Brown Sludge

Walking The Walk On Big Oil

April 28th, 2006

I’ll buy a Ford if I have to

Regular readers of the Brown Sludge blog know that I’m all about Walking The Walk, as opposed to just Talking The Talk. To this end I always patronize small, local and independent over large, multinational and corporate when I can. I drive the extra mile, often I pay the extra price, and always, always, always I make the extra effort.

There are few more insidious examples of pure Brown Sludge than Big Oil, and I’ve spent a large portion of this week participating in discussions on forums and in the comment sections of some of the more right-leaning boards and blogs and it’s become pretty clear to me that most people, even rabid corporatists and Free Market Extremists understand that Big Oil is hurting people at the pump.

Typically their responses range from the moronic “Thank God the price of gasoline is going up! Now maybe people will finally start using less of it and they’ll start drilling domestically!” to shouts of glee from the Gordon Gekko cheerleading dolts who see obscene profits as a corporations only true mission statement.

Then you’ve got the misguided apologists (usually the tin-foil hat wearing libertarians), who resort to bizarre and ethereal mathematics to try to prove to the world that the price of gasoline is actually CHEAPER today than it was in years past. If you “adjust for inflation”, and wear your shirt backwards during the full moon phase of the third Tuesday of a month with an “R” in it’s name.

Adjusting for inflation is one thing, but you need a Doctor with a rubber glove and a flashlight to find the source of some of these poor peoples data. When you “adjust for inflation” bottled water is really $7.00 a gallon, and Haagan Daaz is $30.00 a gallon in “real terms” and gasoline is HARDER TO MAKE so we should be THANKFUL for $4.00 a gallon gasoline, because it should be a LOT more expensive.

Thanks, but… so far nobody has built a car that runs on water (conspiracy theories not withstanding) and ice cream isn’t the beating heart of the American economy. OIL is.

That’s why Big Oil and Big Pharma and Big Energy are entirely different classifications of businesses that require totally different outlooks. If the people at Haagan Daaz are making obscene profits and paying their CEO’s almost half a BILLION dollars in compensation who cares. The bottled water and ice cream industries are CUT THROAT competition industries – you gotta be good to make a buck, people have choices and can even choose to not buy either product if they so choose. Well… most people can. If I refused to buy chocolate Haagan Daaz when Pretty Jamie was having a rough week I’d be slowly emasculated with a cheese grater. No anesthetic of course.

When Big Oil gouges it hurts people by effectively lowering their incomes. When Big Pharma gouges, people don’t get well.

And BOTH of those industries have spent MILLIONS of dollars lobbying the government for legislation that kills competition, derails regulations, keeps prices high, and uses tax payers dollars to actually subsidize their multi-million dollar attempt to privatize all the profits and socialize all of the risks.

Any who considers themselves to be a Republican, Conservative, or Libertarian should be nothing less than outraged at that alone.

Those that are jumping through flaming hoops in an effort to defend the profit-taking of these companies NEVER speak to this issue. They NEVER face up to the truth that one of the reasons these companies are making outrageous profits is that they’ve utilized the Federal Government to give them advantages they should NEVER have been allowed to obtain.

It.
Is.
Obscene.

And those that have put themselves up as apologists for this behavior have some explaining to do. Soon.

So what’s to be done?

What’s the answer?

I’m not sure, but I am sure about what I’m going to do about it.

I’ve decided that I’m buying an E85 vehicle. I’m a huge Toyota fan, especially now since they’re more of an “American friendly” product than Ford or Chevy. I’m checking into an E85 Tacoma with a Flexible Fuel Mod.

Why E85?

Because it fits my personal philosophies so perfectly.

It means that Midwestern farms and farmers will now become the beating heart of the American economy, as they once were, and, more importantly that a handful of “wild-eyed pistol waivers who ain’t afraid to die” won’t be.

It means that Big Oil executives can go stand in line for a cot at the homeless shelter when regular gasoline drops to .79 cents a gallon because nobody wants it anymore.

It means that the speculation orgy that’s part of the current problem with gasoline prices will be deprived of their ability to jerk the consumers leash whenever they feel like it.

It means that I’ll be being far more environmentally responsible.

It means that when only 15% of a gallon of ethanol fuel is gasoline – that perhaps the United States will be able to stop importing oil completely.

It means that the wild-eyed pistol waivers can have their country back, because… few people will have any use for it anymore.

It means that the oil cartels and the OPEC Princes can spend their time deciding what to do with all that black goo that nobody wants anymore.

How do I know that E85 is the right thing? I don’t exactly, but I do know that Big Oil and many of it’s apologists are trying as hard as they can to discredit and crush the E85 movement, screaming from the rooftops that it’s just not a viable alternative.

That’s good enough for me.

Entry Filed under: General, Big Oil, The Right Has It Wrong