House Democrats Buckle Under Pressure from Big Oil, Strip Down Price Gouging Bill
Behold the spineless Democratic Party.On Iraq, no deadlines.
On trade, no enforceable worker protections.
Now, today, on oil industry price gouging, collapse.
In the face of withering pressure from the oil industry, the Democrats in the House, led by Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), have reportedly castrated their own legislation.
Stupak’s original bill – HR 1252 – would make it unlawful to sell crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, or petroleum distillates at a price that “is unconscionably excessive” or “indicates the seller is taking unfair advantage unusual market conditions (whether real or perceived) or the circumstances of an emergency to increase prices unreasonably.”
The law would be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
But according to a report by Darren Goode in Congress Daily AM, late last night, Stupak “added a trigger to his bill allowing the FTC to go after price gougers only during presidentially-declared energy emergencies.”
In other words – almost never.
Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch called the move “pretty unfortunate.”
Slocum said that Stupak’s original bill would have given the FTC long needed powers to go after oil companies in situations like the one the country is facing today – skyrocketing gasoline prices.
“There is no question that the record high gasoline prices we are seeing today amount to just a transfer of wealth,” Slocum said. “Up until this point, the FTC has not moved, because the antitrust laws on the books are so weak. There is no price gouging law currently on the books.”
Stupak and more than 100 House members said they wanted to put that law on the books. But now, it looks like the Democrats have once again caved to the dominant corporate powers that be.
The House will vote on the bill later today.
Slocum said that Public Citizen was strongly in favor of the original Stupak bill.
But if the bill is going to be similar to a bill introduced by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) – only enforceable in times of energy emergencies – Public Citizen would not fight for it.
“This shows the oil industry still holds sway over the Democratic Party,” Slocum said. “Things are definitely different, but not that much different. Are you going to see the Democrats taking big swings at Big Oil? No.”
Stupak’s office did not return calls seeking comment.
Slocum said that some environmental groups want to see higher gasoline prices so that Americans drive less – like in Europe.
“But in Europe, the gasoline prices are higher because of taxes,” Slocum said. “And the taxes are used to fund mass transit. Here, the money goes straight to the oil companies. It’s just a transfer of wealth.”
© 2007 Corporate Crime Reporter
Well it seems clear that the time for direct action is here. Not violent revolution but action that helps the sane among us to first drop out of this predatory rigged system.
To every extent feasible we should rework our lives so that we participate as little as possible in the insanity. Simplify, work close to home and walk or ride bikes. Start the process of starving the beast of its food.
At least protest your non-living wages, demand better and rock the boat (which is sinking anyway) to get attention for better ways to live.
If we vote at all it should be for a third party.
It may well be a misnomer to suggest that the Democrats “buckled” since that would imply there was something significantly straight in the first place.
When was that: When LBJ came clean on what really happened to JFK? When the Dems held Bush Sr. under oath for lying about being “out of the loop” on Iran/Contra? When they shut down the School of the Americas? Introduced IRV and cleaned up our broken balloting system? When Clinton decided that the embargos against Iraq were hurting civilians far too severely, or when he rushed in to prevent genocide in Rwanda? When they found torture, secret prisons, illegal wire-tapping and that sort of thing respulsive? Oops, none of that happened.
So why get angry at the Dems? It’s like getting frustrated with a jackass because it can’t fly. Let’s quit the charade, after 40 years, and build the long overdue opposition party.
No, a revolution is long overdue. We might start by driving off gas stations without paying, en masse. It’s disobedient. It’s non-violent. The police would be powerless to stop it. The oil companies could not risk closing stations. Now, to get everybody on board. There’s the trick.
Oh, come on. “Unconscionably excessive” is a TOTALLY UNFORCEABLE standard. What does it even mean, in English? Ask 10 people and you’ll get 12 different answers.
This is the worst kind of bill - a bill that purports to solve a problem that everyone “knows” exists, without actually doing ANYTHING.
And what of people like me, who think that it’s “unconscionable” that gas is so CHEAP here, compared to the rest of the world?
Yeah, Auberon, that’s right. Gas is too cheap. But the oil companies shouldn’t be the beneficiaries. The extra cost on gas to spur alternatives should go to some important social good, like education, or alternative energy startups, or what have you.
