Stephen Jones: Stand Up Against the Oily Black Tide

This is a post by contributing writer, Stephen Jones, who is a progressive political activist and a resident of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Asked by a worried citizen in Philadelphia what kind of government the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia had framed, Benjamin Franklin responded famously, “A republic if you can keep it.” As Thursday’s appalling performance of Rep. Joe Barton, Republican from Texas and ranking member of the Congressional Energy and Commerce Committee proves, Franklin and his fellow citizens at the front steps of Constitution Hall in 1787 were right to worry. “I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Congressman Barton said, “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. I apologize.”

Rather than speaking up for the citizens of the United States whose lives and livelihood have been devastated, or the environment of the Gulf of Mexico, or the threatened shore and surrounding waters of our nation, or the eco-system that is facing destruction of unimagined proportions, Rep. Barton and the GOP leadership have instead decided to rise to the defense of the interests they represent, most notably British Petroleum, who is primarily responsible for the disaster.

It isn’t hard to follow the money trail that leads to the doorstep of Mr. Barton’s misguided concern and anguish. Barton’s top contributor is Anadarko Petroleum, BP’s partner in the Deepwater Horizon project that is belching its oily death into the Gulf. Since 1989, Barton accepted $56,500 in PAC donations and another $90,000 in individual contributions from Anadarko. Anadarko holds a 25% stake in BP’s Deepwater Horizon project and is Barton’s largest donor. Barton has also accepted massive contributions from the rest of the oil and gas industry, a whopping total of $1.4 million dollars since 1989.

GOP Hearts BP
Barton hardly stands alone. Much of the Republican national leadership has been crying out on behalf of the interests of BP in recent weeks, even as the devastation has spread across the Gulf, threatening four of our southern states. Rep. Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, doubled-down on Barton’s outcry. “BP’s reported willingness to go along with the White House’s new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics,” Price said.

Tea Party heroines Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann have also risen to add their brand of stirring defense of BP. Bachman denounced the $20 Billion escrow account agreed to by BP as "a redistribution-of-wealth fund." Haley Barbour, the Republican Governor of Mississippi and former national chair of the Republican National Committee, current RNC chair Michael Steele, the Fox-News propaganda machine and the Republican Party’s cavalcade of right-wing talk-radio spokespeople have also chimed in against holding BP and its corporate partners accountable.

In place of supporting a legitimate capitalist free market, the GOP seeks to use the levers of political power to manipulate the markets in favor of its monopoly corporate masters, and is “ashamed” to see those multi-national corporations answer to bad risks or criminal malfeasance and face justice.

To be fair, and well before Minority Leader Boehner went into damage control mode, a handful of Republicans in the House of Representatives finally found the courage to distance themselves from the GOP leadership and their scandalous treachery. On Thursday evening Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida spoke out against the leaders and demanded Barton’s immediate resignation. Unfortunately Miller and his fellow decent and thoughtful Republicans are too few and too far between.

At the heart of this concern for BP and other too-big-to-fail multi-national corporations are the very insidious philosophies that Benjamin Franklin and the rest of our nation’s founders warned us about. Rather than representing the voters that elected them to serve in a representative form of government, the GOP has sold its soul to the unaccountable international corporate-combines that own them and grease the pockets of their willing puppets with obscene amounts of cold cash. To paraphrase GOP leader Grover Norquist, we are in mortal danger of the Republican Party drowning our cherished democratic republic in a bathtub.

The BP oil spill has done more than threaten our shores, our natural resources and the hopes and dreams of our citizens. The disaster has ripped the cover off the inner workings of the Republican Party leadership, and what has been revealed is not very pretty. The time is now for we Americans to fight to save our cherished republic from corporate tyranny, and to turn the GOP and its flock of hateful and corrupt spokespeople out of office.

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