It is a somewhat wonkier piece than many, so I have to read it properly (my attention is shit increasingly..very worried about it, but except vaguely yelling threats out into the void, I am brooding still). We should have moved to renewables long back. There are so damn many reasons we would have been better off. But this will make things worse for the worst off people and continue with the destruction of 🌏.
I have a febrile hope this is a, “it is darkest before dawn scenario” for most of us/my beloved earth and a long delayed payback against all creeps everywhere is inevitable, as rock bottom is here and if we don’t act urgently and continue like this, what future is there? Daft species..cats are way brighter..
I like Matt Stoller. I was thinking of him this morning and wondering if he could be recruited to help out Ol’ jfz9580m with some pest control re: corporate malfeasance, though he is pretty North America focused. I am mostly an internet skeptic like one of my favorite journalists Yasha Levine.
Otoh, I am also wondering if as a one-off in an ott sich, one could throw various things at a pack of brainless corporate creeps who are overreaching on every front. This does feel like a do or die global crisis. Ffs can’t we be less stupid?
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-trumps-antitrust-enforcer-andrew
The goal of the alleged scheme was to prevent a price war where shale producers would take share from Arab producers, instead reducing drilling to juice profits and return money to shareholders. And it seemed to work. For a few years, oil companies were insanely profitable. But on the other side, these actions may have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in elevated costs to Americans. And they paved the way for broader inflation. Not only is oil an input into everything, but after corporate America saw the oil guys reducing capacity to take advantage of higher prices, they all started doing it.
The conditions attached to these mergers were very light. In 2024, Khan cut a deal with Exxon to ensure Sheffield couldn’t be on the board of the company, as a condition of allowing its $60 billion takeover of Pioneer to proceed. Sheffield got to keep hundreds of millions in profit and has faced no charges, though several major lawsuits from plaintiff lawyers are now winding their way in the courts making the price-fixing charge directly.
But despite getting richer and not facing any actual penalties, he was angry and embarrassed, isolated from the industry he helped build. Sheffield is a legend among drillers, beloved in Texas for helping to kick off the fracking boom. And Texans, even center-left types, responded defensively. Sheffield himself, though he profited handsomely from the sale of his company, hired a lawyer, a former Obama enforcer named David Gelfand, to fight the order that said he couldn’t be a board member of Exxon.
This guy is beloved in Texas? I wonder if that sleazy Texas Cadaver scandal woman is also “beloved”?
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