HOW BIG OIL USES REPUBLICANS

How Big Oil Uses the Republican Party to Subvert American Democracy

Robert F.Kennedy, Jr., May 10, 2013 (EcoWatch)

“…The perversity of the modern conservative mind is displayed in…the extent to which the right wing has become the ideological sock puppet of Big Oil and the GOP’s army of right wing Christian fundamentalists oil industry foot soldiers…Big Oil’s Orwellian skill at employing the rhetoric of patriotism and emblazoning its enterprises with stars and stripes, has stitched the notion that conservation is synonymous with “anti-American” into the fabric of GOP talking points…

“After a decade of this brand of oily claptrap from the industry’s political toadies and its talking heads on Fox News and hate radio, many conservative Americans now embrace the farcical presumption that buying and burning gas is a patriotic act…[T]here is nothing patriotic, moral or religious about Big Oil. A storied history of perfidy and greed has distinguished these companies among the most treasonous and piratical of all American business enterprises…Not satiated with simply destroying the planet, the oil industry’s relentless greed has eroded America’s economic independence, imperiled our national security, and ruined our global economic leadership and moral authority…”

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“Big Oil has embroiled us in foreign wars supporting petty dictators who despise democracy and who are hated by their own people. The export of $700 billion dollars annually of American wealth has beggared our nation…Add to these cataclysmic numbers, the $100 billion annual military cost of protecting oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, trillions spent on various oil wars over the past decade, billions more in economic injury from oil spills…

“If the oil industry had to pay the true costs of bringing its product to market, gas prices would be upwards of $12 per gallon at the pump…and most Americans would be running to buy electric cars…With low cost disruptive technologies like cheap, fast and efficient electric vehicles, and solar and wind technologies poised to displace Big Oil, the industry is using its hold on the Republican Party to permanently embed itself in our economy while subverting science, American democracy, free market capitalism and our sacred belief in an ethical God.”

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