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TechnoratiGOP Just Can't Give Enough To Big Oil
There are very good reasons why oily guys have been stereotyped over the years as the sorts of villains who twirl their mustaches and tie innocent young women to railroad tracks.
Now, as we are nearing the end of eight years of government of, for and by the oil industry, we may have finally reached the point in our history where the oily guys who run Big Oil no longer have any power to fool us.
With $4-a-gallon gas and the prospect of continuing price rises to $5 and above before the end of the summer, politicians are having a tougher job duping us into supporting more financial giveaways to the oil companies.
Amazingly, though, Republicans still keep trying.
Both President George W. Bush and presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, who seems determined to live up to Democratic accusations he is running for Bush's third term, are trying to use high gas prices to justify allowing the oil companies to threaten our coastlines with environmental devastation to boost oil profits even more.
National Republicans are following the lead of Wisconsin Republicans in standing foursquare behind the oil companies, and the public be damned.
During the last state budget negotiations, Wisconsin Assembly Republicans stood up to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and Senate Democrats, who wanted to pass a state windfall profits tax on the oil companies' record profits, which are, simply put, the largest profits any companies have ever made in the history of the world.
We had Republican legislators standing up in the Assembly making speeches about how the largest profits in the history of the world weren't actually all that excessive.
Alternately, Republicans argued we shouldn't pass a windfall profits tax on the oil companies because the oil companies were run by such big crooks they would just illegally pass the tax on to consumers.
Doyle's windfall profits tax contained a provision making it illegal to pass the tax along at the pump and included penalties for companies that broke the law.
Republicans said the companies would find devious ways to act illegally and pass the tax along anyway. Their argument basically was we know what big crooks the oil companies we support are and, trust us, they'll find some way to break the law.
In a corrupt political world, it takes one to know one.
Now, in an election year yet, national Republicans have decided to try to eliminate the ban on offshore oil drilling, which has protected our coastlines for more than a quarter of a century.
Congress has banned offshore drilling since 1981 to protect coastal economies that depend on clean water and clean coastlines. The first President George Bush issued the first executive order backing the ban in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil off Alaska, one of the worst ecological disasters in U.S. history.
Bush and McCain are counting on fading memories of TV footage of dying, oil-covered seabirds, seals and sea otters.
But coastal politicians, Republican and Democrat, are, for the most part, not foolish enough to support offshore drilling, which could endanger high-end real estate and booming tourist beach economies.
It's one thing to devastate the habitats of seabirds, mammals and fish forever. It's another to threaten hairy-backed high rollers wearing thongs at beach resorts.
To demonstrate how lust for higher office can distort politics, however, Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, angling for the Republican vice presidential nomination, has betrayed his own state by dropping his long-standing opposition to lifting the ban.
Let some future governor of Florida worry about an oil slick destroying Miami Beach.
The possibility of oil spills and other human-error accidents isn't the only danger from offshore drilling. Heavy industrial activity off our shores destroys coral reefs, wetlands and other natural barriers that protect coastal communities from natural disasters such as hurricanes and typhoons.
Imagine the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast spread around all three U.S. coasts.
Most Americans, who may not know enough to worry about environmental disasters, have a more prosaic reason for rebelling against further administration giveaways to the oil companies. They know no matter how much Republicans give to those oil companies, it won't do anything to lower gas prices.
The oil companies will continue to charge as much as the market will bear. Unfortunately, we've already shown them we'll bear ridiculous price increases.
And just last week, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP got their biggest payoffs from the Bush administration as they entered into final negotiations for their no-bid contracts to run Iraq's oil industry.
Those are the same Western companies Saddam Hussein threw out of Iraq 36 years ago when he nationalized the oil industry.
After spending 4,100 American lives and $3 trillion to get Iraq's oil back for those companies, we've contributed quite enough to those oily guys.
Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a regular column for The Capital Times.
The Capital Times © 2008
14 Comments so far
Show AllThe Repuglicans are The Oil Companies!
Nasty, Dirty, Crooked Mothefu-kers!
Put them out of Business.
Nationalize all U.S. oil reserves.
Kick them out!
Take back the Government.
Tax the BU__! SH__! out of them.
Rights belong the People.
None for CORPORATIONS!
Fu-k the Corpirates
Like they've Fu-ked U.S.
R.I.P.
G. Carlin.
We Californians have been told that a repeat of the 1969 Santa Barbara blowout is not possible with the new technologies that will be used. Yeah, back in the 1960's we were assured that, with modern methods of drilling and pumping, there could never be a blowout and, next thing we knew, a whole bunch of us were up in Santa Barbara washing oily seabirds.
Demand for gasoline has dropped off here in CA. So, has the increased supply coupled with a decreased demand caused prices to fall? Uh-uh... refineries have cut production thereby maintaining pump prices by manipulating the supply. Go figure...
