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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
How the Bush White House remains a veritable full-service fueling station for Big Oil.
May 27, 2004 | Drivers, start your engines -- and empty your wallets! As we gear up for the biggest driving weekend of the year, vacationers all across America are coming face to face with the highest average gas prices in history -- up 42 cents a gallon since 2001 -- and a bad case of "pump panic," a new malady in which your heart rate instantly matches the price of full-service high-test. Where I live, there are lots of folks palpitating at 325 beats a minute.
At the same time car owners are having to consider taking out a second mortgage in order to fill up their tanks, oil companies are raking in record profits. ConocoPhillips, for example, the United States' largest oil refiner, recently reported its largest first quarter profits ever. And Exxon Mobil just posted its highest first quarter refining earnings in 13 years.
Coincidentally, these companies and their oil and gas industry brethren have a highly profitable habit of greasing the receptive palms of their friend George Bush -- doling out over $3.5 million to his 2000 and 2004 presidential runs.
So for American consumers, payback is a bitch. And over two bucks a gallon at the gas pump.
Indeed, since taking office, the Bush administration has turned the White House into a veritable full-service fueling station for Big Oil. And we're the ones being forced to pick up the tab.
How has Bush responded to Big Oil's call to "fill 'er up"? Let me count the ways:
1.5: the meager miles per gallon Bush has proposed increasing fuel efficiency standards for light trucks and SUVs, which are allowed to average 7 miles per gallon less than regular cars.
33: the number of oil refinery mergers the Bush administration has allowed, while refusing to block a single oily takeover. Who needs all that messy free market competition, anyway?
41: the number of top-level Bush administration officials with ties to the oil industry, including Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Evans, Gale Norton and Condoleezza Rice the only national security adviser in history to have an oil tanker named after her.
100,000: the amount, in dollars, that buyers of extra large -- and extra gas-guzzling -- SUVs are able to write off in taxes thanks to a scandalous loophole the president signed into law.
23 billion: the number of dollars in tax incentives, tax credits and tax deductions earmarked for the president's energy industry chums in the Bush-backed energy bill passed by the House and awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Infinite (or does it only seem so?): the number of times the president has resurrected the idea that drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would make us less dependent on foreign oil -- even though such drilling would, at best, produce enough oil to meet only six months of America's energy needs. And it would take 10 years to do even that.
