Clinton: OPEC 'can no longer be a cartel'
Clinton's attacks on oil prices as artificially inflated, Enron-style,
keep escalating, and today she appeared to threaten to break up the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
"We=92re going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a
cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in
some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how
much oil they=92re going to produce and what price they=92re going to put
it at," she told a crod at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.
"That=92s not a market. That=92s a monopoly," she said, saying she'd use
anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.
Clinton has cast herself as a warrior for working people against the
oil industry and malicious "speculators," and made that -- along with
her push for a gas tax holiday -- central to her closing message in
Indiana.
It's a potent message, like the attack on "Wall Street money brokers,"
with deep roots in American politics. It' It's also very hard to
figure out what exactly she means by the threat to break OPEC.
UPDATE: The Obama campaign points out that Clinton has not signed on
to cosponsor a bill that aspires "to make oil-producing and exporting
cartels illegal."
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