POLITICIAN INADVERTANTLY SPEAKS TRUTH

From the Houston Chronicle:

Barton BP 'shakedown' remark draws fire

Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis ignited a firestorm on Capitol Hill on Thursday when he apologized to BP's CEO for what he called a White House "shakedown" that led to the creation of a $20 billion fund for compensating some victims of the Gulf oil spill.

The comments drew immediate criticism from Democrats and embarrassed Republicans worried about being portrayed as sympathizing with BP and Big Oil during an election year.

"I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, (they are) subject to some sort of political pressure that … amounts to a shakedown," Barton told BP CEO Tony Hayward. "So I apologize."

More here.

Generally, I'm not very fond of Congressional hearings. You know, the ones that are about issues big enough to make the evening news. For the most part, no information comes out of these things that isn't known already, and the behavior of Representatives and Senators is often nothing but embarrassing. They thump their chests and act all outraged, bullying whoever's on the stand, without so much as a hint that, when whatever shit was going down, they were at the country club or a cocktail party hobnobbing with lobbyists. It's all so gross.

Every now and then, however, something interesting happens.

Like at this BP hearing Thursday morning. We already know that Joe Barton is an idiot. I mean, he's a Texas Republican, so idiocy kind of comes with the territory. But he's not supposed to be this big of an idiot. Apparently, Barton didn't get the Congressional memo sent out to both parties in both houses: until the Gulf crisis is over, everybody act like they hate the oil companies. Really, his apology to BP's CEO probably wouldn't even merit a mention if this weren't the biggest environmental disaster in US history. After all, Congress, contrary to conventional wisdom, represents the corporations, rather than the people of the United States. And the oil corporations are among the biggest players on Capitol Hill. Indeed, even after all the political posturing going on these past few months, I still have difficulty discerning where government ends and the oil industry begins.

But nobody in Washington is supposed to admit it. Especially not right now. They're duty bound to role play like they teach it in the schools: we have a government, and we have business, and they're two different things, and the government polices those businesses for the good of the people. But Barton just mucked the charade up something bad. Sorry the big bad government is holding you accountable for your actions; that's not what this country's about. No doubt almost everybody in Congress agrees with him on this point, but there's a real chance that if the public catches on, voters might actually trump corporate campaign cash, for once, come November.

That's probably the real reason there's so much bipartisan anger about his statement. It's like, "shut the fuck up, man, we don't want democracy breaking out, do we?!? If that happens, we're all fucked!!!"

I do love it when the establishment goes off script.

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