Tag Archives: greed

Consumer Advocates Call On Group To Withdraw Support For Measure That Would Raise Car Insurance Rates on Good Drivers

The nonprofit Greenlining Institute acknowledged in a San Francisco Bay Guardian story published today that it received a $25,000 donation from Mercury insurance company, and expects more for its work in support of Mercury-backed Proposition 33. Prop 33 is funded by Mercury insurance’s billionaire chairman George Joseph and would raise car insurance rates on good drivers who have a break in insurance coverage, even if they’re not driving.

In a letter, Consumer Watchdog urged Greenlining to reverse its decision to support Proposition 33. Greenlining opposed a nearly identical ballot measure proposed by Mercury insurance company in 2010, Prop 17.

Download the letter here

Read the San Francisco Bay Guardian story

“We are writing to urge you to reconsider your shocking support for Proposition 33 and the auto insurance redlining it seeks to legalize,” wrote Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield and Washington DC director Carmen Balber. “Greenlining purports to represent the very low-income drivers who will be hurt the most if Proposition 33 is approved next November, allowing insurance companies to surcharge Californians who stop driving for legitimate reasons and then choose to get back on the road.”

Prop 33 would overturn a 24-year-old law banning discriminatory practices by auto insurance companies that were brought to light in the 1987 California civil rights case, King v. Meese.

“The rampant practice of surcharging, or refusing to sell insurance to, people who were not previously insured was one of the most pernicious of the discriminatory techniques employed by the insurance industry,” said the letter. “In signing the ballot argument for Proposition 33, you have aligned yourself with George Joseph and Mercury Insurance, the most persistent partisans for the legalization of the old redlining tricks that made auto insurance inaccessible to low-income families and communities of color for decades.”

The letter notes that Proposition 33 targets Californians who stop driving for legitimate reasons:

When low-wage workers who commute by bus need to get a car in order to maintain their job, they will be surcharged by about 40% for auto insurance;
When immigrant drivers are finally able to obtain a California driver’s license and try to buy insurance, they will be forced to pay hundreds and possibly thousand of dollars more than the drivers who purchased insurance in the past, even though they are equally good drivers;
When drivers who have found it financially impossible to maintain uninterrupted insurance coverage turn to the auto insurance market in hopes of complying with the mandatory insurance law, they will face a financial penalty for being poor;
Those who cannot afford these massive surcharges will be exposed to penalties and seizure of their vehicles for failure to comply with the Financial Responsibility Law.

Uncategorized

“Gas Pain” At Pump And Smokestack

March 29, 2012 Consumer Watchdog

A California license plate seen recently that said, “Gas Pain,” might be the sly joke of a gastroenterologist, but it’s not on a Mercedes. So let’s stipulate that it means pain at the pump, with a gallon of regular gas stuck for months at around $4.40. This kind of price is as usual fueled by investor speculation and an oil industry that cuts supply to drive up profit. But the license plate could just as well be about a different kind of gas-a big increase in greenhouse gas emissions by the state’s oil refineries.

California refineries “emit 19-33% more greenhouse gases (GHG) per barrel [of crude oil] refined than those in any other major U.S. refining region,” according to a recent report for the Union of Concerned Scientists. The reason is a corresponding increase in the amount of heavier, dirtier crude oil processed, including dark, sticky tar sands oil from Canada. The gasoline produced at the end of the process is no dirtier-but the gases that could otherwise come from your tailpipe are going up the refinery smokestack instead.

A story in Inside Climate Today points to requirements that refiners remove sulfur pollutants from gasoline and diesel fuels. Such scrubbing is harder to do with the cheaper, dirtier tar oil, and refiners may emit more carbon pollutants during a longer refining process, especially as they try to squeeze out more fuel from every barrel of oil.

California isn’t yet capping refiinery pollution, and this week delayed putting financial teeth in planned emission caps. Pardon us for thinking oil industry lobbying could have had something to do with it.

No one is forcing refiners to buy Canadian tar oil-refiners want because it’s cheaper than lighter oils and produces a bigger profit. It’s the same reason oil companies are demanding their high-volume Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas, which could make California refinery pollution look like a clear day in spring. Exxon Mobil officials won’t even admit that the tar oil is dirtier to refine. From a Texas story on the pipeline:

An ExxonMobil spokesperson refused to specify how much heavy crude the company’s refineries are already processing in Texas or might process if the pipeline is completed. Nor would the company respond to questions about how refining tar sands oil affects the amount of air pollution created by the plants.

