Washington Report: Oil for the Senate's Lamps
Sisyphus
the Labor Party already had one of their own, they were not going to fall for that kind of offer. In economic terms, then, the real battle was between a minority of monetarists (who were prepared...
...Moreover, oil companies would probably discourage state governments and non-oil and gas companies from undertaking such projects, they argued...
...Senators answer this complaint by pointing to the key legislative committees, where most battles are won or lost, as stacked with members who play slush-bucket politics with fundamental economic issues...
...I find it one of the most discouraging, disappointing, demeaning things to sit as a member of the energy policy study committee marking up (i.e., drafting) a bill on energy.., and have Mr...
...That spells "oil companies," Biden said, regardless of the preferences assigned state governments and nonoil firms...
...Big oil owns 70 percent of the natural gas, half the uranium and is rapidly buying up the coal fields...
...But there is one other consequence of the election which is probably far more important than anything I've said so far...
...Conscientious Senators, Senator Nelson of Wisconsin being one, do offer legislative medication, such Commonweal: 181 as a program of public-service employment when millions seek work--currently, unemployment has reached 6 percent nation-wide and 11 percent among blacks...
...The collapse of the Liberals in the election was, I think, fairly predictable...
...just a collection of bright ideas...
...But, given the reality of the contemporary situation in Britain, it is probably the only policy that has any chance at all...
...WASHIHGTON REPORT OIL FOR THE SENATE'S LAMPS Occasionally, Senators are obliged to acknowledge brute economic power...
...But none of this has a thing in the world to do with building super-ports, and certainly does not have anything to do with the central question at issue today--that is, where lies the national interest on this amendment...
...But I am sure that, if Labor's kind of policy can work at all, only they can make it do so...
...It remains to be seen who is right...
...Commonweal: 183...
...To have elected the Conservatives would have been to elect a Keynesian government but one that was very unsure of itself, and dangerously exposed on its right flank...
...More to the point is that fierce attention in Senate general debate just is not given to the hammer-lock that business corporations have on our lives...
...This is a more valid reason within the House of Representatives than within the Senate where the committee system is less determinative...
...President, we have had an awfully good time here today_9 We have talked about Rockefeller, robber barons, natural gas, TV ads, circuses, the depletion allowance, and mass transit, and I do not know what else...
...In this case, oil owns state government . . . . The ICC regulation (price-supervision in the bill...
...Whether it is the right policy, or a workable policy, is a different question...
...This is not to say that I think we are now assured of a government that has all the answers to the problem...
...But, with all good intentions, this is like putting a "bandaid" on a hemorrhaging patient...
...SISYPHUS COMING HENRY TEN KORTENAAR writes about the recently concluded Bishops' Synod in Rome: "At first the bishops were only surprised to find that they were supposed to vote on a 41-page declaration;-then, as the text was read to them by the relatores, they grew angry and excited...
...Those voting to table included some of the most notable liberal wordsmiths in the Senate...
...I would not like to bet just now on which way it will go...
...That referendum, and the campaign leading to it, will surely be a more important, and more interesting, political battle than anything that has happened in the recent election...
...Some of those Senators who sense the economic system is unfair don't know how to begin analyzing i t - - or else they decide to settle for accomplishments more quickly achieved and more widely appreciated...
...Consequently, super-tankers, say the oil companies, need super-ports, particularly when they approach the shallow eastern coast-line of the United States...
...And their anti-socialism came through far more clearly than their (alleged) radicalism...
...Hence in a crisis election, when the choice of a government really mattered (as it did this time), they came off badly...
...Most Senators do not find it within themselves to give the same ferocity of effort to the "gut" issues of full employment, income-maintenance, monopoly and reform of the rotten-borough tax system--federal, state and local...
...the disastrous Torrey Canyon was one...
...Far more people voted for them, I suspect, out of disgust with both main parties than out of any conviction that they have a positive role to play...
...The amendment was approved by this group...
...What the electorate has done, one might say, is give itself the chance to say yes or no, decisively, to one issue which matters immensely to all of us...
...But in fact they appeared simply as a party of bourgeois protest...
...Opponents of their amendment argued the bill already had sufficient safeguards against abuse...
...That vote changed around until only two (Biden and Hollings) were left (i.e., in favor) . . . . " Biden recounted the buccaneering days of John D. Rockefeller and then observed that as a New Castle County (Dela...
