"Well, that was fast.
Barely 10 minutes into Thursday's landmark congressional testimony — where BP CEO Tony Hayward and other leading company executives are revisiting the Gulf Coast oil spill before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — the first controversial statement has entered the record.
[The latest coverage of the hearings, updated continuously throughout the day, is available from the Associated Press and from Reuters.]
And no, it didn't come from the gaffe-prone BP brass. Instead, GOP Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member on the House Energy Committee, made a decisive splash in his opening remarks (from which Republican leaders immediately began distancing themselves). A staunch conservative who has a long record of backing oil industry interests, Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the "shakedown" the Obama White House pulled on the company. (Barton has received more than $1.5 million in campaign donations from the oil industry, according to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan watchdog group.)"
And here's what else he said:
"I'm not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself," Barton explained, "but I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case a $20 billion shakedown."
Wrapping up, Barton said: "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words — amounts to a shakedown, so I apologize."Has this man not been watching the news? Does he not see the devastation caused by BP in the Gulf? Does he not see how the environment and its wildlife are being destroyed with no end in sight? Has he not heard about all the businesses that are going under? Has he not heard how BP cut costs to build their well? Has he not heard that people are not being compensated because BP has not been paying people for what they've done? Does he not know what the consequences are from this disaster?
First they criticize President Obama because he's not showing enough emotion or doesn't appear to be doing enough and now this??? What the heck! Damned if you do, damned if you don't!
that's politics for you. love your watercolorized banner with KC. so Cute!
ReplyDeleteAnd that just about says it all Kay. It is all getting pretty disgusting with the finger pointing but I'm afraid that's what I have come to expect with politicians, back-paddling as per usual and hoping we don't have a long memory. In the meantime all those poor people who live in the Gulf are suffering, not to mention all the wildlife while billions of dollars are where?
ReplyDeleteExcellent questions, Kay. I can't imagine what on earth Barton was thinking with his comments.
ReplyDeleteCrazy! Why blame Obama for this mess?
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing that politicians seem to be so indifferent to the environment. Money and power seem to be most important in our lives.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that there are people like you, who have the environment very much at heart.
shocking find, Kay. These are the kind of people in power? I'm just reading the latest horror stories in the news about the effect on the wildlife...it's an unimaginable tragedy.
ReplyDeleteAll Joe Barton is looking out for is his pocket lining.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's more. I just read an email from Organizing for America. It seems Sen. John Cronyn agrees. Rep Michele Bachman called it a "fleecing". The 114 Republican members of the House Study Committee called it a "shakedown". Rush Limbaugh called it a "bailout"??? What?! I guess they're more worried about there being less oil money to line their pockets than providing relief to the people and plants and animals of the Gulf. And we know they will do anything to attack the President.
ReplyDeleteI wish everyone (right wingers) would get off Obama's back. What do they expect him to do, anyway? The damage is done. Instead of blaming each other, they should try to find solutions to stop that blasted leak and repair the damage done already.
ReplyDeleteI just saw this on the news, and agree with you. BP should pay! No question about it, and no apology needed!
ReplyDeleteRep. Barton sounds more like a lobbyist for BP. Probably a well paid lobbyist at that.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm British and I'm ashamed of the mess they have made! Obama is quite right to do what he has.
ReplyDeleteBut I will say one thing, BP is barely a British company at all these days!
Your last two sentences sum it up very eloquently.That says it all. Too bad he's from my home state, kinda wish he were from somewhere else.
ReplyDeletePolitics is getting dirtier globally.Sad to see humanity,environment and wildlife suffer like this.
ReplyDeleteWell that apology didn't go over to well. He has since retracted it and everyone came down hard on him.
ReplyDeleteCalling in the lawyers is his considered method of fixing an ecological catastrophe?
ReplyDeleteYou have an empty suit for a president.
This is the norm in Corporate America. When the consideration over legal precedents and process take priority over an innate and obvious sense of justice, as has been happening in American jurisprudence for the past 100 years, then justice simply becomes a catchphrase for legal processes controlled by attorneys and no longer has any equivalency to rightness or correctness in an emotional sense. Americans and Europeans have that characteristic in common where they always try to reduce things into logical streams of thought and manipulate them and control them as they would any physical commodity. In that way, the 'rightness' of something is twisted until it no longer resembles what any child would tell you is 'right.' We all know what is right. When a killer admits his deed but is released because the admission occurred prior to his being read his rights under the Miranda Act, justice is not served... but the law is.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the BP spill is second only to the Exxon Valdez spill. Your points are well taken and correct. However, you would probably be shocked to find that Exxon has STILL not reimbursed any of the people it harmed as a result of the Valdez spill. They have not paid anyone except their own attorneys. The aim is to tie up the judgments in court long enough until all the plaintiffs die off, or until the time value of the money allocated to the judgments makes it profitable to hold the money back. When the cost of breaking the law; any law... criminal or civil or even a law of nature, is less than the cost to enforce it, corporations have ALWAYS opted to break the law. What needs to change is not really the law; it is the corporate form. Shareholders must and should be held liable. That way, a company like BP could never exist and oil exploration and refining would fall to government entities where it could be watched and regulated.
Sorry for the rambling!
Your cousin,
walt
I'm with Walt. Good points. Directors of corporations are obliged by law to make decisions within the law to maximise the return to shareholders. If they make decisions on a basis of social, ecological, or any other type of conscience, they are in breach of their fiduciary duties, and liable for prosecution.
ReplyDeleteYou want a corporation to pay damages or any other monies? The law has leave them no leeway to get out of it.
All this fretting over money at this critical time in the Gulf is sickening. And it highlights how callous these folks are about the environmental disaster.
ReplyDelete