Extra profit also comes from U.S. refiners exporting gasoline and diesel fuel at record rates. Fuel is now America’s top export, even as refiners import the dirtiest oil to make it. Domestic pump prices go up and the refinery pollution burden on Americans goes up while other nations reap the clean fuel.

Californians are already buying and driving cleaner cars and cutting consumption. All families prize clean air, but those who live near refineries are suffering more, not less, pollution. There’s “gas pain” for everyone except the oil industry and its servants in government, as in a Congress that won’t even trim the industry’s billions in corporate welfare.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Health Care

Blue Cross Claims Fake Credit for “Free” Care

December 14, 2011 Consumer Watchdog 1 Comment

It’s stunts like this that drive Consumer Watchdog’s efforts to beat back the insurance lobby and regulate untenable health insurance premiums.

When I first noticed the ad below while hunting for cookie recipes, I was surprised to see a health insurance company buying a full page in the first pages of a cooking magazine. But reading it was another surprise. The headline touts “Free Annual Checkups,” and the text of the Anthem Blue Cross ad takes credit for this brand-new benefit: “100% coverage for checkups, flu shots and other preventive services.”

Anthem, however, had nothing to do with the prevention benefit. It’s a requirement of the federal health reforms passed last year. Blue Cross, along with every other major health insurer, fought to eliminate such mandatory benefits and later falsely blamed the law for outrageous, unjustified double-digit premium increases. (The prevention benefit is just one of the things that will disappear if the courts or Congress succeed in voiding the health reform law.)

Anthem must figure a deceptive claim of “free” care will make us feel better about insurance payments bigger than our mortgage.

It’s stunts like this that drive Consumer Watchdog’s efforts to beat back the insurance lobby and regulate untenable health insurance premiums.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Health Care

Blue Shield admits to overcharging California customers by about half a billion since 2010

October 14, 2011 Consumer Watchdog 1 Comment

It is a masterful spin by the self-described not-for-profit Blue Shield of California to announce that it is returning all but two percent of its profits to its customers, as though this were some act of humble generosity. It’s a little like a supermarket announcing that from now on it’s going to give back (almost) all of your change. (It’s actually worse than that, as I’ll explain.)

All told, Blue Shield will have returned about $475 million in profits – $283 million that Blue Shield is crediting back in December plus about $167 million credited back earlier in the year for 2010 premiums as well as the $25 million the company distributed to doctors, hospitals and an as yet unnamed “community investment.” But this should not be thought of as a sincere gift from a community-oriented nonprofit. Rather, it’s nearly half a billion dollars that Blue Shield overcharged its policyholders and then held onto for months.

Worse still, Blue Shield had to be pushed and prodded to do anything; this refund didn't just happen. Blue Shield is only giving some money back because there was huge public pressure this year – from Califo rnia Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, from nurses and consumers who protested at their corporate offices, from lawmakers like Assemblyman Mike Feuer carrying legislation to regulate insurance companies and from news reporters investigating their rates and salaries.

What’s more, the $283 million that will go to reducing policyholders’ December premium payments is utter chump change when given a full context:

Blue Shield, according to documents it files with the state of California, has more than $3 billion in excess surplus (“Tangible Net Equity excess” is the formal term). That massive and ever growing pot of money is a profit account that Blue Shield uses to take policyholder premium out of the healthcare system so they can come back and charge those same policyholders high rates again next year. Blue Shield could give back $280 million a month for an entire year and still have a enough money on hand to run a stable insurance company. Or, to think of it a little differently, instead of giving families back a few hundred dollars for Christmas, they could just sell insurance at a reasonable premium and not stuff their own stockings with surplus.

To be sure, Blue Shield is angling for a feel good story it can tell politicians and voters when they next consider whether to enact a law or initiative regulating the premiums health insurance companies can charge. That story may work with some politicians in Sacramento, but I doubt voters who are stuck overpaying for health insurance will be so easily spun.

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Doug Heller is the Executive Director of Consumer Watchdog. Visit our website at: www.ConsumerWatchdog.org.

Health Care

Insurance Industry’s Two-Faced Battle Against Patients

July 7, 2011 Consumer Watchdog 1 Comment

Health insurance companies apparently have no problem taking opposite sides of an issue when it serves their bottom line. When it comes to California law, they hate regulation and will spend any amount of money and credibility to kill it. But when it comes to protecting the profits of insurance brokers at the expense of consumers, insurance companies say (approvingly) that effective state regulation will protect consumers from premium increases. Both positions are public record, but health insurance companies apparently figured no one would ever notice.

