gotta love the fokkin' repugnicans...

[RuMR]

Big Biz ass kissers <--

[max]

From what I heard on the radio, he wasn't the only one who was kissing ass. Seems like some of the other committee members simply using their time at the microphone to make politics rather than solve problems.

 

Not to say BP should get off, but even before I heard a politician apologized, I was annoyed by the way some of the senators were acting at the pulpit.

[YocumRidge]

A true genius indeed.

"Offshore drilling and production platforms are so technologically advanced that one platform on the surface of the water can handle production from several different wells [...] and do so [...] without so much as losing a gum wrapper over the side of the platform. It is truly amazing."

Joe Barton for President 2012

[Nitrox]

Don't kid yourself, BP was paying both side.

 

http://www.capitolnewsconnection.org/?q=node/14779

 

WASHINGTON – The longer the BP oil spill lasts, the more nervous politicians are likely to become about any campaign contributions they have received from the oil giant, political experts say.

 

And the more shy they will be about taking any further BP contributions.

 

"Politicians will be less likely to take contributions from BP for the duration of the crisis," said John Green, political scientist at the University of Akron. "The reason is simple: it would make an easy target for opponents in a campaign."

 

Campaign liabilities

Larry Sabato, political scientist at the University of Virginia, agreed, saying “it’s only a matter of time” before contributions from BP become a liability in competitive congressional races just as contributions from the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs have become controversial in some races.

 

Goldman Sachs bears blame for helping to cause the economic meltdown of 2008 through the marketing of sub prime mortgages grouped together and sold as derivatives.

 

BP continues to face a public relations nightmare due to its massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and the consequent spoiling of beaches and wetlands in Gulf Coast states.

 

'Potentially toxic'

Sabato recently described Goldman Sachs contributions as potentially “toxic” to some candidates. Contributions from BP, he said, are rapidly gaining the same status.

 

“BP may even exceed it,” the professor said. “BP is in the headlines every day.”

 

He added: "If you knew your opponent had BP money and you didn’t, wouldn’t you use it? It’s a gimme. It’s an easy press release.”

 

$6.2 milliion

The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign research organization, shows BP has given $6.212 million to nearly 1,OOO candidates for federal office over the past 20 years.

 

In a bit of political irony, the company, whose oil spill has made President Obama’s life miserable over the past month, has given more to the president than anyone else.

 

The Center for Responsive Politics shows Obama having received $77,051 from BP, with most of it, $71,000 coming during his run for the White House.

 

“Almost all of it was from BP employees during his 2008 presidential race,” said Michael Beckel, spokesman for the center, a non-partisan campaign research organization.

 

Political action committees and employees

The Center for Responsive Politics attributes money to a particular firm when it comes from either its political action committee or one of its employees. Companies are not allowed to give directly.

 

Sabato said he expects many campaigns to start donating their BP money to charity or to the cleanup effort along the Gulf Coast.

 

Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy group for campaign finance reform, said she isn’t prepared to go that far but said candidates are likely to shy away from future BP contributions, at least for awhile.

 

“They are not going to be at the top of anybody’s call list. That’s what happens when you have a controversy,” she said.

 

Giving money back

Giving the money back may only result in more attention to it, she said. “You’re going to get beat up either way.”

 

One potentially close race where BP might become an issue is the battle for a Senate seat from Kentucky between Democrat Jack Conway, the state attorney general, and Republican Rand Paul. Conway has received $9,600 for the 2010 race from BP and is the top recipient from the oil company among Senate candidates this year. Over his career, Conway has received $13,600 from BP. The company is not among the top contributors to Paul.

 

Conway’s campaign Friday did not respond to questions delivered by phone and e-mail.

 

Beckel said the Center for Responsive Politics has noticed an unmistakable uptick in interest in BP money from all over the country in recent weeks.

 

Obama tops the list

Beckel also said that Obama topping the list in receipt of BP money should not be surprising. “He was raising more money than anybody,” he said of the 2008 race.

 

Obama is also the top recipient of Goldman Sachs money over the past two decades, having received $1.05 million.

 

While Obama tops the list of BP recipients, the oil and gas industry as a whole, Beckel said, gave far more to Republicans in 2008 than to Democrats. Sen. John McCain of Arizona received $2.4 million from those companies in 2008.

 

John McCain and Goerge Bush

BP has given McCain $44,899 since 1990. BP gave former President George W. Bush, $47,388.

