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Is Buddy Carter beholding to big oil?
Letter to the editor
lettereditor

Editor, When 1st Congressional District U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter spoke before Richmond Hill High School students on the issues surrounding Kinder Morgan’s Palmetto Pipeline, he stated, “I suspect many of you drive, and gas is expensive. … Having a pipeline could help that. … So sometimes, we have to make tough decisions” (coastalcourier.com, April 17, reported by Jeff Whitten).
But when “tough decisions” include eminent domain, we need to call into question the power of a non-elected government official like Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry to allow a corporation the right of due process in Georgia while denying it to ordinary citizens.
Congressman Carter, according to the nonprofit electoral watchdog OpenSecrets.org, had as his second-largest individual campaign contributor in 2013-14 one of the largest private energy companies in the world, Dallas-based Petro-Hunt LLC. The congressman also pocketed a whopping $387,982 from The Club For Growth, a political action committee, or PAC, that lobbies on behalf of “limited-government Americans who share in the belief that … when people are free to buy from, sell to and invest with one another as they choose, they can achieve far more than when governments attempt to control economic decisions.”
Apparently, Carter does not believe the 398 Georgians facing eminent domain are deserving of that freedom.
K.C. Allan
Coalition coordinator
Push Back the Pipeline

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