Thursday, February 01, 2007
For the Little Guy
Back in October, I passed along the disheartening news that ExxonMobil had failed to break its record for quarterly profits in the third quarter of 2006. No, sadly, ExxonMobil only posted its second most profitable quarter ever. The news was stunning.
At the time, I issued a crie de coeur on behalf of the entire ExxonMobil family, as those brave souls were doing their best to scrape by, and cope with this unthinkable tragedy:
So pop a bottle of Cristal to celebrate this brief moment of success, but tomorrow, it's back to work. For us that is.
At the time, I issued a crie de coeur on behalf of the entire ExxonMobil family, as those brave souls were doing their best to scrape by, and cope with this unthinkable tragedy:
I think I speak for most Americans when I say: this regression will not stand. No, my fellow citizens, ExxonMobil and its shareholders are in need of a massive relief effort - and not some half-hearted gulf coast renewal sop, mind you. No, we need to mobilize the vast wealth of this nation to rectify this wrong. I'm talking even more tax cuts - prodigious in size, scope and duration - established in order to insure that ExxonMobil, and other struggling oil companies, can continue to break earnings records in perpetuity.Well my fellow Americans, our hard work and perseverance has paid off. Big time:
I expect the usual suspects to complain: those lazy, avaricious middle class Americans, medicare devotees and seniors looking for a free handout from the Social Security system. They will argue that their entitlements are more important than saving our oil industry leaders from certainmild disappointmentfinancial ruin. They will tug on our heartstrings, play on our fears - appeal to "reason." They will wage - gasp! - class warfare.
Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company — $39.5 billion — even as earnings for the last quarter of 2006 declined 4 percent.Words cannot express the joy I feel in my heart, knowing that we have done this small bit of good in the world. Brace yourselves, though. This is no time to bask in the glory of a job well done. We must redouble our efforts to preserve the massive, multi-trillion dollar tax breaks for the likes of ExxonMobil that hang in the balance - being eyed, greedily, by a rapacious Democratic Congress that would sooner see a portion of this money "redistributed" to the "alleged" working poor by providing health care to uninsured children, and other "interest groups" like Americans over the age of 65 that are living high on the hog off of their own previously contributed tax dollars.
The 2006 profit topped Exxon Mobil’s own previous record of $36.13 billion set in 2005.
Revenue at the world’s largest publicly traded oil company rose to $377.64 billion for the year, surpassing the record $370.68 billion Exxon posted in 2005.
So pop a bottle of Cristal to celebrate this brief moment of success, but tomorrow, it's back to work. For us that is.
