{"id":4825,"date":"2011-05-13T02:42:14","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T09:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4825"},"modified":"2011-05-13T02:42:14","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T09:42:14","slug":"democrats-grill-big-oils-executive-liars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/13\/democrats-grill-big-oils-executive-liars\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Grill Big Oil’s Executive Liars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many Americans do not understand the background of the subsidies the oil industry receives from American taxpayers.  When they began, the price of oil was $17 per barrel.  Arab oil was so inexpensive that exploration and development of US fields was too costly to compete, so to encourage it, Congress passed subsidies to make US oil competitive.  Today, oil hovers near $100 per barrel and Big Oil needs no further incentive to explore and produce here, so the justification for the subsidies is no more.  The greed displayed by these CEOs and their Republican lackeys was extreme.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"GOBP\"A U.S. Senate Democrat is using the words of former oil company chiefs in an attempt to invalidate arguments the current group of corporate leaders is using to keep generous tax breaks.<\/p>\n

With the heads of the five largest private oil companies watching at a hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden played a video of a 2005 hearing in which oil company executives said they did not need generous tax breaks because oil was selling at $55 a barrel<\/strong>. It is now above $100 a barrel.<\/p>\n

Wyden said he could not understand why oil companies need tax breaks now, when oil is selling for nearly twice as much.<\/p>\n

Chevron Corp. chairman and chief executive John Watson said the companies do not want special tax benefits — just the benefits that other industries get\u2026<\/p>\n

…Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), however, was more sympathetic to the executives in question. Holding up a photo of a dog riding atop a pony, he slammed<\/a> Democrats for taking cheap shots. <\/p>\n

"This hearing should not be used to score cheap political points," he said, holding up the dog-and-pony image. "Let’s send the pony back to the stable. … Let’s send the dog back to the kennel<\/strong>." [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <CBS<\/a>><\/p>\n

To say the GOBP supports Big Oil greed is like saying the Pope supports Catholic prayer.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rarely do I use clips from the same show in two different articles, but as in today\u2019s top article, Rachel Maddow\u2019s analysis stands head and shoulders over anything else I found.  Here she reviews the grilling and calls out Orrin Hatch.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

And here she interviews Senator <\/font>Bob Menendez, co-sponsor of the bill to repeal oil subsidies.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

To be fair, I found it hypocritical for  Jay Rockefeller to be calling them out.  Had the panel been Big Coal executives, he would have acted like Hatch.<\/font><\/p>\n

Kudos to Oregon\u2019s Ron Wyden.<\/font><\/p>\n

Republicans, as usual, are lying.  Ending the subsidies will NOT raise gas prices more than a penny or two and will cost no jobs.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many Americans do not understand the background of the subsidies the oil industry receives from American taxpayers.  When they began, the price of oil was $17 per barrel.  Arab oil was so inexpensive that exploration and development of US fields was too costly to compete, so to encourage it, Congress passed subsidies to make US […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}