LET'S ABOLISH PROFITS

Now that the 2nd quarter 1975 profits are in (Exxon down 34%, Gulf down 49%, Occidental down 53%, oil industry average down 33%), what is Sen. Jackson doing? Recovering from a self-inflicted defeat. He spent much of July in another set of "string'em up and try'em" hearings that were supposed to expose the great gasoline conspiracy, for the oil vampires had allegedly colluded in a price raise. Co-inquisitor was Sen. A. Stevenson III, the well-known advocate of post-office-izing the oil industry. What the hearings did reveal was that the June-July price increases (only a small fraction of what the senators had charged) were entirely due to the FEA's bureaucratic allocation and entitlement system. The charges that refineries were working below capacity and that there was an artificially manufactured gasoline shortage proved to be entirely concocted.

So Jackson voted himself a hefty salary increase (Stevenson did not vote against, either) and went home on vacation. So did Rep. P. Schroeder (D-Colo.), a lady who specializes in butchering the defense budget, but who has now also given a sample of her expertise in energy. At a time when gasoline in her state cost 51 cents a gallon and Europeans paid $1.50 up, she proclaimed that "decontrol of oil would mean that Americans would pay the highest gasoline prices in the world."

We are mystified as to what part of the obscene profits the oil company lynchers wish to abolish. The part that is taxed? No, for they are all hardboiled statists. The part that is reinvested? No, for they say that there is not enough ploughback (at present it far exceeds profits). The dividends paid to the stockholders? Careful now. Never mind the widows and orphans, but such a move would badly hurt an improbable stockholder - the Sierra Club.

You read right. The Sierra Club Foundation, reports the Los Angeles Times, has more than $132,000 of its funds invested in oil company stocks, the mining and metal producing industries, forest products securities, and other industries that the environmental hypocrites brand as polluters.

And not only the Sierra Club. The Audubon Society made a handsome $300,000 last year on leases for the extraction of oil and gas on its near 27,000 acre Louisiana Wildlife Sanctuary (where it sanctions a wild life).

And where did the Environmental Defense Fund put its lavish funds? Not just into any old oil stocks, but into Exxon, the world's largest corporation, with a 25% interest in the Alaska pipeline. And there was plenty of dough left for Public Enemy no.1, General Motors, and then some.

There were some lame explanations by blushing environmentalists.

"We can't invest in companies doing environmentally beneficial things," said an EDF spokesman lifting his head out of the till, "like solar energy or scrap iron. If we did, we would look like we were promoting our economic interests when we took a stand on an issue."

That is an intriguing idea. Pity the Soviet whale hunters don't issue stock. But maybe their Japanese colleagues would let the EDF buy in for a share of the gravy.