I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
It’s not very popular to defend BP right now, so Democrats reacted swiftly after a Republican Congressman sided with the oil company today during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward and said the escrow account set up by BP to pay for damages from the oil spill was a “tragedy,” and “a $20 billion shakedown.”
Here is the full quote:
I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. 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. I do not want to live in a country where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.
An e-mail from Heinrich’s office quoted arch-conservative firebrand Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., calling the escrow account “a redistribution-of-wealth fund” and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., saying, “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.”
Both quotes came Tuesday, before Barton’s apology to Hayward.
Meanwhile, other House Republicans are backpedaling from Barton’s comments, with Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., calling for Barton to resign from his spot as ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“I condemn Mr. Barton’s statement. Mr. Barton’s remarks are out of touch with this tragedy and I feel his comments call into question his judgment and ability to serve in a leadership on the Energy and Commerce Committee,” Miller said in a statement. “He should step down as ranking member of the Committee.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner, in his weekly press conference, also distanced himself from Barton’s comments, though did not call for Barton to step down from his committee position.
“I have said since the beginning that BP ought to be held responsible for every dime of this tragedy,” Boehner said. “And they ought to be held accountable to stop the leak and get it cleaned up as soon as possible.”
Today’s House hearings are in response to the oil spill that, by the latest estimates, is pouring “between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons of oil daily” into the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion from a BP drilling well.
