Big Oil Pollutes, Bribes, and Hijacks Its Place in Power

In 1989 the Exxon Corporation had one of it’s oil tankers wreck off of the coast of Alaska. Due to their negligence, they were convicted in a court of law of negligence and asked to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. After 20 years of appeals and reductions in the ruling, the Supreme Court, just a year into getting two new Bush appointees on the court, has reduced that ruling to $500 million.

Think about that for a moment. At the time of the ruling, the judge in question determined that a company needed to pay one full year’s worth of profit so that they would be incented to never again commit the crime of killing wildlife and forever polluting some of America’s most beautiful habitat due to being so grossly negligent as to put a drunk at the wheel of a boat carrying 1.3 million barrels of oil. Twenty years later, Exxon will now have the tremendous burden of paying out $500 million, or one day’s profit! Imagine, by litigating the Valdez disaster in court, Exxon is now paying 1/365th of what it was originally ordered to pay in terms of income (without regard to its victims and the opportunity cost of getting the money 20 years late)!!!

If Exxon would have been forced to pay this at the actual time the accident occured in 1989, the $500 million would today be worth over $1 Billion at a low 4% rate of return! In other words, they’re paying the actual fine with the interest earned just from getting to keep the money for 19 years.

Ironically, the past week has been a windfall of good news for Exxon in that they got the news that Iraq will grant them and several other Western oil companies (Shell, British Petroleum, Total) the rights to Iraqi Oil drilling that they have not had access to for 30 years. I’ve linked stories about Exxon wanting to go to Iraq to obtain oil contracts before, and in the words of George W. Bush, “Mission Accomplished.” What better time to obtain the rights to trillions of barrels of oil, than the same time you’ve inserted people into power who have created an instability in a region driving oil to over seven times higher than it was prior to Bush becoming president.

A few quick questions about the people who are taking our country down a path of no return:

How do Exxon and other Big Oil companies get away with so much polluting and influence in government. Simply put: bribery.

Who is on the take for over $1 million in Oil money since 1990? John McCain.

Who is in charge of writing our energy policy with Dick Cheney in secret? Exxon

Who is in charge of editing our environmental policy after a report is submitted from NASA to downplay reality? Exxon lobbyists hired by Dick Cheney

Who makes multi-million dollar tax deductible contributions to the National Science Teachers of America and have them distribute their film, “You Can’t Be Cool, Without Fuel?” Exxon and Shell

Who turns down 50,000 free copies of An Inconvenient Truth to teach students about global warming? the National Science Teachers of America - out of fear of losing their “donation”/bribe

Who funds think tanks to offer $10,000 bribes to “scientists” to criticize global warming findings? Exxon

Hillary Clinton and John McCain Want to Fire 300,000 Workers

Yes, it is true. In a time when John McCain and Hillary Clinton are trying in desperation to paint Barack Obama as an elitist and out of touch, these two vote panderers would like to cut out 9 billion dollars of the funds that fix our roads and bridges (you know, like the one that collapsed in Minnesota?), all so you the voter can save $25 dollars in gas over the summer. So, will firing 300,000 people really be worth $25 bucks to you?

It’s sickening that the continued argument (made/pushed by the oil companies) is about getting off of “foreign oil” as if where we buy the oil changes the supply or demand (and thus, the price). It’s sickening that instead of moving to a wind and solar based energy policy, we have politicians trying to bribe the public to make them okay with the high prices they’re paying.

Pandering to the voters to give tax cuts so we don’t have to pay for Medicare, health care, or a three trillion dollar war (other than the yearly 200 billion dollar annual interest payment from the loan we’ve taken from China) is one thing. Pandering for votes on suspending a tax cut so that voters can save $25 despite this hurting our roads and laying off highway workers is not only a joke, but shows zero leadership or judgement.

Maybe instead of spending $12 Billion/month in Iraq, McCain might want to subsidize electric cars and solar panels on homes. We’d be done with our need for oil in 20 years…and his promise to stay in Iraq for 100 years wouldn’t be needed.

Should these guys and 297,000 of their coworkers lose their jobs and further put the U.S. Economy at risk so Hillary and McCain can get a few votes in Kentucky?

‘We Brake when Hillary says “you’re fired!”‘

McCain Gambling with Taxpayer Money

John McCain being entrenched with lobbyists aren’t the only hits he’s taken this week. His latest troubles are not only real time, but much more of a direct poke in the eye to the American taxpayer.

A quick summary of the linked article above is that John needed a healthy chunk of money to get his campaign back afloat and like Hillary Clinton, took out a loan to get it going again. Neither candidate is doing anything terribly shady by doing that (although Hillary’s loan coinciding with a $100 million donation made to her husband raised serious questions about the old school Clinton tactics to make a buck…made shadier by her refusal to release her tax returns after loaning herself money for her campaign).

McCain’s problem, is that after his campaign picked up a little steam, he needed a second loan. He did what most people would do, in December he refinanced his loan. However, lacking collateral to pay the loan back with if he tanked, the new wording of the loan required that McCain would be FORCED (by the language of the loan) to unnecessarily stay in the race and apply for federal campaign money so that taxpayers would be forced to pay back his loan, even though he and the bank would know he was done…or as the article states, “stay in even if he didn’t want to.”

Just to be clear, a potential President of the United States and CURRENT senator would be forced to take money from the U.S. Government at taxpayer expense even if he already had decided that he was ready to drop out. If that’s not selling your soul to the devil, I don’t know what is. I won’t even get into the irony of John not understanding why the economy is in the tank due to predatory lending practices, but let’s just say Fat Albert has nothing on the thickness of it.

Fat Albert supports Barack and preventative health care

As terrible as this sounds, it is made worse by the fact that in recent days McCain has been trying to slam Obama for not accepting the public financing that McCain was using to rig the system.

With every scandal, John McCain is losing the one or two arguments he may have been able to use against Barack in the fall. I expect tomorrow we’ll find out John was withholding armor for the troops.