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The Guinness Book of World Record Price Gouging.
It’s been a year of records — Taylor Swift has the most single-day streams for an artist. Simone Biles has the most all-around U.S. Gymnastics titles. And oil and gas companies have made record profits while consumers struggle to fill up their tanks. Weird, right?
New polling from Data for Progress, Climate Power, and Fossil Free Media finds that voters strongly blame high energy prices on large oil companies and their CEOs, and believe these companies have too much power in government. Joe Manchin is basically a walking, talking oil pipeline – so we kind of get where they’re coming from.
Fossil fuel companies have truly been bleeding us dry like a god damn vampire for YEARS — and voters know that it’s time to make them pay. Three-quarters of voters would support making oil and gas companies pay a tax on their excess profits, while 70% would support making polluters pay for climate damages, including majorities of Independents and Republicans.
Forget about oil, gas, solar, or wind — nothing fuels us more than our hatred for corrupt, exploitative fossil fuel CEOs. Does that technically count as clean energy?
Read the full poll here.
Here are some other highlights from DFP this week:
Mike Johnson who?
If you’ve never heard of Mike Johnson before now, we don’t blame you. And we’re so so sorry for what you’re about to read. Voted Speaker of the House after nineteen votes total this year, Speaker Johnson rose out of obscurity this month because House Republicans simply couldn’t decide on anyone else and finally decided to settle (trust us, don’t ever decide to settle).
And he’s not off to a good start. In our first approval poll of the new Speaker, we find that 56% of voters haven’t heard enough about him — and among the ones that do have an opinion, he’s already 2 points underwater. Ouch.
That’s going to give Democrats a lot of room to shape his image, and Johnson is not exactly making it a challenge. Before being elected to public office in 2015, Johnson was an attorney for a Christian Right legal advocacy group that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.
While Johnson may represent the House Republican caucus, he definitely doesn’t represent American voters. We find strong opposition to policies he’s endorsed, like imprisoning doctors who provide abortions and allowing states to imprison people for having gay sex.
You know it’s rough when Jim Jordan was too extreme for moderate Republicans, so this is the guy they decided to go with instead. With policy views as unpopular as these, Democrats would be wise to get Mr. Johnson’s “heard of” numbers up and those favorability numbers down.
Read the full poll here.
Go go (public) Power Rangers!
From Marlboro to Shell Oil and Boeing to Raytheon – we know that private companies always have our best interests at heart. So why wouldn’t we trust them to control the lights or heat in our homes? This is America!
Of course, if the last 250 years of capitalism have shown us anything, it’s that private companies do what’s best for their bottom line. But today, over 110 million Americans get their utilities from an investor-owned company, while only 24 million have a publicly owned utility. Shocking no one, that’s led to less reliability, higher prices, and more damage to our climate.
Enter Maine. Next week, Maine voters will head to the polls to decide whether to replace the state’s two private utilities — Central Maine Power and Versant Power — with a publicly owned utility, Pine Tree Power. Because the only thing in Maine spookier than a Stephen King novel is a CEO deciding whose lights get to turn on.
New polling from Data for Progress finds that a strong majority of likely voters nationwide (68%) support having a publicly owned utility as their local utility provider. Support holds across party lines, with majority support among Democrats (71%), Independents (66%), and Republicans (67%).
Maine, we’re rooting for you. Those lobster rolls will taste so much better after buying them with the money you save on your energy bill. And for the rest of America, much like what your best friend told you before you broke up with your last ex-boyfriend: we know you can do better. He didn’t care about you, and neither do the corporate executives at PG&E.
Read the full poll here.
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