ruined by the oil disaster should be compensated. Obviously, the Republicans in Congress feel that it's instead more important to kneel at the altar of their radical corporate-conservative ideology. God forbid that anyone should feel any sense of compassion for our fellow working Americans due to the greedy mistakes of a giant oil company with by far, the largest number of drilling safety violations!
The Republican partyīs leadership understood their mistake immediately, and they reacted quickly to Bartonīs apology to BP when they forced him to withdraw the apology. Unfortunately for them, the "milk was already out of the cow". But they were successful in shooting down any additional congressional Republicans that may have wanted to join Mr. Bartonīs BP apology strategy. However, as if on cue, (and Iīm sure it was), Rush Limbaugh immediately called the $20 Billion agreement "unconstitutional" and he accused the administration of acting like "a branch of organized crime".
But one must remember, there hasnīt been one negative "peep" from BP. They did not disagree with the amount of the escrow and they also voluntarily put $100 Million into a fund for unemployment funds for those unable to work or fish, due to the disaster.
Apparently, the GOP leadership has purposely moved the Barton apology approach away from themselves as members of Congress. They instead, assigned that responsibility to the right-wing talkers and various conservative political pundits. Even the disgraced former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, stated that he thought the White House was "extorting money from a company".
As expected, Mr. Stuart Varney of the Fox Noise Channel, falsely claimed that Obama had moved to "seize a private company's assets". And it was very predictable when he complained that the action was "Hugo Chavez-like". Also true-to-form, the Weekly Standard, Editor and consistently wrong, Mr. Bill Kristol, said that "I have no sympathy for BP. But he then proceeded to be sympathetic when he offered that "it's not helpful for the country, for the economy as a whole, for the president to bully different companies and different industries."
There is no question that BP, one of the most profitable corporations in the world, screwed up royally. They did not have a serious oil disaster back-up plan and they were not, and are not, capable of preventing or controlling the worst oil disaster .ever.
However, the perfect example of their massive arrogance was when the BP Chairman stated "We care about the small people". As the Washington Postīs Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Eugene Robinson, wrote; the BP chairmanīs comment, "sounds like something Mel Brooks might dream up for a sequel to "The Producers". Only this time the comment was not from a movie script. And their real attitude was pretty much demonstrated when the BP CEO then left the Gulf disaster to attend a prestigious yacht race in which his personal yacht participated, in England of course. Oh yes, this certainly demonstrates that, "BP cares about the small people".
So while the BP CEO was sipping his champagne as he attended his yacht race, thousands of fishermen, shrimpers, oil-rig workers, restaurant owners and others along the Gulf Coast were suffering the economic effects of the deep-sea oil "volcano". The environmental damage, which is still worsening, will be felt for decades. And a mile beneath the surface, the noxious plumes of gas and oil still continue to erupt from the earth.
During the mid-term elections in November, the American voters will decide if what the president did was the right approach. And if I were a Republican, I would be very careful about pushing this "sympathy for BP" approach.
Based on how Americans feel today, the GOP could easily become "the party that does protest a bit too much".
Copyright G.Ater 2010
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