Ed Martin Personally Demonstrates the Corrupting Influence of Oil Money

Like all good members of the modern GOP, Ed Martin is not content to merely talk about corruption in politics. No, he's determined to personally demonstrate it for us.

Here's Ed Martin on his blog a couple weeks ago:

Big Corporations have learned that it is easier to suck up to the Big Government agenda and earn special consideration in laws and enforcement. Big Government believes it can use corporate cash to buy elections. We need to support efforts to disentangle Government so that it no longer favors individual businesses and industries, but simply and evenly serves the common good as defined by the Constitution.

To prove just how corrupting Big Corporations' money can be, Martin then spent the next several weeks shamelessly defending BP's destruction of the Gulf Coast environment:

Even with millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, Ed Martin has unapologetically defended Big Oil, saying that “drilling for oil isn’t what caused this accident.” (KMOX, May 28, 2010)

What’s more, despite mounting evidence that BP caused the devastating spill by deliberately ignoring industry standards and cutting corners in order to maximize their profits, Martin thinks the solution is LESS oversight of Big Oil, saying that corporations like BP should be allowed to drill “anywhere, anytime, anyhow.” (KMOX, May 28, 2010)

In fact, in Martin’s view, the BP spill wasn’t caused by BP breaking the rules in order to make as much money as possible --- no, in Ed Martin’s world, this spill it was caused by “overregulation over the decades as government encroached where it does not belong.”

And, just like Ed Martin had predicted, he was rewarded for his pandering to Big Oil with a fundraiser hosted by Stephan Brauer, one the major funders behind Newt Gingrich's "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less" campaign. So Ed Martin publicly defends Bil Oil in public, and in return he gets a nice "cocktail fundraiser" from Big Oil boosters.

I'm convinced: corporate money really does have a corrosive influence on politicians. Thanks so much to Ed Martin for illustrating it once and for all.