Forget about the Pope, our religious journeys, forget about Ann Coulter, DeLay, and even the Christian Taliban Death Cult. If we act now, we may be able to head this idiocy off at the pass. If this doesn't get stopped... we as a nation are in deeper shit than we could have imagined.
A new foriegn policy bill (NOPEC - S.555 , H.R.695) relating to energy has passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee that if passed into law, has sufficient disaster potential to dump ALL of us into the soup if anybody is stupid enough to attempt to enforce it. $10/gallon rationed gas, anybody? That's optimistic.
"The bill would allow the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to file antitrust lawsuits against foreign states, such as members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), for price fixing and other anticompetitive activities...
Would you believe that a group of allegedly responsible elected government officials are apparently stupid enough to think that a bill that allows the DOJ to prosecute OPEC and the OPEC nations for anti-trust violations will bring back $20/gallon oil?
In fact, the intent of the bill is plain from the title... the NOPEC bill. Yes, a bipartisan group wants to make OPEC illegal. Doesn't this sound like a neocon wet dream? Wait until the US tries to enforce this!
Since it's short, here's a copy of the Senate version, which appears to be substantially identical to the House version:
NOPEC (Reported in Senate)
S 555 RS
Calendar No. 73
109th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 555
To amend the Sherman Act to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
March 8, 2005
[see sponsors list below] introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
April 14, 2005
Reported by Mr. SPECTER, without amendment
A BILL
To amend the Sherman Act to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act of 2005' or `NOPEC'.
SEC. 2. SHERMAN ACT.
The Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. 1 et seq.) is amended by adding after section 7 the following:
`SEC. 7A. OIL PRODUCING CARTELS.
`(a) In General- It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act for any foreign state, or any instrumentality or agent of any foreign state, to act collectively or in combination with any other foreign state, any instrumentality or agent of any other foreign state, or any other person, whether by cartel or any other association or form of cooperation or joint action--
`(1) to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product;
`(2) to set or maintain the price of oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product; or
`(3) to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product;
when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States.
`(b) Sovereign Immunity- A foreign state engaged in conduct in violation of subsection (a) shall not be immune under the doctrine of sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction or judgments of the courts of the United States in any action brought to enforce this section.
`(c) Inapplicability of Act of State Doctrine- No court of the United States shall decline, based on the act of state doctrine, to make a determination on the merits in an action brought under this section.
`(d) Enforcement- The Attorney General of the United States and the Federal Trade Commission may bring an action to enforce this section in any district court of the United States as provided under the antitrust laws.'.
SEC. 3. SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY.
Section 1605(a) of title 28, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in paragraph (6), by striking `or' after the semicolon;
(2) in paragraph (7), by striking the period and inserting `; or'; and
(3) by adding at the end the following:
`(8) in which the action is brought under section 7A of the Sherman Act.'.
Yes, we have idiots who think the national sovereignity of other nations can be abolished by Congress passing a law. You won't like it when you find out who these idiots are.
Best case: OPEC laughs at the US, doesn't bother to respond to the summons, and nobody tries to take things any further. Fat chance.
What's the worst case NOPEC scenario? The great majority of us will be too busy trying to survive to worry about religion, though I'm sure most of us will be praying a lot to The Deities Of Our Choice.
Who are the responsible shitheads in the GOP leadership for this abomination?
Sponsors and Cosponsors (none / 0)
Senate:
Sponsor: Sen DeWine, Mike [OH] - R
[a Republican, but look out below... see any names you recognize?]
Cosponsors:
Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] D 3/8/2005
Sen Coburn, Tom [OK] R 4/14/2005
Sen Corzine, Jon S. [NJ] D 3/8/2005
Sen Dayton, Mark [MN] D 3/8/2005
Sen Durbin, Richard [IL] D 3/8/2005
Sen Feingold, Russell D. [WI] D 3/8/2005
Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA] R 3/8/2005
Sen Kohl, Herb [WI] D 3/8/2005
Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT] D 3/8/2005
Sen Levin, Carl [MI] D 3/8/2005
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] D 3/8/2005
Sen Snowe, Olympia J. [ME] R 3/8/2005
Sen Specter, Arlen [PA] R 4/12/2005
Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] D 3/8/2005
House
Sponsor: Rep Conyers,John, Jr. D [MI-14]
Cosponsors:
None
Why did Democrats sign onto it?