...Not even comparable to the searing attention given to legislation dealing with abortion, busing, gun-control and installation of seat-belts in motor vehicles...
...They talk about how they are concerned about the welfare of America...
...The Scottish Nationalists and Ulster Unionists are a different matter...
...That was their q u o t e . . . 'it would not be any different from the little old school-house down the block.' They have ways of bringing in their statisticians, their attorneys, their accountants, the people in public office--not that people at the state or local level are corrupt or are going to be bought by them...
...These are the same companies," Biden said, "who, if the Senate will recall, during everything from the Vietnam war through student riots and the protest marches, were talking about patriotism in America and putting the flag patch on their employes' lapels...
...The most recent occasion, as rare as a full eclipse of the sun, occurred in early October when the Senate was confronted with an amendment to prohibit oil companies from owning, in whole or part, "super-ports...
...But whichever way we choose, the face of British politics will be radically changed by it...
...In economic terms, then, the real battle was between a minority of monetarists (who were prepared to allow a major rise in unemployment as the price for beating inflation) and the Keynesian majority who believed that a mixture of measures could be effectively used to do this without these dire consequences...
...It states, Biden pointed out, that competing applications 22 November 1974:182 are to be judged on the basis of which will "best" serve the nation...
...Hollings and Biden had done their homework...
...Brave words are heard from a few...
...Hah: 46 Senators sponsored a bill to do away with that agency...
...A recent study demolishes the argument that the system is "progressive," by demonstrating that the tax load is generally the same for all income groups, in terms of percentage, up to those earning more than $50,000 a year...
...Then, Hollings said: "Within a few days, oil company lawyers started calling at my office...
...Councilman he had learned a thing or two as a result of dealing with oil companies' efforts to establish refineries in that county: "In my case, they promised to build a major refinery and make it look like a schoolhouse...
...In 1900, for example, Hollings pointed out, John D. controlled all but 200 of the 5,200 railroad tank cars in the United States----owned in a secret trust that no one could penetrate for many years...
...But the shades of Senators Norris, LaFollette, Nye, Paul Douglas and Kefauver, all thunderers against the "big interests," should have smiled on Oct...
...There, giant tankers would unload their cargoes of oil into 5-foot-wide pipelines through which it would be pumped to depots on shore...
...They would be locations, 15 to 30 miles off-shore...
...It was not surprising, therefore, that they did well, especially at the expense of the Conservatives...
...However, the two Senators, Hollings and Biden, pointed out that realistically only oil companies would probably be able to finance construction of a superport, whose cost they estimated at $400 million...
...Oil owns government...
...They seem to offer a way out of the mess for those who belong to their particular tribe: namely separatism, self-determination, a kind of "national unity" that, however blinkered, does have some roots...
...Oil owns government...
...We merely have a government which has a policy...
...To support this contention, Biden pointed to a passage in the explanatory report that accompanied the bill...
...Actually super-ports are not "ports" at all in the commonly understood sense of the word...
...Let's not permit "prejudices" against oil companies to make the decision, Johnston asked the Senate...
...Yet the veiled threat is that if we do not let them own these (super) ports they are not going to play, they are going to take their oil and go to the Caribbean, or they are going to take their oil and not let us have any...
...However parochial, they do have something positive and coherent to say to their little bits of the electorate...
...The issue now at hand, the two Senators pointed out, is who controls the new underwater delivery system...
...In other words, the so called "super-port" is a euphemism for a pipe-line delivery system...
...9 . . I have learned one thing in the eight years 1 have been up here (in the Senate)," Hollings told an attentive Senate...
...BRIAN WICKER (Brian Wicker is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Great Britain...
...Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin does point to the buddysystem of the Armed Services and defense contractors who feed from the public trough...
...Senator Metcalf of Montana does thrash private utilities with regularity...
...A recent book, Supership by Noel Mostert, describes one super-tanker as 32-feet longer and 39-feet wider than the first Queen Elizabeth passenger liner...
...Tanker ships are being built bigger and bigger for two reasons: (1) one ship is cheaper than two to operate...
...Finally, after lively, seldom seen debate, the HollingsBiden amendment was tabled 48 to 34...
...Usually, the grey-flanneled, muddled-middle, comprising most Senators, does a soft-shoe shuffle around destructive policies of corporate Americanthe oil industry being a handy-dandy example these days...
...Consideration shall include a comparison of factors such as the environmental, technological, economic and timing aspects of the competing application...
