Gibson means that you don't debate politicians when they're not talking about issues near and dear to your heart: like the parts of the tax code that affect multimillionaires like himself. Then you go in all guns blazing and by God, you take them on regarding their incorrigible claims that raising the capital gains tax raises revenue (and you do so using fatuous nonsense like comparing nominal revenues across time without controlling for things like COLOSSAL bear markets before but not aft, all the while ignoring the economic literature entirely). This is the way a self-respecting establishment journalist behaves.

Oh brother. Now I don't advocate taking people out to the woodshed and putting them down, but Gibson is the most compelling argument against I've yet been confronted with.

I refuse to believe that the market for refined petroleum products is not manipulated for the simple reason that it defies logic. Keep in mind that the oil industry is remarkably vertically integrated which, while having no particular economic synergy, is a great way to hide monopoly practices. And keep in mind that that vertical integration was accomplished largely by brute force- high premiums paid on mergers, and dirty pool across the board, pushing out independent retailers, and discouraging investment in refining and distribution. So just because refiners are booking profit margin x does not make it so. Oil majors are INTENSELY aware of how much public scrutiny there is on their bottom line. Do you really think their public books are going to give the game away?

Item: Oil companies, like power producers in California and traders of that power- ehem- are keenly aware of the effect of the effect on their bottom line of the supply demand balance. What both of these goods have in common is that they are EXTREMELY inelastic. Unfortunately, no oil company looks set to go belly up with fraud, so we can't get the evidence that we were able to obtain with Enron.

Item: earlier in this decade, before oil prices popped skyward carrying oil company stock prices with it, Shell oil was discovered manipulating the 'proven reserves' item on its balance sheet. Changes in that massive asset drive changes in the income statement and can be used to manipulate earnings- in fact routinely dominate earnings. This shows multiple things: first, an obsessive focus on the bottom line and how that affects stock prices and executive remuneration. Second, a lack of qualms regarding fraud and skirting the rules. Third, this but one mechanism demonstrates how easy it is for oil companies to manipulate profits when necessary- like to boost earnings in down times, or lower earnings when, say, the political pressure heats up and they don't want to draw as much attention to themselves.

Item: Pat Robertson tried to start a venture that would have restarted the Powerline refinery in California. Before it was scuttled by the courts through the efforts of environmentalists and local advocates, Robertson accused the oil companies of pressuring financiers- in particular money center banks a la Chase/Citi/BofA- NOT to finance the deal if they wanted to continue to have client relationships with the trillion dollar oil industry. The bank representatives told Robertson that they wouldn't be able to do the deal because of it. I for one don't doubt his testimony.

Item: when oil executives were testifying in front of congress a while back, they were asked why they hadn't taken up an entrepreneur on his offer to expand pipeline capacity, given that the deal seemed profitable for all sides and that the system needed the capacity. The question was met by deafening silence.

Item: the refining and distribution markets in the United States are highly oligopolistic

Item: taking down private refining capacity can be done for any reason an oil company pleases and given names like 'preventative maintenance' or 'repair' or 'an accidental explosion'. See: the % of power generating manufacturing routinely taken offline during California's energy crisis.

Item: empirical retail gasoline prices are far less sensitive to crude prices than the cost attribution presented in this article would indicate.

So given all that, given the immense scope to pull it off and HUGE profit opportunities of having done so, is there anyone out there who really thinks that the oil companies are not manipulating the supply of refined products to the market (also fyi, it has been documented that they occasionally export from the US and sell at less than the price here), and thus keeping the price of gasoline, diesel, heating oil, etc. artificially high??????

If your answer is yes, I've got some WMDs to sell you.