Regarding "Don't Believe Ads Paid for by big Oil" (May 19 letter):
Oil companies pay millions for TV ads claiming they provide jobs. America has only 3 percent of the world's oil supply and uses 25 percent, so drilling the entire 3 percent would create only a handful of jobs in America. Consider the cost of American lives lost and trillions of dollars spent on wars in the Middle East protecting oil companies there while America gets most of its oil from Canada.
Big oil lawmakers were successful stopping a bill that would end subsidies and tax cuts to oil companies earning trillions of profits over the past decade. Oil companies paid for those votes: $39.5 million was spent on lobbying Congress in the first quarter this year, paying $219,300 in campaign contributions to Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Lies by lawmakers and oil companies claim drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and keeping tax breaks and subsidies will bring down the price at the pump. The recent economic crisis proved only lack of demand lowered prices at the pump.
-- Phyllis Mains, Van Wert