Think Progress

Why Aren’t Tea Parties Demanding That The Government Hold BP Accountable On Behalf Of Taxpayers?

Tea Party activists’ self-proclaimed mission is to demand lower taxes. TEA, in fact, stands for Taxed Enough Already. As a part of this anti-tax crusade, the Tea Party has vehemently opposed comprehensive health reform, clean energy legislation, and even mandatory garbage collection.

Given that these protesters take their name from the Boston Tea Party, which was organized around protesting an unfair tax benefit given to a massive British corporation, and that British oil giant BP’s oil disaster could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars, you’d think that Tea Partiers would be demanding that the government hold BP accountable and make the corporation pay the full costs for its bad behavior, so that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill.

Yet the Tea Partiers haven’t descended on BP’s headquarters or marched on Capitol Hill demanding, for example, that the government lift the $75 million oil spill liability cap on BP so that the damages it pays aren’t severely limited. On the contrary, they’ve attacked President Obama for securing a $20 billion escrow fund from BP to recompense victims of its oil spill and cozied up to politicians who’ve sided with BP. As the Associated Press noted last week, “Tea Party candidates [have stood] by BP to rail against President Obama.” Here are just a few examples of Tea Party organizers and Tea Party-endorsed politicians siding with the foreign oil giant against American taxpayers:

– Republican Study Committee chair Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who headlined a Tax Day tea party in the nation’s capitol this year, derided the escrow fund as “Chicago-style shakedown politics.” [6/16/10]

– Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who has proudly boasted of supporting the “Tea Party movement and the people getting involved,” echoed Price’s language as he apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayword for the White House’s “shakedown” it performed while trying to hold his company accountable. [6/17/10]

– Conservative talk show host and chairman of the Tea Party Express Mark Williams compared Obama’s efforts to secure the escrow fund to those of “mobsters,” and added that where he comes “from, they call it extortion.” [6/21/10]

– The “tea party favorite” in the Oklahoma GOP gubenatorial primary, state senator Randy Brogdon, said that BP’s oil disaster was “a perfect example of why government should never be involved in the private sector,” while blasting efforts to properly regulate the foreign oil giant so that it couldn’t cause more devastation in the future. [6/21/10]

Without tough government action to make sure that BP pays for the own costs of its own disaster and doesn’t drop the tab on taxpayers — as leading right-wing figures like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue and House minority leader John Boehner (OH) have suggested — it is likely that the oil company will get off easy, much like Exxon did following its own oil disaster two decades ago.

If Tea Partiers truly want to defend taxpayers from facing undue burdens, it may be time for them to don their signs and demand that BP pay for the entire cost of its own disaster by lifting the oil spill liability cap and ask that the government end billions of dollars in special tax breaks for Big Oil (just as the original tea partiers wanted to end the tax advantages of the British East India Trading Company).

Klobuchar Hits Coburn For Saying America Was More Free When There Were No Women On The Supreme Court

As confirmation hearings on Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court proceed, Senate Republicans continue blustering through their arguments — even going as far as to lambast Kagan’s clerkship under Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice. Today, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) echoed classic Republican talking points under President Obama, lecturing the Supreme Court nominee about how Americans are “losing freedom,” and how we were more free “30 years ago.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) then responded to Coburn by pointing out that Coburn’s idea of a more “free” society was when women had fewer rights:

KLOBUCHAR: I was really interested and listening to Senator Coburn. … He was actually asking you, just now, back 30 years ago if you thought that we were more free. … But I was thinking back 30 years ago, was 1980. … And then I was thinking, were we really more free, if you were a woman in 1980? Do you know, solicitor general, how many women were on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980?

KAGAN: I guess zero.

KLOBUCHAR: That would be correct. There were no women on the Supreme Court. Do you know how many women were sitting up here 30 years ago in 1980?

KAGAN: It was very striking when Senator Feinstein said she was one of two women. I thought, how amazing. So, how many?

KLOBUCHAR: There were no women on the Judiciary Committee until after the Anita Hill hearings in 1991. Do you know how many women were in the United States Senate in 1980, 30 years ago?

KAGAN: I’m stumped again.

KLOBUCHAR: No women were in the United States Senate. There had been women in the senate before, and then in 1981, Senator Kassebaum joined the Senate. So, as I think about that question about if people were more free in 1980, I think it’s all in the eyes of the beholder.

(Klobuchar later corrected herself later to note that Kassebaum was already serving in the Senate at the time, having been sworn in in 1978.)

Watch it:

Kathryn Lopez, the editor of National Review Online, quickly responded to Klobuchar’s comments on Twitter, writing, “given the women who are in the senate now, i’d be happy with the zero number again.” Within moments, the insensitive comment had disappeared from Lopez’s Twitter page, but ThinkProgress captured a screenshot:

– Nina Bhattacharya

Coburn Has ‘No Idea’ Whether He Would Have Voted To Confirm Thurgood Marshall

One of the main lines of attack that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have deployed against Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court is her clerkship under under Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice. They have had no qualms about blasting the civil rights legend, with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) attacking Kagan’s association “with well-known activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of our Constitution.” On Monday alone, Republicans mentioned Marshall 35 times during the hearing. By comparison, President Obama’s name was uttered only 14 times.

But today, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) went further than merely criticizing Marshall, telling ABC’s Top Line that he has “no idea” whether he would have voted to confirm Marshall, even while knowing his “entire record as a justice”:

KARL: How would you have voted, knowing all that you know — I mean, now you know his entire record as a justice — would you have voted no on a Thurgood Marshall nomination?