...But the Army Corps of Engineers is helping to persuade federal and state governments that they are feasible and pose no major environmental threat to ocean and shorelines, an assertion environmentalists dispute...
...I have said that this was an election which mattered a great deal...
...The following day, the major daily newspapers carried no account of a legislative effort to thwart tighter control of energy-supply and policy by the oil industry...
...He and a few others do criticize weak-kneed federal agencies who have become regulated by the businesses they're supposed to regulate...
...Surely, you know ICC is not going to regulate them (oil companies operating super-ports...
...During the coffee-break there were more animated discussions than there had ever been during the preceding weeks, and it soon turned out that a large number of bishops considered the document totally inadequate as a basis for further discussion...
...They claim to be a radical party of new ideas, who have the future in their bones, and who possess the key to a new kind of political set-up in Britain which will ensue when the two-party system has been smashed...
...Simon, the then 'Energy Czar,' say (about the need for information from oil companies): 'We do not know...
...This is that we are now guaranteed a referendum on the Common Market membership issue in the next twelve months or so...
...Thinking, as distinct from floating, voters decided they could not afford to waste their votes on mere protest...
...The Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Power Commission and the Justice Department, to cite only three, have been ineffective, or worse, in preventing anti-competitive abuse of land-based pipelines owned by oil companies...
...They knew that, way-back, control of transportation was John D. Rockefeller's key to dominance of the oil industry...
...What the election has made clear is that the electorate--surely rightly--believe that Labor make better (i.e., more convinced and more competent) Keynesians than Conservatives do...
...Hollings and Biden themselves were not in complete agreement...
...and (2) approximately half the oil consumed in the world moves by tanker--nearly one-third of our consumption comes from the Middle East...
...Sometimes it is even discussed within the Senate chamber...
...Hollings described a recent experience of his with oil companies, one involving efforts within Congress to compel the oil companies to roll-back prices this year...
...the oil companies will not tell us.' " Biden and Hollings argued that their amendment only sought to apply to oil companies what already applies to railroads--a general prohibition from shipping any articles or commodities which may be owned in whole or in part by them...
...There are none now...
...its bridge one-quarter mile from the bow...
...9 when Senators Hollings of South Carolina and Joe Biden of Delaware rose to offer their "super-port" amendment designed to prevent oil companies from further tightening their heavy vertical grip on the energy industry-development, production, refining and marketing...
...Hollings commented that a group of Senators drawn from three committees, with jurisdiction over energy matters, had met in the form of a special subcommittee to discuss what became the Hollings-Biden amendment...
...It is just that they do not have the hardware to compete with the oil companies . . . . " Biden said that another Senator had told him that if the oil companies were not permitted to own super-ports they would go down to the Caribbean or some other place and do business there...
...Hollings seemed to accept the inevitability of super-ports, but would let them operate as public entities, common carriers and let every shipper "have an equal bite at the apple...
...But they agreed that the omnibus energy bill, which, among other things, authorized the federal government to issue licenses for construction and operation of superports, was faulty...
...They had nothing to offer that looked like a total package...
...After hearing Milton Friedman on TV doing a remarkable hatchet job on a group of Britain's most distinguished Keynesians, I have to confess that I'm not sure that the Labor Party is right...
...Senator Johnston of Louisiana, a main opponent of the Hollings-Biden amendment, rose at one point to contest: "Mr...
...And without the amendment, the super-port bill was subsequently passed with only two dissidents--Senators Abourezk of South Dakota and Biden...
...Proposals to construct "super-ports" are a result of the growing size of "oil tankers...
...Traveling 16 knots, the ship would take 3 miles and approximately 21 minutes to stop, according to the author...
...Giving preference, as the bill did, to state governments and firms independent of oil and gas companies is simply window-dressing, the Senators argued...
...Biden in press statements has expressed strong reservations about the environmental consequences of super-ports and has suggested that, should alternative sources of energy be developed, the oil companies would smother these in order to protect their investment in super-ports...
...They wear the American flag in their buttonholes...
...Senators will kick around physicians, the courts, war-protesters, abstractions such as high-interest rates, and Madame Gandhi, but seldom do they undertake effective discussions of formative economic forces...
...In order of priority, state governments, non-oil (and natural gas) firms and oil companies would be awarded licenses to construct and operate super-ports by the federal licensing authority, under terms of the bill as it was presented to the full Senate...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 7
