Only a Liberal…

Congressmen screamed bloody murder when Exxon reported their income rose 14% in the 4^th quarter of 2007. As a result of this “crime,” Congress even brought in the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies to reprimand and lecture them.

“Where is the corporate conscience? Is there anybody here that has any concerns about what you’re doing to this country with the prices that you’re charging and the profits that you’re taking?” Sen. Dick Durbin

So what are the profits? Exxon earned $11.6 billion, which is a record for U.S. companies. In 2004, they had profits that freaked out the masses as well. Their gross margin that quarter was 9.8 cents per dollar of revenue. But financial institutions such as commercial banks, are routinely more profitable than Exxon. 9.8 cents is laughable in comparison to Citigroup’s 15.7 cents per dollar in 2004. The makers of Marlboro made 22 cents for every dollar. Merck made 25 cents.

If your company grosses 6 billion, and your expenses are only 1 billion, you just made 5 billion. If you gross 150 billion, and your expenses are 140 billion, you made 10 billion. Ask yourself which company is more “evil”: the one whose income was twice as much, or the one who’s ROI was 600%? Profit margin is the more relevant statistic.

Looking at Moneycentral.msn.com, Exxon’s gross margin is 21.6%. Check out the gross margin of these other companies that haven’t been scolded by congress:

• MoSys: 81.1%
• Microsoft: 79.3%
• Google: 59.8%
• Yahoo: 59.5%
• Apple: 34.4%
• Safeway: 28.6%
• Walmart: 23.5%
• Amazon: 22.5%
• Exxon: 21.6%
• Disney: 20.3%

Walmart is also attacked with its gross margin of 23.5%. Walmart and Exxon aren’t being attacked because of their profits. That’s just the excuse. If profits were the real crime, Bill Gates and Larry Page might as well live in Washington to make their daily scoldings more convenient. Why don’t we stop bothering Exxon and start demanding Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo decrease their obscene profits? Google didn’t exist 10 years ago, and we were doing just fine.

* I don’t really believe we should go after Google’s profits. They earned it fair and square, just like the oil companies. There is no difference. Just be aware of the hypocrisy.

What goes into the price of a gallon of gas? There’s a nice explanation here. At the pump, only about 4% of the price represents oil company profits. So if you wiped out all oil company profits, the price of a $4 gallon of gas would become $3.84. That doesn’t explain the dollars of increase in recent years. Did you know that while Exxon gets 16 cents from that gallon, 60 cents goes to taxes? “A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn’t demand you thank him.” Walter Williams

You can’t tax a corporation

“You can’t tax a corporation. It’s a lie. There’s no such taxpayer. Tax the corporation and you tax the people that work there, or buy its products, or own its stock. If you can’t have dinner with it, you can’t tax it.” - Kelly J. Maguire

Senators like Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer would solve this “problem” of high oil company profits by instituting a windfall profits tax. Maxine Waters actually admitted what Washington really wants to do. When Exxon makes a boatload of money, that boatload will be taxed more than their usual profit. But what does a company do when its expenses increase? It increases the price.

A windfall profits tax actually taxes gas users. This is just basic economics. If you add a tax to a corporation for high profits, their bottom line will decrease, which decreases their stock price and dividends. This is completely unacceptable to shareholders, so to prevent that, the corporation must increase its prices or decrease its expenses by the exact amount of the tax. BASIC ECONOMICS. So either prices will go up or some people will get fired.

This article at lossofsanity.com puts it best:

An increase in corporate taxes increases the cost of producing goods and services and leads to a higher price for the consumer.

Politicians know the secret and fear that the public will learn it too one day. Thus politicians continually demonize business with words like greedy, anti-consumer, socially irresponsible in order to keep people’s anger focused on business instead of the true practitioners of greed… politicians.

BIG Farm

I mentioned earlier that people were hopping mad about Exxon’s 14% increase in profits. What if I told you there was another company whose profits rose by 86%? Would you be 6 times as mad? Cargill Inc.’s profits went from $553 million to $1.03 billion. How did an agriculture business increase profits by that much?

They didn’t. Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005 which required use of ethanol in U.S. gasoline. As a result the price of corn nearly doubled, which increased their profits. The increased profits gave incentive to stop growing other crops to make room for corn, which lowered the supply of those other crops and therefore raised the prices. The price increase in crops like corn has caused “Tortilla riots” in Mexico, and violent protests have occurred in 33 countries. Artificially messing with energy has literally made people hungrier. Perhaps everyone should stop worrying about Big Oil, and start worrying about Big Farm and Big Government.

It used to be someone could bring on a scientist to tell us how things are. We could rely on the scientist to tell us the truth so that we wouldn’t have to research it ourselves to be sure.

Those days are over, thanks to government incentives for catastrophic forecasts of man-made global warming. No matter where you stand on the issue, you can’t deny that there are a substantial number of scientists lying or omitting facts on this issue simply because there are so many on both sides contradicting each other. Someone is lying. Whether they’re bare-face lying, or lying about their specific expertise, the opinion of a scientist has become near worthless if politics are at all involved.

As a result, regular Joes and Joannes are going to demand everything be explained in layman’s terms. It has already begun, but it will have to become commonplace eventually.  People that previously wouldn’t have cared are now questioning that humans have a substantial effect on the climate. Ya, it was hot last week, but last winter was really cold. Explain that to me. Ignorance in that field is decreasing rapidly, which is a good thing for society: bad for those with a stake in the theory of catastrophic human climate destruction.

The gradual realization that changing our ways will cost more than a couple of Iraq wars has caused normal people to start asking questions. Will spending all this money do anything to stave off this so-called impending doom? Is there any impending doom? Might this all just be a few sun burps?

