Brave New Films on McCain's oil love affair

Brave New Films has come up with another installment in its series, The Real McCain, which outlines John McCain's intimate relationship with Big Oil.

McCain's babbling about 21 billion barrels of oil that is untapped along our shores sounds good for the headlines and for everyone who's angry for paying $4+ per gallon, but the math doesn't hold up. The US consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day, which translates to 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year. That's a little less than three years' worth of oil. And the great fallacy of all of this oil that McCain (and President Bush) now says we need to drill for is that it won't reach the market for years to come.

What's more, a new oil refinery hasn't been built in this country for over 30 years, so even if more oil comes in, the supply wouldn't increase, because oil companies refuse to increase refining capacity, and our bought-and-paid-for government won't force Big Oil's hand to build more capacity. Even more outrageous is that these oil companies have had tens of billions of dollars in profit during the last 2-3 years, and our government continues to turn a blind eye to the oil companies' willful raping of the American taxpayer because of Big Oil's campaign contributions.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Big Oil's push to drill on our coasts and in ANWR is how they claim that the drilling will be done in an "environmentally sensitive way." What a joke. I've said it before and I've said it again - I've got two words: Exxon Valdez. Our government had better not risk our coasts and our tourism economies to drill for oil. The consequences could be disastrous.

I also think it's outrageous that oil companies only pay the U.S. Government 12.5 percent of the oil's market value. That's complete b.s. - the government should double it to 25 percent, and use some of it to give tax breaks to companies that will invest in alternative energy sources. And it wouldn't hurt to give some of the money to companies willing to build hydrogen refilling stations, too, since we need that infrastructure to use hydrogen vehicles.

John McCain's modification of his opinion (Read: A total reversal) about drilling on our coasts is transparent, and it should be realized for what it is - shameless pandering for votes.

W's urge to purge... another peek < ò > < ó >

This story, which I originally found on C&L and read about further in a March 22 WaPo piece, floored me. What shocked me even more was that Chris Wallace explored this on his show yesterday.

It seems that the Bush Justice Department stuck its nose right where it should not have gone - right up Big Tobacco's tar hole.

The story's so unreal, I'm not even going to try to describe it - just read a few excerpts for yourself from the WaPo story:

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."

Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron.

News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.

WTF? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that someone is getting paid here. This was the government's chance to drop the hammer on Big Tobacco, which has been exploiting the American public for decades, including intentionally putting additives in cigarettes that made them more addictive.

Here's a cheerful thought - if this administration would do something like this with Big Tobacco, what kind of influence do you think Bush and Cheney, oil men both, have over what goes on with Big Oil? Read on...

Yesterday [March 21] was the first time that any of the government lawyers on the case spoke at length publicly about what they considered high-level interference by Justice officials.

Eubanks, who retired from Justice in December 2005, said she is coming forward now because she is concerned about what she called the "overwhelming politicization" of the department demonstrated by the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Lawyers from Justice's civil rights division have made similar claims about being overruled by supervisors in the past.

Eubanks said Congress should not limit its investigation to the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.

"Political interference is happening at Justice across the department," she said. "When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration. . . . The rule of law goes out the window."

Hey, where there's smoke, there's fire. I have no doubt in my mind that Bush, Rove, Cheney and their cabal played a big role in the attorney firings. Now it's just a matter of finding out for sure by uncovering the legal trail, and deposing witnesses, under oath and with a legal transcript.