Thursday, August 30, 2012

Gas lobby ad campaign targets eastern seaboard


Honcho is Romney's Chief of Staff

A first look at Mr. Gerard's Agenda


For instance, two stories topping the lead today are bright little numbers. First we have a breezy report about the Department of State's “Chief of Diversity” counseling his staff not to use racist and hateful terms such as “holding down the fort.”

Another regards a Secret Service Agent who left his sidearm in the head on Mitt Romney's chartered jet as it winged its way toward Indianapolis from Tampa for an overnight speaking engagement. A news correspondent had to let someone know about the abandoned firearm, prompting the crew of the aircraft to send the chastened Secret Serviceman back to get his pistol.


After all, King Oil has replaced gold and silver bullion as the unit of worth backing the full faith and credit fiat currency of the lofty Federal Reserve system's puppet, the United States Treasury. Since the early 70's, a dollar is worth some particle of a barrel of crude, no matter where on the globe it may be produced.

The President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, a Mormon from Idaho, is said to be the top pick as Chief of Staff in a Romney Administration.

His organization has inserted the interactive internet ads in various on-line publications, and they are a study in the thunderbolts and lightning politics of the energy sector.

One is invited to pick a state – any state on the list, click on it - and the screen opens up to a factoid list about all the leverage an energy-focused White House can bring to bear on the poor denizens of these tiny states.

Take Massachusetts.

Unlike Delaware, which state's page diplomatically fails to mention that Wilmington is the chemical plant capital of the Atlantic coast, the ad boldly reminds the folks from Mass that about 250,000 of their number are unemployed. They are taxed at the rate of $.42 per gallon for gasoline.

And so forth.

The unspoken message, the one that Mr. Gerard is working hard to get across, is that obstructionism in the permit process for fracturing technology in the Marcellus Shale Fields of New England, or EPA hard nosing on giving the green light to refinement plants and offshore platforms will only make the plight of working men and women worse.

Prominently displayed in every page is the gap between the median income level for an energy sector employee and the entire mix of workers lucky enough to be employed in other types of industries.

It's about fifteen to twenty thousand dollars in every state.

An array of YouTube videos hammers home the “comprehensive conversation” Mr. Gerard is seeking with the honchos of both parties.

He told a reporter from the “Globe and Mail” yesterday, “We're going to have the same type of events and conversations in Charlotte to move the debate forward.”

In the reports API made to the platform committees of both the Democrats and the Republicans, he pointed out that the oil and gas industry pays $86 million a day to the U.S. Treasury; that the energy sector's need to produce petroleum and gas from domestic sources will generate 1.4 million new jobs by the year 2030, one million of them within 7 years; and that “persons, party and political philosophy” have not a whole lot to do with the dialogue big oil is looking to establish in a D.C. that has turned largely deaf ears on his colleagues.

“I don't disagree that there is a polarization between the parties on energy issues. We see our role as trying to bring some rationality to the discussion,” Mr. Gerard told the newspaper.

The question no one is asking Mr. Big Oil: Is it really for sale, this Big Enchilada gig on Pennsylvania Avenue?

But, then, I guess you don't have to ask. He's telling. 

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