It’s the Profits Stupid!
The Rise and Rise of Exxon’s Take From America
How sad. Exxon Mobil, the universe’s largest publicly traded company, which also happens to be enjoying some of its biggest profits ever thanks to the almost doubled price of oil during the past year, didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations this week. In fact, its stock fell nearly 4% the day it announced its first quarter of 2008 earnings.
Unfortunately, this does not make the pain at the pump pulsing through the nation any more bearable. Apparently, Exxon could have made more profit, had it not chosen to hold back further gas price hikes. Instead, earnings in its refining business (which converts crude oil to gallons of useable gas) weren’t as strong as it had wanted. Yes, that’s right — Exxon would have made even more money had they passed more pain onto the public. They were just being “nice.” Right.
As people contemplate paying $4 per gallon for gas, not to mention the havoc those higher oil prices wreak on their home fuel costs, Exxon isn’t really skimming less off the top in order to be a Team America player. Nor does Exxon feel the same pain from these high oil prices that ordinary citizens feel while driving to school, work, the grocery store or childcare. The $21.7 million paycheck (18% more than last year) of Exxon’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, certainly covers a whole lot of gas.
No, that Exxon didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations is just pre-election spin, ensuring that whichever candidate gets into the Oval Office doesn’t try to take some of their profits away by taxing them. (Not that they’d have to worry if John McCain wins the election.)
Exxon posted an almost $11 billion profit for the first quarter of 2008 on a staggering $117 billion in total revenue, which was up from $87.2 billion in revenue last year (or, more than a third of the projected 2008 $311 billion US deficit.) Part of Exxon’s windfall still came from higher gas prices, which on average, rose about 30% over the year, as oil prices rose from $60 to $100 at the end of the last quarter it reported.
Plus, Exxon’s earnings were up 17% versus the same quarter last year, pulling in the second-highest quarterly earnings in US history for any corporation. To put it in perspective, Exxon’s last earnings for all of 2007 were a record $40.6 billion, which puts them in the running, if oil prices stay where they are, to come in at about 10% above that for 2008.
So, is Exxon joining the “go-green, don’t be dependent on foreign oil” mantras popular in this election cycle? Are they spending some of that hard-earned cash on alternative energy sources? Not so much. Instead it was busy investing in itself, buying back $31.8 billion of its own stock out of that $40.6 billion profit, compared with just $3.3 billion in US capital investment. Says Tyson Slocum, Energy Director at Public Citizen, “This discrepancy certainly shows that motorists aren’t getting any bank for their buck out of it.”
And Exxon wasn’t the only one struggling to beat their previous record profits. Oil companies around the world were feeling the love from record crude oil prices. Firms like BP and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, despite flat production over the quarter, posted stellar, even better than expected first quarter earnings, up 64% and 25% in profit respectively. ConocoPhillips’ first-quarter earnings increased 17% to $4.1 billion.
On Friday, Chevron added to the oil company euphoria, posting a net income rise of 37% for the first quarter of 2008, and revenues of $65 billion, up from $33 billion, though also citing more limited refining profits (the ‘downstream’ part of their business — upstream is oil production). Like Exxon, Chevron also chose to use its profits to buy its own stock — underscoring that the best investment for oil companies is — oil companies. The firm bought back $2 billion of its own stock during the first quarter.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton appropriately commented, “There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon’s record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street. But on Main Street, middle-class families are facing devastating choices every day between buying groceries and filling up their gas tanks to get to work.”
Unfortunately, Clinton’s understanding didn’t translate into a fully useful policy suggestion. Both Clinton and John McCain suggested helping American drivers with a “gas-tax holiday,” in which the gas price at the pump would be temporarily exempt from certain federal taxes, providing consumers with an 18.4 cent-a-gallon price break. Clinton would make up for the money the federal budget would lose by not collecting that gas tax, by taking it from the current tax breaks oil companies already enjoy. McCain didn’t really elaborate on what he’d cut money from to compensate, but suggested the tax holiday would allow families to pay for school costs — an odd attempt at cause and effect logic (which would work only if school costs were a fraction of what they really are).