One of the myths about gas pricing comparisons between Europe and the US is that the EU imposes heavy taxes on consumers. The reality is that we impose taxes on gas in the US as well, it is just that the taxes collected here go back to the oil companies in subsidies and in the EU they go to fund alternative energy sources and research as well as towards mass transit and other public works.
“No, a revolution is long overdue. We might start by driving off gas stations without paying, en masse…”
Pretty ironic.
The USAns will be driven to revolt, not by the mass slaughters and atrocities done in the past two decades in their name and for the sake of their gas tanks, not for ongoing global war against the working class, not for the privatization of public space, and not for the destruction of the planet in the name of greed.
No, they will rise to revolt because they may soon be paying a price for gasoline that most of the industrial world was paying long ago, and is still apparently too low to change anyones personal transportation habits.
The totally unrealistic espectations of USAns hits home If you go to this British site:
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.html
You will find that it is unusable to a USAn, because the types and numbers of cars and engine sizes a typical USAn owns are totally off the scale of the pull-down selections avaialble. 1.8 liters being the average engine size of a “family car”. Somehow, civilization continues in a land where a Toyota Echo would be considered a large car.
It’s not that gas is so cheap — it’s that real estate is too high for a lot of people to live closer to work, great shifts which caused the rise of suburbs require driving to work, and hybrid cars are out the price range of most people.
The only people arguing that gas is too cheap are people with a larger pocketbook than mine.
I spend $7/day on gas to commute to work. I’d move closer in, but real estate is too high in relation to my wage. I’d get a Toyota Prius, but as it already stands my kids aren’t going to be able to afford college.
So I’d have to retort to the “gas is too cheap” people something like this. You can send a check my way for the price of a new Prius or down payment on a $300K middle-class home closer to my workplace, and I’ll be awfully happy to use less gas.
Well, you can always begin looking for a new job thst is either closer to home or is has public transportation access. For example, in the DC area, the key is finding a job in the District where there is park-and-ride rail and metro access, rather than around the beltway.
I’m lucky to live in the in Pittsburgh, a very livable city where, because it hasn’t been discovered by the yuppies yet, the real estate prices only get lower as you get closer to downtown.
Darn.. you mean to say that ‘Big Oil’ has BOUGHT the democrats too? Last November is starting to look like an act of futility
PJD, agreed, but can you imagine the average American revolting against the US on behalf of the third world poor, the privatization of public space (already complete), or for a changing climate that goes like the proverbial pot of water with the frog in it? People revolt when it becomes more than they can bear. The ordinary, indoctrinated, ignorant American isn’t even aware there is a problem.
What happened?? We had an election and all we got was more of the same! Let’s see: in the first 100 hours, the Demopubs wrote bills to relieve students of high loan rates (stalled), ethics reform (revised to the original - net gain, zero), raise the minimum wage (wandering the halls of congress like an orphan picking up gifts to business and finally attached to unlimited Iraq occupation funding - so far), stop the price gouging by oil companies (revised to only no price gouging during a presidentially declared national energy crisis - don’t hold your breath), and best of all, free trade agreements with fast track terms that negate laws for workers, the environment and even our our safety standards on imported meats. Something for everybody - except working Americans. The Democrats must want to commit political suicide. Or get murdered in the next election. They didn’t learn anything from 1994.
Ferency, running off isn’t fair to the small business owners who own the stations. Think of something better. You’re right that Americans aren’t paying attention. And I wouldn’t object to high gas rices if we were getting something for it besides very rich oil execs.
Dems cavein again and again.
Dems cavein again and again.
Dems cavein again and again.
A Trifecta of Treachery: Iraq, Trade and Oil. Lets think back to when the Dems were in power before during Clinton time. With the Dems holding the White House and Congress we got a lot of Republican Legislation, NAFTA, GATT, Welfare “reform”, sanctions, The Telecommunications Act, etc.
I must have been nuts to donate to these sellouts in ‘06.
Their plan to hold an Iraq vote in such a way as to dodge being held accountable is beneath contempt.
They will get no more money and no more votes from me! Enough already. Read Paul Bramscher’s comment above. The Dems have been screwing us for decades. NO MORE! I can’t wait to get another fundraiser e-mail of letter from this bunch. To hell with the Democrats.
