well, to put the high gas prices in perspective…exxon’s profits for the 3rd quarter of 2005(aka-last summer) were over $10 billion dollars, on total earnings of $100 billion dollars.
it was the first time in corporate history that a publicly held corporation had quarterly sales of over $100 billion dollars.
kind of disgusting, huh?
well, let’s look at another salient fact:
exxon were the 2nd largest campaign contributor to bush’s first presidential campaign(2nd only to enron…).
exxon in the last election gave 80% of their campaign contributions to republican candidates.
another salient fact:
exxon executives have participated in a few bush sponsored energy think-tanks, including the one that was involved, with dick cheney, in establishing u.s energy policy.
oh, did i mention that exxon received $2.6 billion in subsidies from the bush administration?
in other words: we as taxpayers gave exxon $2.6 billion so that they could go on to have record earnings and record profits.
these subsidies were a part of the energy bill that the oil industry helped write, along with dick cheney(who, surprise surprise, is the former ceo of halliburton, an energy company).
the bush ideology is so fucking transparent: take money away from people and give it to corporations. tax the poor and subsidize rich corporations.
all of this other right-wing nonsense is just a smokescreen. the bush administration has one goal: funnel taxpayers money to the energy and defense industries.
i hope that the democrats are paying attention.
note to democrats: voters probably won’t be too happy when they find out that their tax money has subsidized oil companies who have been making record profits from grossly inflated gas prices.
-moby