30 | October | 2008 | Robot Pirate Ninja

HOUSTON — ExxonMobil (XOM), the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.

Bolstered by summer’s record crude prices, the company said net income jumped nearly 58% to $2.86 a share in the July-September period. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago.

The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set in the last quarter, when ExxonMobil earned $11.68 billion.

Revenue rose 35% to $137.7 billion.

via ExxonMobil posts biggest quarterly profit ever, $14.8B – USATODAY.com

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A couple things to point out here real quick, first up is the fact that net income (profit) rose 58% while revenue (total income) only went up 35%. That means that Exxon, already setting records for profits, has been increasing their profit margin over the last year.

When you take a closer look at another article, you can see exactly how that was done.

Despite the surge in profit, Exxon said oil production was down 8% in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.

So just to set this straight, Exxon made record profits, in the billions, by producing less oil than they did last year.

You know what’s better than working less and making more? Having an entire political party trying to help you make even more money with less work, and cut your taxes, while you sit on an ever growing pile of cash.

Let’s see what the business response would be to “Drill, Baby, Drill.”…

Big Oil: Sure, we’ll drill, baby. When we’re good and ready and the price of oil is both high enough and stable enough to ensure a healthy return. What? You think you can order us to drill? HAHAHA!!! This isn’t socialism, you can’t control industry through democracy.

Now give us those leases, stat!

I keep hearing that the secret to success and energy independence is drilling, working hard, and tax cuts. Yet I what I see here is something working less, producing less oil, getting tax cuts, and RAKING IN BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of profits.

And speaking of McCain’s tax cuts, meant to reward hard working small businesses, doan’cha know. Here’s who gets most of ’em.

Straight to the fact check.

Fact check: McCain tax cuts give $200 billion to corporations, $4 billion to oil companies?

The Verdict: True. Obama’s statement accurately reflects two studies of McCain’s tax proposals.

So the idea here is to give Exxon a tax break in order to “motivate” them to work harder…after they’ve already realized, much like OPEC, that they can make more money by producing less. Nice. Not bad work if you can find it.

Heck, you even get to party with and bang government officials in order to help keep “taxes” lower.

Guess who else gets to enjoy McCain’s tax cut reward for their hard work?

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — Five straight quarters of losses and a 70 percent slide in its stock this year haven’t stopped Merrill Lynch & Co. from allocating about $6.7 billion to pay bonuses.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, both still on track for profitable years, have set aside about $13 billion for bonuses after three quarters, down 28 percent from a year ago. Even some employees at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which declared the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history last month, will get the same bonus they received a year ago.

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, public outcry over excessive pay and the demise of three of the biggest securities firms won’t deter Wall Street from offering year-end rewards to employees on top of their salaries, compensation experts say.

[full story]

These are the kind of people that *really* benefit from McCain’s tax cuts, and have enjoyed *tremendous* benefits from Bush’s tax cuts…but I repeat myself.

The City of Dallas recently laid off over 400 teachers because of a $65 million shortfall for the year. Over the last 90 days Exxon made of profit of about $1,900 a second. That’s over $150 million a day. In profit.

Exxon is based in Dallas County.

Doesn’t it seem like, oh, I don’t know…rational public policy…to actually bring in enough money in taxes to pay for public services?

Some might say the market should solve the problem, but I would rather tax Exxon and have Dallas county schools, than cut taxes on Exxon and get Exxon-branded Education Centers. And DISD isn’t even that good a school district. It did, however, get shafted like the rest of the country by No Child Left Behind, which was underfunded….BECAUSE OF TAX CUTS.

Giving even more tax cuts to Exxon and Goldman Sachs and their respective execs is not doing to do a damn thing to motivate them to work harder.

Making sure your kids, and your neighbor’s kids, have FREAKING TEACHERS in school trumps “executive compensation” in my humble opinion.

Giving massive tax cuts to folks who squeeze the commodity market and sell bullshit securities, while our schools and fire departments lay off people, doesn’t seem like sound public policy to me.

