Profiteering Through Puppeteering: API Ads On Protecting Oil Tax Breaks

[wtmusic]

"So the American Petroleum Institute is out with more ads that feature “person on the street” interviews with ordinary Americans. You know, the kind of folks that go to bed at night worried about those mean people in Washington threatening to take away the billions in tax breaks currently enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.

Leaving aside the substance — that high gas prices are already enriching oil companies on top of their tax breaks, and the industry has enjoyed hundreds of billions in government support for a very long time — you have to wonder how ads like this get made in the first place. Do those folks really walk around on the street, and a camera pops up in front of them, and they blurt out deep-seated and authentic desires to protect aggrieved mega-corporations?

Greenpeace investigated this in 2011, and got some audio evidence of the direction these “people on the street” receive from the directors."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/14/1710201/profiteering-through-puppeteering-api-ads-on-protecting-oil-tax-breaks/

[limpyhobbler]

1. Oil companies shouldn't be allowed to advertise on TV anyway.

It's a public health issue. Same as we ban ads for cigarettes.