 

Other prominent politicians still in office and their BP money since 1990 include:

 

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, $41,400

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., $31,000

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., $28,200

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, $27,350

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., $22,300

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; $22,000

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, $20,950

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, $19,500

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, $19,200

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, $16,000

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, $15,200

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., $14,000

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,$14,000

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., $12,500

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., $11,000

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, $10,500

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; $10,050

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., $9,500

Sen. John Kerry, R-Mass., $9,500

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, $9,000

[prole]

 

OIL WHORES!

 

In kowtowing to BP, Rep. Barton isn't alone

 

By JOEL CONNELLY

SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

 

As slick attacks on President Obama's oil spill leadership spread across conservative media -- and mainstream Washington, D.C. pundits display their disconnect with America -- a defining question gets overlooked.

 

Do our elected officials' sympathies lie with what BP's chairman called the "small people," those with livelihoods put at jeopardy, or with Big Oil?

 

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, was delivering his "shakedown" apology to BP at last Thursday's hearing when a four year-old memory flooded to mind: This is the guy who tried to shake loose Puget Sound refineries from tanker size and transportation safety regulations.

 

As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Barton was crafting legislation designed to cut down the regulatory hoops governing the siting of new oil refineries. Hurricane Katrina was the given reason, Big Oil was the chosen beneficiary.

 

Tucked away in the bill draft was a rollback of nearly 30 years worth of tanker size limits and tug escort requirements. The impetus was BP's frustration at inability to build a put a new long dock at its Cherry Point refinery, in near proximity to a herring spawning ground.

 

The stealth attack was stopped.

 

Still, we should ask what manner of folks will be running Congress if control flips to Republicans in the November election.

 

Joe Barton is not alone in tossing bouquets and sympathy toward the corporation responsible for the worse pollution disaster in American history. Other examples:

 

--BP "shouldn't have to be fleeced," in the words of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minnesota, who described as "a redistribution of wealth fund" the $20 billion escrow account set up to pay cleanup costs and claims.

 

--"We can't afford to demonize" BP, Sarah Palin declared on television last week as she upbraided President Obama for taking so long to meet with BP's chief executive Tony Hayward. (Hayward has been exiled back to England.)

 

--President Obama "is directly engaged in extorting money" from BP, ex-House Speaker (and possible presidential candidate) Newt Gingrich charged, appearing on Fox News' "Hannity."

 

--Back when he was a law professor, Barack Obama taught his law students "how to use the Constitution to shake down corporations through race and grievance lawsuits," Rush Limbaugh charged. "That's what he taught students at the University of Chicago . . . much like he is doing to BP."

 

--The BP escrow account is an example of "Chicago-style shakedown politics" by President Obama, Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, charged in a statement.

 

After Republican House leaders beat his brains in, Barton apologized for his apology. Interestingly, however, House Republican leader John Boehner declared about 10 days ago that government and BP should share burdens of spill response, before hastily clarifying that cleaning up is the company's responsibility.

 

Republican Senate hopeful Dino Rossi told seattlepi.com that he supports the escrow fund and removing the liability cap on oil spills. In Kentucky, however, GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul delivered a now-famous "Accidents happen" response before he stopped giving interviews to non-tame media.

 

Dating back more than a century, to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, "green" Republicans have done yeoman service for conservation and the environment. But they are now an endangered species.

 

When supertankers were banned from Puget Sound -- via an amendment slipped into the Marine Mammals Protection Act -- Democratic Sen. Warren Magnuson received the kudos. But two Republicans in our House delegation, moderate Joel Pritchard and conservative Jack Cunningham, cleared away obstacles to House floor passage.

 

By contrast, Joe Barton is responsible for legislative language that forced the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to speed up approval of drilling rigs. MMS was already more a lapdog than a watchdog.

 

The lethal disasters of 2010 -- the Tesoro refinery explosion in Anacortes, the West Virginia mine blast, the Deepwater Horizon fiasco -- demonstrate the need for rigorous regulation, and a necessary role for government.

 

Even as beaches and birds are fouled along the Gulf, however, blood runs thick among friends of BP. "They need their capital to drill wells: They need their capital to produce income," Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, former Washington, D.C., lobbyist, said in criticizing the escrow fund.