The most charitable guess I can come up with is that they felt they needed to be seen to be DOING SOMETHING to fix the energy problem and didn't read what they were invited to cosponsor. Or sponsor in Conyer's case. Or that association with the Senatorial wingers has weakened their minds.
While it would be ironic in the midst of all our legitimate complaints about the Bushmen shutting the Democrats out of the political process if a bi-partisan effort with Democrats prominently represented got a bill to George Bush's desk that he was eager to sign... and enforcing that new law brought the entire world economy down on our heads or worse, I'm not sure how many of us would be around afterwards to appreciate that irony or to take pride that the Democrats helped make it happen.
We do have an example of what happens to a modern oil-based agricultural economy when the oil gets shut down for political reasons. It's North Korea. The long-term results have been. . . let's just say not all that great.
If the US tries to enforce antitrust penalties against OPEC... much of what's being discussed on dKos will become completely irrelevant. What happens if the US tries to enforce antitrust penalties by economic means? What happens if the US tries to enforce them via military means? OPEC nations ignoring US courts or antitrust penalties could very well give Bush an excuse to attack or invade.
The best argument against this bill is practical, not moral.
America does not have enough military or economic force available to enforce its will against OPEC nations as a whole and their political allies. (if push comes to shove, that's China, India, Russia, and the EU.)
America has just enough military and economic power to piss them all off but not enough to enforce our will.
Or persuade them that BOTH PARTIES comprising the political leadership of America are sufficiently insane that their investments propping up the US economy are going to be worthless Real Soon Now anyway and that they'd better contain the US NOW before Bush outdoes himself.
The ability of OPEC and allied nations like China to enforce economic sanctions against the USA that will bring the entire world economy crashing down on all our heads aside, you do know that Venezuela has 100,000 AK-47s, helicopter gunships and 50 high-end Mig29s on a $5,000,000,000 order, http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/16/venezuelaarmed.shtml right?
Specs on the Mig29
IMHO, Venezuela and Iraq are the most likely national targets for attempts at anti-trust sanctions. I doubt that any other nation in the world is going to going to help out with sanctions of any sort to assist in America's attempting to enforce its domestic laws against another nation.
Brief summary of the backstory on this:
The oil-producing nations and the new big oil-consuming nations are making oil deals for a bigger share of what Congress considers our oil.
"They broke our antitrust laws!" doesn't have the sort of dramatic ring that "They'll blow up the entire world with their weapons of mass destruction." does. The EU antitrust action against Microsoft is completely independent of the USDOJ prosecution of Microsoft and it's based on Microsoft's international presence. Nation =! Multinational company
Picking a fight with either Iraq or Venezuela is stark idiocy at best. Nuclear? Oil fields that glow in the dark are not good places to get oil out of. Invasion, assuming we can find anything to invade with? Even with "success", our record for getting oil out of Iraq hasn't been exactly good. The oil infrastructure keeps blowing up for some reason.
No matter what propaganda has been coming from the Bushmen over Venezuela, a war with Venezuela over oil would NOT be a walkover short of going nuclear, and given the geography of Venezuela, I wouldn't even bet on that working.
While I doubt what passes for our party leadership will necessarily listen to us over this... it's got to be tried.
BTW, I basically stripmined Spiderleaf's diary of a couple of days ago and some of the posts to get the info for this one, it didn't hit the recommended list (my guess... posted late at night and people didn't see it before it scrolled off)... we should all thank him for catching this. There's a bit more info on that diary, unfortunately, it didn't last long enough to develop a lot of info. My sole contribution was deciding that this was too important to go down dKos's memory hole.
What should we do? Put enough pressure on our elected public officials to make them stop this.
Those of you in the home states of the Senators and Conyers' district?
"Not another dollar of campaign money, not another hour of volunteer time until you not only dissassociate yourself from this bill, but visibly start doing all you can to make sure S.555 / HR695 goes down the memory hole."
Any MoveOn leaders around here?
There are few "single issue" situations that it's worth doing this over. I hope you'll agree with me that this is one. At the very least, these people who want to lead us damned well owe us an explanation of WHY the fuck they think this is a good idea.
If you don't agree, tell me why my concerns are unwarranted for reasons that don't include trusting the judgement or sanity of President Bush, the Attorney General (who would file such an antitrust suit) or the elected officials trying to bring us this idiocy. I would much prefer to be convinced that this is so.