This is a Robbery!

Capitalism has been lured down a dark alley and mugged. Set upon and jumped. In a shocking and dismaying move, BP has caved to communist, nanny-state pressure and agreed to set aside $20 billion for damage compensation. Thank God for Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton, and his courageous championing of the embattled oil company:

"I am ashamed of what happened at the White House yesterday," he said during a congressional hearing in which Hayward was testifying. "I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation would be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown – in this case a $20 billion dollar shakedown."

Barton is uniquely positioned to comment on this travesty as he is the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the committee that has jurisdiction over:

Exploration, production, storage, supply, marketing, pricing, and regulation of energy resources, including all fossil fuels, solar energy, and other unconventional or renewable energy resources.

It's beautiful and refreshing to hear a politician speak out about an issue there's no way he's ever been lobbied about involving people there's no way he's ever golfed with. 

And while he is now being publicly disavowed by a number of high-ranking Republicans, incapable of appreciating the fact that while BP has the money to put towards fixing a large problem it obviously caused, it really shouldn't because that's just mean, there are others willing to stand by him. Rep. Michele Bachmann, speaking at the Heritage Foundation (which doesn't at all sound sneakily racist) referred to the fund as "extortion." 

Thank you, Barton and Bachmann, for being brave enough to call a spade a spade. Or an avoidable catastrophe an "unfortunate accident." Or reparation "extortion". If we don't put a stop to this, what next? Corporations being held responsible for deaths they've caused? Children being told they have to clean up their own messes? Let's forestall the arrival of this nightmare world by apologizing to BP, refusing its money, and accepting the fact that the oceans have had their day. 

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