The gas-tax holiday proposal would only work if gas companies were not allowed to pocket that 18.4 cent difference by increasing pump prices anyway, to somewhere just below an 18.4 cent rise — which would leave the total price almost the same. Somehow, trusting and gas companies don’t quite fit together. Indeed according to Slocum, “This is pointless pandering. There’s no guarantee prices will actually fall 18.4 cents, plus the Highway Trust Fund that the tax promotes is in need of the money, particularly for mass transit investment (which would be energy-friendly).”
Senator Barack Obama didn’t back the proposed tax holiday, nor did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but both Obama and Clinton (in her Economic Blueprint) have proposed a windfall-profits tax before. In Obama’s case, he would impose a tax on each barrel of oil priced over $80, which his camp says would extract three times the $50 billion, 10-year windfall-profits tax that Clinton proposes collecting from oil companies.
Both are a start, but too tame. The reality is that gas companies can and do profit disproportionately from higher oil prices, limiting their need, without any enforced regulation or tax consequences, to either find alternative energy sources or support means to reduce energy dependency.
What’s needed is a major extraction from the pocket books of the oil giants that will steer them toward alternative energy. They must be brought to participate, by limiting their profits, in funding solutions for energy conservation — like more money for mass transit, rebates for motorists to buy super fuel-efficient cars, incentives for families to install solar panels, and other means of reducing oil dependency. Meanwhile, there are many Americans who simply have to drive to work, care for their kids or parents, get food, or get educated. Some must make their living in driving and transport. Others find that rents or homes near their work are unaffordable making a commute necessary. Providing more transportation alternatives with windfall profit money would be both cost and energy effective.
All this must be taken into account when determining practical energy policy, and in order to achieve cost benefits to more Americans now, and in the future.
Nomi Prins is a journalist and Senior Fellow at Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization. She is the author of Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How “Conservatives” are Picking your Pocket (whether you voted for them or not). Other People’s Money, a devastating exposé into corporate corruption, political collusion and Wall Street deception was chosen as a Best Book of 2004 by The Economist, Barron’s and The Library Journal.
Copyright © 2008 The Women’s International Perspective
Oh come on! everyone knows that “THE BIG OIL” has nothing but the best interests of the people, who’s monies the oil barons are literally drowning in,
at the forefront of all their decisions.
To claim they are greedy, self interested and bottom line driven, just isn’t fair ..after all they have DONE SO MUCH to improve the world we live in…
The government should reward these mighty juggernauts of commerce, with all sorts of tax breaks and incentives… oh wait the government already does that…
Maybe they (the big oil guys), don’t have enough of the market share to be able to fairly compete and need more help from the people and government…
After all, how can the BIG GUYS be expected to maintain their lifestyles, on the paltry record profits, gouged from the rest of us?
These profits and huge salaries will be donated to the GOP and their “special groups” which will use the money to buy attack ads and political favors so they can continue to make profits with little regulation or competition from sustainable energy sources.
The left needs to start yelling about how it is “Unamerican to profit off of the American people like this.” Even IF the “business of america is business” the oil companies are un-american because they are interfering with the normal operations of all other business.
We need to start talking about nationalizing oil. That along with all energy sectors, schools, prisons, etc. It is, after all, a major infrastructure of this country. And it all gets mixed together anyway, like electricity. The right has been privatizing all of this stuff for a reason; so that they can pick our pockets. And in every instance is has been shown to be a boondoggle that citizens end up regretting. Well, unless they own stock or have a white collar job working for the company that has privatized it. This is how they pay off.
The mindset is that if you go along you will be paid off. There is an illusion of inclusion; that if you nod agreement and allow privatization you might be able to join the club. And some do. Some get there 30 pieces of silver, and the ones that can really play along, warm handshake, club tie and an easy smile, might hit pay dirt. But for the rest of us, the unfortunate, the unbathed and the unwilling, we will be screwed. It will not be forgotten where you stood on these issues.
AND, we need to start enforcing the anti-trust laws that are on the books.
