"Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing voices, be able to turn lies into truth?" - George Orwell, 1984
". . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln, 1864
Chevron Corp just released their 4th quarter report which showed a $5.1 billion net income for the quarter. That brought their 2011 net earnings to $26.9 billion. So what did Chevron do with all that money?
The enrichment of stock holders came in the form of buying back company stock. Buying stock, especially in large quantities, causes the price of stock to increase substantially. And the price of Chevron stock increased from $91.25 on December 31, 2010 to $106.40 one year later. That’s a $15.15 increase for calendar year 2011.
John Watson became CEO of Chevron in September 2009. At the end of 2010 he had 987,000 stock options. At a per share price increase of $15.15, that means Watson was $14,953,050 richer (on paper) at the end of 2011 than he was at the beginning of 2011. The remainder of the executive officers at Chevron were just as proportionally enriched.
Of course other benefactors of the buy back program include employees who participate in Chevron’s stock program. But the big boys on Wall Street were the big winners. Hedge funds love the likes of Chevron.
Okay, so you’re still waiting on me to show you the trickle-down results. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’ve already done that — it trickled down to the owners of Chevron stock. So, trickle-down-economics does work. That’s why we should lower corporate taxes even more and continue to give them taxpayer subsidies. Trickle-down-economics (supply-side-economics) works so very, very well — for the people at the top!
Here we go again — taking another baby-step toward eliminating political opposition.
Republican state Senator John Thrasher of Florida has proposed a bill that would ban state college and university employees, such as professors, from serving in the state legislature. Why? According to Thrasher — now get ready for this; this has got to be the most absurd and dumbest excuse ever — it would present “a potential conflict of interest whenever lawmakers take up bills impacting these institutions”.
As the article points out, every person in the state has the potential for a conflict of interest, including one-forth of those already serving. But I’d bet Thrasher has his own definition of “conflict of interest” which we can rest assured doesn’t even come close to the real one. But all this is simply an excuse for Thrasher’s true objective.
Just a couple of weeks ago Republican’s in the state of Virginia decided that unless a voter signed a pledge to vote Republican in the General Election, the voter would not be allowed to vote in the primary election. And there are literally dozens (PDF) of other incidents over the past several years that is designed to stymie political opposition to the GOP. And historically state college professors and employees are Democrats. So this latest action by Thrasher is in line with the greater overall objective of the national GOP.
Thrasher has a full-blown GOP-dedicated 26-year resume. Among proposed bills were attempts to keep bills a secret from the public until after they were passed and prevent party members from switching parties. So the only surprise here is that it doesn’t cover a wider range of professions; which the next one will if this one passes.
There was a lot of fire works during the Florida GOP Presidential debate last night. But the most telling point came out when Mitt Romney nailed Gingrich on the latter’s campaign “promises”.
As I and my wife watched the debate, I nearly fell out of my chair when Romney said:
I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, “You’re fired.”
The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it’s not a good idea. And we have seen in politics – we’ve seen politicians — and Newt, you’ve been part of this — go from state to state and promise exactly what that state wants to hear. The Speaker comes here to Florida, wants to spend untold amount of money having a colony on the moon. I know it’s very exciting on the Space Coast.
In South Carolina, it was a new interstate highway, and dredging the port in Charleston. In New Hampshire, it was burying a power line coming in from Canada and building a new VHA hospital in New Hampshire so that people don’t have to go to Boston.
Look, this idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear, promising billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy, that’s what got us into the trouble we’re in now. We’ve got to say no to this kind of spending.
It was just yesterday morning — before last night’s debate — that I told my wife the exact same thing. That was right after Gingrich told a Florida audience that he would build a moon base. Not supplying the details, my words to my wife was “you know – Gingrich is a typical lying politician; no matter where he is, he tells people exactly what they want to hear”.
You may have heard that the World Economic Forum is meeting this week in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. It has been referred to in short as “Davos”. Exactly what they discuss behind closed doors is anyone’s guess. But the official “mission” is as follows:
The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
As most know, Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels gave the Republican rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address. This is a common occurrence, as regardless of which Party occupies the White House the opposing Party always give a rebuttal to the SOTU address by the President. And when I heard that Daniels was the official designee for that assignment, my first thoughts were “well, at least they got someone this time who isn’t a pea-brain”, and was looking forward to his speech. Unfortunately my bubble was soon busted.
One of the first things I heard that raised my eyebrows was when he said “One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.” If you remove the word “prime” from the first part, it didn’t sound too bad. But the latter part really raised a question in my mind. Well, as it turns out, my concerns were very justified
Politifact.com, who has come under fire of late for not being always on queue, hit this one on the mark. Daniels was so far off Politifact gave it a “liar, liar, pants on fire” rating.
Then there was his statement about job creation: “The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew.” I knew immediately that wasn’t right. So no surprise that Politifact.com gave it a 100% false rating.
Now as is with every high-level elected official, federal or state, Daniels has used taxpayer dollars that may be questionable. But there’s one expenditure he made that’s beyond questionable. It’s just wrong.
Daniels used taxpayer dollars to lobby for the Keystone XL Pipeline project. If he feels there’s a need to promote the project, that’s fine. But using taxpayer money to promote the project when half of those taxpayers in Indiana are not in favor of it is the same as stealing the money.
I honestly hoped and believed Daniels was going to give a meaningful and honest response to Obama’s SOTU address. And although there were a couple of other grey areas in his speech, those kinds of things are expected. But the employment numbers and job creations he quoted took away all of his credibility.
GOP In 2012: Running On Redistricting, Not On Their Record - Boehner tethers the future success of the GOP to the simple fact that he and his party have so manipulated the congressional redistricting process that "it will be nearly impossible" for Democrats to win again.
Oil Industry Demands Less Transparency - The American Petroleum Institute is demanding the Securities and Exchange Commission withdraw and revise proposed rules that mandate disclosure of oil and mining companies’ payments to governments. Why don't they want the public to know how much they're paying taxpayers for the oil they extract?
Chevron Corp just released their 4th quarter report which showed a $5.1 billion net income for the quarter. That brought their 2011 net earnings to $26.9 billion. So what did Chevron do with all that money?