The California battle is highly public. The state is the biggest health insurance market in the nation and one of the least-regulated. So it’s no wonder tht the insurance industry is fighting a tooth-and-nail battle against state regulation that would protect consumers from premium increases of up to 86% in 12 months–as Blue Shield tried to impose in the last year. The insurance companies have clubbed doctors into submission, threatening to cut their reimbursement if decent regulation starts to squeeze record health insurance profits. They have also poured money into political contributions to key legislators, according to an Associated Press story this week.

The bill, AB 52 by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, has passed the state Assembly and is up for a vote today (Wednesday) in a key state Senate committee. Here’s a safe bet: Even if it passes and goes to the full Senate, insurers will twist every arm and make every threat to get the bill killed–or more likely, crippled by hostile amendments that would hogtie the state Insurance Commissioner.

The other side of the insurance company mouth is buried in the proceedings of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, where only geeks go to read. Right now the organization is under pressure to back a legislative proposal in Congress that would kill a key consumer protection in the federal health reform. The bill, HR 1206 by Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, would allow insurance companies to pay brokers and agents without counting the payments as an overhead expense. This would trash the reform requirements that insurance companies spend more on health care, holding overhead and profits to 15% or 20% of insurance premiums. If they don’t have to count broker pay as overhead, health insurers wouldn’t have to lift a finger to become more efficient.

Of course, we consumer advocates have argued that if the Rogers bill passes, insurance companies will have a free pass to raise premiums.

The health insurance lobby’s response? Oh, that won’t happen because consumers are well-protected by state insurance regulations!

From a June 2 letter (see last page) by America’s Health Insurance Plans to the NAIC:

“Finally, we wish to comment on a concern we have heard that deserves a response. One commentator has expressed the concern, and assumption, that if commissions are removed from the MLR calculation, then insurers will only increase their premiums – leading to great harm to consumers. We believe this flawed assumption fails to recognize the standard of rate review prevalent in the states. Exempting commissions from the MLR calculation does not pull them from the rates, and certainly does not stimulate insurers to inflate their rates. And states are increasingly focused on assuring value for consumers in their rate review, in accordance with the ACA, making such an assertion even more unlikely.”

If states want to “assure value” in health insurance, they certainly do have to review and regulate rates, and that includes the power to approve or reject rates before they go into effect. Such prior approval is now “prevalent” in the majority of states–though not in California.

When a corporate lobby is as powerful as the health insurance industry’s, it apparently doesn’t have to worry about being consistent.

I hope state legislators weighing the California bill have a grip on how two-faced the industry deliberately is. At least the industry has admitted that regulation is the only barrier between consumers and the next flood of premium increases.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Uncategorized

$4 Gasoline and the Price of Silver: Yeah, There’s a Connection

May 4, 2011 Consumer Watchdog 1 Comment

U.S. gas prices have hit their highest level ever for springtime, at $3.96 a gallon for regular on average. Yep, higher even than the record surge in 2008, as oil companies reap near-record profits. So what does that have to do with the price of silver?

The speculative price of silver is dropping, maybe crashing, from its high around $50 an ounce largely because of one move: the New York Mercantile Exchange, where silver is traded, increased how much of the price of a trade has to be paid up front. Instead of a few cents on the dollar, it’s now several cents on the dollar.

Oil futures are sold even more cheaply–with speculators still putting up only around 6 cents on the dollar to trade hundreds or thousands of barrels of oil. That makes it too easy to gamble and encourages trades that are intended to push the price up further, to the detriment of your personal wallet. Just as with silver, most of the traders don’t produce oil and never intend to take delivery of a barrel of oil on their Manhattan doorsteps. Just as with silver, oil is attractive to speculators looking for a commodity that’s protected from any drop in the value of the dollar–even if their activity ends up hurting the value of the dollar, as shown in a 2009 Rice University study on energy speculation.

There are some differences, including the fact that oil markets are too vast to be cornered by one or a few traders, unlike silver. But the similarities are more numerous.

So why not raise the margin–the amount that pure speculators have to pay up front–on oil futures trading? Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Maria Cantwell of Washington recently asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to do just that–and quickly. But the CFTC hasn’t lifted a finger and won’t even comment on the Nelson letter–which is evidence of the power of the financial industry’s lobbying power in Washington.

