Hillary Clinton: OIL Tired
President Bill Clinton posed with members of the Gianelli Sausage and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que concession stand during a visit with his wife Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the New York State Fair on Friday September 2, 2005. L-R: Molly Scullin and her sister Katie-Sue Scullin of Liverpool, NY, Evan Wojtaszek also of Liverpool, NY, (Clinton), Nicole Cilani of Solvay, NY and Amy Marascalchi of Syracuse, NY.
The Washington Post has Oil Firms Turn Katrina Into Profits, Clinton Says, N.Y. Senator Criticizes Lack of National Leadership, Freedom From Imports.
Pressed by constituents alarmed by skyrocketing gasoline prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) accused oil companies of manipulating energy markets to enhance profits and decried a lack of national leadership for a plan to free the country from dependence on foreign oil.
“I want to go after the oil companies and the oil speculators and the manipulators of the money, because they’re the ones who I think are really behind this,” Clinton told an audience in Elmira Heights on Thursday. “You have a hurricane, and all of a sudden you see prices going up like that. That has . . . everything to do with people trying to make money off the backs of this tragedy.”
Clinton repeatedly took aim at record profits rolled up by energy giants during the last quarter as crude oil prices have continued to rise. Her rhetoric was at times angry, exasperated, frustrated and passionate. “You just cannot convince me that they are not manipulating this market,” she told another audience near Newark, N.Y.
But, Senator, what about lowering federal and state taxes to bring gasoline to more affordable levels?
Clinton sparred with one constituent who called for a rollback of state and federal gasoline taxes to ease the pain of increases that have pushed prices well above $3 a gallon in many places since the hurricane hit Monday morning. Clinton said that will not solve the problem.
“We can get some temporary relief, but that’s not the answer, and we don’t have the leadership we need to stand up and fight for what should be the answer and the sacrifices people should be willing to make,” she said.
So…. what, Senator pray tell do you propose?
More domestic oil production in Alaska?
More refineries?
More nuclear power facilities?
Senator, where have you been and where was President Clinton during his 8 years in office?
Clinton criticized the new energy bill, which she opposed, as inadequate to solve the country’s long-term energy problem. She said the United States has regressed over the past three decades, since the first oil shocks of the early 1970s. “We’ve had 30 years to do some things we haven’t done,” she said. “In fact we’ve gotten, we’ve gone backwards in many respects.
“I am tired of being at the mercy of people in the Middle East and elsewhere, and I’m tired frankly of being at the mercy of these large oil companies,” Clinton said.
All whine and no beef.
Propose some solutions or just be quiet.
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