I drove by the local Union 76 Station and the price was up to $2.15.9 per gallon for the cheapest unleaded gas. Our editor Laura Tate is just back from a short vacation on the East Coast, and the price of gas back there was significantly cheaper, even in New York City–$1.85 per gallon.
California is an oil producing state, has a local domestic supply and local refineries, as anyone driving through Torrance can tell you. So the question is, Why are we paying so much for gasoline?
I guess you could ask the same question about natural gas, and perhaps heating oil and just about every petroleum product.
The answer is, I believe, inescapable. We are being ripped off.
I suspect our rather clumsy deregulation of the power industry and our failures to build new power plants or use nuclear energy probably set us up to be victimized. However, it doesn’t change the inevitable reality that we’re being had. And we’re not doing much about it. The question I ask myself is, Why not?
Now if we’re looking to the federal government for help, we can just forget it. It’s not that the government is in bed with the energy cartel, they are the energy cartel. Dick Cheney is their guy and he’s calling the shots–and the industry runs FERC, the federal regulatory operation.
Again, I ask the question: Why isn’t anybody doing anything?
Now I must make a confession. As a litigator, I was always of the opinion that the best way to get anyone’s attention was to hit the person over the head with a 2-by-4. Then you apologize for being so crass, and when they get up, you hit them again. By the third time you generally have their attention and it’s time to begin talking.
I believe the same rules would apply in the energy situation. It’s interesting to observe the differences in the way the prosecution and law enforcement crowd handle major crime, like sales of small amounts of marijuana, as opposed to minor crime, like the ripping off of the entire State of California, the bilking of billions of dollars and the physical endangering of an entire population dependent on power to run their lung machines, their kidney machines and various other devices that keep a legion of our population alive and functioning.
So go with me on a little fantasy trip while we deal with the energy cartel the same way we deal with the drug cartel. They’ve got a number of tools to go after a drug cartel and I don’t see that energy would be any different.
First of all, there is the law. There’s the RICO Act–many of you who watch the “Sopranos” know what that’s all about–and then there are conspiracy statutes and a legion of other old-fashioned criminal statutes that work very effectively. So there’s plenty of law.
Additionally, the next time there is a power blackout and some little old lady dies, that’s called murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and aiding and abetting murder, and, at the very least, some sort of negligent homicide.
Next you start the wiretaps. You find some compliant judge and get a warrant to tap the energy cartel’s business phones, home phones, kids’ phones, and for good measure you throw in faxes and e-mails.
Next, you gotta have a snitch, because no good criminal case goes without one. There are plenty of snitches available. All you have to do is listen to the taps and you’ll soon pick up the unhappy players who can be turned. Easier yet, you wait until there is a layoff, or someone gets passed over for promotion, or a little sexual harassment and you’ll find a legion of people ready to spill the beans for immunity, a reward, or whatever. You set up a reward system and give the snitches a piece of what you recover and, if need be, the witness protection program.
Then you go to the grand juries and you get indictments all over the place. You keep them running from Yreka to Bakersfield to Los Angeles to San Diego. Then you serve search warrants at their homes, along with arrest warrants, at the airport as they get off their planes, at the country club and at their wive’s women’s groups. By the way, you also make sure to arrest the wife, the children and, if need be, the family dog. It’s amazing how many people will cop out to protect their family dog.
And soon, it all just goes away. The prices start coming down. The free market becomes free again.
I often wondered why some ambitious attorney general or local district attorney doesn’t just step up and bite the bullet.
I suspect that some of you might be thinking that what I’m visualizing is tyranny. You might well be right. But not having enough power to live, or fuel to heat your home or being held captive by a bunch of Texas power manipulators is also tyranny. So which tyranny would you prefer?