The Chris Moeller Archives

Nationalize, nationalize! Also: The Clinton's latest angle

Rising gas prices (approaching $4 a gallon in Iowa) have taken headlines across the country, but virtually none of the news reports (AP here) are addressing as a root cause the record profits being posted by our private-controlled oil companies. Oil executives have even been on Capitol Hill this week being grilled before Congress, and still the traditional media focuses it's coverage mainly on the Memorial Day holiday traveling season-- the effects of high prices rather than their cause-- in essence buying into the oil companies' preposterous claim that global market forces, i.e. supply and demand, are solely to blame for the high cost of fueling up at your local filling station.

Betraying these executives' claims, though, are these staggering profits being posted at ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP America. Falling in behind the political cover of Vice President Dick Cheney, who eight years ago assembled a super-secretive national energy "task force" comprised entirely of industry executive-slash-Bush campaign contributors, these billionaire executives continued this week to press such a phony notion of public stewardship and concern that two of the executives actually claimed before the House Judiciary Committee that they didn't know how much they were paid.

ExxonMobil alone posted a $46 billion profit in 2007, essentially for performing the service of selling our national resources back to us. In 2006, company CEO Lee Raymond received a $400 million retirement package. That's an out-and-out raping of the American taxpayers. The time is long overdue to nationalize the exploration, extracting, and processing of petroleum within our borders and along our coastlines. Not only would that eliminate the costly, profane payouts to the boardroom middlemen who act as pimps, but the profits of a nationalized firm could be put towards developing technologies for future American energy independence, such as the transfer to alternative fuels, something the private sector has long promised but failed to deliver.

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I can't think of a dumber idea than Barack Obama choosing Hillary Clinton as his running mate, but at least now, the New York Senator's actions over the last few months make sense in a context. Clinton's efforts to split the Democratic party into two parts, after the delegate math began to turn against her in February, has been the same old "Friends of Bill/Enemies of Bill" tactic our First Disfunctional Couple pioneered in the 1990s when their reckless personal ambition cost the Liberal Left the legislative and judicial branches of our government and a seat at the table within the party's establishment. (And they then have the temerity to brand Ralph Nader a "spoiler"?)

In the Clintons' world, much like the Bush/Cheney world, you're either for them or against them, and if you're against the Clintons, then you're self-righteous, elitist, and now sexist and misogynist too-- not that a party that smothers all manner of anti-establishment dissent deserves better than the likes of Geraldine Ferraro-- but it's aggravating that so many of our fellow citizens have bought into this fabricated and distracting conflict of the competitive disadvantages between black men and white women. Truly, what an enormous waste of time and energy.

Hillary has played both sides of the gender issue as it suits her campaign purposes, and more power to the campaign, I guess, but the tactics that work to shame her philandering husband into paying back her career with his political cache should have nothing to do with Obama, Nader, Cynthia McKinney, John McCain, you, me, or our daughters and granddaughters so desperate for political female role models. The rest of us were never sworn to love, honor, and cherish within the Clintons' altogether-unique marital covenant, and we should resent the implications of any theme of her campaign larger than that. As The Village Voice's Allison Benedikt wrote tongue-in-cheek, "There is no greater wish that a mother can have for her daughter than that she will exploit poor people, obliterate Iran, and win rigged class president elections, Putin-style. (Mom, I won 100 percent of the vote.)" The women's movement, already a casualty of the Clinton White House, remains in a death-like state.

Hubby Bill pals around with Bush 41 and other right-wing fat cats like Rupert Murdoch while treating Barack Obama and his reform-minded supporters with the utter contempt he once reserved for blue dresses. Yet today's New York Times reports he's now maneuvering behind the scenes to have Hillary tabbed as Obama's running mate, as if Illinois' junior senator would want to share what would be a suddenly-cramped White House with one Clinton, let alone two.

I'm fairly certain that Obama has the individual good sense to see what a bad idea such a running mate selection would be, but if there's one thing we've learned in American politics-- beyond the corrosive influence of corporate cash-- it's that Democratic presidential nominees (read: Gore and Kerry) can have precious little control over the decisions made on behalf of "their" campaigns. And as summer begins in earnest, there seems to be an ever-growing number of Democratic bosses that believes Obama can only topple McCain in November if the Democrat is running as part of a "unity ticket" with Hillary and her husband. Clinton operatives, meanwhile, with the '08 writing already on the wall, see this as the best way to angle Hillary for another presidential run in 2016, and they're probably right. The Obama people, though, just shouldn't be surprised then when VP Hillary first challenges his re-election in 2012.

posted by CM @ 11:30 AM