Does the mainstream media influence the price of gasoline?

Yes

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by Ted Sherman

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Here we go again. CNN and other news media are now trumpeting to America that our already inflated prices for gasoline now at $3, are expected to go up to $4 within the next several months. How do they know? Do they have a secret agent in Saudia Arabia? Do they bug the palaces of already filthy rich US and Arabian oil barons as they plot their next price increases?

Doesn't anyone suspect that clueless stupidity or collusion on a grand scale is going on here? Do CNN and other news media get more oil company ad money for making such propped-up predictions? Are they paid a stack of under-the-table money to soften up consumers for each new wave of price gouging? We all know George Bush, Dick Cheney and many other fat-cat politicians in Washington have had long-standing business connections that involve playing footsie with the oil cartels. Now that our wallets are again being emptied, will we get any help from them?

Of course not. We can't expect the politicians to pause, while stuffing more oil dollars into their mattresses, to feel anything for American families that must keep paying more money for gas at the pump in an already inflated economy. However, we hoped we could depend on the media, which is always bragging about its free press honesty, to give us some semblance of the truth about the obvious oil price gouging, instead of just parroting the oil gougers predictions.

Instead, we get the highway robbery thrown in our faces. Laughing all the way to the bank, Exxon Mobil last year took in its largest annual income dollars in history, boasting nearly $40 billion in profits. The company boss, Lee Raymond, dragged home a $400 million retirement package. Where did you think all those heavy profits came from? Has any honest reporter or editor looked at those figures, then while pumping $4 a gallon gas into the family SUV, figured out that the huge take-home pay of Exxon Mobil and all other oil companies with ties to the Middle East cartels are not only excessive, but obscene?

Oh, sure. Congress is astir with big plans to take some of the excess profits from the oil companies by raising their taxes. Yeah, that'll fix 'em. Maybe the next oil CEO to retire will have to be content to take home only $300 million. The reality is that if the oil companies are burdoned with extra taxes, just who do you think will pay for them at the pump? Congress, already adding extra loads on taxpayers for endless war expenses and their own private pork barrel projects, isn't likely to do anything to stop the rise of inflated oil prices.

Can the media help? Possibly, if any have the guts and are not beholden to big oil. Has anyone at CNN or elsewhere in the free press thought to question the fact that we are paying wave after wave of ever-rising, outrageous prices for gasoline? Just maybe they should question reasons and motives, rather than fall into obedient line each time and predict the next obvious rounds of highway robbery. Don't they realize that the oil-imposed inflation is fast increasing prices of all other consumer goods, food, travel and just about everything else in our lives? And, unless something is done about it, the robbery will continue indefinitely or until the US economy is totally wrecked.

Of course, the media will introduce spring and summer suggestions for American drivers to cut back on gas use, join carpools, drive at lower speeds and all the other pap they've fed us since the Middle East sheiks first discovered they could hold us hostage 30 years ago. Why don't some of them get up on their hind legs and yell, "Hey! Those guys are robbing us blind. Let's find ways to stop them!"

I don't believe diplomacy or a new invasion would do any good. It hasn't worked for George W. Bush today nor for his equally-clueless dad 17 years ago. Maybe, just maybe, when someone else sits at the boss desk in the Oval Office next year, we can hope that he or she could take intelligent and decisive steps to give the US oil independence.

Would drastic action such as increasing oil drilling in America send the tree-huggers marching into the streets? So what! We must reconsider tapping the billions of barrels of oil that sit waiting for us under the Alaskan shorelines and elsewhere within our borders. We need every possible source we can tap for oil, so we can then stop our groveling dependence on a bunch of disgustingly rich guys in bedsheets and their American political and business lackeys.

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