Oil companies are out of control

A Senior View

By Ed Lyons

(Updated: Friday, April 04, 2008, 5:52 PM)

I find that I have to admire the inventiveness of American Big Business.

Even as they tighten their stranglehold on fuel costs for a nation that moves almost exclusively on wheels and a gas guzzling engine and maintains a manipulative upwardly swirling control of our cost of living -- they plan for future large scale rip offs,

Apparently having dropped ethics and integrity for a policy that is based on the sure knowledge that Americans have more than one pocket and that no one is watching them.

Now, as to future planning -- let's take a look at the biofuel they're calling ethanol.

Herding their embedded politicians before them, the industry now preaches that corn is the answer to all of our fuel problems. Everyone knows that corn is an American commodity that is both cheap and clean.

Or, at least, it used to be. Speculators have already begun to buy up corn futures and redirect that commodity from it's regular path.

That means that all those corn-fed beasties and their byproducts -- like beef, butter, eggs, milk, bread not to mention that old favorite corn on the cob -- are joining the petroleum products in their upward swirl.

Challenged, the advocates of this newly blossoming scam cry out that they're not only combating rising fuel costs, but with the attendant rise in food prices, are actually helping out with America's obesity problem.

And, believe me -- these people will be successful in cramming that down our throats as they are in convincing us that the rising price of gasoline is anything other than an expression of their greed.

As I see it, some greed is natural -- a part of human nature in it's instinct to survive.

But the voters have elected people to watch our backs -- to limit that greed and their failure to do that is betrayal....a sin much worse than greed.

And we are all the much poorer for it!

Grandpa sez: "The denunciation of the young is not necessarily the hygiene of older people, but, it greatly increases the circulation of their blood!"