Conservatives all claim right about now that the president doesn’t have enough power to control the economy. When I hear that I laugh out loud and say “well then why the hell do corporations pay so much to make sure that there man is elected?”
Conservative policies do not work and only enrich a few, at the expense of the many. How well the propaganda has worked… just look at how many poor people vote conservative.
Why is it every time there is a problem at an OIL refinery the price jumps due to a shortage or gas. Didn’t ENRON do the same thing creat a shortage then jack up the price? Is that not illegal and any repairs to refineries should be taken out of profits not passed onto the consumer.
Put a profit cap on the industry the rest goes into alternative energy.
Come to think of it this Iraq invasion could have put a Hybrid in every drive.
AGAIN another CD story and not a main US media story. Time to start to phone the networks and ask why don’t you have any guts
HRC was just blathering on about ‘confronting the oil companies on their profits, and confronting OPEC to cut oil prices in half and increase production’.
This leads to two probabilities:
1) HRC was pandering to the audience, saying what they wanted to hear, knowing that she is beholden to the very interests she says she is going to confront. (VERY PROBABLE)
2) HRC is dangerously delusional, and does not understand that if she ‘confronts’ the oil companies and OPEC in the manner she suggests, she is very likely to suffer a ‘Paul Wellstone’ moment, i.e. dies in a ‘convenient’ accident. (not probable)
Modern Western society is the product of petroleum. The oil is running out. The OIl Companies know this. That is why they stopped building refineries 25 years ago. No matter how many ‘gas tax holidays’ are proposed, or how much oil is removed from the Strategic National Reserve, or ANWR is despoiled for the meager six month supply of gasoline it would produce, will prevent the collapse of modern technological civilization.
Today’s politicians are the creation and puppets of a shadowy cabal of corporations, intelligence agencies and the obscenely wealthy. They DO NOT exist to help the common man. They are in power to insure the profits of the Corporate State. Nothing more.
Anyone who denies this to themselves has not been paying attention to world events since the end of WWII. Modern society exists only as a life support system for the wealthy.
Hollow Point- (good choice on the handle BTW) The MSM knows about this. It’s not that they don’t care.
THEY HAVE BEEN ORDERED BY THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS TO BURY THE STORY!
If you doubt me, maybe you should read Barry Zwicker’s ‘Towers of Deception’.
Getting Exxon the “be nice” is really very simple. You get two large bailiffs to take Rex Tillerson by the arms and throw him off a tall building. Exxon hires another CEO, we keep the bailiffs on retainer, and I’ll bet those mysterious “market forces” find a way to get pump prices a lot better.
Omission of stories like this from the corporate media is not by mistake, but by design. Remember corporations are just holding companies. The owners of corporations own all kinds of other businesses as well - including (especially) the media. They spend a fortune on buying candidates (and make a much larger fortune in return), you don’t think they are smart enough to own the media as well? Gotta cover every avenue to feed your addiction to greed and power.
If we want to solve the problem of Big Oil or Little Oil or wars over this resources then let’s solve the root causes of this problem instead of getting distracted worrying about these companies profits. That right…its a distraction. Nothing will be solved. Your rightous or unrightous anger is in complete vain.
Root cause: Motive Transportation in the USA is enslaved to a single commodity of oil,gasoline,diesel.
Solutions: Minimizing or replacing oil as a dominant source of motive power.
How-To: Utilize the grid via PHEV, electric vehicles. Have internal combustion engines run on multiple of fuels, ban corn ethanol (others made from waste but not food sources ok), hydrogen fueling stations.
How-Not-To: DO NOT ban or punish coal powered plants. Their more efficient than gasoline and we need them for the time being. Push for solid-oxide fuel cell coal power (really really efficient and clean). DO NOT LIMIT natural gas. We have ooodles and its the highest hydrogen/carbon fuel we have. Use it for fuel cells and to get off of oil.
DO NOT use food sources for fuel…its stupid
DO NOT make incentives for solar, wind etc, only for corporations…that’s fine but the consumer and home-owner have a far better vested interest in getting electricity cheaper (if not free) and using that to help power their vehicles.
nuff said.
