Tag: oil

Do the math

Today’s math lesson comes to us, courtesty of Daniel Froomkin at Huffington Post. As he points out:

The Big Five oil companies this week announced they had made a whopping $36 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2011.

Here’s the second-quarter profit tally:

  • ExxonMobil, $10.7 billion
  • Shell, $8.7 billion
  • Chevron, $7.7 billion
  • BP, $5.6 billion
  • Conoco Philips, $3.4 billion

These are astonishing numbers when you consider that our economy is locked in a massive stall — and it should make the folks realize that budget reform is possible and that it can come without shredding the programs and services that the poor and middle class have come to rely on.

 

What do these obscene profits have to do with the deficit discussions currently paralyzing Washington? The oil industry gets “$4 billion to $8 billion a year in deficit-increasing tax subsidies” that remain in place, as Froomkin says, “the incentives those subsidies were designed to create ceased to make economic sense.”

 

The subsidies should end — and could, given their profits, without much pain to the oil industry.

 

But that would be bad form, right, given the amount the industry spends on the political process. I mean, if you pay to get a politician elected you have every right to expect him to do your bidding. Right?

 

 

 
  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Going after the gas companies

Legislation that would cut aid to oil companies appears dead, thanks to a coalition of Republicans and oil state Democrats. A minority of Senators, in fact, have scuttled legislation that would end subsidies for the most profitable industry in the United States.

The lessons from this?

  • Big oil — and big business in general — has far more power than voters and consumers, thanks in part to the industry’s ability to spend massive amounts of money on political campaigns and buy candidates’ loyalty.
  • The Senate system is undemocratic, both because it gives as much power to small states with little population as it does to larger states, and because it allows the filibuster and secret holds.
  • We need a massive realignment of our politics that shifts power back to the citizenry — reform of the campaign finance system, constitutional checks on corporations, reconfiguration of the Senate, an end to the electoral college and to the two-party system.

The most important lesson, however, is that we cannot wait for government to fix things. Our elected representatives only react to threats to their jobs so we have to organize (civil disobedience and lobbying) and run aggressive primary and third-party campaigns designed to do what the Tea Party has done to the Republicans — pull the Democrats to the left.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Unintended consequences

Fear can cause rash decisions. This story pits the scientific community concerned that potential response to the Gulf oil spill will create unforseen consequences against local officials who want something done and done quickly. Personally, I think it would be foolish, even with the oil approaching the coast, to cut the scientific community out of the loop.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Limits of a BP boycott

I am sympathetic to the call for a boycott of BP — corporate irresponsibility should have consequences and there are few better ways to make corporations pay in our capitalist culture than by voting with our wallets. The problem is that for the boycott to be effect, the message must be clear and I’m just not sure that withholding my gas money from BP while giving to Exxon (Valdez oil spill), Shell (a host of injustices throughout Africa, including the death of the Nigerian activist Ken Wiro-Siwa), Chevron (unsavory activities in the rain forest, Burma and elsewhere), and so on, sends much of a message.

The real boycott would be of gasoline altogether, but that is an impossiblity given how tightly woven into the fabric of our lives the poisonous fuel is (not only do we drive, but everything we buy relies on gas).

I’m not advocating doing nothing — we hve to move as quickly as possible to end our reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy (which relies on extraction of uranium and requires disposal of toxic material, making it as bad environmentally as oil or coal), boost our use of renewable energies and conserve, conserve, conserve.

A boycott might make us feel good, but it won’t do much damage to BP and, even if it does, it only means redirecting our money from one nefarious actor to another.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.