I almost entitled this post "Lying to Congress, Part II," to be
congruent with my
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/lying_to_congress.php">previous
post, but it has not been established conclusively that
anyone has lied. All we know at this point is that
information is being withheld, and it appears as
though someone is lying.
From Fox News:
href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206967,00.html">Congressmen:
Dept. of Interior Fudged Oil Drilling Contracts
Thursday, August 03, 2006
WASHINGTON — Two congressmen said Thursday someone at the
Interior Department may have deliberately removed provisions from
offshore drilling contracts, giving oil companies a multibillion-dollar
windfall.
They also said the department has refused to provide critical e-mails
and documents that could clear up the mystery over the contracts and
provisions that dictate how much in royalty payments the companies must
pay the government on the leases issued in 1998-99.
"We believe the department may have deliberately withheld crucial
information" that could determine if the issue involves a deliberate
action, complained Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Davis, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, and Issa,
chairman of its investigations subcommittee, demanded in a letter to
Interior Secretary Kirk Kempthorne that additional documents and
e-mails be provided concerning the 1990s drilling leases.
Issa has held several hearings on the matter, which concerns the
failure of the department's Minerals Management Service to include a
provision in the 1998-99 leases that would have required payment of
royalties on oil or gas taken if the market price reached a certain
point.
Because the provision was left out of leases issued those two years,
the leaseholders have not had to pay royalties and won't for years to
come, although oil and gas prices have soared well above the royalty
trigger.
This is not a partisan issue; the events in question happened during
the Clinton years, and the two congressmen who are raising questions
both are Republicans. Both Parties have an interest in
keeping the government leases fair and in making sure that appropriate
royalties are paid.
The issue here is this: how is it that corporate interests have
infiltrated the government, so that something like this could happen?
Do people realize how serious a threat it is, when a government starts
to serve the interests of corporations over the interest of its
citizens?
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Given the billions of dollars involved, it would be a relatively minor problem to arrange for very comfortable retirements in the Cayman Islands for a few people in the contracts division. Should we be surprised that greedy oil companies would spend a few million in bribes to reap billions? The potential is obvious, so we need appropriate oversight and jail sentences. Putting a few guilty CEOs in prison for 20 years would make the oil companies ride herd on their own people.
I do think that a criminal probe is called for, and if it happens, oil company executives should face serious penalties.
Starts to?
The Supreme Court of the US, in a decision little noticed at the time, awarded in 1896 to corporations the same rights and responsibilities accorded to human beings. Our current corporate-driven federal policy is a direct result of that ruling. We've been had.
I've heard that corporations have the same rights and responsibilities are people, although I did not know the details.
The thing is, soem corporations seem to have more than one vote. Or at least, their votes seem to count more than mine does.