(Uncomfortable but fair questions for Rep. Welch. – promoted by GMD)

Peter Welch claims he’s doing all he can to hold BP responsible for the damage caused in the Gulf of Mexico (see http://welch.house.gov/index.p… That’s certainly commendable. A while back, he asked some memorably tough questions of BP CEO Tony Hayward, and he has subsequently poked at some specific shortcomings of BP in the cleanup effort, albeit with dubious results (I doubt BP cares what Peter recommends/suggests/implores they do).

Most audaciously, he’s insisted that BP refrain from paying bonuses and dividends until the cleanup has been completed and the bill paid. All well and good, but so far, it’s been largely rhetoric.

In fact, it’s not clear how much of this is Peter grandstanding on a story that’s front-and-center in the news, and how much of it is a genuine attempt at actually, you know, holding BP responsible. Recall, if you will, that shortly after ACORN had been accused of fraudulent behavior following a theatrical right-wing smear attempt, Peter was awfully quick to jump on the bandwagon and insist that ACORN be barred from receiving federal funds. Specifically, he voted for the house bill to de-fund ACORN, about which author Mike Johanns (R-NE) said: “Until a full investigation is launched into ACORN, no taxpayer money should be used to fund their activities. A vote in favor of my amendment is a vote in favor of the taxpayer and against the status quo.”

Mind you, ACORN hadn’t been found guilty at the time, and the organziation was subsequently aquitted of all charges, but Peter nevertheless found that the accusation alone was enough to vote for Johanns’s draconian bill and withhold all federal funds from ACORN. This turns out to have been illegal in its own right (only after being found guilty could Congress defund an entity like ACORN), but regardless: with Peter’s help, the right-wing smear accomplished its goal, and ACORN was shut down. The poor and disenfranchised lost yet another important advocate, while I assume Peter proudly notched the whole thing down as “holding ACORN responsible…”

Back to BP, then: Attorney General Holder confirms that BP is already under criminal investigation for what has transpired with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Obviously, BP is bound to be aquitted — they have too many friends in Congress, and Barack Obama will no doubt offer BP amnesty for past wrongdoings like he did the Bush administration perpetrators of torture and crimes against humanity. Remember, the law is different for big corporations than for you and me). But the investigation alone should be plenty for Peter Welch to come forward with an amendment — he should be the first to state that “Until a full investigation is launched into BP, no taxpayer money should be used to fund their activities. A vote in favor of my amendment is a vote in favor of the taxpayer and against the status quo.”

But as of now, I’m looking in vain to find any mention anywhere of Peter’s initiative to immediately stop, for instance, the annual purchase of almost $1bn worth of aviation fuel from BP by the DoD (see http://www.commondreams.org/he… But if he felt justified in stopping the paychecks of community workers employed by ACORN based on nothing but an alleged crime, then surely this is no different? Actually, this is different, because Peter now claims to himself be on the frontline, “holding BP Responsible.”

Too much for Congressman Welch to pull off? Well, he’s already authored a pending piece of legislation “To require the proposal for debarment from contracting with the Federal Government of persons violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977”,/i> (see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/… so he’s clearly familiar with precisely this sort of thing. Is the courage to genuinely take on BP perhaps lacking, Congressman?

Which is it Peter: are you going to measure out the same tough justice & love here in an instance where it really matters, or will you simply stomp your feet, raise your voice a bit when the cameras are rolling, but then let BP continue to pull down billions of tax payer dollars as an unjust reward for their criminally inadequate efforts to clean up their act of gross negligence & wanton destruction in the Gulf of Mexico?