Caelidh July 6th, 2008 1:01 pm
I was listening to Rush the other day and he honestly told his listeners that they had NOTHING to worry about with offshore oil drilling
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Caelidh, Why are you listening to that drug addict, abuser of undocumented workers at all?
I was listening to Rush the other day and he honestly told his listeners that they had NOTHING to worry about with offshore oil drilling... that it wouldn't harm their view from their resorts.
I kid you not.
Yeah. They won't put up a platform in front of some ritsy resort... the rich would have a kniption fit!
In the age of the Internet where you can easily You Tube search for video coverage of Exxon Mobile's oil spill hopefully people will not forget just how crooked these oil companies are.
Furthermore the Democrats will not seriously stand up to big oil, Obama (who already has shown how much he will capitulate to big business) won't, one man running for President will.
Ralph Nader.
Nader's presence will, if anything else, keep Obama from moving even further right.
GOP = Gas and Oil Party. Boy, those Republicans sure like to talk tough about everything, but when it comes
to standing up to the oil companies maybe a better moniker is Grand Ole Pussies.
We can do better...
FREE AMERICA
DIRECT DEMOCRACY
The interesting thing here, the thing that isn't obvious and therefore bears further examination, is that Republicans are fillibustering in Congress to prevent a vote that would send excess oil company profits back to the people, at a time of the highest corporate profits in history, also a time when the public is screaming about skyrocketing gas prices--and DURING AN ELECTION! Why do the Republicans feel free to do this NOW? Why aren't they worried about a voter backlash? I guess it's because they're counting on the buckets of bucks from the oil companies to allow them to drown any challenger with TV ads--they're counting on the public to pay very little attention and vote for whoever spends the most, as they do 90% of the time...or maybe they're counting on something else, like President Cheney to start a war with Iran and then the usual "patriotic" knee-jerk response of approving of whoever's in power to kick in (this always works, but would it work NOW, when people are so sick of the wars we've already got going?)or worse--they know about plans for a false-flag operation in which "Iran" or "Al Qaeda" attacks a US city just before an election, and that sends sheeplike American voters toward the right. That I'm afraid would work.
And a certain number of fools will vote for these reThugs again! Unbelievable!
There isn't a complete ban on offshore drilling. The oil companies have over 4000 current lease contracts, only 20% of which are presently being drilled. In other words, they aren't exercising 80% of the contracts that they have. I would guess that this is because the price of oil has not been high enough in the past few years. Now that it is almost 4 times as high, they will probably make a big expansion, but not until this "crisis" allows them to get even more contracts and leases secured. Quite a hoax and we are getting screwed daily by it. Thanks again, Republicans!!!
I had moved from Anchorage already, then the Valdez Tanker/drunk Captain spill occurred. They got shit from that settlement last week or month.
My Congressidiot is open to allowing every sq bazillion miles of wilderness in Alaska, as well I think, owned by the oil companies to be drilled starting posthaste! I saw photos of the wildlife that called that their home, they showed an annual slide thing, I wish it was "When Moose, Fox, Bear, Brown Bear, Elk, anyold wild creature ATTACKS" show, live on FAUX @ 11.
Scum, pigs, we export oil from Alaska, sell it to Japan, they in turn resell it to us at a profit. I think my congresspersons mothers backyard should be quite fine.
If only the fight to legalize hemp, get solar, wind, geothermal, and good biofuels such as hemp, switchgrass, and even algae (though I hear that there are new discoveries being made on converting algae to light sweet crude oil) into the market and allow them to compete with petroleum were all underway would this insane out of control price gouging at the pump stop. Don't expect the Democrats to be any different. Remember LBJ and KBR?
VOTE FOR RALPH NADER and/or RON PAUL. They are fighting to legalize and put to use INDUSTRIAL HEMP which can completely wipe out any trace of dependency on petroleum. Do this and help yourselves and each other truly save the environment. You'll thank yourselves as will your children, grandchildren, etc ...
All it would take for ANYONE to be opposed to offshore drilling would be to experience what I personally experienced, and that was the blowout of the PEMEX offshore rig IXTOC-II in the late 1970's. I was living in Corpus Christi, Tx at the time, and when the enormous oil spill hit our Padre Island beaches, it was an unbelievable mess. The surf didn't "break" but rather just kinda "sloshed" up on the white sand beaches. The resulting mass of tar was over three feet thick in many places and covered almost 100 miles of beach front. One creative cleanup methods was to use some of this tar that washed in to repave most of the county roads. Fishing was ruined and the beaches were a mess for years afterwards.
There are already existing rigs, both offshore and in Alaska that are capped at present. Why? So they will have plenty of oil available in the event of a shortage (Ie highr prices.) Tell your reps. NO!!! to more offshore exploration and ANWAR exploration. We don't need it to begin with!
I agree with you Joel, but don't expect the Democrats to reverse this trend. The love affair between Big Oil and the White House has existed for many generations regardless of which Party occupied the Oval Office. After all, it's not like America will suddenly wake up and vote Ralph Nader or the Greens into power.