All Out to Get You

You may think I'm overly paranoid when I propose that US gas companies are lowering prices at the pump to help favor the GOP in the upcoming mid-term elections (which have been explained away as the result of decreased tensions in the Middle East -- I guess we're talking Lebanon here, certainly not Iraq and Iran -- a relatively quiet hurricane season, lower demand now that the summer travel season is over, etc.)...but then I read a story like this in the Times:

Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies [Shell and Kerr-McGee Corporation] they said were cheating the government.

The accusations, many of them in four lawsuits that were unsealed last week by federal judges in Oklahoma, represent a rare rebellion by government investigators against their own agency.

The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers,” said Bobby L. Maxwell, who was formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico auditing. “These are assets that belong to the American public, and they are supposed to be used for things like education, public infrastructure and roadways.”

Of course, two former oil men like Dubya and Cheney wouldn't throw any favors to their Big Oil buddies, would they now?

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"All Out to Get You" is from the English Beat's "Wha'ppen?" album.