Interesting news about BP

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool | Washington Examiner

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool

By: Timothy P. Carney

Examiner Columnist

June 9, 2010

In this May 30, 2010 file photo, BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward talks to reporters as he visits a Coast Guard command center in Venice, La. BP's inability to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history has focused attention on CEO Tony Hayward's words and deeds over the past six weeks - and the scrutiny has not yielded a flattering image. (AP file photo)

As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies — including BP, according to the Washington Post.

Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican co-sponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board.

But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and tarring “reform†opponents as the stooges of big business.

Expect BP to be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate.

There’s a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas.

In February, BP quit USCAP without giving much of a reason beyond saying the company could lobby more effectively on its own than in a coalition that is increasingly dominated by power companies. Theymade out particularly well in the House’s climate bill, while natural gas producers suffered.

But two months later, BP signed off on Kerry’s Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption.

Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies including federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina.

Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey—again, profiting BP.

Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama’s stimulus bill and Bush’s Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn’t in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.

BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, co-founded by John Podesta, Obama’s transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton’s Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic congressman. Former Republican staffers, such as Reagan alumnus Ken Duberstein, also lobby for BP, but there’s no truth to Democratic portrayals of the oil company as

an arm of the GOP.

Two patterns have emerged during Obama’s presidency: 1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and 2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand.

[mikegideon]

That's exactly why Obama should have never tied new energy policy with the spill to begin with. We are going to find that this spill was 100% preventable, and that cost cutting and bad engineering was responsible.

Tying other politics in just confuses an already complicated issue. You have a lot of Republicans ready to fry BP's bacon as well.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I agree, but it's interesting to see the 'strange bedfellows'. It's also going

to be a very convenient reason for BP to bailed out like GM and AIG.

The taxpayer is going to get stuck with this.

I haven't been following BP's business or politics, except that I didn't like

their ads about carbon emissions and that 'environmentally friendly' logo

they changed to a few years ago.

I believe BP is getting 'thrown under the bus' in the name of 'Cap and Trade'.

As you already know, I have been one of the few kind of defending BP on

their cleanup effort. This just adds to the plot of a sad story with, maybe

a sadder ending.

[mikegideon]

I agree, but it's interesting to see the 'strange bedfellows'. It's also going

to be a very convenient reason for BP to bailed out like GM and AIG.

The taxpayer is going to get stuck with this.

I haven't been following BP's business or politics, except that I didn't like

their ads about carbon emissions and that 'environmentally friendly' logo

they changed to a few years ago.

I believe BP is getting 'thrown under the bus' in the name of 'Cap and Trade'.

As you already know, I have been one of the few kind of defending BP on

their cleanup effort. This just adds to the plot of a sad story with, maybe

a sadder ending.

BP is getting thrown under the bus because they deserve it. I think we have seen the last of the bailouts.

[Guest GT_Rat]

Luckily BP is a British company (British Petroleum) so the British taxpayers get to pay for their bailout.

[MacGyver]

I think we have seen the last of the bailouts.

I hope you are right, but I think we have several to go:

• Corporate Real Estate
  
• More Consumer Mortgages - next year is the year when all of the 3/1 ARMS written in 2008 convert. The industry wrote more before the fallout in September than they had at anytime previously
  
• Consumer Credit Card Debt - that $50 cheeseburger would cause a lot less heartburn if it would just go away.
  
• At least one more round of massive banking failures - how are we any different today than we were two years ago? Answer: We're not. People just quit looking
  
• More auto bailouts - as the economy tightens again, the government is going to want people to keep buying cars - here comes Cash For Clunkers 2
  
• A new homebuyer credit - the only uptick we've seen in home sales has been the result of the homebuyer credit. As that expired last month, we're going to see sales falling off a cliff. Better prop that back up.
  
• Lord forbid the effect of the widescale default by Europe on their debts. A military coup in Spain, Portugal or Greece isn't out of the question. It's certainly happened before.
  

I could go on, but I've now thoroughly depressed myself.

From my perspective, we've only just begun. I would argue that the next shoe dropping will be way worse than the first, because the government is out of ammo, and everybody depends on them to be their sugar daddy. I think the next few years are going to be brutal.

