BP and the Feds

Mark Hemingway Timothy P. Carney has a useful piece up at the Washington Examiner about BP's pre-spill relationship with the federal government. Excerpt:

The [John] Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP's lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company's bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP's oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

Whole thing here. Link via Mark Hemingway's Twitter feed. Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote about BP's corporate greenwashing initiatives back in 2006.