October, 11 2022, 10:42am EDT
STOP Campaign Releases New Videos with Rep. Ro Khanna Calling for a Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax
As Big Oil profiteering sends gas prices and home heating bills skyrocketing again, STOP calls on Members of Congress to take immediate action to help working families
WASHINGTON
The Stop The Oil Profiteering (STOP) campaign released two new videos online this morning featuring Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17) calling for a Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax.
"Big Oil has mastered the art of profiteering," Rep. Ro Khanna says in a shorter video released on Twitter. "Over the last year we've been investigating the ways Big Oil has been gouging consumers at the pump and tracking the profits. We found a Big Oil pipeline from your wallet to their pocket....Big Oil has been making us pay. It's about time we make them pay, so join me in supporting the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax."
In a longer version of the video released on YouTube, Khanna talks about the steps that progressives in Congress have been taking to investigate Big Oil and free the country from a dependence on fossil fuels.
"It's less than half a mile from this ExxonMobil station to the US Capitol, but the path from your wallet to the pockets of Big Oil is even more direct," explains Khanna. "Over the last 8 months, Big Oil companies have raked in over $100 billion in profits by limiting supply and jacking up prices."
As gas prices and home heating bills start to climb again across the country, Stop The Oil Profiteering and its allies have intensified their calls for Congress to pass a Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax that would tax a percentage of Big Oil's excessive profits and use the earnings to send relief directly to American families.
Over 80% of voters support a windfall profits tax and 87% of voters want to see Congress take steps to crack down on oil industry price gouging. Dozens of members of Congress support the policy. California Governor Gavin Newsom recently endorsed the idea and called for a special session to pass the tax.
"As fossil fuel prices skyrocket again, these videos aim to educate the public about how Big Oil is gouging us at the pump and on our home heating bills," said Jamie Henn, a spokesperson for the STOP campaign. "The Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax remains the most direct way to hold Big Oil accountable and get money back in the wallets of hard working Americans. It's past time that Congress take action and stop the oil profiteering."
Fossil Free Media is a nonprofit media lab that supports the movement to end fossil fuels and address the climate emergency.
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Current and former far-right leaders around the world cheered U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's remarkable victory in Tuesday's election, in which the twice-impeached, 34-count convicted felon, self- and court-affirmed sexual assaulter, and insurrection-fomenting 78-year-old Republican won not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote in what some observers described as a "mandate for fascism."
In Israel—which the Biden administration buoyed with massive military and diplomatic support even as it faces a genocide case at the World Court for a war on Gaza that's killed more than 43,000 Palestinians—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump's victory is "history's greatest comeback" and represents a "powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America."
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister and leader of the Jewish supremacist Otzma Yehudit party, reposted an earlier message in which he proclaimed, "God Bless Trump."
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who was the first European leader to endorse Trump in 2016, lauded the Republican's "enormous win," which he called "a much-needed victory for the world."
Argentinian President Javier Milei—who campaigned as a libertarian populist but has governed like a neoliberal shock doctrinaire—hailed Trump's "formidable electoral victory."
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Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele—who Trump recently accused of sending gang members to the U.S. to insidiously reduce crime in his country—wished divine blessings and guidance for the president-elect.
Arab dictators—from the monarchs of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi—also congratulated Trump. Some, like Jordan's King Abdullah II, said they hoped Trump's second term would usher in an era of "regional and global peace and stability for all."
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Former right-wing leaders also cheered Trump's win. Disgraced former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—who like Trump incited an insurrection following his last election loss, but unlike Trump was slapped with an eight-year electoral ban over it—said Tuesday's result represents "the triumph of the people's will over the arrogant designs of an elite who disdain our values, beliefs, and traditions."
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On the flip side, progressive leaders around the world vowed to fight fascism—even as they shuddered at the specter of what horrors may come in Trump's second term.
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While Republicans have won the White House and U.S. Senate as of early Wednesday afternoon, control of the House of Representatives remains too close to call—and may be the only governmental firewall against the GOP's fascist federal agenda.
Democrats went into the Tuesday election hoping to flip the House, which is now narrowly controlled by Republicans. There are 435 seats in the lower chamber, so the party to secure 218 of them will have the majority.
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Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who won his ninth term on Tuesday, toldThe Hill early Wednesday that "in terms of the power trifecta, the House is the only hope for Democrats to maintain a check on our out-of-control Donald Trump," now the president-elect.
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) similarly welcomed the "critically important" wins in his state on social media. Redistricting also helped Democrats pick up seats in Alabama, where Shomari Figures won the state's 2nd Congressional District, and Lousiaina, where former Congressman Cleo Fields claimed victory in the newly drawn 6th District.
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The House under Democratic control also impeached Trump twice during his first term in office. He was never convicted by the Senate.
Key issues on the minds of progressive lawmakers and advocates across the country on Wednesday included reproductive freedom and the climate emergency.
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"Our story does not end with this election result; we have a lot of work ahead of us. The future we are dreaming of is worth fighting for."
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With Trump planning to further gut abortion rights, mobilize a mass deportation operation, and roll back climate regulations while keeping his promise to oil executives to expand fossil fuel drilling, journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo urged all progressive organizers to make "'solidarity'... the most important word in our political vocabulary."
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The term has been the rallying cry of the labor movement for generations, and United Auto Workers organizer Helen Brosnan echoed Hasan's call.
"The only way through is solidarity," said Brosnan. "We can't let what happens next divide us. We have to fight the billionaire class together."
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich did not hide his despair over Trump's victory, writing in his Substack newsletter that he was "heartbroken and scared."
But Reich urged progressives not to lose sight of "our first responsibility... to protect all those who are in harm's way," including women, immigrants, and transgender people.
How will we conduct this resistance?
By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.
We will ask other Americans to join us—left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.
But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.
We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation—rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.
The preamble to the Constitution of the United States opens with the phrase "We the people", conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire "to promote the general welfare," as the preamble goes on to say.
We the people will fight for the general welfare.
We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.
The National Immigration Law Center, which joined the ACLU in fighting Trump's Muslim bans and other xenophobic policies during his first term, said it "knew Trump could win and that is why we helped lead a movement wide effort to plan for this moment."
"Trump and his allies told us what he plans to do: mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, ending the right to public education for immigrant children, internment camps, and using the military to hunt down immigrants. We should take him at his word," said Kica Matos, president of the NILC. "One thing is certain: we cannot and will not retreat. For more than 40 years, NILC has been steadfast in our fight to defend the rights of low-income immigrants and their loved ones. We successfully fought Donald Trump before, and we will do it again."
Reich reminded his readers that Americans "supported one another during the Great Depression" and other national crises.
"We were victorious over Hitler's fascism and Soviet communism," he wrote. "We survived Joe McCarthy's witch-hunts, Richard Nixon's crimes, Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"We will resist Donald Trump's tyranny," he added. "Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined. It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary. We will never give up on America. The resistance starts now."
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