Maybe my priorities are wrong. Maybe if I believed that the highest ideal a human could strive for was “Profit, baby, profit” I could go along with McCain’s tax policy.

But I don’t, and I can’t.

So I won’t.

Just looking through the logs and I found a link that led me to this search result on CNN.com.

Campbell Brown

This is as a result of doing some fact checking on Campbell Brown’s hit piece on Obama’s fundraising (or as she’d say it, how Obama lied to rake in millions)

The funny part is, after reading more about the story, I realized that CNN had done their own fact-checking…

Fact Check: Did Obama say he would accept public financing if McCain did?

The Verdict: Mostly true. Obama did indicate he would accept public financing if his opponent did the same. But he did not sign anything, as McCain states. Obama did not sit down with McCain before Obama’s decision on public financing, but members of both campaigns met with each other on the issue.

You would think it would take a bit more than a quibble to call someone a liar and thief, but not for Campbell Brown.

I wonder, now, if this has anything to do with the father of her children, and salesman for the War in Iraq (2003 and 2004 version), Dan Senor. Dan is a budding young neocon, with a resume that already includes working for the Carlyle Group, the Council of Foreign Relations, and fucking up at least one Middle Eastern country. He hopes to fuck up another one (Iran) and is currently writng a history of Israel. Who would have thunk it?

Mr. Senor, a regular commentator on Fox News who is married to CNN anchor Campbell Brown, recently served as a campaign adviser to Mitt Romney. Before that, he worked for the Bush administration as an adviser to Paul Bremer, who was at one point charged with overseeing the reconstruction of post-invasion Iraq. Mr. Senor’s sister (his co-writer’s wife) heads the Jerusalem office of the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.

The book by Mr. Senor and Mr. Singer, titled Start Up Nation, will “explore Israel’s success in the global economy,” according to a description provided by Twelve’s publicity director Cary Goldstein. Twelve acquired the book in a preempt from U.K.-based literary agent Ed Victor.

BTW folks, if you really want to know why the Iraq War was such an expensive debacle, why why got lied into the war, why some journalists didn’t ask too many hard questions while working at or for the White House, and why someone with a complete and utter disdain for a culture was sent to rebuilt it, you can ask Dan Senor and Campbell Brown. They have personal experience in the matter.

And it’s a funny cliche that Jon Stewart makes fun of all the time.

On April 2, 2006, Brown married her second husband Daniel Samuel Senor (born 1971), a Republican consultant who regularly appears on Fox News.^[3]^[4] Brown converted to Judaism, her husband’s faith;^[5] the two were married in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony.^[6]

Look, I got nothing against jewish people, particularly the older ones, (and most “real” jews wouldn’t consider Campbell one now anyway) so please don’t think that’s why I’m taking it so hard to Dan and Campbell. I do think it is a bit revealing about why Dan Senor fucked up Iraq so badly, and why he showed complete and utter ignorance, bordering on contempt, for Muslim history and culture.

When you have enough personal knowledge of the history of Israel to write a book about a small part of that history, you probably spent more time studying that than Arabic, eh? When your sister works for AIPAC, what do you think the tone around the dinner table is?

Don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a guy who speaks Arabic, or would even want to, with you as a “spokesman” when you invade an Arab country? Naah, not for neocons. For neocons, studying Israel’s economic history is perfect experience for your next job of rebuilding a Muslim country. Kinda like how the North ran Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War here in the U.S. Works great. Just look at how efficiently Atlanta was rebuilt.

I’m taking it so hard to Dan because I watched his smarmy face spout lies and bullshit and idiocy about the Iraq war for a number of years. I’m taking it so hard to Campbell because during one of the great failures of the media during our time, the one that should keep us out of stupid wars by calling bullshit on smarmy PR assholes, she was instead making doughy eyes and babies with the very person she was supposed to be calling bullshit on.

Good to see how professionalism is rewarded in “punditry” (if she ever was, Campbell Brown is no longer a “journalist”).