Time to Step Up and Speak Out Against Big Oil

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/49146/time-to-step-up-and-speak-out-against-big-oil

Time to Step Up and Speak Out Against Big Oil
by Thom Hartmann | April 19, 2013 - 8:58am

ExxonMobil, one of the most profitable companies in the world that regularly pays no US income tax, had a pretty horrible tar sands oil spill in Arkansas last month. Most people have heard bits and pieces of the story, but here’s what you probably have not heard from the corporate media.

First off, you got a glimpse of the pipeline rupture and spill because of citizen bloggers and journalists like Drew Barnes, who posted this on YouTube. But you haven’t seen much coverage from the air of this, have you? That’s because, just like with the BP/Halliburton blowout in the Gulf, the FAA imposed a “no fly zone” over the oil spill. You’re not allowed to see what’s going on. ExxonMobil has even hired local police for “security” and they’re doing a pretty good job of keeping reporters away, according to Mother Jones reporting that documented numerous instances of people being threatened with arrest for just trying to ask questions or take pictures on site.

Second, with all the money and profits from that oil pipeline, ExxonMobil doesn’t have to pay into the federal fund to clean up oil disasters. Including this one. Why? Because this isn’t “oil,” it’s that stuff that the press refers to as “tar sands oil from Canada” but is know legally as “diluted bitumen.” And, according to a 1980 law pushed through and passed by our bought-off Congress, that stuff that comes from Canada, the “diluted bitumen,” not being “oil,” isn’t subject to the tiny taxes that are imposed on regular oil to pay into a fund to help cover the costs of spills.

Another reason by the “diluted bitumen,” aka “tar sands oil” that’ll be coming down the Keystone XL pipeline, will be even more profitable for the big oil companies who plan to refine it on the Texas coast and then ship the refined diesel they extract from it to England, Mexico, Brazil, and China. We, by the way, will get to keep all the poisons left over from the refining process. And we get to pay for all the cancers from them – expect “Cancer Alley” down South to grow substantially.

[limpyhobbler]

1. du rec nt.