“Mc Cain suggests the gas tax cuts could could help with school costs”(paraphrased) Duh? Even a blonde knows school is out during the summer “Driving” season. This populist pandering sounds good on the campaign trail,did Hillary or McCain actually make this proposal in the Senate?
Nice Pink Floyd reference, qbaldsmoove. Funny how relevant that song still is today.
Lets cap prices.
“They must be brought to participate, by limiting their profits, in funding solutions for energy conservation — like more money for mass transit, rebates for motorists to buy super fuel-efficient cars, incentives for families to install solar panels, and other means of reducing oil dependency.”
This is exactly correct. Right now the game is for the government to do absolutely nothing to help this situation other than to do whatever the oil companies want, while everybody else suffers. There’s plenty of talk out there about what We, the People can do to help both the global warming and gas shortage problems, and there are things we can do, like refuse to buy gas-guzzling vehicles and insulate our houses better and drive less and so on, but we can’t do it all on our own. And there are plenty of us who just won’t do it, not unless and until they’re told by our government that it’s necessary (and some can’t do it, mostly because they’re too broke). After all, our government knows a lot more about these problems than do independent oil geologists and climate scientists.
Common Dreams is read by a lot of people. If any of you have the ear of Obama please scream this message into his brain.
Connect the Iraq War, and the vote for the war, to the high gas prices!!! Before the war, oil was at $20 a barrel, today it is at $120. $100 more!!!
Clinton and McCain voted for the war - they are responsible for the high gas prices!!!
Obama will end the war and the price of oil will fall. If you vote for Clinton you will save a penny - if you vote for Obama you will save a dollar!!!
Connect Connect Connect
Stop this argument about economists, pandering, and it didn’t work in Illinois. Clinton looks like she is trying to help those who are suffering, and Obama looks like he doesn’t care, perception is reality.
Damn I was trying to stay out of the silly politics - But Obama is acting stupid.
Ramsay
There will be little left of the great USA when big business has finally looted the coffers of the last pauper.
What a bunch of whining babies acting like you’re entitled to non-renewable polluting resources on the cheap. As for the profits, that’s math — a given percentage of a larger number is a larger number. Sorry your addiction is becoming expensive, blaming your “pusher” is certainly the answer, not kicking the “habit”.
Real leaders would have encouraged putting the brakes on the move to larger vehicles, enabled by classifying SUVs and vans as “light trucks”, and instead encouraged conservation, alternative energy, and sustainability years ago. It has been 16 years of the Clinton/Bush do- nothing-administration for the sake of a happy-economy party. This folly is at the expense of our children’s children.
Shame on everyone. Quit whining.
dmgreenaz: Here, here. The SUV owners also cause more accidents because 1) drivers of the smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, can’t see around them, and 2) almost all the time the SUV driver is on the cellphone. How’s that for some stereotyping, Mr. and Ms. Rich? Take that for calling us lazy. losers, and (dirty word) liberals.
Retire Green - Obama is an infanticidal nutcase. He advocates and supports infanticide and euthanasia…he might as well be called Adolf. All he will do is drive America into the ground quicker.
I wonder which large American commercial building containing the SEC records for Exxon is slated to go ‘boom’? You know, the way WTC Building 7 committed suicide on 9/11?
Bronto- nice to see another CIA troll besides AngstOfTheSHEEPLE in here.
Most of their profits are taken in the tax havens, those that get reported are a drop in the bucket.
Obama would simply need to whisper in Exxons ear, how about us nationalizing you big fellah and shutting down the tax havens, and oil prices would be down to 40 dollars a barrel overnight. His life expectancy might be measured in weeks though. JFK went up against Big Oil, and was set to cut their oil depletion allowance.
brontoburger:
I think you are a troll. I have my reservations about Obama. See the Counterpunch article, a great progressive website, about how Obama is owned by Wall Street. http://counterpunch.com/martens05052008.html
As a progressive, I watch this election, as the elimination of the lesser evils. And I believe that Obama is the least of the evils still in this election. No matter how much I distaste Daniel David, he still has a valid point, the world would be a better place with Al Gore instead of George Bush.
