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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Bill Steigerwald :: Townhall.com Columnist
It's About Time Big Oil Started Defending Itself
by Bill Steigerwald
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As any recent television viewer can attest, the American Petroleum Institute - the main lobbying group for the oil industry - has launched a huge ad campaign designed to tell Big Oil's side of the $4-a-gallon gasoline story.

Aimed at one audience -- voters -- the multimedia, multimillion-dollar propaganda blitz is a necessary antidote to the misinformation and false charges we constantly hear about Big Oil from Big Media and our duly elected demagogues.

We've all heard about the alleged sins of Big Oil, the handy media-made pejorative for the world's largest oil and gasoline manufacturers:

It controls/manipulates the world energy market. Its six "supermajors" -- multinationals like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron -- are exceptionally evil and rapacious corporations that are responsible for skyrocketing oil and gasoline prices.

They are uniquely and grossly profitable. They deserve to have their "excess" profits taxed and their robber-baron bosses scolded - if not publicly waterboarded -- by Congress.

A few weeks ago, when the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled five U.S. oil executives, some senators treated them like captured war criminals. Demagogues like Dick Durbin scolded them for their high salaries, threatened them with windfall profit taxes and suggested brainless, environmentally correct ways for them to reinvest their companies' oil revenues.

The Big Oilmen defended themselves ably, mainly because they actually knew what they were talking about.

The oil execs warned, correctly, that government intervention will only make things worse - not that Sen. Durbin and his fellow grandstanders gave a care. And they called on Congress, futilely, to allow more drilling and exploration for domestic oil on the vast swaths of federal land in Alaska and off America's shores that by law are off-limits to oil and gas development.

Many Americans have heard by now the truth that oil companies pay far more dollars in taxes each year than they earn in profits. And that the oil industry's average net profit margin -- 8.3 percent last year -- is lower than Big Tobacco and Big Beverage (19.1 percent), Big Pharma (18.4 percent) and Big Banking, Big Insurance and Big Media. Continued...
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About The Author
Bill Steigerwald, born and raised in Pittsburgh, is a former L.A. Times copy editor and free-lancer who also worked as a docudrama researcher for CBS-TV in Hollywood before becoming an associate editor and columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
 
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Reply # 1
Date: Jun 12, 2008 - 10:50 AM EST
Subject: Cam--Wrat--MarkinVA--streetcars
I may be one of the few people on this list who actually rode the Red Cars when I was quite young.

They were uncomfortable, bumpy, un-heated, and un-air-conditioned.

They couldn't travel over 40 MPH,and usually less than that.

They operated on city streets in many areas, taking up one or more lanes, and they often could not even travel at "normal" speed when cars were in their lanes.

The coup de grace was the fact that rail lines provided poor coverage, almost never going where you actually wanted to go, so you wound up walking considerable distances in hot, cold, or wet weather. Or standing in the rain or hot sun to get a transfer bus.

All these problems were obvious to a little child. And the newer subways don't attract much ridership for some of the same reasons--specifically, coverage. If L.A. were to build enough lines to provide reasonably complete coverage, the cost would be SEVERAL HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. Not Millions, Billions. Does anyone know of a mass transit system that reaches break-even without large taxpayer subsidies?
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Reply # 2
Date: Jun 12, 2008 - 10:19 AM EST
MyOpine--Thanks for the laundry list
My, my, my! Robert must be a busy boy! He makes Thomas Jefferson look like a monomaniac.

I find this amusing.

I have some other "interesting" information from a thread he trolled a few weeks ago.

Can you post a throwaway e-mail I could use to contact you?
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