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May
21
“Big Oil” Stalinist Show Trial in Senate Today
Filed Under Conservative Side of the Story, Energy Independence, Statists (or Democrats for you Libs)
- Scott Miller
In what can only be described as Stalinist-style show trial, our esteemed Senators saw fit to haul executives of 5 major oil companies before the Senate, again, to “explain their profits”. This from the AP:
WASHINGTON – On a day oil prices leaped to unheard-of highs, senators lined up Big Oil’s biggest executives and pummeled them with complaints that they’re pretending to be “hapless victims” while raking in record profits.
“Where is the corporate conscience?” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies.
You gotta be kidding me… Dick Durbin is the last guy to be talking about a conscience. This is the same damn clown that compared our troops to guards of the Soviet Gulags, Nazis, and Pol Pot. I honestly don’t know how the execs sat there without leaping over the table and wiping that little jerk’s Barney Rubble smirk of his face.
It’s all about economics, came the reply. Supply and demand. The company leaders tried to shift attention from motorists’ anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline to a debate over new areas for drilling.
But senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing weren’t having any of that. They wanted to press the executives about public anguish over paying $60 or more to fill up a car’s gas tank.
“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the executives. He said there’s a “disconnect” between legitimate supply issues and the oil and gasoline prices motorists are seeing.
The executives, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the hearing room, said they understood people were hurting, but they tried to blunt the emotion with economic analysis.
“The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work,” said John Hofmeister, chairman of Shell Oil Co., acknowledging it is something the oil industry has been saying for some time and that the explanation may sound “repetitive and uninteresting.”
Yes, in other words, we have been telling you moron politicians for years now that we need to open more of our reserves to exploration to increase supply, and you are the ones who are standing in the way! You sit there and smugly question us, while in fact it is you who are to blame… have you no shame Senator?
It was the second time this year the executives had been summoned to testify before Congress. When they came in early April oil cost about $98 a barrel.
This time the exchanges got personal.
Simon was asked what his total compensation was at Exxon, a company that made $40.6 billion last year. Simon replied it was $12.5 million.
John Lowe, executive vice president of ConocoPhillips Co., said he didn’t recall his total compensations. So did Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron Corp. Hofmeister said his was “about $2.2 million” but was not among the top five salaries at his company’s international parent. Robert Malone, chairman of BP America Inc., put his “in excess of $2 million.”
None of your damn business, Senator, is the right answer to that low class question.
The executives, appearing under oath, cited tight global supplies with scant spare production capacity and the fact that large areas of land and offshore waters remain offlimits to drilling. And they said they’re worried Congress was talking of requiring the five companies to pay more taxes.
“I urge you to resist these punitive policies,” said Hofmeister.
It was not what many senators wanted to hear.
Yeah, God-forbid the Senator actually hear the truth. God-forbid they actually stop playing class warfare politics with this issue and fix the root source of the problem, which is fundamentally a supply and demand issue. A lack of supply problem that they, the politicians, are 100% responsible for… no… why face the truth and fix the problem when can score political points by bashing the big bad boogieman…. Big Oil.
Comments
3 Responses to ““Big Oil” Stalinist Show Trial in Senate Today”
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Yeah, I cannot take this demonization of “big oil” when we know who the real bad guys are. And it really makes me mad because they are playing on the ignorance of citizens. They are pulling this stunt assuming that the American people don’t understand economics. And many don’t because our education system is so completely horrible that it is not taught enough. And every main stream news organization perpetuates the myth that the Democrats are shoving down our throats. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Demonizing the Demons, how unfair!
Yes, they are playing on the ignorance of the masses, but this whole argument between Big Oil and the Politicians (only a certain group of politicians on the ‘inside’) is staged to be irresolvable, while oil company execs grab all they can from the consumer before the inevitable switch to alternate renewable energy sources.
Their aim is simply to keep this argument going while they filch every penny they can from the consumer, in a last ditch effort to syphon off all the profit they can, because their ship is sinking.
jane,
There certainly is never a lack of conspiracy theories out there, and sounds like you’ve bought into a good one.
If I read you correctly, Big Oil is colluding with the liberal senators and house democrats to keep oil supply articially low? And, somehow the Big Oil execs are funnelling money back to these members of our government…? Do I have that right?
If so, all I can say is WOW… that’s quite a theory…