The White House appoints the members of the CFTC. If its chairman, Obama appointee Gary Gensler, won’t exercise his power to protect consumers and the economy, President Obama should be all over him.

If you’re interested in raising the price of speculation to lower the price of gasoline, why not give the president a call and tell him to give the CFTC a kick in the pants? White House e-mail is here (put “oil speculation”) in the subject line). Comment line is 202-456-1111, and live switchboard is 202-456-1414. Every call is logged.

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Uncategorized

Is There a ‘Gashole’ in Your Tank?

April 19, 2011 Consumer Watchdog

It’s as though we had another Hurricane Katrina furiously driving up the price of fuel, but without the storm. Which makes it interesting that an indie documentary called “Gas Hole,” (trailer), examining the reasons for our high gas prices in the post-Katrina world and oil company influence on the gas-guzzling engines in our cars, is now getting wider release. You can be sure that Exxon didn’t provide the funding for this funny/weird/disturbing doc. (I love the old desert-rat types with faded sedans that get 100 mpg, and their stories of disappearing clean-car patents.)

The national average price of plain old regular gasoline is up a dollar a gallon over the past week to $3.83, according to AAA. California, which alerts the rest of the nation to where pump prices are going, is at $4.20. And nationwide, the diesel fuel that drives our trucks and trains is $4.14 a gallon, even though diesel is cheaper to make than gasoline. No wonder food prices are spiking.

We find out why there’s no supply and demand in any real sense driving the price of gas today. Oil prices are spiked upward by speculation in futures markets, not by physical shortage on the market. Gasoline is driven upward not just by oil prices, but by refining companies’ restrictions on their output, and overall supplies. Then the price of gasoline pushes up oil prices some more. We’re all at the mercy of greed, not supply and demand.

Some of the serious points covered in “Gas Hole” track OilWatchdog’s studies and reports over the years, which are covered in my colleague Jamie Court’s book, “The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell.” (video). (Full disclosure: Jamie was interviewed for the movie.)

Some of the most eye-opening points from the book:

Remarkably, the idea that oil companies have control over the price at the pump is controversial in Washington, D.C. Oil company executives point to geopolitical instability, future predictions of crude oil scarcity, OPEC, and other forces beyond their control as the culprits.

The public knows the scoop, and its instincts track the research. Oil companies know they can make more money by making less gasoline, so they do.

I have studied the issue of high gasoline prices for more than a decade.

Here’s what I have learned about how the big five oil companies control gasoline prices by making the commodity scarce and keeping the price high. This knowledge is critical to opposing the industry’s anticonsumer behavior and pushing Americans toward real energy change.

• Rather than compete with each other to provide more and cheaper gasoline, oil companies cheat together to withhold needed gasoline supply from the market. Consistently, the companies artificially pull back refinery production of gasoline in order to reduce supply coming in during periods of peak demand so they can increase prices. … This behavior has been documented by government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, which found, for example, in an investigation of Midwest gasoline price spikes, that one refiner admitted keeping supply out of a region in need because it would boost prices.

• Oil companies failed to build ample refining capacity to meet demand. Over the last twenty years,America’s demand for gasoline increased 30 percent and refinery capacity at existing refineries increased only 10 percent. No new American refinery has come on line during the last thirty years. Internal memos and documents from the big oil companies show they deliberately shut down refining capacity in order to have a greater command over the market.

• The big oil companies have their own crude oil production operations and control substantial foreign production of crude oil. They profit wildly when the price of crude oil skyrockets, so they have an interest in driving up the price, despite the fact that they blame OPEC for those crude oil increases.The crude oil producers can even drive up the price of crude by restricting gasoline production and trading crude oil among their own subsidiaries to drive up the price paid for crude by others. Traders with connections to the oil companies can also make big bets on the opaque crude oil futures market to drive up the price and also drive up the value of their Exxon shares.

• The crude oil that big integrated oil companies use in their own refineries is mostly bought on long-term contracts or through their own production, so the oil companies don’t pay the world price for crude oil when it’s high. Their raw material costs are much lower than they would like us to believe. So when the companies raise the price of gasoline in tandem with the run-up in crude oil prices, they are making big profits because Exxon’s crude oil unit is charging its own refining unit a higher price for crude than is necessary.The accounting shenanigans result in an overall windfall profit but show the companies’ gasoline refineries making little profit.