Marriage as we have known it for years is far from “sacred” to many people. Plenty of heterosexual people engage in marriages they have no business engaging in.

That being said, natural reproduction is and always will be better, and cheaper, to society as a whole than artificial reproduction. Humankind cannot continue without reproduction, so an institution where natural reproduction is held above artificial reproduction is a good thing. I do not believe heterosexuals should be forced to have children for the same reason I don’t believe homosexuals should be forced to marry the opposite sex to get the same tax benefits as heterosexuals. In both cases, I feel that way because this is a free country.

On the other hand, there is a HUGE statistical difference between the behavior of heterosexuals vs. homosexuals. Promiscuity by heterosexuals is dangerous, but it seems to be much more popular among homosexuals. I’ve also seen studies that say the number of partners is not the reason for a higher STD occurrence among homosexuals; its the activity engaged in that increases the occurrence. Either way, its riskier to engage in homosexual behavior than heterosexual. It’s also riskier to jump motorcycles over 10 buses, but we haven’t officially made that illegal. People should be educated about risky behavior, not outlawed from doing it.
A lot of conservative or religious people want marriage to be defined as between a man and a woman. I have zero objections to this. If people wish to marry others of the same sex, they can come up with another name. If civil union doesn’t suit them, pick something else. Homosexual marriage in most cases is different than heterosexual marriage, so it makes sense to distinguish between them.

Here’s the easiest way to put it: any man and any woman can get married to each other without living together or loving each other, so why shouldn’t two men or two women who do love each other be able to do the same? As long as they have the same laws and consequences as heterosexuals, life will go on just fine. Come up with a new name for it if you don’t like “civil union.”

When I visited Europe, it made me proud to be American. There was nothing there I liked better than here (the sites are beautiful of course) EXCEPT the Coca-Cola. A couple months later, my brother handed me a Mexican coke, and it too tasted better than American coke.

Why does the greatest country in the world have lower-quality Coca-Cola than Mexico?

Answer: Greedy politicians in collusion with an American sugar company.

Meet the Fanjuls

The Fanjul family owns Flo-Sun Inc. In the ‘95/’96 campaign cycle, their family and their companies contributed $774,500. In the 2000 election cycle, they spent nearly $1 million. As a result, Congress has put tariffs in place against foreign-produced sugar that raises the price of sugar in America substantially. World-wide the average price of sugar is 7 cents per pound; in America, it is 21 cents. This puts Coca-Cola, and other companies in a pickle. Do they pay the additional 14 cents for real sugar, or find a substitute, like corn syrup, which is similar, but not as delicious? They chose corn syrup.

So for less than $1 million per year, the Fanjuls enjoy an estimated $65 million annually due to a manufactured price for sugar. Keeping a 14 cent difference between the two costs consumers about $2 billion annually. It is in their best interests to grease our politicians in order to keep their scam going. You can actually buy them in America, but they cost twice as much.

ENOUGH

Coke with sugar tastes better than coke with corn syrup in my opinion. I have yet to encounter a testimonial where that is not the case. The American people need to know that congressmen have no interest in helping or representing the people, and routinely put tariffs in place if it helps them politically. Restricting free trade to increase prices is the semi-legal way for congressmen and lobbyists to steal money. It should piss you off.
Some references…

America’s Sugar Daddies
Wikipedia
Sugar subsidies destroying Florida everglades

The Earth’s atmosphere is around 5×10^18 metric tons, or 5E18, give or take water vapor. The industrial output of the US in 2008 could be estimated to be around 8 billions tons. Let’s call it 10 billion. I saw another figure that the U.S. is responsible for 17% of all emissions worldwide. Lets call it 15%. So the total worldwide output of greenhouse gases is around 58.8 billion tons. Lets call it 60 billion.

60 billions tons of greenhouse gases amount to 1/83millionth of the atmosphere (5E18/6E10). To visualize this a little better, an Olympic swimming pool is 660,000 gallons. Our contribution to the “swimming pool” is 1.01 ounces per year. Despite my global-warming-alarmist-friendly numbers, rounding up every number along the way in their favor, we are contributing 1 ounce to an Olympic swimming pool (most community swimming pools are about 1/6th the size of an Olympic pool). What a joke. Al, your propaganda days are growing shorter.

It took a white preacher saying the same crap as Jeremiah Wright at the same church for Obama to decide to leave the church. Michael Pfleger is a self-hating white who has decided his schtick will be the white who hates whites so that people like Jeremiah Wright seem mainstream.

Obama still doesn’t have the backbone to denounce the church, in fact emphatically stating he will not entertain the idea. “It’s not a church worthy of denouncing.” Mr. Obama, please point to a church that is worth of denouncing so that we have point of reference. What does this church have to do? I am so uninterested in the good things the church does. I see parishioner after parishioner interviewed about Wright and Pfleger talking about all the good things they do. A stopped clock is right twice a day. Do the good deeds of someone wash away their bad deeds? Nazi scientists discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, and Hitler created the first nationwide ban on smoking in certain public locations including hospitals. I’m supposed to give a crap that the Trinity Church of Hate also runs intramural sports and gives money to charity? Does the KKK get to talk however they like as long as they have social programs?

This latest example of Barack Obama doing as little as possible to get rid of bad news is just more evidence that he is black first, American second. Actually I take that back, he is black first, anti-American second, and American whenever he needs to apologize for something.

Every step of the way Obama chooses to do as little as he can to separate himself from the associations that hurt him politically. I have never seen anyone straddle a fence like this guy. To this day, I still don’t understand his ascendancy. I can’t stand it anymore. John McCain is not my ideal candidate, but Barack Obama is not in the same league.

Barack Obama is a despicable coward with no moral courage.