Exxon Mobil Scores Massive Record Profits
While poor American workers were struggling to keep their lives together while paying almost double their energy costs just to get back and forth to work and to heat their homes, Exxon Mobil was scoring unimaginable profits: $36 Billion!
The company dwarfed even Wally-World in earnings, but for some reason they seem ashamed for having made so much money off the backs of American workers and retirees. You'd think such a successful company would be racing around bragging about their accomplishment. Why not? Could it be that they are aware that their profits amount to little more than extortion?
To put things in another light: Exxon Mobil is now richer than most of the countries in the world. For instance, its $371 billion in revenues last year were greater than the gross national product of Indonesia ($245 billion), an OPEC member and the world's fourth most populous country.
So will the government hit the oil giants with any new taxes, say to try to help rebuild New Orleans or to fight Bush's war in Iraq?
Well, the Republican controlled congress has introduced a bill that would tax the biggest oil companies, but Emporer Bush has already stated that he would veto any bill that included a tax on the oil companies. This will allow the Republicans to go home and tell their constituencies that they tried to do something about the oil companies' greed, but the Emporer just wouldn't let them. Sounds like a political ploy to me.
While poor American workers were struggling to keep their lives together while paying almost double their energy costs just to get back and forth to work and to heat their homes, Exxon Mobil was scoring unimaginable profits: $36 Billion!
The company dwarfed even Wally-World in earnings, but for some reason they seem ashamed for having made so much money off the backs of American workers and retirees. You'd think such a successful company would be racing around bragging about their accomplishment. Why not? Could it be that they are aware that their profits amount to little more than extortion?
To put things in another light: Exxon Mobil is now richer than most of the countries in the world. For instance, its $371 billion in revenues last year were greater than the gross national product of Indonesia ($245 billion), an OPEC member and the world's fourth most populous country.
So will the government hit the oil giants with any new taxes, say to try to help rebuild New Orleans or to fight Bush's war in Iraq?
Well, the Republican controlled congress has introduced a bill that would tax the biggest oil companies, but Emporer Bush has already stated that he would veto any bill that included a tax on the oil companies. This will allow the Republicans to go home and tell their constituencies that they tried to do something about the oil companies' greed, but the Emporer just wouldn't let them. Sounds like a political ploy to me.
posted by Jim | 11:34 AM
1 Comments:
Taxation of oil is a short-sighted plan. Yes, this is something we should be doing, something we should be pushing for, but 30, 40 years down the road I doubt that we'll look back to this decade and say that it was so helpfull for us to tax the oil companies. We should regulate oil, stop gouging, set up a taxation plan, but we also need to seriously look into alternative fuel sources. This means money, this means ideas, this means hard work, this means politics and oil can no longer share a bed.
Money has obvious solutions, but ones that will be hard to enact because of our system. He's one source for research money; the military budget. It's cheaper and smarter to use that money to research alternative fuel sources than to fight the Middle East over our right to their natural resources.
America can also no longer afford to leave ideas to "the idea men." Ideas do not always have their origins in labs, and the public needs to become less passive. So I'll begin, and even if this is a stupid suggestion, at least it is something. Many scientists believe that fuel cells are the future. The problem seems to be difficulty in getting hydrogen gas efficiency. The main source of hydrogen gas right now is electrolysis of water, but this is highly inefficient. However, we are also using very little of the solar energy the earth receives every day. So here's a question: Does it make sense for us to use solar energy as the source for electrolysis in order to produce hydrogen for fuel cells? I admit, this is not my field. However, I am thinking. I hope everyone else is doing the same.
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