How stupid do “they” think we are? Let’s see… every summer for the past 50 years, gas prices rise for Reason X. Every year our “representatives” demand investigations. And every year NO CRIMINAL WRONGDOING IS FOUND. Every year.
That’s how stupid they know we are.
Check this site out: CHP Paycheck to Paycheck.
The figures demonstrate that MOST career paths and metro areas require a 2-3+ income household today. Unless the husband/wife work for the same company and commute together, there’s potentially double the miles driven versus the previous generation: just to maintain a roof over one’s head.
My 40 year-old ranch home, 20 miles outside Minneapolis in a working-class neighborhood was assessed this year by the county at $193K. Needs $25K or so of upgrades also.
Looks like nationally the median is supposedly somewhere between $229-260K according to Reuters today. Apparently that’s for new construction, including town homes, which typically aren’t near where people actually work.
What I do is hit one of the larger realty MLS listings (www.edinarealty.com here in Minnesota), conduct a search on homes within X miles radius of mortgage-paying jobs. Though prices have softened a little, you’d be astounded to see the fixer-upper crud in the $175-225K range. Been there done that.
http://paulbramscher.blogspot.com/2007/03/lets-get-real.html
High real estate forces people to live further out, work more and longer hours, deal with child care, etc. all of which require more fuel/energy consumption. Looks like the prices have softened a little — you can probably bike reasonably well (4-5 miles) to your job in Minneapolis with a median home in that radius if you’ve got around $275K. Of course it’s much worse on the coasts.
Paul Bramscher May 24th, 2007 12:57 pm
“It may well be a misnomer to suggest that the Democrats “buckled” since that would imply there was something significantly straight in the first place.”
Great line, Paul!
“We had an election and all we got was more of the same!”
I would guess that this is the only country where people
believe that voting is such a heroic, difficult and demanding so much sacrifice act that they are excused from any other political activity (protest, for example) between elections.
Sorry for the flood of my comments here — I think it was tonight’s PBS nightly news report that also quoted $299K as the median priced home right now. The number is difficult to get a good fix on, but the median home is clearly well above the median salary.
Anyway, my whole point with the high cost of real estate is that it forces people to chose what they can (barely) afford first, and what is sensible from a transportation perspective a distant second. I can name off any number of neighborhoods actually within walking distance of my job which are well beyond my means.
This is probably the crux of the problem with regard to fuel consumption: affordable real estate within short distance of good salaries, since the bulk of the driving that people aged 22-65 do is probably job-related.
Can I introduce a couple of new concepts?
- Public transportation
- trains
This is from reading an NYT article yesterday, but it seems to be on topic. I can’t believe anyone is surprised that politicians caved to oil interests. Gee. Democrats voted for the oil war, didn’t they? Haven’t they always?
I’ve just read an article in the New York Times (Oil Industry Says Biofuel Push May Hurt at Pump 5/24/07) that makes me want to laugh…and lead a revolution. Maybe it is just me, but it certainly sounds like a threat to tell the public that the consideration of alternative fuels is going to hit them in the pocket book. Doesn’t it seem obvious that the threat of alternative fuels could not, within months, impact the price of gasoline in any actual fashion? In the article, oil representatives talk about scaling back plans to increase oil refinery capacity because they just aren’t sure it’s worth their investment if we consumers won’t promise to be eternally true to the oil giants who have completely corrupted our entire way of life. You think I’m exaggerating? Not even close, but we’ll save that for another day. Today, we are happy to stick to extortion. If the oil industry says that it is merely scaling back plans to increase refinery capacity in response to a statement from THE oil President (they are blaming his call for a 20% reduction in gasoline usage over the next decade, which most of us assumed to be lip service, in a speech in January), it is hard to imagine that this lack of increase in capacity is driving prices up so quickly and so steeply. Obviously it would take a little longer than a few months for our consumption to overtax the system of supply so completely. This is a false crisis, meant to alarm consumers into pressuring their representatives away from alternatives, such as biofuel, which are doing such obvious harm to our poor, beleaguered oil companies. Never mind the record profits recorded last year in a time when, again, they were driving up prices as fast as they were able. Thank God for free market competition, eh? That thing we sacrifice our social safety net to preserve? Because that market is doing a bang up job of preventing collusion among the oil companies. Any day, some maverick is going to drop their prices and blow the competition out of the water, right?