“Gas Hole” also pays close attention to oil companies’ long history of influencing markets and government to boost their profits and protect their business model. It pays impressive tribute to the inventor of modern investigative reporting (and one of my personal heroes), Ida Tarbell, whose 1904 history of Standard Oil laid bare a price-fixing national monopoly with tentacles everywhere in government.

Gee, does that sound familiar today? “Gas Hole” has too much sense of the absurd–even a clip from “Reefer Madness”–to be pedantic. But knowledge is power. In the end, it’s a lot more useful than boycotting the Exxon station.

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Uncategorized

What’s Causing the Gas Hole in Your Wallet? You’ve Got to See This Movie

April 14, 2011 Consumer Watchdog

If you want to know why we're really paying over $4 per gallon for gasoline, and there appears to be no end in sight, the film Gas Hole lays it all out for anyone who wants to know the history of the pain at the pump.

The filmmakers pull back the curtain on the dirtiest secrets of the oil industry: from oil companies buying up patents for devices that would give you 100 miles per gallon, to intimidation of inventors of green technology, to oil company manipulation of the gasoline supply that drives up prices.

Being released on DVD in time for Earth Day, Gas Hole, narrated by Peter Gallagher and featuring Joshua Jackson, is an eye-opening documentary about the history of oil prices and sheds light on a secret that the big oil companies don't want you to know — that there are viable and affordable alternatives to petroleum fuel!

View the Gas Hole Trailer from Cinema Libre Studio on Vimeo.

Gas Hole provides a detailed examination of our continued dependence on foreign oil and examines various potential solution.

The film also tells the story of the battle my group, Consumer Watchdog, fought with Shell Oil to keep the company from demolishing a key gasoline refinery during a period of high demand and low supply in order to drive up the price at the pump. A combination of public pressure and intervention by US Senator Barbara Boxer and then California Attorney General Bill Lockyer forced Shell to keep the refinery open and sell it to a competitor.

As Gas Hole documents, it took every bit of raising hell know-how we had to keep Shell honest. Most communities just cannot fight back.

The film artfully lays out what I learned about fighting oil companies for more than a decade about how they jack up the price up at the pump.

• Rather than compete with each other to provide cheaper gasoline, oil companies cheat together to withhold needed gasoline supply from the market. Consistently, the companies artificially pull back refinery production of gasoline in order to reduce supply coming in during periods of peak demand so they can increase prices.

• Oil companies failed to build ample refining capacity to meet demand. Over the last 20 years, America's demand for gasoline increased 30 percent and refinery capacity at existing refineries increased only 10 percent. No new American refinery has come on line during the last 30 years. Internal memos and documents from the big oil companies show they deliberately shut down refining capacity in order to have a greater command over the market.

• The big oil companies have their own crude oil production operations and control substantial foreign production of crude oil. They profit wildly when the price of crude oil skyrockets, so they have an interest in driving up the price, despite the fact that they blame OPEC for those crude oil increases. The crude oil producers can even drive up the price of crude by restricting gasoline production and trading crude oil among their own subsidiaries to drive up the price paid for crude by others. Traders with connections to the oil companies can also make big bets on the opaque crude oil futures market to drive up the price and also drive up the value of their Exxon shares.

• The crude oil that big integrated oil companies use in their own refineries is mostly bought on long-term contracts or through their own production, so the oil companies don't pay the world price for crude oil when it's high. Their raw material costs are much lower than they would like us to believe. So when the companies raise the price of gasoline in tandem with the run-up in crude oil prices, they are making big profits because Exxon's crude oil unit is charging its own refining unit a higher price for crude than is necessary. The accounting shenanigans result in an overall windfall profit but show the companies' gasoline refineries making little profit, and "upstream" crude-oil production divisions making the lion's share.

The oil companies cannot be shamed, but Gas Hole shows why we need to keep them on a short regulatory string.

What are the solutions? Gas Hole offers them up starting with claims of buried technology that dramatically improves gas mileage, to navigating bureaucratic governmental roadblocks, to evaluating different alternative fuels that are technologically available now, to questioning the American Consumers' reluctance to embrace alternatives.

If you are paying $4 dollars or more per gallon for gasoline, spending a little more on the DVD of Gas Hole is a wise choice.

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Jamie Court is the president of Consumer Watchdog and author of The Progressive's Guide To Raising Hell (Chelsea Green)

Follow Jamie Court on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RaisingHellNow

Uncategorized

Facts of Life on High Gas Prices: It’s the Speculators & Oil Companies to Blame, Not Middle East

March 8, 2011 Consumer Watchdog

While skirmishes in Libya and uncertainty in the Middle East are nice cover for outrageous gasoline prices, the fact is the same old suspects are making a killing from sky-high gas prices approaching $4 dollars per gallon in California: big oil companies and greedy speculators.

