Following the money leads to scary, unpleasant truths.
In 2007 ExxonMobil recorded $40.6 billion in profits, the highest amount of money ever brought in by any company. So it is utterly pathetic and obscene that oil companies are receiving “multibillion-dollar tax subsidies” (see Obama reissues call to cut U.S. oil tax breaks, msnbc.com, 4-26-11) from our government.
While Obama “has urged congressional leaders to take steps to repeal oil industry tax breaks,” (see above-referenced article) he’s also taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Big Oil. So it will be interesting to see if Obama follows through on this or simply makes a few more meaningless comments.
According to FactCheck.org in 2008 candidate Obama took in well over $200,000 “from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.” It gets worse. Obama accepted, during his time in the Senate and as a presidential candidate, $77,051 from Big Oil pariah BP. He’s also “the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.” (See Politico’s Obama Biggest Recipient of BP Cash, 5-5-10, and they also cite the highly regarded Center for Responsive Politics in this article.)
Unfortunately I can’t figure out which is worst: claiming to want to help people at the pump when really not doing anything about it or flat-out siding with Big Oil like George W. Bush did.
W (the biggest whore ever for Big Oil), when faced with then-record prices at the pump during his presidency, had to deal with lawmakers who wanted to force oil traders to report every trade they made in an attempt to curb price fixing and other shenanigans that would benefit Big Oil.
W refused to support this and had the gall (actually Karl Rove probably wrote the lines) to say that would be price controls. He was lying through his teeth and forcing commodities traders to report the trades they make doesn’t even come close to price controls. And W neglected to mention that every other trader of every other commodity has to report every trade they make. But not Big Oil.
Follow the money – but only on an empty stomach.
cosmic poaching 