 

Barton was once a Senate candidate in Texas, promising to be a voice for "the good people who work hard and carry the load." On Thursday, however, Barton said he "doesn't want to live in a country" that would shake down a beleaguered corporation to create a "slush fund."

 

If an anti-gnvernment tide washes over America this November, it will carry into Congress more Bartons, Boehners and Bachmanns. They'll strip oversight agencies, let corporations write the rules, and usher in more bed sharing of regulators and industry than seen in the Colorado office of MMS.

 

Do we really want that for our country?

[Off_White]

Repugnicans? What, you mean these folks?

 

[video:youtube]

[wayne]

Nice find Off.

[j_b]

More ass kissing of big banks, including by so called "populist tea-baggers": "In an extraordinary move aimed at winning over reluctant Republican senators, the top Democratic negotiators on the Wall Street reform bill will reopen the conference committee Tuesday to swap out a controversial $19 billion tax on big banks, according to House and Senate aides.

 

The unusual development points to deepening troubles for Democrats in their push to finish the bill before the July 4 recess. The death Monday of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) and the decision by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to oppose the bill unless the tax was removed left Democrats several votes shy of Senate passage.

 

Other key Senate Republican holdouts — Susan Collins of Maine, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Grassley of Iowa — also expressed concern with the tax, saying they were surprised to learn that it was added early Friday morning during an all-night committee meeting.

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39167.html?om_rid=DXn0aN&om_mid=_BMKk7kB8M4BlB9ixzz0sHixDFiu

 

[j_b]

This one by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is priceless:

 

Ensuring there's enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country's entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he'd favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/29/john-boehner-accuses-demo_n_629265.html

[prole]

1.3 million unemployed won't get benefits restored

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 28 mins ago

 

WASHINGTON – More than 1.3 million laid-off workers won't get their unemployment benefits reinstated before Congress goes on a weeklong break for Independence Day.

 

And hundreds of thousands more will lose their benefits in the coming weeks.

 

The House voted 270-153 Thursday to extend jobless benefits for people who have been laid off for long stretches, but the gesture was made futile by the Senate's inability to pass the bill. For the third time in as many weeks, Republicans in the Senate successfully filibustered a similar measure Wednesday night before senators adjourned for vacation.

 

A little more than 1.3 million people have already lost benefits since the last extension ran out at the end of May, according to the Labor Department. By the end of the week, the number will jump to 1.7 million. By the end of July, it would top 3 million.

 

"It is hard to understand how anybody can come to this floor and say, for 1.7 million people and their families, this is not an emergency," said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "There is no excuse for voting no."

 

The bill would extend unemployment payments for up to a total of 99 weeks, for people whose state-paid benefits have run out. The benefits would be available through the end of November, at a cost of $33.9 billion. The money would have been borrowed, adding to the budget deficit.

 

The payments average a little more than $300 a week.

 

Republicans, tapping into voter anger about the growing national debt, said they would support extending the benefits if the bill was paid for. They proposed using unspent money from President Barack Obama's massive 2009 economic recovery package.

 

Democrats rejected the offer, saying the money was needed for jobs programs. Republicans said the stimulus package included plenty of lawmakers' pet projects that could be cut to cover the unemployment benefits.

 

"Americans are not receiving their unemployment checks because Democrats refuse to pay for these benefits at a time of record federal deficits," said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.

 

A times, Thursday's debate grew heated, as lawmakers prepared to face unemployed voters back in their districts during the weeklong break.

 

"I challenge you to look people in the eye and tell them that you voted no," said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. "Tell them as they swallow their pride that you don't care, that you don't have a heart, that you don't have any feeling."

 

Lewis' booming voice rang throughout the House chamber, but his real audience, Republicans in the Senate, had already adjourned for their holiday break.

 

Camp said Republicans in both chambers empathize with laid-off workers but simply want to pay for the benefits instead of adding to the national debt.

 

"We could pass this bill with broad bipartisan support if Democrats would just agree to pay for the spending," Camp said. "The American people know we must pay for this spending, and the Senate appears to have heard that message."

 

The measure stands a better chance of passing the Senate after a replacement is named for Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., who died Monday. The measure fell two votes short of the 60 needed to advance Wednesday night, but only because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a supporter of the bill, voted "nay" to take a procedural step that would allow for a revote.

 

"We will vote on this measure again once there is a replacement named for the late Senator Byrd," Reid said.

 

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, will choose Byrd's successor.