COBURN: I have no idea. I don’t know his writings. I think that’s an important part of her history, but not as important the two things that I just mentioned

Watch it:

Coburn joins fellow Judiciary Committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who said yesterday that it was “hard to say” whether he would have supported Marshall. As Salon’s Steve Kornacki noted, “That’s a rather stunning statement when you consider the dynamics of Marshall’s 1967 confirmation.” Only 11 senators voted against Marshall, and their opposition “had everything to do with race — and, more specifically, with lingering white Southern resentment of the court’s 1954 school desegregation ruling (in which Marshall, as the NAACP’s chief counsel, had played a leading role).” All 11 were White and Southern, and most had signed the “Southern Manifesto,” a pro-segregation document drafted by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Moreover, Republicans can’t seem to provide any evidence to support their claim that Marshall was an “activist” judge. Talking Points Memo asked Coburn, Hatch, and Sessions which of Marshall’s opinions best exemplified his activism — “none of them could name a single case.” As the National Urban League’s Stephanie Jones wrote in today’s Washington Post, “Unlike many of his detractors, past and present, Marshall showed the utmost reverence for the Constitution” by defending equal rights for all Americans.

Commenting on the absurdity of Republicans’ attacks on Marshall, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote, “With Kagan’s confirmation hearings expected to last most of the week, Republicans may still have time to make cases against Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Gandhi.”

Obama Slams Boehner: Americans Know The Country Needs More Than An ‘Ant Swatter’ To Recover »

In recent weeks, Republicans have been making headlines for their unabashed advocacy on behalf of Wall Street and big business at the expense of American taxpayers. In a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) compared the financial crisis to a poor little ant, and criticized Democrats for “killing” it with a “nuclear weapon” (i.e. financial reform).

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went after Boehner and called him “completely out of touch with America.” A staffer for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded, “An ant, Mr. Boehner? It was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — Americans lost 8 million jobs and $17 trillion in retirement savings and net worth.”

Today at a town hall event in Racine, WI, President Obama went directly after Boehner, telling him that most Americans don’t think “the financial crisis was an ant and we just need a little ant swatter to fix this thing”:

The leader of the Republicans in the House said that financial reform was like — I’m quoting it — “using a nuclear weapon to target an ant.” That’s what he said. He compared the financial crisis to an ant. This is the same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs. The same crisis that cost people their homes, their life savings. He can’t be that out of touch with the struggles of American families, and if he is, he should come here to Racine and ask people what they think. Maybe I’m confused. Do you think that the financial crisis was an ant and we just need a little ant swatter to fix this thing, or do you think that we need to restructure how we regulate the financial system so you aren’t on the hook again and we don’t have this crisis again?

When you ask men and women who’ve been out of work for months at a time, who talk about how they’ve been barely hanging on, they don’t think this financial crisis was something where you just need a few tweaks. They know that it’s what led to the worst recession since the Great Depression. And they expect their leaders in Washington to do whatever it takes to make sure a crisis like this never happens again.

Watch it:

Yesterday, ThinkProgress caught up with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who said that he agreed with Boehner’s comparison of the financial crisis to an ant.

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Kagan Rejects Roberts’ ‘Umpire’ Metaphor: Judging Is Not a ‘Robotic Exercise’

During his confirmation hearing Chief Justice Roberts famously promised to be nothing more than an “umpire,” limiting his role to “call[ing] balls and strikes.” During her confirmation hearing today, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan took issue with this infamous metaphor. While making clear that a judge cannot be like an umpire who says “every call should go to the Phillies,” Kagan criticized Roberts for pretending that judges are nothing more than robots:

The metaphor might suggest to some people that law is a kind of robotic enterprise. That there’s a kind of automatic quality to it. That it’s easy. That we just sort of stand there, and we go “ball” and “strike” and everything is clear cut, and there’s no judgment in the process. And I do think that that’s not right, and that it’s especially not right at the Supreme Court level, where the hardest cases go.

Watch it:

Regardless of the value of Roberts’ metaphor, the Chief Justice has spent his entire time on the Supreme Court pushing the strike zone to the right. 

– Exemplified — but not limited to — the Court’s egregious decision in Citizens United, Roberts has endorsed corporations’ power to force their consumers and workers into a secret, privatized court systems that overwhelming favors corporate interests. 

– Roberts has consistently sided against the earth in environmental decisions — even endorsing a company’s plan to destroy nearly all life in a pristine lake by dumping millions of tons of mercury and lead-laden mining waste into it.

– Roberts has ignored laws protecting women from pay discrimination and older workers from age discrimination. 

– Roberts has cheerfully tossed out precedents preventing price fixing, protecting women’s health and permitting public school desegregation (yes, Roberts actually wrote an opinion saying that it is unconstitutional to desegregate public schools). 

Roberts clearly exercised his personal judgment in these cases, even if that judgment did contradict the clear mandate of the law, precedent and the Constitution.

For her part, General Kagan has promised to display an “admiration for the democratic process” and to “respect the choices made by the American people.” In the same exchange where she criticized Roberts’ umpire metaphor, she states that judges must acknowledge that “the people who make the fundamental decisions for this country are the people and their elected representatives — whether in Congress or the executive branch.” Hopefully, she won’t follow in John Roberts’ footsteps and forget these promises the minute she joins the Supreme Court.