Liza's recent article on a humorous side to Republican Joe Barton's (TX-6) opposition to healthcare for Amreica's children rang a bell for me. I remember this Joe Barton. His current crusade is denying Amrerica's children healthcare, but in the past he has been cold-hearted in a different way. He was one of the Katrina 11, the 11 Republicans who voted “No” on the bill that Congress approved and Bush signed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. These are the cold-hearted bastards who would willingly see Americans die for the sake of more tax cuts for the wealthy and for Halliburton profits.

Joe Barton is one of those cold-hearted bastards. Only now his target is also America's children. But that isn't even new. Barton was one of the Republicans who worked to block the Combating Autism Act in 2006. His actions were so deceptive and so awful, that Don and Diedre Imus (no left wingers themselves) were pissed off and offended. So Barton has a history of right wing extremism when it comes to helping America's children.

But Barton is more than just a cold-hearted bastard. He is also anti-science. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from oil and gas industries then, as chairman of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee, he proceeded to go after climatologists whose work helped us understand global warming. Joe Barton has been bought and sold by the oil industry and has become one of their main attack dogs against scientists.

In addition to the gas and oil industries, the top donors to Barton are energy companies. What does he do in return? As chairman of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee, he inserted special provisions into 2002 energy legislation to let near-bankrupt Westar Energy split off its regulated utility from its heavily indebted other businesses--a split that would facilitate saddling ratepayers (that's regular Americans) with $1 billion Westar's non-utility debts. So he is MORE than willing to let a failed energy company leach off taxpayers, but is not willing to give money to poor black families who lost all they had in hurricane Katrina. Please see this article for Barton's Westar scandal as well as other aspects of his disgusting corruption.

For being such a cold-hearted bastard (even though he might have a sense of humor about it) for repeatedly hurting America's children, for his refusal to help Katrina victims even as he helped failed energy companies and Halliburton with massive amounts of taxpayer money, and for his anti-science stands, I place Joe Barton at the top of my Katrina 11 list and I ask you to help me defeat him (and other Katrina 11 Republicans) in 2008. Early money can help defeat these most extreme of right wing fanatics.