Joe Barton

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Joe Barton (2006)

Joe Linus Barton (* 15. September 1949 in Waco , Texas ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . From 1985 to 2019 he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Texas .

Family, education and work

After attending Waco High School , he studied mechanical engineering at Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University (TAMU) from 1968 to 1972 , where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (BA Industrial Engineering). He then completed a postgraduate course in industrial management at Purdue University in West Lafayette (Indiana) in 1973 with a Master of Science degree (M.Sc. Industrial Administration). He then worked as a manager in the oil industry, among other things. As a White House Fellow , he worked for US Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards from 1981 to 1982 .

Barton's first marriage ended in divorce in 1992. His second marriage, in 2004, ended in divorce in 2015. He has four children.

Political career

In 1984, Barton was elected a member of the US House of Representatives for the first time , and after 16 re-elections, up to and including 2016, he represented the 6th Congressional Constituency of Texas since January 3, 1985 . His last legislative term ran until January 3, 2019. From 2003 to 2007, he was chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce , which he was also a member afterwards. He also sat on six subcommittees and six congressional caucuses . Among others, he belonged to the tea party movement related Tea Party Caucus on. He was also a member of the Republican Study Committee .

After a nude photo of Bartons that he had privately sent as part of an affair had been distributed in social networks, he announced at the end of November 2017 that he would not run again in the upcoming election in 2018 because a loss of confidence had set in. His mandate ended on January 3, 2019.

Positions and controversies

Barton has close ties to the fossil fuel industry . Before entering politics, he worked as an engineer on an oil field and received more than 290,000 US dollars in election campaign donations from the oil company Anadarko Petroleum between 1989 and 2010 . Barton caused controversy in June 2010 when, during a hearing with BP boss Tony Hayward before the Hayward committee, he apologized for the fact that the US federal government had committed the company to high compensation payments due to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico . The White House responded with harsh criticism. Press spokesman Robert Gibbs described Bartons action as "shameful": He obviously worries more about large companies than about the situation of the little people. The MP Jeff Miller suggested to his fellow party member Barton the resignation of his leadership position in the committee.

Barton denies man-made global warming . In 2013, he described the cause of climate change as the wrath of God. In 2005, Barton held a House hearing aimed at refuting the hockey stick diagram and thereby discrediting the IPCC . Barton sent threatening letters to the authors of the underlying study. An alleged quote from Barton as an Internet meme became known , according to which Barton rejects the use of wind energy because, in his opinion, it accelerates global warming. In fact, it was a reproach by Barton during a congressional hearing in 2009, in which he quoted researchers who had found temperature increases on wind farms - an effect that is considered to be negligible on a global scale.

In 2010, Barton campaigned for a sodomy ban .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GOP congressman Barton apologizes for nude selfie. In: Politico , November 22, 2017.
  2. ^ Katie Leslie: Rep. Joe Barton: I will not seek re-election. In: The Dallas Morning News , Nov. 30, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b God's climate change. In: taz , April 12, 2013.
  4. ^ Rep. Joe Barton Apologizes to BP's Tony Hayward for White House "Shakedown". In: CBS News , June 17, 2010.
  5. ↑ Eight More Deep Thoughts from Rep. Joe Barton. In: Time , June 18, 2010.
  6. ^ Riley E. Dunlap, Aaron M. McCright: Organized Climate Change Denial. In: John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, David Schlosberg (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 144–160, here p. 153.
  7. ^ War on Science. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 17, 2010.
  8. ↑ Louis Jacobson: Widely shared meme oversimplifies Joe Barton's 2009 comment on wind energy, climate change. In: PolitiFact , January 15, 2015.
  9. ↑ Alexander C. Kaufman: Rep. Joe Barton's Explicit Photo Leak Could Be Revenge Porn. In: Huffington Post . November 23, 2017, accessed August 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Barton, Joe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barton, Joe Linus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Waco , Texas