Rachel Maddow just informed Ca. residents that we were duped by the Gas Companies for

[busterbrown]

the past 2 months. Turns out that those refineries weren’t down the entire time they
claimed they were. Gas prices were up to $5.45 in my area. Justice Dept. now investigating.

[onehandle]

1. Nationalize Energy!

It's a matter of national security.

[abelenkpe]

3. and health care

and the banks

[mckara]

12. Absolutely! I Agree!

[Champion Jack]

26. Exactly!

[DiverDave]

31. And the insurance industry

just a scam to print money.

[abelenkpe]

2. Why am I not surprised? nt

[goclark]

4. go to jail

Directly 2 jail ..damn

[Angry Dragon]

8. Prison for all of them

the only way they will learn

[rhett o rick]

13. Sounds good, but they run the country. They own Congress. Now what? nm

[LuvLoogie]

5. Holder ain't gonna do jack shit.

He's too busy searching for his purpose.

[Politicalboi]

7. Yes his purpose

To close every Marijuana shop in Ca.

[robinlynne]

11. Holder is an embarrassment. And I have to blame Obama for that. (It's never really the employee,

when it is about policy. Just like the client who never pays me. It is the owner who determines these things.)

[rhett o rick]

14. Agree. Holder does what he is told. nm

[panAmerican]

6. The recurring fires are suspicious as well

I'm not saying there's a possiblity of 0 fires ever, but if they see a recurring problem in the plant, what are they doing to fix it?

[2naSalit]

17. Indeed. The fires thing

caught my attention right away, I hadn't been paying close attention to the frequency of these events. I have dealt with those refineries and others in that state in the way back past and a fire in a refinery was a big deal with regard to safety and all. This smells like the Enron model at work... some of the players are the same people. hey, a fire was the ticket for jacking up the prices, so let's burn some oil... who's gonna know? there's so much employee "security" as in you sign your life away as far as "trade secrets" for a job, even if you're just a truck driver... So I am pretty sure that all they did was torch off a few thousand gallons of the cheapest stuff and called it a major devastation. they probably got disaster relief from the feds too, the POSs. And then, very few refineries get the "upgrade" treatment. Shit, back in the mid 80s the refineries I was familiar with looked like they were unchanged since the 1950s or earlier for some of them. Some in LA were so scary-old that they made you feel like a time traveler.

I hope they ream those assholes.

[TheBlackAdder]

19. Yes, those 'upgrades' are bogus.

Every summer, the price of gas used to go up because the oil companies claimed that one complete refinery was shutdown to perform 'upgrades'. This turned out to be a bogus excuse when it was detailed years back that each oil refinery has completely redundant delivery and control systems which allow them to take any part of the facility down while maintaining full operational status. Many of these redundancies are not just duplicated but also done in triplicate, so when they shut one pipeway down, they still have a backup and a backup to that backup to fall back upon. Even though this scan was revealed, there were no reparations.

[Roselma]

9. Yes...I read about it

earlier this month:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/14/174662/california-refineries-operated.html#storylink=misearch

Study: California refineries operated during periods blamed for gas price spikes

[demosincebirth]

10. What a surprise. nt

[ReRe]

15. Where's Erin Brachovich?

... she'll get to the bottom of it!

[TheBlackAdder]

18. This Erin Brockovich?

http://www.cracked.com/article_19564_6-based-true-story-movies-with-unpleasant-epilogues.html

[ReRe]

23. Yeah...

that one.

[dreamnightwind]

28. That looks like 1 side of a complex story to me - nt

[SleeplessinSoCal]

16. Maddow also reported that several Senators on top of this

"The U.S. Department of Justice should investigate possible “market manipulation and false reporting by oil refineries” which may have spiked prices at the pump in May and October, Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Tuesday in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The senators cited history — the 2001 manipulation of the energy market by Enron — and a recent report released to the California State Senate by McCullough Research. The report revealed that price spikes occurred while crude oil prices were on the decline and inventories were rising."

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2012/11/27/have-oil-refiners-pumped-the-public-senators-to-feds-find-out/

[sakabatou]

20. Not surprised

[Tippy]

21. If this was a CA problem then... WHY did gas start going up here in TN

[2naSalit]

24. So that everybody else wouldn't feel left out.

[DFW]

22. This is just like what they did to oust Gray Davis as Governor of CA with Enron's help

Do they think Dick Cheney is still running things? They sure are acting like it.

[2naSalit]

25. That bastard,

Cheney, will have his filthy, bloody hands in the pie until somebody decides to pull the plug and left him die. Until that decision is made, we will be footing the bill for all their misdeeds and his life support network, that could be put to better use by a likely thousand tax-paying and financially destitute citizens of our nation. All of whom are far more loyal to the country than that miscreant war criminal. He's also a waste of good air that could be put to better use by a number of endangered species that are far more worthy of an extended opportunity of life than he is.

[Walk away]

27. Ya gotta love that Free Market!

Free to be crooks! God bless America.

[Hekate]

29. Quelle surprise

Not.

Thanks, Rachel, as always, from this Californian.

Hekate

[MFrohike]

30. When she mentioned there being a tool in the Justice Department

I laughed and thought, "Yes, Holder is a tool."

[Buddyblazon]

32. PG&E got busted for this in the early '00's for doing the same thing...

in California. It was right after the voters decided to privatize the energy market in their state. PG&E all of a sudden had their "maintenance" on substations go up 300%. They were basically creating a false shortage to drive up prices.

The only reason I was lucky was I was in L.A. Proper...and (for some reason...I think it was L.A. that still voted against it) wasn't affected. But L.A. was the only part of California that wasn't affected. My coworkers that lived in Hormosa or Manhattan Beach or the Valley got absolutely crushed when their energy prices tripled for months and months until PG&E got in trouble. Their was even a recording of some of their employees joking how they were "screwing grandma" and laughing about it.


I can't believe they fell for this again. It's barely been a decade since it happened last time. People have teeny tiny short memories.

[Hekate]

33. Pasadena, iirc, kept its public utilities public

So Pasadena was spared the depredations of Enron.

The big energy corporations are godless, soulless bastards, and there is little we can do about it except keep hammering our elected officials to rein them in with regulations. Ha! and can you believe there's an OP out there tonight demanding to know why on Earth Obama keeps telling us all to hammer on our elected officials to do the right thing?

Hekate

[Egalitarian Thug]

34. So did Los Angeles and they were also spared. n/t