Why Aren’t Tea Parties Demanding That The Government Hold BP Accountable On Behalf Of Taxpayers?
Given that these protesters take their name from the Boston Tea Party, which was organized around protesting an unfair tax benefit given to a massive British corporation, and that British oil giant BP’s oil disaster could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars, you’d think that Tea Partiers would be demanding that the government hold BP accountable and make the corporation pay the full costs for its bad behavior, so that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill.
Yet the Tea Partiers haven’t descended on BP’s headquarters or marched on Capitol Hill demanding, for example, that the government lift the $75 million oil spill liability cap on BP so that the damages it pays aren’t severely limited. On the contrary, they’ve attacked President Obama for securing a $20 billion escrow fund from BP to recompense victims of its oil spill and cozied up to politicians who’ve sided with BP. As the Associated Press noted last week, “Tea Party candidates [have stood] by BP to rail against President Obama.” Here are just a few examples of Tea Party organizers and Tea Party-endorsed politicians siding with the foreign oil giant against American taxpayers:
– Republican Study Committee chair Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who headlined a Tax Day tea party in the nation’s capitol this year, derided the escrow fund as “Chicago-style shakedown politics.” [6/16/10]
– Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who has proudly boasted of supporting the “Tea Party movement and the people getting involved,” echoed Price’s language as he apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayword for the White House’s “shakedown” it performed while trying to hold his company accountable. [6/17/10]
– Conservative talk show host and chairman of the Tea Party Express Mark Williams compared Obama’s efforts to secure the escrow fund to those of “mobsters,” and added that where he comes “from, they call it extortion.” [6/21/10]
– The “tea party favorite” in the Oklahoma GOP gubenatorial primary, state senator Randy Brogdon, said that BP’s oil disaster was “a perfect example of why government should never be involved in the private sector,” while blasting efforts to properly regulate the foreign oil giant so that it couldn’t cause more devastation in the future. [6/21/10]
Without tough government action to make sure that BP pays for the own costs of its own disaster and doesn’t drop the tab on taxpayers — as leading right-wing figures like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue and House minority leader John Boehner (OH) have suggested — it is likely that the oil company will get off easy, much like Exxon did following its own oil disaster two decades ago.
If Tea Partiers truly want to defend taxpayers from facing undue burdens, it may be time for them to don their signs and demand that BP pay for the entire cost of its own disaster by lifting the oil spill liability cap and ask that the government end billions of dollars in special tax breaks for Big Oil (just as the original tea partiers wanted to end the tax advantages of the British East India Trading Company).
Its simple the tea baggers hate America. They hate the idea of an enlightened modern democracy that has an effective government that works for the people rather than corporate interests. And no corporations do not create wealth. Business can only create wealth with the labor of ordinary working Americans.
GOPers So Opposed To Wall Street Regulation That They Voted For Bailout Continuation
The dubious Senate testimony of Jeff Sessions The Alabama Republican says he doesn't believe Elena Kagan. But in 1986, it was his honesty that senators doubted
Whenever Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., insinuates that Elena Kagan is lying in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about military recruiting at Harvard Law School, it is worth recalling the dubious quality of his own testimony before the same committee when it rejected his nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986. At the time, to put it politely, he appeared insufficiently candid on certain crucial matters.
Of course everyone knows that the fundamental reason for the committee's decision to dump Sessions was his unreconstructed Deep South attitude, usually described in the oh-so-careful Washington lexicon as a "lack of racial sensitivity." Copious evidence included persuasive testimony from former colleagues who recalled his appalling remarks in private about the Klan (he liked them until he learned that some Klansmen were "pot smokers"), the NAACP ("un-American" and "Communist-inspired") and the American Civil Liberties Union (also "un-American" and "Communist-inspired"). He had castigated a white lawyer who fought for equal voting rights as "a disgrace to his race" and repeatedly called a black assistant U.S. attorney "boy," warning him to "be careful what you say around white people.
