The Transparency of Some Politicians

You want to see how connected certain politicians are to corporations? You want to get a real indication of some elected officials' motivations?

Unfortunately, this week proved to be quite revealing as a number of current and former politicians have come to the defense of BP - apologizing to them for our government forcing BP to pay for cleanup of their oil spill and taking the Obama administration to task for telling a company what it should do.

So far the people saying these things are conservatives. It may not stay this way, but for now that's how it is on the public record.

My guess is that particularly aggressive conservatives see this as a winning game for three reasons:

1. It's one more way they can make a point that somehow, some way this Obama guy is "a socialist" by criticizing government involvement what BP does. It's actually brilliant because...
2. As they do that they can also - out of the other side of their mouths - criticize the administration as not doing enough. A double dip.
3. And, as the cherry on top they can retroactively rehabilitate the W reputation by saying or implying things like, "Obama's response is no different (or worse) that Bush's during Katrina."

Anyway, I think the perhaps even bigger point and the real transparency in the rush to defend BP is how much influence companies like it wield in the corridors of power in the U.S.A.

My summary? Rallying to the defense of BP, apologizing to them, saying that they're being "shaken down" by the White House and that they should not have to pay for their oil spill clean up is straight up disgusting. It shows a) that some politicians are 100% megalomaniac opportunists (far from "country first,") and b) connected at the hip with big oil interests. These are the people we need to concerned with.