We all know now of the sorry spectacle in the Senate a few days ago when the Oil Company executives who appeared before the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, and despite pleas from Democratic committee members (i.e. Senator Cantwell of Washington) were allowed to testify without first being sworn under oath to tell the truth. The details of this outrage were nicely set forth by jpol in a story front-paged at Booman Tribune on November 10th. I recommend you read it if you want an in-depth look at what transpired.

On the heels of that story, we just learned from the Washington Post today that these same Oil companies were the ones who spent face time with Vice President Cheney as part of his secret Energy Task Force that met back in 2001 to formulate the Administration’s National Energy Policy:

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

. . . Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force,” Lautenberg said.

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document. She said that the courts have upheld “the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality.”

So now we know the Oil company executives lied to Congress last week when they said they weren’t a part of Cheney’s task force. And that they lied about the extent of their involvement in developing the Nation’s energy policy. How fortunate of them that they won’t have to face perjury charges, eh?

Which got me to thinking. We all know that benefits like this don’t flow freely from major Republican politicians. While they might preach for more charity from you and I, they seldom practice it. No, someone had to pay well for this kind of access and the distribution of such boons. So I decided to do a little research of my own regarding Big Oil’s entangled financial relationships with the GOP.

First place I looked was here at website for The Center for Public Integrity, and guess what I found:

WASHINGTON, July 15, 2004 — The United States is the oil and gas industry’s biggest customer, slurping up fully a quarter of global production in 2003.

Not surprisingly, the industry has lavished more than $440 million over the past six years on politicians, political parties and lobbyists in order to protect its interests in Washington, according to a new report by the Center for Public Integrity.

Four Hundred and Forty Million Dollars (or if you prefer $440,000,000) in six (6) years? Well, maybe that’s pocket change to Big Oil, since just Exxon Mobil cleared profits last quarter in excess of $9.9 Billion all by its lonesome. But that’s a lot of dough to go spreading around K Street Lobbyists ($381 million) and for political contributions to federal election campaigns ($67 million).

Not surprisingly, most of those campaign contributions went to Republicans:

Oil and gas companies overwhelmingly favored Republicans over Democrats in their campaign giving, the study found. Just over 73 percent of the industry’s campaign contributions have gone to Republican candidates and organizations.

Of course, when you consider, that the K Street lobbying firms have been overhauled into a subsidiary of the Republican Party by Tom Delay and company, one can only assume that a significant portion of Big Oil’s lobbying fees ($381 million, remember) ended up in the hands of Republican lobbyists, and, through their political contributions, back to the coffers of Republican candidates and office holders.

The Republican purge of K Street is a more thorough, ruthless, vindictive, and effective attack on Democratic lobbyists and other Democrats who represent businesses and other organizations than anything Washington has seen before. The Republicans don’t simply want to take care of their friends and former aides by getting them high-paying jobs: they want the lobbyists they helped place in these jobs and other corporate representatives to arrange lavish trips for themselves and their wives; to invite them to watch sports events from skyboxes; and, most important, to provide a steady flow of campaign contributions. The former aides become part of their previous employers’ power networks. . . . When I suggested to Grover Norquist, the influential right-wing leader and the leading enforcer of the K Street Project outside Congress, that numerous Democrats on K Street were not particularly ideological and were happy to serve corporate interests, he replied, “We don’t want non-ideological people on K Street, we want conservative activist Republicans on K Street.

The K Street Project has become critical to the Republicans’ efforts to control all the power centers in Washington: the White House, Congress, the courts—and now, at least, an influential part of the corporate world, the one that raises most of the political money. It’s another way for Republicans to try to impose their programs on the country. The Washington Post reported recently that House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, of Missouri, has established “a formal, institutionalized alliance” with K Street lobbyists. They have become an integral part of the legislative process by helping to get bills written and passed—and they are rewarded for their help by the fees paid by their clients.

You see? Big Oil’s money goes to Republicans directly and indirectly. But it sure gets there Big Time. And what did they get for all that largesse? Besides getting to write the own ticket in Cheney’s National Energy Policy and getting to avoid perjury convictions, I mean? Well . . .

The energy bill passed by the House in April [2005] is a striking case in point. The oil-and-gas industry, a top contributor of campaign money—80 percent of it to Republicans—benefited from several of its new provisions. A study by the staff of Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, shows that perhaps the most indefensible provision gave a waiver against lawsuits to manufacturers of MTBE, or methyl tertiary-butyl ether, a gasoline additive that’s a pollutant and suspected carcinogen. According to Waxman’s staff, this waiver is worth billions to energy companies; the major beneficiaries would be Exxon, which, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, contributed $942,717 to candidates in the last election cycle; Valero Energy, $841,375; Lyondell Chemical, $342,775; and Halliburton, $243,946. The bill also exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act the practice of hydraulic fracturing, which is used to make natural gas wells more productive and can also have an adverse effect on drinking water. Halliburton would benefit from this provision as well.

Another provision provided compensation to oil companies that bought leases, supposedly a speculative venture, on offshore sites where there is a moratorium on drilling. The compensation is worth billions of dollars to the oil industry. The bill also provided for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) to oil drilling—an invasion of the refuge that environmental groups have long tried to prevent. (Now that it contains more Republicans, the Senate passed a similar provision as part of its budget bill earlier this year.) The Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee were effectively shut out of the drafting of the energy bill. House Democrat Edward Markey, a member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, told me, “The energy companies got everything they wanted. Eight billion dollars in subsidies go to the energy companies, but to say that the conservation measures in it are modest would be a generous description.”

By the way, if you’re curious about how the political campaigns of some of your favorite Republicans have done vis-à-vis the Oil Industry is a breakdown of the top recipients (again, via The Center for Public Integrity):

All figures are for the years 1998 through 2004

Bush/Cheney campaign: $1,724,579

Rep. Tom DeLay: $498,375

Sen. Kay Hutchison: $359,924

Sen. John Cornyn: $329,804

Rep. Dennis Hastert: $299,682

But what about Senator Ted Stevens, you ask? Committee Chair for the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee? The man who refused to swear in the Oil industry executives when they came to testify about their windfall profits after Katrina and Rita? Well, and this is almost embarrassing, he only received $129,190 in direct contributions for the years 1999-2004. Maybe he made it up in contributions from oil industry lobbyists, but it sure looks like he was bought cheap, comparatively speaking.

If I was an Alaskan resident, I’d know I’d be pissed.

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