Why would any major US oil company want to produce “cheap” refined gasoline? I’m not talking about crude oil from the Middle East, or South America, or Africa, but refined gasoline produced right here in the USA. Although related, crude oil and gasoline are two different products, just like bauxite and aluminum.

When you look at a list of all the refineries here in the USA, you will notice that the same corporate names keep appearing over, and over, from state to state:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries#United_States

Would these companies want to reduce refined gasoline prices because they are patriotic? Don’t think so. Maybe they would want to reduce refined gasoline prices to be competitive? Against whom – themselves? Why are these companies in business? To make profits. Obscene, Republican-backed, excessive profits, which produce very little (if any) tax revenue.

So when the neocons try to convince you that it is those bad “enemies of the USA” who supply crude oil who are the cause of $5.00+/gallon gasoline, ask yourself the question: who has a monopoly on the supply of refined gasoline in the United States?

The basic business law of Supply and Demand drives all consumer prices, and Rule #1 is to manipulate Supply, so that Demand is driven up (think Enron). When gasoline Demand is high, consumer prices go up, and consumers end up paying not only higher prices for the product, but higher taxes as well. This scenario provides the neoconservatives with a double whammy: high profits for their corporate oil friends, and the average American ultimately picks up the tab for the taxes on that profit.

The PUC regulates electricity, cable, telephone, and natural gas  – why not gasoline? Because they are “protected” by the Cheneys, Dubyas, Rices, and all of the other “oilmen” politicians who are in the pockets of the major gasoline refiners. Gasoline Supply is not the problem  (“let’s hurry and drill in ANWAR”) control, regulation, and taxation of that Supply is the problem.

Now ask yourself a couple of more questions: Whose tax plan would do more to address these problems – Obama’s, or McCain/Palin’s? Which candidate(s) would continue to support the failed economic policies of the neoconservative, faux religious-right, “oilmen” now in office?