>[UPDATE]:
Nobody could have anticipated this! Oh, wait …
———————————–
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas just apologized to BP for being forced to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate the Gulf Coast. He called it a “shake down.”
I see.
This is why we don’t want any more Texas oil men in Washington. This is precisely the attitude we saw from Bush, Cheney, Condi (she had an oil tanker named after her!) and all the other Big Oil cronies handed the reins of power for eight years.
Meanwhile, you wacky kids on the internet are already having your fun:
Honestly, after months of hissy fits from the right wing about President Obama “apologizing for America” you’d think apologizing to BP over the oil spill might raise a few eyebrows in the Texas Teanut Party. But word has it Limbaugh opened his radio show today criticizing the “BP shakedown.” Guess they got the memo.
[UPDATE]
Video courtesy of JR Lind at Post Politics:
Southern Beale 
>OT but worthy of note. http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/Visualize the oil catastrophe in your own area. Staggering.
>You have to question the legality of Obama being able to insist on this fund being created without a judgement by the judicial system. Most everybody claimed Bush was asseriting Executive powers that were not in keeping with the Constitution and I would say this falls in that category as well. This follows an Obama pattern of just bypassing the judicial system as he did in taking over GM, firing the CEO, and screwing the valid bond holders out of their money in order to hand over what money and control was left to the unions.Should BP pay for the mess they caused? Of course they should. However the law needs to be followed. Have a court decide what BP owes – that is their function in our government. It is not for the President to decide.
>@Jim – But Obama didn't order the fund into existance.BP *agreed* to it.Now, no doubt Obama made threats,or at the very least pointed out that BP is on the road to bankrupcty.But it's neither illegal nor unconstitutional for anyone, even a President, to negotiate and to accept a bargain.
>There was no Executive Order signed, no legislation enacted, nothing of that sort. Obama told BP to put some walk to their talk about "making this right." And they did it.If we'd had a compensation fund set up after ExxonValdez a lot of pain and suffering might have been saved up in Prince William Sound. But George HW Bush was no Obama.
>rewinn.. I agree, the whole thing stank of negotiation and tradeoff — the most important of I'm sure we were never told and never will be told probably. And leaving it in the hands of courts when corporations can cherry-pick their own pet judges isn't realistic.
>"And leaving it in the hands of courts when corporations can cherry-pick their own pet judges isn't realistic."If the corporations can cherry pick their judges then who is to say they did not cherry pick the president? We already know that Congress answers to their corporate overlords, is the whole government run by the corporations? If so, then what is the use in even complaining what they do?
>'We already know that Congress answers to their corporate overlords, is the whole government run by the corporations? If so, then what is the use in even complaining what they do?'One theory of democratic republican governance suggests that people should be educated to understand what is going on so they can throw the creeps out. Another would argue that money and speech are not necessarily the same thing and that buying election is wrong for a candidate… maybe buying candidates should be wrong for a corporation.Will much good necessarily come from the complaining? I don't know.However, from a moral point of view, one has to say something.As for how much of our elected government is under corporate control… it's a very tough call. Much was made of Tom Daschle's connection to the health care industry when he was nominated for H&HS secretary. Yet when he was a senator he was one of the leading architechts of Hillarycare. Like or hate Hillarycare, it was not precisely a gift-basket for the insurance industry.Justice Hugo Black was a member of the KKK, but he was one of the judges who unanimously ruled against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education.Abraham Lincoln was a trial lawyer, but he wasn't much for habeas corpus as president. ;)So maybe some people can wade in the pool and not get wet.Doesn't mean I wouldn't feel a lot more comfortable if there was less splashing going on.
>If the corporations can cherry pick their judges then who is to say they did not cherry pick the president?Spoken by someone who clearly does not remember the 2000 election …
>Jim…I think 99% of the politicians and the bureaucrats are bought and paid for — yes, including my own. And I don't think there's much to be done about it. For sure I'll never vote Democratic again — ever. Guess that leaves the Socialists for me. But you go ahead and keep on complaining. I like reading your posts.
>BP is on the road to bankrupcty.Any truth to the rumor that BP's so rich that this $20B is about 1½% of their cash and liquid (no petroleum joke) on hand?I wish I could screw up like that, even on the little scale that one person can, and only pay 1½% of my bank account and 401k. Somebody has to remind the corporate world what "punitive" means. How do I get to be a corporation?The people at Media Matters cranked up their Wayback Machine. If you wonder if just maybe the press has decided to stick to a narrative that this oil disaster is a political crisis for Obama, but a bit more slack was cut to whomever was in the White House when the Exxon Valdez ran aground (the exact name escapes me), wonder no more.