Teabag Braintrust
by digby
I honestly couldn’t create a more ridiculous bunch of GOP women if I set out to make a cartoon. Here’s the brilliant Tea party leader Michelle Bachman speaking today at the Heritage Foundation about the 20 billion dollar BP account:
In her address to the group, Bachmann attacked the White House proposal for BP to arrange a $20 billion escrow account to pay for damages from the oil spill:
The president just called for creating a fund that would be administered by outsiders, which would be more of a redistribution-of-wealth fund. And now it appears like we’ll be looking at one more gateway for more government control, more money to government. If there is a disaster, why is it that government is the one who always seems to benefit after a disaster, and that’s of course what cap-and-trade would be.
Full details of how the escrow account would be operated are pending, but early reports describe the account as one run by an independent panel, and it is intended to hold BP liable for all damages accrued due to the oil spill. The account’s funds will go toward paying for both cleanup efforts and damages for individuals such as Gulf Coast fishermen whose livelihoods have been damaged by the sudden toxicity in the ocean and beaches. In effect, the fund will prevent the government (and by extension, American taxpayers) from being fiscally responsible for BP’s actions. Is it a “redistribution-of-wealth fund”? Maybe, but in the same sense that one would be responsible for paying to repair a house he drove a car into.
More quotes at the link from Congresswoman Mensa about not “fleecing” BP and Obama calling all the poor corporations evil so he can turn America into a socialist state. If this is how the “populist” Tea Party movement sees this crisis, they are stooges. But we knew that:
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