To those who point out, that pooh pooh on the people that have to pay more for gas, you are stupid. Our economy runs on oil. If you are like me, a person who doesn’t own a car, then the rise in gas pump prices doesn’t hurt so much. But you and I are still paying for the rise in oil prices, this economy, our country, is lubricated by oil.
The world food shortage is caused by high oil prices. When I go shopping at the supermarket I pay for the increase in oil prices. Yes, we should get away from oil, we should provide our energy from renewable resources.
brontoburger I take your attack on me as a signal that I am correct. Obama’s heart I wish to beleive is true, his strategy is too safe, the Iraq war and those who voted for it are responsible for the high gas prices.
So I repeat, if you have Obama’s ear then scream into his brain, that the Iraq war and those that voted for it are responsible for the price you pay for gas.
I am not sure if Obama wants to create a better country, or he is just an agent of Wall Street, an Uncle Tom for corporate America. Like I said, I wish to avoid the silly politics, but Obama is acting stupid. And I know, after this torturous primary, that Obama is a smart man, so Barack Obama it’s time to connect the dots. Dude step up!
Ramsay
“Omission of stories like this from the corporate media is not by mistake, but by design. ”
There was no real “story” that I saw, just the *usual* lament about the high profit number, the CEO compensation (less than one half of one percent of expences, stock holders really don’t care) and the idea that there should be a windfall profits tax (which doesn’t really work, consumers will pay one way or another whether taxed directly or if the companies that supply them the things they want get taxed).
I use the word “usual” above because I in fact see these kinds of “stories” (editorial comment actually) all the time, including on Fox News. I just don’t buy that anything in the above story is buried.
“What a bunch of whining babies acting like you’re entitled to non-renewable polluting resources on the cheap. As for the profits, that’s math — a given percentage of a larger number is a larger number. Sorry your addiction is becoming expensive, blaming your “pusher” is certainly the answer, not kicking the “habit”. ”
Five points, redeamable at the bar.
“Most of their profits are taken in the tax havens, those that get reported are a drop in the bucket. ”
Can you supply any specifics please?
jakenewton:
I’m gonna have to agree on one hand and disagree on the other. Yes oil companies profit margins (Net income % Revenues) are pretty tame at around 10% compared to a google (~40%). However I would disagree that it is the fault of the many many people that HAVE to drive to get to work to feed their families. I mean this is not discretionary spending, this is a need.
Maybe one day it will not be a need, with some source of permanent renewable, but until then , the government really does need to step in to this highly manipulated and tightly (supply) controlled ‘free’ market. They stepped in to save a public brokerage firm (Bear Stearns), We are getting a $600 rebate check from the govt, so the ‘free market’ argument is not always valid. What would you suggest to those who live paycheck to paycheck and live in a big city, and must drive? The little guy can’t just ‘quit the habit’ like you suggest the solution would be.
Also, like the author of this piece stated, the amount that these companies pour back into their own stock is very high percentage wise. And of course, why would they not when there is no real incentive for them to invest in renewable energy.
” However I would disagree that it is the fault of the many many people that HAVE to drive to get to work to feed their families. I mean this is not discretionary spending, this is a need. ”
Thank you for your response. I’m not sure what it is that you disagree with me on. Yes, getting to work is a need, we agree on that, but there are different ways of going about that. SUV sales are down, reflecting gas prices that are too high. People can car pool, ride bikes, move closer to work, etc. If the trend in gas prices continue, you will see all of these changes more and more.
That is definitely true, although I believe car sales in general are down pretty huge…but the demand from the cars already on the road is not going anywhere, it may stay level, but not down, so I thought I disagreed with you about whether or not people driving too much is the problem, and therefore the solution …instead of there being a solution only in govt intervention (at least in the incentive form) for the short to meidum term…
but thank you also for your input
As the oil component costs of the money economy increases the oil companies will eventually own the US of Terrorism. Or do they already?
It’s remarkable how successfully Big Oil has managed to stay under the public radar in the last decade or so. Brilliant performance. (And how did the merger of Mobil and Exxon get official blessing?)