Hope I'm wrong.

[mikegideon]

I hope you are right, but I think we have several to go:

• Corporate Real Estate
  
• More Consumer Mortgages - next year is the year when all of the 3/1 ARMS written in 2008 convert. The industry wrote more before the fallout in September than they had at anytime previously
  
• Consumer Credit Card Debt - that $50 cheeseburger would cause a lot less heartburn if it would just go away.
  
• At least one more round of massive banking failures - how are we any different today than we were two years ago? Answer: We're not. People just quit looking
  
• More auto bailouts - as the economy tightens again, the government is going to want people to keep buying cars - here comes Cash For Clunkers 2
  
• A new homebuyer credit - the only uptick we've seen in home sales has been the result of the homebuyer credit. As that expired last month, we're going to see sales falling off a cliff. Better prop that back up.
  
• Lord forbid the effect of the widescale default by Europe on their debts. A military coup in Spain, Portugal or Greece isn't out of the question. It's certainly happened before.
  

I could go on, but I've now thoroughly depressed myself.

From my perspective, we've only just begun. I would argue that the next shoe dropping will be way worse than the first, because the government is out of ammo, and everybody depends on them to be their sugar daddy. I think the next few years are going to be brutal.

Hope I'm wrong.

Maybe I should have put it differently. Any bailout at this point would be dangerous politically, and probably wouldn't even pass.

[Guest SUNTZU]

Maybe I should have put it differently. Any bailout at this point would be dangerous politically, and probably wouldn't even pass.

But not for lack of trying. And that is the dangerous part. Papa knows best and we should be good little potatoes.

[MacGyver]

Maybe I should have put it differently. Any bailout at this point would be dangerous politically, and probably wouldn't even pass.

That's fair. I would like to agree, but the DNC is stupidly displaying one or both of the two most dangerous things in politics - a party that thinks they can't lose, or one that thinks they have nothing to lose.

I'm not one to bash democrats for the sake of bashing democrats, but they're playing hot potato with a grenade. The end of the game is going to be ugly.

And it's not like the republicans are any better. They were fully responsible for what they got in 2008. Our two party system is a zero sum game where 'we the people' are left on the sidelines as an afterthought.

[mikegideon]

But not for lack of trying. And that is the dangerous part. Papa knows best and we should be good little potatoes.

Papa's track record ain't looking so good right now.

[mikegideon]

That's fair. I would like to agree, but the DNC is stupidly displaying one or both of the two most dangerous things in politics - a party that thinks they can't lose, or one that thinks they have nothing to lose.

I'm not one to bash democrats for the sake of bashing democrats, but they're playing hot potato with a grenade. The end of the game is going to be ugly.

And it's not like the republicans are any better. They were fully responsible for what they got in 2008. Our two party system is a zero sum game where 'we the people' are left on the sidelines as an afterthought.

I agree. They need to reel in some of the outright thievery with a little much needed reregulation in some areas, instead of going full libtard on us. They're already going to lose a bunch of seats in November.

And yes, the Republicans deserved what they got in '08. Turned me into an orphan for awhile.

[MacGyver]

Turned me into an orphan for awhile.

I'm afraid I'm still out in the cold.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Luckily BP is a British company (British Petroleum) so the British taxpayers get to pay for their bailout.

It doesn't work that way. The stockholders are at least 40% in the US.

Besides, it is BP America, or something like that. That stuff is complicated

and We will be the ones that bear the brunt of this. It has already cost the value of BP stock dearly and their credit status is almost at the 'junk' quality.

[Guest HvyMtl]

But hey, the according to the BP Chairman,"We care about the small people."

Edited June 17, 2010 by HvyMtl

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Yeh, the Brits have always felt that way. They need to get over it. That class thing sucks. Doesn't help them a bit.

[mikegideon]

But hey, the according to the BP Chairman,"We care about the small people."

Tony is in the running to overtake Biden for stupid stuff just falling out of his mouth. The risks to the "little people" were calculated ones. Sure, they're sorry now, but I'm thinking their balance sheets have more of their concern than civilian casualties.

Their calculated risks have contributed to the balance sheet over the years. Was it worth it? We may never know.