McCain Plays Puppet For Big Oil, Gets Paid

“ It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

— Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)

There is, of course, a very good explanation for why Republicans can only make our energy crisis and climate change worse, it is because their lobbyist money depends on making it worse, or at least doing absolutely nothing to make it better, which in the end does make it worse.

Take for instance John McCain, who recently flip-flopped on offshore drilling, which has been proven to be absolute bullshit, as it would do absolutely nothing for decades, and even decades from now, it wouldn't help Americans at the pump AT ALL. When McCain flip-flopped on this, an interesting thing happened:

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

Here is how that breaks down. In three and a half months McCain got $882,000 from the oil industry, which is a lot of money, but after McCain flip-flopped and started pushing the oil industry's lies about offshore drilling, suddenly the corporate money comes in a wave, and McCain makes $825,000 from them in two weeks. Oh, and you think McCain didn't know he would get paid handsomely for selling out the environment and struggling Americans? Think again:

McCain delivered the speech before heading to Texas for a series of fundraisers with energy industry executives, and the day after the speech he raised $1.3 million at a private luncheon and reception at the San Antonio Country Club, according to local news accounts.

Yes, I bet McCain got a warm reception there, to say the least. It is no wonder that McCain now says whatever the oil companies tell him to say, he is their puppet, nothing more.

But it doesn't stop with McCain, that is how Republicans are in general. For example, while Republicans have been pushing for false-solutions like offshore drilling, Democrats have actually been trying to solve the problems, for instance by regulating the energy markets (which some of McCain's advisors helped deregulate) that have allowed rampant energy speculation, which most experts believe have been an important factor in driving up oil prices. So we have basically the only short-term solution to energy prices, one of the easiest, most sensible steps to take, and guess what happened:

A US Senate proposal designed to curb speculation and increase transparency in the energy markets was blocked by Republican legislators on Friday.

The move frustrates Democratic efforts to show the party is taking action on record petrol prices. The Stop Excessive Speculation Act, sponsored by Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, fell 10 votes short of clearing a procedural hurdle.

The vote marks a victory for the futures industry and Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which lobbied heavily against Mr. Reid’s proposal, and is a setback for the airline and trucking industries, which strongly supported it.

The legislation would have required regulators to impose limits on speculative oil and natural gas trading. But Republicans countered with proposals for increases in drilling in environmentally protected areas, mining for oil shale in the west and new nuclear power stations.

An ad hoc coalition – backed by the CME Group, operator of the world’s biggest futures exchange, the InterContinental Exchange (ICE), and Nymex, the New York energy exchange – lobbied hard against the legislation, arguing that limits on trading would make it more difficult for investors to diversify their holdings and that such curbs would drive US markets overseas.

Once again, you see who is actually trying to solve problems, and who is just trying to look out for the interests of big corporate interests. And again, you see them pushing offshore drilling as the solution to everything, even though the oil companies are refusing to drill on open lands they already own the rights to. Yeah, something the Republicans don't like people to know, the oil companies want more land, so they can sit on it while demand goes up so they can make more money when they eventually drill it, but the problem isn't a lack of places to drill, because they already have plenty.

Oil companies are lying to you. McCain is lying to you. Republicans are lying to you, and doing everything they can do stop real solutions, while trying hard to secure oil companies even more outrageous profits.

But hey, at least John McCain gets lots of money for selling out.

Update: I'm embarrassed, here I was so focused on the huge wads of cash McCain is getting from the oil industry that I totally failed to mention to lobbyists: