Congress Shifts Attention to Oil Executives, Gas Prices

In what I believe is an attempt to simply assign blame and get the attention of the public away from their dissatisfaction with Congress and their poor performance, Representatives made a big show of "grilling" oil company executives about the profits the companies have made.

Liberal Rep. Ed Markey from Massachusetts wants to take away about $18 billion in tax breaks from the five largest U.S. oil companies and put them toward what he calls "planet-friendly energy alternatives like wind and solar."

That's all we'd need is those ugly forests of windmills strewn around the countryside, which don't supply enough electricity to help much at all.

As Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron, said, "Given that the largest contributor to the cost of gasoline is crude oil, this has translated into record-high gasoline prices."

The other thing Congress doesn't talk about is the high taxes on gasoline of an average of 47 cents a gallon; including state and federal taxes combined. That average is as of the first quarter of 2008.

In the end this is just a media circus to get people to start blaming business again, and get the attention of the politicians.