Bad! Bad! Big Oil!

It's an election year and it's time once again for the congressional Big Oil Executives show. Congress hauls a group of big oil executives in front of them, yells at them, makes faces and wags their fingers at them. The executives leave and laugh all the way to the bank. The last show was two years ago, ironically also an election year. They were called before congress due to record prices and oil company mergers and what happened afterward? Two years later they are being called in again because of record profits and because they got 18 billion in tax breaks given to them by a Republican congress and they are giving the consumer no kind of break at all.

It puts me in mind of how, when cops are on the take from drug dealers, they have to occasionally bust somebody or it looks suspicious. So they bust a small fry, or do a big publicity raid and it looks like they're doing their jobs and trying to control drugs. It's all done with a wink and a nod and made into a big production for the media and the TV cameras, but in the end there are just as many drugs on the streets as before.

And this is what will continue to happen as oil companies make obscene profits as the rest of the country faces recession. While we're in a war as the Bush administration and Republicans like to remind us when they want us to make sacrifices, but not when it comes to making their fat cat buddies in the oil industry make equal sacrifices. It's really funny how the conservative mythology revolves around the self-sufficient, pull yourself up by your bootstraps philosophy when it comes to poor people, but the rich are gladly given tax breaks and bailouts.

John McCain is talking tough about what we shouldn't do for "bad actors" (is he talking about She Who Must Not Be Named?) in the current home mortgage crisis which is due to plunge us into the worst recession ever, if not depression. So while Bear Stearns and the rest of the banking industry gets bailed out, the people with the least to start with, and with families to support, get thrown out of their homes and onto the streets. How is that for Republican family values? He's still in favor of those tax breaks for the rich.

And even when these guys have something bad to say about a rich corporate abuser of the public trust, their major focus, their ire and their scorn is always reserved for the little guy who they see as the cause of all our ills. The people who got duped by subprime mortgage lenders, the undocumented worker, the victims of hurricane Katrina who had to find food and clothing the government didn't provide in a time of disaster and were then called looters. They have a blind spot when it comes people like the group of oil executives before congress now.

The last thing I have to say on the subject is amen, right on and you go boooyeee to the truckers who are protesting these obscene prices. The thing is, they really have no choice. As the gentleman said, they will be out of business in a few months if things continue to go they way they are. My cousin is a trucker and we talked just a couple weeks ago about everything I am seeing on the news now. How the gas prices are literally killing these guys. The rates they get paid don't go up as the price of fuel eats into the profits of independent truck drivers.

He's just gotten into the position where he is buying his own truck and working for himself. The real pull yourself up by your bootstraps story. That's what all these independent truckers are. So while congress plays wink and nod with fat cat oil

executives and does absolutely nothing, these guys go out of business. What they should do is all get together by the thousands and blockade Washington DC. Just make a big ring around it so nothing goes in or out. The million trucker blockade of Washington. Then something might happen.