Seven Villages, Janet Joakim

Wait just a minute here!

What?!

Exxon Mobile and Chevron are reported record breaking profits???!!!

I spent much of today in the car traveling off-Cape.  I listened to WBZ and NPR throughout the day and heard many different iterations of this story (AP’s story)  including an interview with an expert of some sort of expert on BZ who said that clearly this means that the price increases at the pumps have resulted in an increase in the pockets of the oil execs.

The numbers are often debated, but it is agreed that somewhere between 70-80+% of the oil this nation consumes is used for transportation.  The higher costs of transportation are why groceries prices have increased so dramatically.

Today we bought 100 gallons of heating oil for around $3.13 a gallon.  Just  few years ago it was almost $2.oo less a gallon.

 I had to fill my car last night for $3.03 a gallon. Remember when we were horrified that gas was creeping towards $2 a gallon?

 In our house these costs are making the idea of getting ahead harder and harder. Lately, it is more like just getting by.  My husband works, for the most part, off-Cape.  Travel *to* work is not an expense, nor is tax deductible.  I do a lot of work from home, meaning that that oh so expensive, oil generated heat is on at a tolerable level more often than not.

I see so many of my neighbors losing the battle to stay ahead – some are losing their homes because they can no longer get by.

So, why is the middle class suffering while the oil companies are making record profits?  So far the best quote I have seen that addresses this comes from a widely distributed and widely used and quoted press release by Congressman Ed Markey.  Most are using a portion of the quote as taken from this Bloomberg article:

 ”While the oil companies are turning the American consumer upside down at the pump, shaking out every last cent, the White House is defending unnecessary giveaways and tax breaks to big oil.”

But the entire quote given in the Markey press release is:

Markey said, “ExxonMobil’s outlandish profits are the direct result of a Bush energy policy that for seven years has used every lever of the American government to tilt the scales towards satisfying the special interest demands of a single industry at the expense of the public interest. The Bush Administration and the GOP Congress stuffed energy bills full of goodies and looked the other way when the Interior Department didn’t collect royalties owed by these companies to the taxpayers.  The hypocrisy of the oil and gas lobbyists is so high that even as these record profits gush from their company balance sheets, they try to block all attempts to recover the royalties they owe the American taxpayer.”

It is time to reconsider the tax breaks and freebies we give these corporations. It is time we all pay attention to, track and advocate for the bills that have been filed to do just this.

Closer to home, when the Minerals Management Service released their draft environmental impact report, Amalia Baredda reported for WCVB that report was a success for Cape Wind, and showed footage of Jim Gordon saying his famous lines, “this is the RIGHT place, and the RIGHT time for this project!”
Baredda ended her report standing in front of a gas station sign with the current cost of GAS in the background saying, “with oil prices over 100 dollars a gallon, if there was ever a time Massachusetts needed this project, it would be now.”

I wonder if Amalia knows that a Wind Farm won’t power our cars or heat our houses.

And, I wonder if she realizes that Jim Gordon, just like Exxon Mobile and Chevron, will not be paying any lease on his pristine area of federal waters so nicely protectd by surrounding, struggling, municipalities, and that it is a deal he will fight for to the end?  Who wouldn’t? 

Why are we allowing private corporations to mine our federal waters, and why won’t they pay for that privilege?

What are the additional tax breaks, grants and rebates these companies enjoy?

I would love to install a set of solar panels on my roof. But, I can’t come up with the thousands of dollars needed to install them, and to finance them means we really don’t save money — when we looked into it, it appeared that it would ultimately cost us more overall.  Why can’t the breaks given to Jim Gordon, be sent in our direction instead? I can help reduce MY dependency on foreign oil by setting up solar panels to heat my hot water!

My husband would love to buy a Hybrid car, but we just can’t swing it right now.  Wouldn’t it be great if some of those tax breaks or grants that Gordon and the ExxonMobiles of the world get were to come in our direction to make these cars more affordable?

Sigh. What kind of car do you suppose the top oil exec’s drive?

And, finally in today’s news, as if to pour salt in the wound the second story in business news today was reported by AP as follows….

Employment Drops in a Pink Slip Blizzard
By JEANNINE AVERSA
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a shower of pink slips, U.S. employers cut jobs last month for the first time in more than four years, the starkest signal yet that the economy is grinding to a halt if it hasn’t already toppled into recession.

Janet Swain Joakim