Gas Pains, sent to me today

[keithjx]

I looked around briefly, and I apologize if this is a dupe.
A buddy of mine (very centrist, republican on some issues) sent me the following article.
I'd like to give it the full DU treatment, so here ya are:

TIA,
KJ

Gas Pains

The next time a gas fill-up costs you 40 bucks or more, consider this: Lee Raymond, the retired CEO of Exxon-Mobil, was paid more than one billion dollars by that company from 1993 to the present. Raymond's retirement package is about $400 million, according to published reports. Does everybody love Raymond? I don't. I think he's a greed-head.

The Exxon-Mobil board of directors approved Raymond's compensation, and guess who appointed most of those well-paid board members to their positions? Does the name Lee Raymond ring a bell?

And guess who is paying all those Exxon-Mobil salaries, including our pal Lee's? The regular folks who must buy gas to go to work and heat their homes. This is called "predatory capitalism."

Let me explain, and please keep in mind that I am a big-time supporter of capitalism. Gasoline supplies are at an eight year high, according to OPEC. There is plenty of gas selling on the open market, more than enough to meet the worldwide demand.

So rising gas prices are not a supply and demand issue.

What the American oil companies are doing is exploiting the uncertainty in the world. Every time the nutty Iranian government threatens to kill the Jews or the Americans or whoever, speculators bid up the paper price of a barrel of oil.

These speculators operate in the so-called commodities markets. They gamble on where the price of oil and other tangible assets will be months from now. These Vegas-type people sit in front of their computers and bid on "futures" contracts.

Every time the oil company executives, guys like Lee Raymond, see these people bidding up oil "futures," they order their retail gas station owners to jack up prices to you. Supply and demand my carburetor—this has nothing to do with the free market.

If you don't believe me, try to start your own oil company. Just try. The government has to approve almost everything these conglomerates do, and there's no room for any "startups."

So everyday Americans are at the mercy of a complicated shell game that is manipulated by a few people playing high risk financial roulette. But it is no game to millions of Americans who have to buy gas. We have no choice.

That's because the U.S. government declined to do what the government of Brazil did. Next year, Brazil, population 188 million, will be totally independent of imported oil. Back in the 1970's, the Brazilian government mandated that all cars sold in that country run on sugar-based ethanol. And now they do.

These are the same cars we drive. But in Brazil, the fuel situation is sweet. Vehicles run on sugar.

Back here in the USA, the federal government rejected ethanol, and all other alternative fuels, because Lee Raymond and his brethren wanted none of that. Raymond is in the oil business, not the sugar business.

In the time of the French Revolution, Lee Raymond and his $400 million pension would be running one step ahead of the guillotine. But today, some in America admire Raymond and support his unbelievable compensation.

But to those of us who really understand what's going on here, Raymond and his ilk are hurting the country and the government is their enabler. Talk about gas pains. There isn't enough Alka-Seltzer in the world.



By: Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com
Thursday, Apr 20, 2006

[BlackHeart]

1. Is there another Bill O'Reilly

that I don't know about. This one sounds sane.

[keithjx]

2. In truth. I should go verify

that this actually did come from there, but I just don't want to taint myself....
KJ

[RamboLiberal]

10. Yep - it's really from O' Reilly

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,191620,00.html

I of course don't watch him much at all, but I do seem to remember he is closer to our view when it comes to gas guzzlers.

[medeak]

3. all I can find on his site

is asking people to boycott buying gas on Sundays? edited to say...just found it...yep..he wrote it:

http://www.billoreilly.com/currentarticle

[Warren Stupidity]

7. How on earth is that going to help anything?

There are things we can do:

1) go back immediately to the hated 55. I hate it too, but a leader with vision would demand the american people make sacrifices to help with the peak oil crisis. Of course we have no such leader.

2) raise the auto cafe standards now, impose a huge surcharge on gas guzzling passenger vehicles of all types (commercial license required for exemption on any truck with more than a front bench), across the board tax credits on alternative and high economy vehicles, and keep the cafe standards rising on an annual basis until we are all forced to drive 50mpg or greater vehicles, and then keep it rising anyway. 100mpg by 2012.

3) tax credits for domestic solar/wind/geothermal energy systems. Let 100 million rooftops bloom!

4) invest the highway tax fund into mass transit development and subsidies.

5) get our troops our of Iraq and take all that money we are blowing in Iraq and invest it instead in a manhattan project to develop a renewable safe clean energy infrastructure. 100B/year ought to get something going.

6) convince people to move back into cities. Subsidize urban recolonization.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. For almost everyone there are few choices here.

Gas is an essential commodity. You can't not buy it unless you move to an urban area where you don't have to drive everywhere.

At first I thought this was another one of these:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp
But it seems it isn't.

While there is of course speculation and manipulation going on, the fundamental problem is that increasing demand is outstripping supply. New oilfields coming online are not keeping pace with the depletion of old fields and the growth in demand. Worse, new fields replace cheap to produce crude with expensive to produce crude. There are fundamental reasons why the price trend is inexorably up. It is called peak oil and we are there.

[European Socialist]

5. Lee Raymond and the decider should be in side by side photos in...

every dem campaign ad.

[Coyote_Bandit]

6. Forwarding .....

to all the fundie pukes in my address book.....

[Arugula Latte]

8. Hey, Bill, what are ya, a dirty COMMIE?

So rampant greed and unfettered capitalism is fine in your world unless it affects you at the gas station? :eyes:

[keithjx]

9. Thanks all, for your comments.

I suppose there are redeeming qualities about everyone. I don't know what Falafel is on, but I suspect that this falls into the category of "more money out of bill's pocket is a bad thing." He's still a greedy ignorant bastard as far as I'm concerned.
KJ