Chan Lowe: Oil slick hearings
It’s return on investment time.
Well, it’s always return on investment time for the oil companies when it comes to making political contributions, but usually the payoff gets worked out behind closed doors, and appears in the form of favorable small print buried deep in a piece of legislation.
Now, thanks to the slick, we have a public with blood in its eye, and it expects bread and circuses out of its elected representatives in Washington.
Let’s all hunker down in front of C-SPAN and watch the kabuki play--or if we can’t handle the full performance, at least take in the juiciest sound bites on cable news. After all, we paid for it.
The BP execs will cower like little boys caught smoking in the boiler room, they’ll all blame the equipment manufacturers or anybody else who has a stake in this mess, and the proceeding will wind up with a sanctimonious tongue-lashing from the committee chairman. Maybe a few other pols facing reelection will chime in, too.
Then the photographers will pack up their equipment, the TV crews will cap their lenses, and the whole cast of characters will head off to The Palm or some other D.C. power eatery and toast one another over hand-cut steaks and Grey Goose martinis.
Just another day in Washington, doing the people’s business.
CHAN LOWE has been the Sun Sentinel’s first and only editorial cartoonist for the past twenty-six years. Before that, he worked as cartoonist and writer for the Oklahoma City Times and the Shawnee (OK) News-Star.
Comments
POLITICAL GAMES--
BP-owns the well...Transocean...the drilling rig....Halliburton....in charge of sealing the bottom of the well.
You'd think they were 3 kids,arguing with mom, over who broke the vase..
Cheney was CEO of Halliburton from 95' to around 01'--In 02' he had meetings with the Oil "fat-cats" & the Energy Exchange Comm,behind closed doors. Halliburton is based out of Dubai so tax liabilities are reduced...out of our reach. What else is out of our reach.? Claims.? BP is in the Uk & Transocean Swiss owned.
Who'll be left, holding the pieces of broken vase.?
Broken environment.? Fishing industry.?
You guessed it.....
Posted by: Lorraine Wagner | May 12, 2010 12:31 PM
Excellent post by Lorraine. And i still think we should boycott BP regardless of what sun sentinel poll results are!
Posted by: mel | May 13, 2010 12:16 PM
Definitely don't boycott. In fact, you should go out of your way to buy BP. Why? Because if they go out of buisness, who is going to pay for the clean-up? The tax payers, of course. When homeowners bought houses they couldn't afford or banks loaned money that they couldn't afford, or automobile manufacturers gave out benefits to employees that they couldn't afford, the tax-payer paid. The same is true here. Buy BP gas and make sure that THEY pay for the clean-up, rather than declairing bankrupcy and avoiding responsibility.
Posted by: BCL1 | May 13, 2010 1:12 PM