During last week’s recess, Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) felt the heat once again at a town hall back in New Hampshire, and this time had an odd recommendation. CAP’s Kristen Bartoloni has the story and video.
When a constituent asked a question about ending Big Oil subsidies – which received a round of applause from the audience – Guinta pointed his finger at the recent failed Senate vote to roll back some subsidies for the richest oil companies. He said that if oil companies lost their subsidies, they shouldn’t have to pay for leases. His suggestion prompted shouts of “ridiculous” and “that’s a giveaway to Big Oil” from angry Granite Staters:
Guinta: Here’s what I would suggest. You’re going to eliminate that, also eliminate the lease payments they have to make. Offset it. And be fair.
Audience: Fair? [cross talk] “¦
Guinta: So the specific issue is, if you’re going to get rid of that tax benefit to those five companies, let’s also eliminate lease payments, make it fair.
[crosstalk]
Constituent: That’s ridiculous. That’s a giveaway to Big Oil.
Watch it:
Guinta failed to mention the votes he’s taken against ending Big Oil handouts. Less than two weeks ago, he voted against ending a tax credit for oil companies. And earlier in the year, he voted against recovering $53 billion in foregone royalty payments from oil companies, and against ending $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil. In the last campaign cycle, Guinta received $14,000 from the oil and gas industry.
It’s not the first time Guinta faced a fiery crowd over Big Oil subsidies. Back home during the April recess, Guinta was forced to defend his votes to an often contentious crowd:
Republican Representative Frank Guinta spent much of the evening defending the tough decisions Congress has proposed to get the nation’s debt under control. He received occasional boos and shouts from audience members upset over changes to Medicare, subsidies to oil companies, and extended tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
-Kristen Bartoloni, in a Think Progress cross-post
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Just how many of these clowns are there?
I’ve stopped laughing at this nonsense, I’ve stopped being shocked or surprised.
But I -am- stunned at just how many people can be so stupid and so thick-skinned, downright brazen, in front of people they expect to vote for them. How they think ordinary voters would possibly stump up campaign contributions to pursue these notions further is an impenetrable mystery to me.
Another republican showing just how serious they really are about triming the budget and ending corporate welfare.
Funny isn’t it… how the only subsidies they are willing to end is for companies that actually need it? How the only welfare they are willing the stop are for those people that really depend on it?
If humanity has a future…then future generations are going to be asking why the hell we didn’t throw them all out of office and run them out of country instead of leaving them in positions of power when they are so obviously corrupt.
Zetetic:
Guys like Guinta get elected because they keep repeating “working American families”, with a bunch of American flags in the background.
Most voters don’t ask the hard questions.
@ Mike Roddy:
True, I know. But from the point of view of future generation it will be hard to understand, especially when his own audience isn’t buying Gunita’s excuses.
Maybe that’s why the Republicans have targeted the elderly more… so their main constituent block won’t have the energy to actually run them out of town! [j/k]
Burning Down the House
Guinta is a “New TORY” defending the corporation while ignoring the will of the people.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110520/ap_on_bi_ge/us_food_and_farm_stink_bugs
Yahoo has an article on a new crop pest and it has attracted over 1800 comments.
Why does the Yahoo article on a farm pest get 1800 comments and CP gets 5. I am confused.
I discovered a hole in our language in a response to Leif the other day:
Humane, humanity, humanitarian, are all standard English words.
Inhumane, inhumanity are, too.
Inhumanitarian is a perfectly logical construction which for some reason has never been used.
It perfectly describes the Tea Party and Republican philosophies. And many more.
Gunita is just another inhumanitarian.
Some corporations are demonstrably inhumanitarian because of the way they treat local people who live near their facilities particularly in the third world.
They know they can get away with it because only about half, or less of, those people will go and vote. But if enough people stay angry enough for long enough, they may get a shock – well, you never know, ME
Christopher #5, the stink-bugs get the attention because they are a symptom of the coming collapse. Millions of insects, swarming, destroying food, ravaging gardens-it has a certain apocalyptic menace to it. We had a lovely, relatively stable, world, and we stuffed it up. If we get down to work, we can achieve what most indigenous societies seem to have managed-to live within Nature’s bounds and by her rules. It shouldn’t take more than a thousand years or so. If we don’t at least try, and continue with our hubristic adoration of that deadly mutation, our ‘intelligence’, and our ‘technological prowess’, then Dame Nemesis is lurking in the wings, about to make her entrance, and for the bit players, us, it will be ‘exeunt omnes’.
Weight a minute i think we miss the big picture here. This shill pf big oil just voted for close to 60 billion wind-fall for big oil. LOOK at the what they had to pay for this wind-fall, $14,000. Your kidding me, 14 THOUSAND is all. So if i find $15,000 and out bid theses thieves do you think Guinta will change his vote.
That price of 14,000 dollars sounds cheap to me. Just wonder how much $,$$$,$$$ never saw the light of congressional over site. Simple me what congressional over site.
Tom, this type hire themselves out by the hour. 14K is just a down-payment, a first installment of a lifetime of ‘appreciation’ for ‘services’ rendered.