LOL.... you read the story, didn't you? What's the total they think they've found? Curiously no mention of that. Yawn.
Do better.
The situation is simple.
Oil is a high profit substance.
Person 'X' owns the oil.
It is in 'X's best interest to make sure that the political and ideological climate protect his profit source, lest the market gets wise and starts investing in less petrol-intensive solutions.
Therefore, it is absolutely logical for X to invest in politics and media - to control laws and minds.
Politics
- X pays politicians to block conservation methods (so America has to use the maximum amount of oil, thus driving up the price).
- X Pays politicians to block energy competition, like the measures used to crush alternative energy in the early 80s or the first electric car movement in CA, in the 90s.
- X pays politicians for deregulation which enables anti-consumer market manipulation.
- X pays politicians for unaffordable military intervention around the globe (to secure access to petroleum in unstable regions), rather than using the money to diminish American dependence on foreign oil.
Media
- X gives money to think tanks, publishing groups, and mass media outlets for the sole purpose of producing evidence, premises, conclusions, stories, books, facts, and information which protects his interests, one of which is to defeat anything which would diminish the monopoly of oil.
Starting in the 60s . . . when the right started to radicalize and purge itself of moderates, and Goldwater/Nixon/Wallace were building the southern strategy to bust the New Deal coalition,
movement Conservatism started building a highly efficient machine which would channel profits into politics and media - their goal was to form a perfect synergy between business and the wider political/media scape. This machine would evolve into the most powerful lobbying infrastructure in world history. This machine would enable the right to move profits seamlessly into something so powerful that it could turn Bin Laden into Hussein and Health Care into death panels. - a machine so powerful that it could invent intelligence to start a dubious war, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, while the same machine could impeach the other party's president for an extramarital affair. This is called power.
The left has been asleep ever since the great postwar New Deal era ended. Once they splintered into social movements, they lacked the means to federate into an efficient, unified machine. They now lack the ability to promote and spread their vision. They don't have a centralized processing center which funnels money into a powerful, comprehensive bullhorn. Despite Clinton's successful effort to co-opt big business, they are still playing catch-up: business only supports democrats when it's a "democratic election cycle" or a "democratic district", otherwise they would much prefer investing in the more business-friendly GOP. The Left can't even reach old people who want Government to get its dirty hands off their medicare. There is a broad cross section of poor people out there who are voting against their economic interests because the Left does not have a machine in place to speak to these people. On the other hand, when G W Bush spoke, his machine would spread the message to an unfathomably large army of people who would pepper the airwaves and fill message-rooms, blogs, and TV & radio, repeating his narrative of terrorism, freedom, evil doers, WMD, and free markets endlessly until it became part of the factual backdrop. When Obama speaks, his words are twisted by the same machine. He has no bullhorn. He is out-shouted by a bigger, louder machine.
The game is over. America is ruled by one party. When will the Left admit that their 30 year failure to federate has placed them in a hole of persistent surrender and compromise? When will they admit to the base that the battle has been lost more comprehensively than anyone can imagine?
well that's delusional.
