David Van Os: Big Oil Still Running Roughshod

[Horse with no Name]

This is from an email I got. Many of you remember David as a DU'er who was running for Texas AG. He is always "right on the money".


In a recent lead newspaper article in one of the big-city Texas daily newspapers, "energy experts" are quoted as predicting the price of gasoline is going to hit $4 a gallon this year. In some places in California it is already over $4.

At nearly $2.90 again in most of Texas, gasoline prices are at a point where last year most people were screaming bloody murder over these prices. But of course, as we all know, gasoline went down during the two months before last year's general election.

So again, we continue through a repeated pattern. Prices go up astronomically; then they go down, but not to where they were before the rise. Then they go up again. But there is not as much outcry the second time prices reach levels that previously provoked public outrage. The temporary price retreat conditioned many consumers to think they got a break, just as the greedy and powerful intended. By manipulating consumer expectations, Big Oil and its political and editorial lackeys thus pull off a constant rise in the price of gasoline and diesel to ever-higher levels.

So now that you are being softened up to expect $4 per gallon gasoline, ask yourself a question. Has this national and global economy, which Big Oil and its apologists claim makes gasoline prices escalate beyond their control, also caused your ability to earn a living to increase by the same proportion?

Let's get more specific. Last year gasoline hit $3. If it hits $4 this year, that will be an increase of 33%. Will your income-earning capacity be up 33% between mid-2006 and mid-2007? If you make your living in agriculture, will the return on your livestock or produce be drawing a 33% increase? If you are a small business owner, are you going to be able to mark your products up by 33%? If you are a wage earner, will you have 33% worth of cost of living increases from your employer? If you are a retiree or pensioner, will your Social Security or pension income be up 33%?

If you do not occupy the upper income brackets, how will you afford the gasoline to get to and from work every day? If you live in a rural area, how will you afford your regular trips to town? If you are a retiree on regular medical care, how will you afford your regular trips to the doctor's office, clinic, or pharmacy? If you farm or ranch for a living, how will you afford the $15,000+ per month your operation may require?

Some of the newspaper editors I interviewed with during my campaign for Texas Attorney General mocked me. Some of the Insiders and Status Quo Apologists in my own political party likewise mocked me. They said there was no evidence of price manipulation. They said the price of gasoline was determined by international market fluctuations and was beyond anybody's control. They quoted economic models and statistics. They quoted politicians, including my opponent Greg Abbott, who said there was nothing that could be done. (When I challenged the editors to ask Abbott to share the specific results of the investigations he claimed to have conducted, I got blank stares in return.)

Well I know this. The Constitution starts with the words "We the People," not, We the Economists or We the Politicians or We the Newspaper Editors.

I also know this. Throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s gasoline prices were relatively stable at below $2 a gallon. In the late 1990s and early 2000s there were gigantic corporate mergers. Exxon and Mobil became Exxon-Mobil; Conoco and Phillips became Conoco-Phillips; Shell and Texaco merged; and so on. Control of production and distribution thus fell into fewer and fewer sets of hands.

You and I both also know that in 2001 a new administration assumed executive power in the USA, consisting of an oilman as president and an oilman as vice president.

We also know that these two oilmen invaded another country, which happens to possess the world's second biggest reservoir of oil, on the basis of a series of purported reasons that were all falsehoods. And that today these two oil men insist on staying with that invasion, continuing to send grief and heartbreak daily to American and Iraqi families, despite all the logic and evidence that screams for withdrawal.

Against this background of corporate mergers and growth of allied corporate-political monopoly power, Big Oil and its stooges and apologists in the arenas of politics, economics, and journalism want us all to think that the drastic rise in gasoline prices over the last 5 years and the coming years does not suggest any manipulation of markets or prices. I say they are full of baloney. I say their arrogance and conceit prevent them from realizing how obvious it is to the rest of us. I say that if the real spirit of Texas as represented by great Texans of the past like Sam Houston, Jim Hogg, Jim Allred, or Lyndon Johnson were representing the people through executive positions in our state government today, they would have been all over Big Oil with the ready tools of the Texas Constitution and Texas law, and the Oil Giants would not be running roughshod over the people of Texas as they are now.

Don't give in and don't give up. Keep fighting for a return of the Texas spirit of old, the fighting Texas spirit of liberty and democracy. Fight the corporate-political monopoly powers. Fight 'em till hell freezes over. Then fight 'em on the ice.

[Horse with no Name]

1. kick