{"id":1926,"date":"2010-06-18T02:08:52","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T09:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2010-06-18T02:11:01","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T09:11:01","slug":"extreme-antics-at-the-gulf-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/18\/extreme-antics-at-the-gulf-hearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme Antics at the Gulf Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterdays grilling of Tony Hayward, BP CEO, had two stars.\u00a0 The first was Hayward himself.\u00a0 I have not seen such overt obfuscation since Alberto Gonzales was grilled on the firing of US Attorneys, because they refused to file bogus prosecutions against Democratic office seeker shortly before elections.\u00a0 Hayward did not know, could not remember, was not part of the decision making process, and could not comment until BP\u2019s internal investigation is complete.\u00a0 I have some entertaining video that hasn\u2019t made the news shows, but I\u2019ll save that for last.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second was Ranking Member Joe Barton.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"18barton\"<\/a> In a jarring departure that caught fellow Republicans by surprise, Barton, the top GOP member of the panel, used his opening statement to apologize \u2014 twice \u2014 for the pressure put on the company by President Barack Obama to contribute to a compensation fund for people in the afflicted Gulf of Mexico states<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026Barton said the U.S. has “a due process system” to assess such damages, and he decried the $20 billion fund that BP agreed to Wednesday at the White House as a “shakedown<\/strong>” and “slush fund<\/strong>.” Since 1990, oil and gas industry political action committees and employees have given more than $1.4 million to Barton’s campaigns, the most of any House member during that period, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <AP\/Google<\/a>><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the Barton video.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Barton was not the only Republican to betray BP\u2019s victims on the corporate behalf.\u00a0 In addition to Michelle \u201cBatshit\u201d Bachmann, Haley \u201cOily\u201d Barbour and John \u201cBad-Tan-Limp\u201d Boehner, a few more spoke out for BP.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"GOBP\"<\/a> Last night, the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest [GOP delinked] caucus of Republican House members, fired off a statement declaring that the $20 billion dollar negotiated by BP and the Obama administration for victims of the oil catastrophe in the gulf is a \u201cChicago-Style Political Shakedown. [GOP delinked]\u201d Echoing this sentiment, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) told BP executives that he is \u201csorry\u201d for Obama\u2019s \u201cshakedown\u201d of their company.<\/p>\n

This morning, ThinkProgress traveled to Capitol Hill to interview lawmakers about the escrow fund. Several members of Congress, like Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), agreed with the RSC\u2019s criticism of the fund. Even though Fleming\u2019s home state of Louisiana has been devastated by BP\u2019s spill, Fleming attacked the administration for not trusting BP and for daring to \u201ctake control of all the money from BP.\u201d Asked about Barton\u2019s apology to BP, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said any lawmaker has a right to \u201cdo what they want\u201d:<\/p>\n

TP: He announced the $20 billion dollar escrow fund, funded by BP, to compensate some of the victims of this catastrophe. The Republican Study Committee put out a press release last night saying it\u2019s a Chicago style power grab, do you agree with that sentiment?<\/span><\/p>\n

FLEMING: I do<\/span> because what we have seen from this administration is whenever something like this happens \u2014 look at automotive industry, financial industry \u2014 what they do is take control of dollars then they begin to disperse them along political agendas. And we\u2019ve seen this happen before, and it looks like its the development here. BP has said, time and time again, that they will process all legitimate claims, we have no reason to believe they won\u2019t. Why does the administration feel like it\u2019s got to take control of all the money from BP?<\/p>\n

TP: So Congressman, the Republican Study Committee last night said that the $20 billion dollar escrow fund is just another Chicago style politics kind of power grab. Do you agree with that, do you think that\u2019s a fair characterization?<\/p>\n

JORDAN: I\u2019m, look, I\u2019m always worried about this unprecedented involvement by the government in the private sector<\/span> and look, BP obviously made some mistakes, but do we really believe the Federal government is going to do a better job?<\/p>\n

TP: What do you think about Joe Barton in the hearing this morning, he said \u2018I apologize\u2019 to the BP executives for the escrow fund, saying again it\u2019s a shakedown […] Do you have any kind of reaction to a member of Congress apologizing to BP executives?<\/p>\n

NUNES: Look, every member of Congress represents seven, eight hundred thousand people and they can do what they want.<\/p>\n

Watch it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

\u2026 [emphasis original<\/span>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

From a Democratic perspective, what could be better?\u00a0 We knew that the GOP is BP\u2019s pawn, because of all the times they have filibustered Democratic attempts to raise the liability cap.\u00a0 However this behavior is suicidal.\u00a0 On the other hand, if they do not support the giant corporations Teabaggers claim to hate, the Teabaggers will Teabugger them.<\/span><\/p>\n

And finally here\u2019s that special video of Hayward\u2019s testimony. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 Enjoy!<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/span><\/p>\n

Corporations are NOT People!\u00a0 Money is NOT speech!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterdays grilling of Tony Hayward, BP CEO, had two stars.\u00a0 The first was Hayward himself.\u00a0 I have not seen such overt obfuscation since Alberto Gonzales was grilled on the firing of US Attorneys, because they refused to file bogus prosecutions against Democratic office seeker shortly before elections.\u00a0 Hayward did not know, could not remember, was […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}