Thursday, June 24, 2010

BP or not BP: Accountability, not apologies.

Republican Congressman Joe Barton personally apologized to BP in a congressional hearing this week.

Apologized. Told the huge international company, the one responsible for eleven deaths and an unprecedented environmental disaster, that he was sorry. He called the $20 billion victims' relief fund a "shakedown."


What the #%$%!^&*#!?!?

President Obama and many members of Congress are working hard to ensure that BP provides relief to the victims in the Gulf region -- and that the oil giant is held accountable for the damage it's done. This is not a shakedown. This is accountability. This is responsibility. This is Taking care of the world in which they do business.


On that note, here's my apology.

Dear Representative Barton and colleagues:

I'm sorry that you've been misled by your Grand Old Party. Successful business is good, and oil is important. But the cost in human lives, animal lives, and massive environmental damage, is not something to be taken lightly.

I'm sorry you think it's wrong to expect accountability. Paying for damages is not a shakedown; it's restitution. Putting up an escrow account for the future to rebuild and restore the beaches and marshes and fragile ecosystems; that's not a shakedown, either. It's called responsibility. Average citizens, the "small people" so condescendingly mentioned by BP executives, call it insurance. We pay premiums in case of disasters that we hope will never happen.

Most of all, Representative Barton and associates, I'm sorry that you have the power to make policy and write laws. If taking responsibility for our world, accepting accountability for mistakes that cost lives, and planning for the future are alien concepts, I don't want you in office. You certainly don't represent me.


Sincerely,

Daisy

Labels: , , ,

Digg! Stumble It! add to kirtsy

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shakedown?
Coming from the party against big government and spending, right? Who the hell do they expect to pay for the clean up then?

6/24/2010 9:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The sad part is now those same people who are apologizing are demanding more deep water drilling. Hello! We cannot fix one deep water disaster and you want to drill more wells in the area?

6/25/2010 12:21 PM  
Blogger Liberty Rose said...

I just love you, Daisy. Smart, articulate, caring, and a hell of a good writer.

6/26/2010 10:07 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Smile!

Search & Win

About 1 in 5 child deaths is due to injury. CDC Vital Signs www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

Creative 

Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Copyright, 2003-2008 by OkayByMe. All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval without written permission from Daisy, the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. In other words, stealing is bad, and if you take what doesn't belong to you, it's YOUR karma and my lawyers you might deal with.