Posted on 06/19/2008 5:53:31 PM PDT by King of Florida
THE president of the United States has the power to attack, and perhaps destroy, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the illegal cartel that has driven the price of oil over $130 per barrel. This can be accomplished without invasion or bombing. No special legislation is needed. The president need simply allow the states to seek relief in the Supreme Court under our antitrust laws.
The oil ministers of the OPEC countries meet periodically to set production quotas for the cartel’s members and in the process establish an artificially high price for crude oil. Under our antitrust laws, this is illegal. Two years ago, Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University, estimated that the real production cost was $15 a barrel, at a time when the price was approaching $60. Recently, an OPEC spokesman said the price could be $70 a barrel — a little more than half the current price — if speculation and manipulation could be eliminated.
Despite this illegal conduct, not everyone can sue OPEC and succeed. In 2002, a federal court dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought against OPEC by a gas station owner. An appeals court agreed, noting that “under the current state of our federal laws the individual member states of OPEC are afforded immunity from suit brought for damage caused by their commercial activities when they act through OPEC.”
. . .
Fortunately, there is another way to sue OPEC. Even if actions by individual citizens fail, a seldom-used provision of Article III of the Constitution grants original jurisdiction to the Supreme Court over lawsuits brought by states against “foreign states” and, as expanded by the United States Code, over “aliens.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That's it, NYT, distract us from the real energy market agitator: Russia.
What idiocy. Sovereign nations have this thing called “sovereignty”.
So what do we do when OPEC tells our courts to pack sand, go to war for oil?
and the Supreme Court can of course enforce their decisions, I might be wrong but I would suspect OPEC would tell them to go pound sand.
How did sensible men like Reagan and GHW Bush have a guy like this as an advisor? I expect he didn’t get in to see the President very often....
except the USA of course
We could enforce a ruling in such a lawsuit, if we wanted to. But if we intended to go that route we might as well just invade the OPEC nations in the first place and not waste the court's time with the preliminaries.
The Supreme Court is now their answer to everything.
Which one of the Liberals will serve the summons to Ahmadinejad?
Sure. Produce more oil with lawyers & liberal judges. That’s the ticket. Just like the court system can fight terrorism according to Obamarama.
Sue OPEC?
...they don’t have to provide us oil you know...
Which one of the Liberals will serve the summons to Ahmadinejad?
::::::
Yes, I got a good laugh out of the idea of the SCOTUS (The liberal court of the land) taking on OPEC over oil. LMFAO. The SCOTUS libs would have thier knee-pads on and would protect OPEC the best they could.
What a joke.
The OPEC countries will give the same deference to a US Court decision as the US should give to a World Court decision.
Besides, what can the US Court do outside of US soil? The assets aren’t available seizure, short of open warfare, which isn’t the province of the courts.
The only sane thing to do is drill our own oil and flood the market making OPEC oil worth about $15 a barrel.
What is it with the left and their faith in the courts? Sue OPEC, treat Islamo Fascists like hold-up men...geeez...
Drill Here, Drill Now and Kill the Terrorists.
Hillary has said that somehow we can work through the World Trade Organization to ensure that OPEC is not artificially fixing prices. who knows if that’s true but that’s what she said. She also said if we elected her, that would send a powerful message to world oil markets that we are now serious about alternative energy, and that fact itself would bring down prices................
All it would take is for Congress to overwhelmingly vote to drill everywhere and expand refineries and set a schedule for eliminating OPEC imports, and the price would magically drop overnight.
What total lunacy!
OPEC is like the soup nazi on Seinfeld.
Either you play by his rules, or:
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
Are the RATS really willing to bring western civilization to a standstill once they sue OPEC, and shut off the spiqot??
And then when you’re in the corner, and need to crawl out on your hands and knees, kissing their camels, as you are unwilling to take military action to take over their countries, you just eat more of their shit.
Total stupidity! Total RAT intelligence!
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