Author:
Ned Depew
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Date Posted: 18:19:39 09/01/05 Thu
Gene -
while I agree with you that this "crisis" is a combination of mis-and-mal-feasance by a corrupt and incompetent administration and opportunistic manipulaion by a greedy administration - as have been 9/11™, the War On Terror™ and the War In Iraq™ - Tom's post does nothing to clarify the situation - only muddies it with his usual non-sequiturs and gratuitous references to his laundry list of "invisible Martians"
And of course, it's full of mis-information - like the idea that it is "NIMBY enviornmentalists" who have reduced and centralized America's refinery capacity. That has actually been done through a systematic consolidation of oil companies into a few enormous conglomerates, who choose to limit the supply of refined oil products in understanding of the principle of "supply and demand." If they can control the supply, they can drive the price up as high as the market will bear.
That's why there is, currently, no shortage of gasoline locally, yet prices reflect the speculative wholesale price for oil that won't be deliverd for more than a month. That is also why - even with oil companies fudging the figures as hard as possible - their reported profits are already up around 50% this year.
Government used to regulate such predatory practices. Jimmy Carter instituted a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies in the wake of their record profits from the 1972 "oil crisis" (which has been revealed to have been largely manufactured by the oil companies themselves). Bush, on the contrary, applauds enormous profits for the Oil Industry - one of his and his family's cheif financial backers.
Tom tries to transmute the need to "develop our own resources" (which in the case of energy resources is vitally important, as Jimmy Carter urged in 1973, when he introduced legislation that would have made the US energy independent by 2000, which the Reagan-Bush Administrations, at the behest of their Big Oil supporters quickly repealed) into a case for allowing a Swiss-based Multi-National company toexploit our mineral wealth, dominate our local politics and degrade our environment in order to enrich its shareholders.
The events in New Orleans are indeed tragic - and as usual in America the poor, the elderly, the minorities and the generally disenfranchised have been left behind to bear the brunt of the disaster.
There is, as Tom says, much for us to learn from these events - about the truth behind the rhetoric concerning our Country's willingness to care for its own citizens, about the supposed "experts" inability to protect people from catastrophe, about the greed and heartlessness that corporations show in the face of human tragedy - turning the gasoline situation into just another opportunity to "make a killing."
But Tom himself doesn't seem to be able to draw any coherent lessons from the experience, just his ususal disjointed reciting of clichés and catch phrases that mean nothing (or less).
His unwillingness to drop the insulting epithets from his messages, despite repeated appeals, and to make an effort to make every post as coherent and readable as his best are what led me to block his posting here. He can be re-permitteed at any time if he shows a willingness to abide by the rules which all the rest of us respect.
I expect you to continue to respect those rules, as you have for the most part in the past. If you start posting the same mis-information filled, pointless, gratuitously insulting nonsense for which Tom has become notorious - either under his name or yours, you won't be welcome here either.
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