Rigged: Senate Fails Public, Gives Oil Moguls Red-Carpet Treatment by Ralph Nader

It was Wednesday, November 10th and the Senators had the five bosses of the largest oil conglomerates in the world facing them and the media in a large hearing room. Millions of Americans are indignant over gouging gasoline and natural gas prices and want action.

So what did the two Senate Committees do? They blew it. As Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post, "instead of calling oil executives on the carpet yesterday, senators gave them the red-carpet treatment." Not quite. Senator Barbara Boxer, among a few, gave the oil tycoons a hard time. But generally, by the end of the hearing, none of the executives broke a sweat.

There was at least a high expectation for some tough rhetoric and demands for information, though nobody thought there would be any action whether for an excess profits tax, tougher anti-gouging legislation or antitrust crackdowns. But surely some table thumping.

After all, it was the people-frightened Republicans who called the hearing to expose, in their majority leader, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN)'s words "those who abuse the free-enterprise system to advantage themselves and their businesses at the expense of all Americans."

Instead, what the public saw was the astonishing workings of corporate power, ideology and campaign money on Capitol Hill. Senators, like Mary Landrieu (D-LA), were tossing soft questions and deep praise on the oil moguls, after receiving big time campaign money from their oil and gas paymasters. Landrieu took $249,155 over the past five years. Observing the moguls, one got no sign that any of them were at all worried about the hearing. Many of the Senators were marinated in oil. The rest were frustrated or not courageous enough to come adequately prepared to take apart the all-purpose response that these oil companies were merely responding to the global marketplace. It is always the impersonal market, the all-encompassing ideology that leaves these oil giants powerless - just so many profit-gushing buoys on the ocean of market determinism.