Is Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK) The Joe Barton Of The Democratic Party?

Earlier today I was tweeting about Blue Dog Dan Boren's repulsive attack ad against populist Oklahoma state Senator Jim Wilson. It looks like someone had the foresight to cut off the pricetags but Boren is clearly out of place in the tree and clearly wearing brand new, never-before-worn hunting duds that someone from a movie prop shop had bought for the ad shoot. Inspired by the ridiculous and outrageous ad by a gun-toting Dale Peterson, at least Peterson did serve in the military. So did Senator Wilson. Gun-toting, inauthentic loudmouth Boren? Draft dodger just like his hero, Dick Cheney.



But... but, just because Boren paid off an ad firm to make a slick ad for him that doesn't mean that all of Hollywood is on his side. Filmmaker Josh Fox has a new film, being shown now on HBO, Gasland. You can watch the trailer below. In it you will notice that there's a congressman defending the outrageous behavior of Big Oil corporations poisoning ground water across America. That isn't an actor. It's Oklahoma's own Dan Boren, one of Big Oil's most dependable fully-owned subsidiaries. Since 1990 Big Oil has invested around $144 million in the careers of congressmen, almost all conservatives. Almost 70% of the payoff have gone to Republicans. And among current members of the House there's only one Democrat in Big Oil's Top 10: Dan Boren ($565,460). As you can see, Big Oil is, by far, the biggest source of cash for his political endeavors. What you haven't been able to see, until Fox caught it on tape, is that Boren, who bragged about not voting for Obama and who has voted against virtually every piece of Democratic legislation since Obama has become president, has never found anything in the oil industry's agenda that he didn't get behind. And, as a member of the Committee on Natural Resources-- and on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources-- that support has been worth a lot more to Big Oil than the $565,460 they've given Boren for his campaigns.

On May 19, 2005 Boren voted with Republicans to allow the kind of deep water drilling that led directly to the current Gulf of Mexico ecological disaster. In fact, a few weeks earlier, on April 21, 2005, he voted, again with the GOP, against Raul Grijalva's amendment to the Energy Policy Act that would have stricken from the bill a provision directing the Secretary of the Interior to stop collecting royalty fees for the government from oil and gas companies operating in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a giveaway to his gas and oil patrons and as clear a case of bribery as you'll find in Congress.

A week from Saturday Sen. Jim Wilson will be joining the Blue America team at Crooks and Liars for a live blog session. He's not just "good for Oklahoma"-- he's just plain good. Please take a look at the Gasland trailer, get a feel for what a corporate shill Dan Boren is, and consider helping Jim get the resources he needs to get his message out in the face of Boren's-- and Big Oil's-- onslaught.