June 17, 2010
Claims Against Corporations Un-American?
WASHINGTON – A leading House Republican [Joe Barton] accused the White House Thursday of a “$20 billion shakedown” of oil giant BP by requiring the company to establish a huge fund to compensate those hurt by the Gulf Coast oil spill.
How can this be a good strategy for Republicans? Maybe they believe they can now smear anything with the same brush and the paint will stick. And given that anger goes for thought in their base, maybe they can pull it off.
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That’s a tricky one. Once upon a time, I might have said you could always count on Americans to rally round a call to stick it to the fat cats. Hell, you could even raise temperatures on those occasions when anti-corporate zeal was ill-informed or misplaced.
Now, I honestly don’t know. Has popular sentiment done a 180°?
I still tend to think that speaking of a ‘shakedown’ of BP just goes too far against the populist grain.
But then, I’m almost always wrong.
Daryl, requiring compensation or accountability for the criminal irresponsibility of white dudes is un-American.
That sums it up for me, Sheila. The dream of money drives even those without it; they show their readiness to reach for big money by making enemies of the enemies of big business; big business shafts them, then points at some unrelated wrong; the wanabe “have it mades” stay with what they know, which is–go fetch.
Deron–yes. Even foreign white dudes.