BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, after meeting with President Obama at the White House on the Gulf oil leak disaster, declares: “I hear comments sometimes that big oil companies are greedy companies and don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.”
OK, he’s Swedish, and English isn’t his first language, but “the small people”? Ouch. I would have loved to hear the reaction if he had said that to an audience of Louisiana shrimp fishermen.
Update: Republicans, apparently having received their talking points, are denouncing BP’s $20 billion escrow fund to pay oil leak-related claims as a “slush fund”– before a single dollar has been distributed.
Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas actually apologized to BP for what he called a “shakedown.”