The speculative market may have driven crude oil prices up, but that’s not the price oil companies pay for the crude oil that goes into our gasoline. America’s big oil companies use crude oil that they have harvested from the ground or bought much cheaper through long term contracts to refine into gasoline. You’ll see the results in next quarter’s profit statements: big profits from both crude oil sales and refineries that make gasoline, what’s called “upstream’ and “downstream” operations in profit reports.

Consumer Watchdog has for years both tried to curb the opaqueness of the volatile speculative market for oil and to regulate supplies at gasoline refineries because oil companies game both systems, creating artificial shortages in the markets to jack up prices or exploiting historical events to justify obscene profits. Today’s sky high gasoline prices are the result of oil companies shutting down refineries and playing the speculative markets for big gains.

The deafening silence from the White House and groups in DC loyal to the President who know better is the most astonishing thing.

Obama campaigned against oil company greed on the campaign trail but now he seems to have lost his voice on the subject. Republicans are taking the offensive, but the oil industry that has been nourished in their bosoms for decades is at the heart of the crisis. Oil companies have kept the nation running on such short supplies of gasoline that any jolt to the system sends gas prices through the roof and makes the economy pay.

What follows is the five facts of life I have learned from more than a decade fighting oil companies, battles I recount in my new book The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell. It’s about time the White House started educating Americans about these facts of life and fighting back against the real perpetrators of the pain at the pump.

• Rather than compete with each other to provide more cheaper gasoline, oil companies cheat together to withhold needed gasoline supply from the market. Consistently, the companies artificially pull back refinery production of gasoline in order to reduce supply coming in during periods of peak demand so they can increase prices. It’s legal so long as there is no smoky back room where they talk about it, but they don’t need to since industry data about supply flows freely on corporate computer screens. This behavior has been documented by government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, which found, for example, in an investigation of Midwest gasoline price spikes, that one refiner admitted keeping supply out of a region in need because it would boost prices.

• Oil companies failed to build ample refining capacity to meet demand. Over the last twenty years, America’s demand for gasoline increased 30 percent and refinery capacity at existing refineries increased only 10 percent. No new American refinery has come on line during the last thirty years. Internal memos and documents from the big oil companies show they deliberately shut down refining capacity in order to have a greater command over the market.

• The crude oil that big integrated oil companies use in their own refineries is mostly bought on long-term contracts or through their own production, so the oil companies don’t pay the world price for crude oil when it’s high. Their raw material costs are much lower than they would like us to believe. So when the companies raise the price of gasoline in tandem with the run-up in crude oil prices, they are making big profits because Exxon’s crude oil unit is charging its own refining unit a higher price for crude than is necessary. The accounting shenanigans result in an overall windfall profit but show the companies’ gasoline refineries making little profit, and “upstream” crude-oil production divisions making the lion’s share.

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Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Uncategorized

Praying for Time

May 19, 2010 stevefromsacto

My good friend Marty Omoto reminded me of a song by George Michael called “Praying for Time.”

The words are so moving and so relevant as we watch the destruction of the California dream. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Here’s a portion of the lyrics:

These are the days of the empty hand

You hold on to what you can

And charity is a coat you wear twice a year

This is the year of the guilty man

Your television takes a stand

And you find out

That what was over there is over here

So you scream from behind your door

Say what’s mine is mine and not yours

I may have too much but I’ll take my chances

Because God’s stopped keeping score

And you cling to the things they sold you

Did you cover your eyes when they told you

That He can’t come back

Because he has no children to come back for

calitics

Tag Archives: greed

Mercury Insurance Gave $25K to Greenlining Institute for Flip-Flop Prop 33 Endorsement

“Gas Pain” At Pump And Smokestack

Blue Cross Claims Fake Credit for “Free” Care

Blue Shield admits to overcharging California customers by about half a billion since 2010

Insurance Industry’s Two-Faced Battle Against Patients

$4 Gasoline and the Price of Silver: Yeah, There’s a Connection

Is There a ‘Gashole’ in Your Tank?

What’s Causing the Gas Hole in Your Wallet? You’ve Got to See This Movie

Facts of Life on High Gas Prices: It’s the Speculators & Oil Companies to Blame, Not Middle East

Praying for Time

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