Biofuel is a red herring. It is not a sustainable alternative to oil. The oil companies have to be well aware of this fact if this Indiana redneck has figured it out. Can we take that as a given? So, what is with the price hikes and the complaint that, if that market isn’t guaranteed, they can’t guarantee that gasoline won’t me as scarce as a Nintendo Wii? It is nothing but a threat. Extortion. A reminder that oil companies can make our lives pretty miserable if they want to, and a realization on their part that we can, and ought to, do the same for them. They are afraid because they world is getting wise to the damage done by oil consumption. God forbid we ever get around to acknowledging what they have done to the global political environment as a whole. Complicity in assassinations in Nigeria, destruction of delicate ecospheres from Alaska to Peru, the overthrow of governments in every oil producing region…these are bad people with a lot of power and, apparently, no access to anything resembling conscience.
Personally, I’m in favor of the sharp increase in gas prices. I hope it keeps going. And I hope that we, as a population, are smart enough to let them keep their oil and their cars, while we move onto something truly sustainable. It is time to stand up to the extortion of the energy Mob before they drive us into irreparable global catastrophe (whether military or environmental). Park your car, get on your bike or take to your feet, and maybe call your local oil company customer service representative (some people call them senators or congress) and let them know you would like a true alternative in transportation.
“The Democrats must want to commit political suicide. Or get murdered in the next election. They didn’t learn anything from 1994.”
Ueah, now your cookin’!!! Come next election, vote for a republican. That will show ‘em!
Seriuosly, we are caught between what is commony known as a rock and a hard place. And in reality, my above suggestion has some sircerity in it. Check out Rep. Ron Paul. See what he stands for and check out his voting record in the House. He is gaining momentum, and with enough support, may be able to pull the next election out of the fire. We know what the democrats will do and we know what the neocons will do, and neither look terrible appealing. Mr. Paul stands behind the Constitution and has demonstrated this with his past voting record. It’s time to go for an underdog. It beats the status quo either way.
the first poster said it was “time for direct action.. NOT violent revolution.”
Why not?
Whining about the one-party system is pointless. Quit complaining about the Dems in Congress and take action yourselves: stop driving. Use a bicycle when it’s possible. Use public transportation when it’s not. Do not buy gasoline. Do not drive a car except for emergencies. Stop flying. Stop taking vacations to resorts that are exactly like the ones at home. Be responsible for yourselves and don’t whine about it while you’re doing it.
Well, slap us all silly and call us Grandma Millie. Remember when the oil execs were hauled before Congress to “testify” not under oath about price gouging a year or two ago? About a day later in a brazen FU gas prices shot up about 10%.
The taxpayer’s military is being used and abused for the interests of big oil while they rake in record profits and Congress repeatedly relieves big oil and the other fat cats from more and more of their share of the tax burden. How sweet it would be if we could confiscate those record profits and make them pay for their war somehow. Ha.
There are other congresspersons who have not caved, like Denis Kucinich. He has consistently oppossed the illegal occupation of Iraq and been critical of the corpratocracy. We should support him and anyone else in congress who opposes the use of our military in the service of the corpratocracy.
We all know that oil is why we are in Iraq and why the neocons want to go into Iran. (like they can threaten our 10,000 armed nuclear warheads)
Supporting publically funded elections is one way we can get a more ethical congress and give third party candidates a chance.
Right now big oil is trying to force Iraq to sell almost all their oil rights, so they can walk off with trillions in profits while the Iraquis are left with death and devastation, and we complain about oil prices being too high!
Gas is not any more costly than it ever was but it sure costs a lot to take a train or fly. Then when you get to where you are going tou still have to rent a car.It is going to take a lot of effort on our part to be rid of the oil fascists and we should start by demanding real progress on the move back to hemp products and the fact that they can completely do away with the need to burn oil for transportation. Dupont , Standard Oil,et al have tricked us in the west into abondoning hemp and other oil seeds by telling us we will be killed by the hop heads smoking the weed. We all know you can,t get high from the seeds or stalks…