Congress, we also obtain the proper framework in which to evaluate the truth of Bush's
public explanations of his role in Iran-contra and other scandals. Bush stands out as one
of the most accomplished liars in the highly competitive field of postwar American
politics.
But we shall not conclude that Bush devoted the entirety of his Congressional career to
the promotion of race science and global depopulation. He was also concerned with
providing constituent service. This service came in the form of Bush's central role in the
implementation of a sophisticated strategy by the oil cartel to maintain its ground-rent tax
privileges at the highest rate that the climate of public opinion would permit. Within this
strategy, Bush worked to protect the oil depletion allowance as the principal tax giveaway
enjoyed by the cartel.
The oil depletion allowance was a 27.5% tax writeoff for oil producers that had been
introduced in 1926, allegedly to strengthen the US petroleum industry. The impact of a
27.5% depeltion allowance was that many of the largest oil companies, including some of
the wealthiest corporate giants, paid a very low rate of corporate income tax. On July 10,
1969, Congressman Bertram Podell of New York wrote an open letter to House Ways
and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills in which he pointed out that, primarily as a result of
the high oil depletion allowance, Gulf oil had paid an effective tax rate of only .81% on
more than a billion dollars of 1968 income, while Mobil had paid 3.3%, and Atlantic
Richfield had paid 1.2%. In his letter, Podell paid ironic tribute to the oil cartel's
"passionate devotion to old- fashioned virtues, such as greed" to the point that the "oil
industry makes the mafia look like a pushcart operation" while "through our various tax
loopholes, professional tax evaders like the oil industry churn like panzers over foot
soldiers." [fn 17]
In 1950, President Truman had declared that no tax loophole was "so inequitable" as the
depletion allowance, and cited the example of one oilman who enjoyed a tax-free income
of alomst $5 million thanks to this provision. Truman claimed that he wanted to cut the
depletion allowance to 15%, but Congressmen opposed to the high depletion allowance
later claimed that he had done very little to carry out this pledge. Senators of the stripe of
Humphrey, Douglas, Williams of Delaware and other offered amendments to reduce the
depletion allowance to 15%, or to restrict the 27.5% to oil producers with incomes below
a certain level, but these efforts were defeated in 1951, 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, and
- But in 1969 the issue was back in the form of a clamor for tax reform as the
economy deteriorated, and a great deal of public heat was focussed on the 27.5% for
Rockefeller's oil cartel.
Congressman Charles Vanick of Ohio, who was profiling himself as a leading tax
reformer, calculated that the oil depletion allowance had resulted in the loss of over $140
billion in tax revenues since the time it was instituted.
In response to this public hue and cry against the 27.5%, the public relations men of the
oil cartel devised an elaborate public charade, with the depletion allowance to be cut
slightly in order to turn off the public pressure and save the bulk of the write-off. In May