Some people scratched their heads when oil executives testified before Congress last week. The custom is that people who testify — from tobacco executive to Raphael Palmiero — take an oath. For some reason, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the chair of the Senate Energy Committee, steadfastly refused to have the oil executives take an oath. Matt Yglesius discovers a possible … Read More
If This Doesn’t Piss You Off, You Must Be Dead
Or Cheney. From CNN Money: Exxon’s $10B net a U.S. corporate recordThe oil company gains from soaring oil and gas prices, but falls short of estimates.October 27, 2005: 1:25 PM EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion Thursday, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring … Read More
Hey Big Spender!
Conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute did a study on the budgets of the last 9 administrations (LBJ to present) and wrote an article proclaiming "President Reagan, Champion Budget-Cutter". "Yea! Reagan! He was soooo good!" You get the idea. Sadly, the AEI buried the lede. You have to go to the bottom of the article to find out who was the … Read More
How Government Does Biz
I really liked what Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor under President Clinton) said yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace. You should really give it a listen here. But since you won’t, let me restate his commentary in my own words. Why are prices so cheap at Walmart? As most people know, it is because Walmart is so honkin’ huge, that it can … Read More
Find The Money
With Bush proposing upwards of $200 billion to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, many fiscal conservatives are understandably edgy. Likening Bush’s proposal to Roosevelt’s New Deal programs (which is, to them, a bad thing), they wonder where the money is going to come from. Of course, some conservatives are being blatently stupid about the effort. This moron notes … Read More
Increasing The Deficit To Improve Bush’s Image
Boy, Josh Marshall really hits it on the head with this one: This worries me. Note the added emphasis. The clip comes from a piece in tomorrow’s Post about yet another huge funding bill the president will roll out tomorrow for Katrina aid, which the Post says will cost more next year than the entire cost of the Iraq war … Read More
Think About This Next Time You Fill Up
From Daily Browse:
High On Gas
For the past year or so, Bush defenders like to point out that the high gas prices we’ve been seeing aren’t all that bad. "When adjusted for inflation, there are nothing like the high gas prices in the Carter administration," they say. They can’t say that anymore. Graphic from the New York Times.
Class Warfare
The average CEO makes 430 times as much as the average production worker. That’s data from 2004, presented here. In 2003, that ratio was 301-to-one. In 1990, it was 109-to-one. [Defense contractor CEOs, while not as rich as their brethren in real dollars, are really seeing a post-9/11 surge. Defense CEOs make 160 times more than army privates, up from … Read More
Punishing Competence
What happens if you actually do your job, and the result is a potential embarrassment to the Bushies? You get demoted: A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance. The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military … Read More
Not Angry
In response to a comment on that his blog is "full of hatred and anger", Corrente not only denied the charge, but set out to compile a list of things he was not angry about, as well as things he doesn’t hate. It’s not only long, but a work-in-progress, so check out Corrente’s site for the latest revisions and updates: … Read More
Ouch!
From the Associated Press: Oil Prices Hit Record Near $67 08.12.2005, 03:38 PM Oil prices settled at a record high near $67 Friday, as U.S. refinery outages looked set to test gasoline supplies in the world’s biggest-consuming nation. The threat of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and concerns over Iran’s decision to resume uranium-conversion activities also fueled the price … Read More
ExxonMobil-Cooney Timeline
I could rant and rave about the White House’s ass-licking of the oil industry, but sometimes all it takes is to let the facts speak for themselves: Seven days ago: "President’s George Bush’s decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil … Read More
Not Practicing What He Preaches
Then-Gov. George W. Bush as a presidential candidate in 2000: The president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price . . . [As President I will] convince them to open up the spigot to increase the supply. President Bush yesterday: I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow. Keep … Read More
Practicing What He Preaches
George W. Bush, 4/20/05: If someone doesn’t pay his or her debts the rest of society is left paying for them. Amount added to the federal debt during the George W. Bush presidency: 2.2 trillion