Tell Congress To Donate Oil Contributions Back To The Gulf
As oil has lapped onto our shores from the Gulf, another tide of viscous liquid drips from the North. Dawn dish-washing liquid, which apparently doesn't differentiate between seagulls and dirty dinner plates, is being squirted onto countless desperate animals.
It won't be enough. The death toll to wildlife due to the spill is in the thousands; and there is still no hint of a meaningful response from Congress.
But how can Congress do anything when its members are also swimming in oil? Leading up to the 2010 midterm elections, the oil and gas industry has already donated more than $14 million to federal candidates. The Defense of Wildlife Action Fund is demanding our representatives give this money to the people who are trying to rescue gulf animals; and you can join them.
Our legislators have gotten very dirty of late. That's why the Defense of Wildlife Action Fund wants to give them a good scrub. There are a lots of reason why this is important.
It hasn't been since the high-flying '80s that anyone has really thought of bankers as fine, upstanding citizens. Nowadays more think: drug-addled sex-pots with an adrenaline complex as deep as their portfolios (with perhaps the tiniest twinge of envy.) But to find out the same about government oil regulators with the Minerals Management Service was more than a little shocking. The oil industry mixed business, sex and drugs with the people who were supposed to be their designated drivers. The people of the Gulf are still reeling from the crash.
While the MMS has a brand new name, and there has been some major housecleaning in oil regulation; Congress is still under the influence of oil. John McCain, by far the member who has benefited the most from the oil industry's generosity, has accepted almost three million dollars in donations. Just behind him are two Republicans from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Phil Gramm, with $2.1 and $1.6 million apiece. All three have staunchly opposed a push for better regulation.
BP is paying, and will pay so much more, for their response to the Gulf oil spill. The ambitious energy juggernaut recently announced plans to pay $30 billion toward spill response. This makes the fourteen-plus mil Congress is taking in seem like chump change; but it's not.
And on Tuesday, a Senate version of an election finance reform bill was just barely barred from a presidential signature by unified Republican opposition; plus an absent Sen. Joe Lieberman. The bill would have prevented corporations that have more than $10 million in government contracts to get near elections; it would have also prevented donations from American companies controlled by foreign parents. BP falls in both categories.
The House bill that passed months ago? It's called "Disclose Act, for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections." You gotta love the House.
We know who is donating, without shame, to our elected officials. It's in their interest. They can; they will. But our Congressmen are not bankers. They must be held to a higher standard; and if not us, who will hold them to it?
Tell Congress to send every cent the oil and gas industry has donated right back to the Gulf; because that money is chump change to an oil executive, but I know some sea turtles that would die for it.
Photo Credit: fpsurgeon
Ben Proffer
is an environment writer and has written for Sherman’s Travel and New York magazines.
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