When Congress threatens to seize the profits of oil companies, we should all stop and think about whose money they are trying to take. If you have a pension, a mutual fund or even a bank account it is likely that you are the owner of an oil company. According to a recent study led by a member of the Clinton Commerce Department, oil companies are largely owned by middle-class Americans with small investment portfolios.

It also turns out that those evil oil executives own on average only 1.5 percent of the stock in the oil industry. They go to work every day to make sure that we have an uninterrupted supply of fuel to make our cars go, heat our homes and run our lights. On top of that they fetch a handsome profit for their investors (who, it turns out, are most of us). For this service they are routinely dragged before Congress and threatened with confiscatory taxation by a group of people who have never provided us so much as a drop of oil or gas.

We are not going to see energy prices come down until we stop vilifying the people who make the fuels that make our lives possible. Congress needs to lay off the sanctimonious grandstanding and make a real plan for our nation’s energy independence – that includes expanding drilling opportunities, building new refineries, and investing in nuclear technology.

Maxwell Coolidge

Orland