David Goodfriend’s Daily Rant: Big Oil & Shameless Profiteering
March 14, 2012“Recent sky-high gas prices are an outrage, a wholesale transfer of wealth out of the 99% and into the very top of the 1%,” says David Goodfriend. “Forget about politics and government. I lay the blame for this wholesale theft at the feet of the oil industry.”
Watch David’s Daily Rant here, and read the rest of it below the video.
First they tell us it’s because they can’t drill enough in the United States. Then they tell us it’s because international oil prices are rising. But all of this, in my opinion, is a cynical effort to deflect attention from their own shameless profiteering.
Right now, the oil industry is sitting on plenty of public drilling leases. Nearly two thirds of the land leased isn’t being used. Whose fault is that? Close oil industry tax loopholes to pay for alternative fuels?
Deny the Keystone XL pipeline unless the oil would be used here at home instead of exported? Big oil’s chief Washington lobbyist literally threatened political payback for anyone even proposing such things.
Frankly, Ithink big oil knows damn well what they’re doing. By sitting on their domestic leases, keeping supplies tight, they help drive up the price of crude oil.
Why would they drill to the max, increase supply, and lower prices?
That would just lower the value of the oil they control today. What’s to say they’re not just choking supply to keep oil prices high and laughing all the way to the bank while you and I pay through the nose?
On top of that, I suspect that they’re illegally colluding with one another to do it.
At the very least, as we can see from the oil billionaire Koch brothers, this is an industry that is not above trying to buy our government out from under us.
If our democracy is the last thing standing in their way of total domination, big oil will try to drown it in a bathtub rather than let us little people tell them what to do.
I know presidents get more credit and blame than they should for oil prices. But if I were president, I’d get the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation on the oil industry for illegal price fixing.
I’d get the Interior Department to open its own drills on public lands — skip the oil companies altogether — and flood the market with government-drilled American crude, sold at cost, not at spot-market prices. In other words, I’d go to war against these greedy bastards.
Dylan, I know that here on the Dylan Ratigan show, we’re no longer into fighting for fighting sake. I’ve been working on my anger management techniques. I can find my happy place. But when you take a look at these oil companies, at their history of squeezing consumers, crippling the environment, bullying politicians, and pocketing the spoils, come on! You gotta get steamed!
Maybe I’ll get more zen when I see an oil executive do the perp walk. Shackles, pinstripes, and Texas tea. That would be oh, so lovely.
- David Goodfriend runs his own public policy practice in Washington, D.C. and is the founder of Sports Fans Coaltion, a public policy group for sports fans nationwide, and is the host of Left Jab Radio on Sirius XM.
I for one am with you 100%! I am so tired of being ripped off, giving my tax dollars to these creeps in subsides, and then ripped off again at the pump. Which too I believe is just a ploy to get Obama out of office. The koch brothers MUST be brought to justice once and for all!
I’m sorry, but how would closing tax loopholes help the consumer? Companies ALWAYS pass increased production costs on to the consumer by raising prices to cover said costs and maintain profit margins. Any company that doesn’t won’t be in business long and then how would you get your gas? Unless you have a supply of crude and a refinery in your garage, you’re screwed–look up the concept “economies of scale” sometime. The only thing closing said loopholes would do is raise the price of gas and increase the DEMAND for alternative fules at a time where there is NO VIABLE SUPPLY and wouldn’t be for the forseable future. So you pay through the nose at the pump while praying for another “evil” corporation to develop the tech needed to escape the clutches of the even more “evil” oil giants. And anyone that counters with the idiotic idea that the federal government could set prices artificially low should read an economics book–here’s the Cliff’s Notes: price setting below marker equilibrium creates a shortage and black markets. So the price might be low, but the supply is either scarce, possibly rationed, and highly prone to theft and exorbitant black market prices. …And you still don’t have an electric car or even the ability to get to work. All the other suggestions in this artical are just as silly and completely ignor basic economics. Don’t export any oil? oh by all means increase the trade deficit further and watch as supply is scaled back to make up lost margins. If the leases aren’t being used like you claim, then pursue legislation requiring said leased land to be forfeit to the competition of not being utilized. If these companies truly are colluding then they’d all pass and a rush of venture capitalists not engaged nor interested in collusion would jump into the market and drive prices down. Read a book and make an educated suggestion