Chutzpah

Rahm Emanuel, the Obama Administration's Chief of Staff, appeared on FoxNews this weekend to warn Americans of the "danger" ahead if Republicans win back control of Congress this fall, saying we'll return to the deregulation that led to BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.  In other words, "Blame Bush."

Emanuel's and the Obama Admininstration's demonizing of private enterprise is the height of hypocrisy. 

Herewith a few inconvenient truths.

In addition to Big Oil, another scourge Emanuel pledges to protect America from is Wall Street.  But, as reported in The New York Times, after working as an advisor in the Clinton Administration, Emanuel worked for two years as an investment banker and made $16.2 million.

"President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is already widely known in the halls of Washington for serving as an adviser to President Clinton, and most recently as a congressman from Illinois. But in between those two roles, Mr. Emanuel made millions of dollars on Wall Street as an investment banker with Wasserstein Perella, as the boutique firm was known at the time.

"Despite having little experience or education in finance, Mr. Emanuel became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office in 1999, helping to bring in business and seal deals.

"According to a 2003 article in The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Emanuel was brought in by one of the firm’s founders, Bruce Wasserstein, who was one of President Clinton’s most active fund-raisers on Wall Street and is now the head of Lazard.

"In his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, Mr. Emanuel — who once trained as a ballet dancer and was briefly a civilian volunteer on an Israeli military base — made $16.2 million, according to Congressional disclosures.

There's more. According to Wikipedia, Emanuel was a pig at the trough.

"Emanuel was named to the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) by President Bill Clinton in 2000. His position earned him at least $320,000, including later stock sales.^[31][32] He was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, and the Board met no more than six times per year.^[32]
During his time on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities.^[32][33] The Obama Administration rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director.^[32]
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) later accused the board of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." Emanuel resigned from the board in 2001 when he ran for Congress.^[34]

But there's even more.  Despite this administration's best efforts to hang the oil disaster on Bush, Cheney, the GOP and anyone other them themselves, Rolling Stone magazine isn't having it.

"Ken Salazar took over as Secretary of the Interior in January 2009, vowing to restore the department's 'respect for scientific integrity.' He immediately traveled to Minerals Management Service headquarters outside Denver and delivered a beat-down to staffers for their "blatant and criminal conflicts of interest and self-dealing" that had 'set one of the worst examples of corruption and abuse in government.' Promising to 'set the standard for reform,' Salazar declared, 'The American people will know the MMS as a defender of the taxpayer. You are the ones who will make special interests play by the rules.' Dressed in his trademark Stetson and bolo tie, Salazar boldly proclaimed, 'There's a new sheriff in town.'

"Except that it didn't. Salazar did little to tamp down on the lawlessness at MMS, beyond referring a few employees for criminal prosecution and ending a Bush-era program that allowed oil companies to make their "royalty" payments – the amount they owe taxpayers for extracting a scarce public resource – not in cash but in crude. And instead of putting the brakes on new offshore drilling, Salazar immediately throttled it up to record levels. Even though he had scrapped the Bush plan, Salazar put 53 million offshore acres up for lease in the Gulf in his first year alone – an all-time high. The aggressive leasing came as no surprise, given Salazar's track record. "This guy has a long, long history of promoting offshore oil drilling – that's his thing," says Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "He's got a highly specific soft spot for offshore oil drilling." As a senator, Salazar not only steered passage of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which opened 8 million acres in the Gulf to drilling, he even criticized President Bush for not forcing oil companies to develop existing leases faster.

Here's another fact.  Guess which federal-level politician is the all-time highest recipient of money from BP?  Yep.