NY Senator Chuck Schumer - perhaps second only to John McCain for never meeting a microphone he didn't like - recently, and correctly, ripped into the airline industry for not sharing with their customers any of the windfall they're experiencing resulting from plummeting oil prices (and in typical Schumer style, no discernible follow-up, once the cameras stopped rolling).
Corporations that truck or ship anything - everything from heavy equipment to consumer products - must all be quietly reaping unanticipated windfalls resulting from the drop in oil prices that is expected to last the forseeable future (aka until Big Oil concocts its way out of the downward price spiral). Corporations whose products come in petroleum-based plastic containers - from detergent, shampoo and soda bottles to plastic... everything - must be experiencing additional, through-the-roof profits which are being passed back to us not one ¢, enabled by lack of consumer pushback and a supine media that rarely reports what ruffles their advertisers. (For that matter, consider how much petroleum-based plastic there is in cars, furniture, homes, offices, packaging, etc.)
Consider, say, Pepsi, a product with no redeeming worth, delivered in super-sized plastic bottles by increasingly cheaper fuel. Pepsi takes a proper stand against bullying but remains mostly silent on domestic violence, noteworthy as they're proud, prominent NFL sponsors.
A greater example than Pepsi of consumer exploitation and opportunism is hard to imagine: selling unhealthy products; flaunting their support of an issue like bullying with no likelihood of economic backlash while fueling, with megabucks, their super-sized NFL sponsorship that serves to silence dissent against domestic battery.
Corporations that exploit tragedy for public self-aggrandizement - Pepsi's hardly alone - should be held to especially heightened public scrutiny as they reap unearned windfalls, sharing none of it with their marks... excuse me, customers, that in this case fund silence on domestic abuse.
Schumer was right to spotlight an industry so clearly reaping unanticipated, unearned profits on the backs of the customers they transport. But in fact, nearly every industry benefits from plummeting oil prices. We should be demanding - from every company whose products we buy - proportional price rollbacks: our share of the windfalls they're reaping and keeping.
Toll-free consumer lines are available right now, everywhere.