by Ralph Nader, Nader.org
AlterNet (January 08 2008)
While many impoverished American families are shivering in the winter
cold for lack of money to pay the oil baron their exorbitant price for
home heating oil, ex-oil man, George W Bush sleeps in a warm White House
and relishes his defeat of the Congressional attempt to get rid of $15
billion in unconscionable tax breaks given those same profit-glutted oil
companies like ExxonMobil when crude oil was half the price it is today.
This is the same George W Bush who, calling himself a "compassionate
conservative" in October 2000 made this promise to the American people:
"First and foremost, we've got to make sure we fully fund the Low Income
Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which is a way to help
low-income folks, particularly here in the East, pay for their high,
high fuel bills".
So what did this serial promise-breaker propose this year? Mr Bush
wanted to cut the fuel aid program by $379 million! This entire
assistance program is funded at about half of the $5 billion that state
governors and lawmakers believe is essential to meet the needs of the
six million people eligible to apply for such help this year.
Everyone in Washington knows that the big, coddled, subsidized oil
industry has many politicians over a barrel. When it comes to oily Bush
and Cheney though, the global melting industry has these two indentured
servants marinated in oil.
Look at what ending regulation of natural gas prices has produced:
prices up fifty percent since last year. Home heating oil prices are up
thirty percent. Bush's own Energy Department estimates the rise of
heating oil costs will impose an average increase of $375 for customers
this winter. No way that supply and demand explains this gouge.
If a home dweller is too poor to order more than 100 gallons at a time,
they get smacked with an extra surcharge of sixty to seventy cents per
gallon for delivery.
Some states set aside some money. New York State will spend $25 million.
Joe Kennedy and Citgo sell discounted heating oil, but that Venezuelan
program is undergoing a reduction.
Efforts in Congress to impose a windfall-profits tax on the King Kong,
record-profit-setting oil companies got nowhere.
Two years ago, efforts by Senator Charles Grassley (Republican, Iowa),
then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, begging the major oil
giants to slice off a tiny portion of their profits for charitable
contributions toward energy assistance for the poor did not receive even
the courtesy of a response.
I've asked members of Congress, including the Black Caucus and the
Hispanic Caucus in the House of Representatives to take up this cause
vigorously and prominently on behalf of their constituents back home.
Have you heard any high-visibility demand from these veteran lawmakers?
I haven't.
Even Senator Grassley seems to have despaired.
Please note that ExxonMobil alone made $36 billion in profits last year.
That's one company profiting over seven times the amount of dollars
needed for energy assistance. Greed, arrogance, callousness and far too
much unaccountable power exists in Big Oil and in its White House.
Enforcing the antitrust laws and prohibiting organized speculators at
the Mercantile Exchange from determining the price of an essential
product like petroleum will bring prices down. But there is no action in
the White House. No demand from the Congress.
Veteran free lance reporter, Lance Tapley has been reporting for The
Portland Phoenix newspaper on the price bilking of recipients of energy
assistance programs. For thirty years, he writes, the oil dealers have
been charging the Maine state housing authority, which administers the
LIHEAP program, higher prices than they set for their payment-plan
customers, despite the large bulk purchasing by this housing authority.
Tapley severely criticizes the failure of Governor John Baldacci for not
standing up for poor Maine people at the same time he promotes large
subsidies for business and sells off state-owned assets at
bargain-basement prices to corporations.
Mr Tapley writes: "The heating oil crisis could be a big test in 2008
for Baldacci and the State House Democrats. The picture will not be
pretty if elderly poor people freeze in their trailers while rich
Republicans and professional-class Democrats snuggle up in their
McMansions or old Colonials ... but, with our Democrats, who needs
Republicans?"
Some day, the tens of millions of poor people in America, most of them
working poor, will be heard from. Until now, they have been exhausted,
powerless, despairing, fearful and grasping for whatever crumbs fall off
the table. History teaches us that such a subdued human condition does
not continue indefinitely.
Call the White House switchboard (202-456-1414) and your member of
Congress (Senate Information: 202-224-3121; House Information:
202-225-3121). Tell them not all these low-income Americans have been
sent to oil rich Iraq. Many are here mourning their losses of and
injuries to loved ones while they shiver in the cold.
Tell them to make those big oil CEOs making as much as $50,000 an hour
to ante up.
Copyright (c) 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