Compare previous decades when endless detailed books on the corruption that is Big Oil came out on a regular basis
- c/f Anthony Sampson’s The Seven Sisters; John Blair’s The Control of Oil (Blair’s premature death a tragic loss); Robert Engler’s The Brotherhood of Oil; Louis Turner’s Oil Companies in the International System; etc.
Nor for just a day but for as long as it takes….BOYCOTT EXXON MOBIL!!!
The big Western oil companies are protecting themselves from the near future. There is a reason for the big mergers over the last decade or so, this reason is the amount of oil (reserves) in these companies’ “bathtubs”. Bad times for these companies are coming - they know it and so do a few other power brokers. By bad times I don’t mean collapse, I mean less control of crude and the subsequent dwindling revenue from this part of the oil equation. Of the 85 million barrels or so produced every day, big oil is responsible for a minor share of it and this share is getting smaller every year.
Most oil reserves in the world are owned by national oil companies of sovereign nations. Most of the world’s production comes from these firms and this percentage will increase over the years to come. Exxon/Mobil and others will still have downstream revenue but they won’t have the whole pie - hence the worry in the boardrooms and the offices of the elite, whether political or private.
“BOYCOTT EXXON MOBIL!!!”
I imagine you have the best intentions but the bioycott cry is knee jerk. A boycott would never work. Oil and gasoline are fungible commodities. Exxon-Mobil is no different from any of the other companies, the others do the same thing but they just aren’t quite as big. If you want to do something, then use less oil and gasoline.
The car companies have started to invest in cellulose biofuels. They have for far too long been way too dependent on the oil industry for their future. This is the last greed fest for the oil companies and they know it. They helped put Bush in there to make sure that they got all the profits that they could get in the oil end game.
Have you heard they are going to start showing pornographic movies at all gas stations in America?
That way you can watch someone else getting fucked at the same time you are.
Personally if we put half of our energy used to whine about oil company profits into doing something to create alternative energy we could have this turned around quickly. The problem is that we do not have a real conversation about energy. It seems there are only 2 extreme sides to choose from. Kill the oil companies or kill the planet with them. both ideas are steeped in rhetoric and seriously short on facts. Something in the middle might actually contain truth and solutions while preserving the economy.
Problem #1 - EVERY SINGLE person who considers themselves environmentally conscious has many items in their lives that would not exist without crude oil. Everything made of plastic, your MAC, iPod, iPhone, cell phone, baby carriage, stroller, child car seat - are ALL made from crude oil. What will you all do for your children’s safety without plastic?
Problem #2 - the real issue with crude oil is its use as a fuel. We have never needed to use it for fuel. We chose to. Back at the turn of the last century - early 1900’s - oil companies bought up the copyrights to many other types of combustion engines that did not burn gasoline.
Solutions will come when we recognize hat the oil companies are not going to invest in alternative energy. Accept this and move on. First Solar is a public company - one of many - investing in and building industrial solar power plants with a 100% recycled assembly line producing thin film solar panels. United Technologies is heavily invested in geo-thermal power in the midwest. Trinity is builing wind towers, GE wind turbines… My point is we do not need the oil companies on board to produce good and effective alternative energy solutions. BP is one oil company that is investing in alternatives though. Waste Management is using their landfills to produce natural gas also. Other companies have put venture capital into wave energy from the ocean as well as using algae to clean coal fired power plants emissions to zero and taking the excess algae and recycling that for use as biofuels.
Read the book Earth: The Sequel - written by the President of the Environmental Defense Fund - it is loaded with positive information on the many forms of safe alternative energy. the reality is we will need natural gas and coal - clean burning coal - to make the change over from fossil fuels.
Electric cars were developed by Ford and GM - not hybrids - pure electric cars - that were on roads in Calif from 96-06. Then they were all destroyed when the legislation that forced the companies to produce them expired. See the movie “Who killed the Electric Car”. now there are several other newer car companies Tesla, ZENN, and others producing electric cars and several shops popping up in the country doing conversions of gasline engines to electric. My point is that we have solutions - we simply need to begin to use them. Damn the govt - big oil and big auto - we do not need them. Once they see the little guys selling things and making money - they will get on board. they are greedy and will not pass up the opportunity to make money. Stop whining about what has been done in the past and start makinng the real changes needed to drive the future.
