Big Oil Big Giver in Prez Race
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
The price of oil continues to skyrocket today with a barrel of crude going for $120. Remember back in the day when the media kept warning that oil would bypass the $100 a barrel ceiling? Yeah, well those days are long gone.
Leave aside whether the U.S. can ever wean itself off its dependence on foreign oil, how about simply curbing subsidies and other corporate welfare perks for oil companies? An army of high-paid oil and gas lobbyists know the best way to forestall action is to win the hearts (these can usually be located next to their campaign accounts) of politicians. Oil producers are doling out some of their record-breaking profits to fund the presidential race. The Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit, runs a database called Oil Change International that tracks oil and gas contributions to the presidential candidates.
Republican candidate Senator John McCain is in the lead with $291,685, while Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is close behind with $289,950 in contributions.
Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama trails the two with $163,840 in oil and gas contributions.
The biggest recipient of oil and gas largess is former Republican presidential nominee Rudy Guliani who collected $659,158 in political contributions. The campaign contributions are current as of March 3, 2008, according to the database.
Oil giant Exxon Mobil is not taking any chances in its lobbying and has given contributions to all three candidates. Long a target for environmentalists, Exxon has given the most, $23,550, to Senator Obama and the least to Senator McCain with just $7,950. Senator Clinton received $15,700.
Hmmmm. Is that about mitigating a worst-case scenario or do they know something we don’t?
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:47 am
I thoroughly enjoyed the article concise direct and no fluff! I would appreciate your help in an effort on my part to rally the people and change the situation as it applies to each of us at the pump.
IF YOU ARE TIRED OF PAYING A RIDICULOUS PRICE PER GALLON AT THE GAS PUMP PLEASE PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS MESSAGE.
I am starting this e-protest as a reasonable means of reaching 300,000,000 americans and at least as many of our global cousins.
It is very simple……
We as a global culture MUST WORK TOGETHER……
This means that we must all AGREE to do one thing as a group…..
Right now you are asking yourself HOW CAN I CHANGE THE PRICE OF GAS?
Simple…. Join together and collectively act…..
DO NOT BUY GAS FOR ONE WEEK EACH MONTH!!!
I am calling upon all individuals who purchase gas to not buy gas for one whole week.
Fill up on the last week of the month and COMMIT to not buy gas or any products from a gas station from the 1st of each month to the 7th of each month.
I know that I am asking for a huge change in your weekly lifestyle. It will mean carefully considering the number of miles that are absolutely necessary to drive in that week
and not driving unless it is an absolute necessity.
One more thing and this is THE big one. This will only work if every person who receives this message passes it along to every person on their email list.
This is the most critical part. The average person has around 70 email addresses in their contact list, If every person I sent this to forwards it to their whole contact
list that will be over 5000 people…..if these all forward it to about 70 people thats over 340,000 people, if these all participate it will be over 24,000,000 people.
That is only after the third generation of emails if each of these 24,000,000 participate, that is almost 1.5 billion people.
PLEASE DON’T DISCARD THIS EMAIL, SEND IT TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW, AND FOLLOW UP WITH THEM TO SEND IT TO EVERYONE THEY KNOW!
I AM NOT ASKING FOR MORE THAN A COUPLE OF HOURS OF YOUR TIME. THIS IS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY TO PREVENT THE OIL COMPANIES FROM
RAISING THE PRICE OF GAS TO MORE THAN THE HOURLY MINIMUM WAGE!!!!!
If you are not sure just how this could work think about how much impact
BIG OIL will feel if over 1,000,000 people stop buying their weekly gas just one week a month.
If you are like the average consumer and you fill up just once a week at around $50.00 and you multiply this figure by 1 million,
That’s 50 million dollars a month that hits hard immediately. Now suppose this happens over the course of three to four months,
and the participation continued to escalate as I have outlined. The results would have to be in our favor. The number of gallons of fuel processed and delivered are carefully
calculated by the oil companies based on the number of gallons sold in the previous months and years…
If the fuel consumption goes down the ammount produced and on standby becomes a backlog situation…
If there is a glut of fuel left over at the end of each month for a few months the Oil Companies have no choice but to lower the price to get the fuel moved!
The result LOWER PRICES AT THE PUMP!!!!! IT”S HIGH TIME WE AS CITIZENS OF AN EMERGING GLOBAL SOCIETY
STARTED TO PUT THESE COMPANIES ON NOTICE. WE ARE THE ONES WHO ULTIMATELY CONTROL THE MARKET BECAUSE WE ARE THE MARKET!!!!!!
Please take this seriously We are only going to change the status quo if we refuse to let the suppliers dictate the rules.