The true issues are rarely enjoined by the public or the politicians the reasons are clear. Special interests and “free enterprise” capitalism it is what this country has devised as worth living an dying for. The basis for the consumer ideology is energy and its association with an auto centered economy closes the circle. It uses the media to direct the public flow of the so-called truth and we have a perfect example of it in this political campaign. It is why Exxon Mobile is out of control and the public is given platitudes rather than help. It is why a $30 gift is given to the electorate by Clinton and McCain. They are both extreme “free marketer”and it is why this establishment is afraid of Obama.
The media is out of control this election has shown us just how far it has gone to dumb-down the public. The recent move by ABC to remove candidates from the debates was outrageous. They are trying to determine , the fate of the country and the world being mouthpiece for special interests and the government and to silence dissent.
Media censure is unheard, the FCC should rule for the public but like the EPA its teeth are continually drawn. The media has no right to exclude any politician who is running for office as happened recently with the ABC debate. The only exclusion under the rules used by ABC should apply to a candidate not sitting in public office. The license of ABC would be lifted if the rules were changed but the congress, with the exception of a few pushes for more media conglomeration supported by special interests. I hope that someone picks up on this thought. We have seen the obsession by FOX and CNN, particularly in the form of Wolf Blitzer, and the FOX rabid journalists constantly referring to the Rev. Wright controversy.
Blitzer’s bias is clear. He is quick to use every possible negative he can against Obama from the Flag Pin to anything else he could get his mouth around. His support for Clinton has been clear and inappropriate, for CNN to call itself a “fair and balanced” news network. I quote Mr. Nichols: ” The media pretense of being a fly on the wall has often been preposterous. In the real world of politics — where power brokers and manipulators proceed with the cynical axiom that perception is reality — the fly on the wall is the wall. The political press corps is not observing reality as much as redefining it while obstructing outlooks and constraining public perceptions.”
As usual, few are able to see the stampede of the public sheep created by media. I support the change that Obama represents! He is intelligent and wants America once again to be looked upon as a great nation that it could still be and once was. The present “lack of experience” cry of Clinton is preposterous. Could anyone having been near the White house as long as Bush done as badly for the USA? There is experience! However, the discovery of a job approval rating for him at about 28% of the American people speaks volumes about experience. No one could have been as bad as the Bush team! There is experience!
A flight from entrenched American politics is necessary . . .it has ruined this country and made greed the single value of importance. The young people once again embrace hope as a result of the Obama campaign. The Hillary political group and entrenched politics have virtually destroyed America with its policies and exclusive power clubs. She has believed this form government is America.
Clinton recently morphed to the Obama populist message, it was called, “finding her voice” while at the beginning of her stump showing her Madeline Albright, bomb the children image. Can anyone truly think that change is unnecessary? I guess not since all the politicos have adopted his message including McCain? The mistakes that Obama may make as president cannot be greater than those of the past seven years. It is also necessary to give him a democratic congress to make certain that the programs that Americans want can be enacted.
Mr. Gore Vidal, has pointedly criticized mainstream media as one of the major problems, and what is wrong with the USA. The corporate media conglomerates control the message and that message is perversely distorted and panders to its advertising portfolio! Wolf Blitzer one of the glaring examples of this criticism and shows clearly those distorted ideas with his reporting, which is nothing more than partially factual opinion dictated by his bosses.
He is a person who has no right to shape public opinion far from being the “fly on the wall” he espouses to be. We must remember flies morph from maggots. He displays ignorance as a virtue for the entire world to see, an example of what is considered, by many in America to be news reporting. If Blitzer were billed as a CNN commentator, at least the public would not be hoodwinked to believe his reporting to be the truth, while it is lack of concern for accuracy, rectitude and fairness to be considered to be news rather than opinion.