Nofsdad
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
|
|
Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 4:28 pm Post subject: Which Big Business Do You Believe?
|
|
|
A bit of a new wrinkle in the gas price situation. Those that feel that Big Business has a right to extract anything by any means it can from the public are going to have to deal with some opposing views from Big Business itself. Geez, first the Rebublicans and now the automakers. Who's gonna be the next to realize that the greed of the people controlling the oil industry is ripping the economy to shreds for personal gain?
Chrysler blog flogs `Big Oil' over prices and pay
| Quote: |
| hanks to the Internet, people can vent on the auto industry. Now the auto industry is venting back. At least, Jason Vines, the head of public relations for Chrysler Group, is doing that. Chrysler has a media blog called the Firehouse usually devoted to the automaker's daily goings-on. Vines, however, used it for what he called a "blog editorial" to take the petroleum industry to task. |
OK, do we have the bona fides established here. This is the PR head for the Chrysler Group US, NOT some obscure little group of "leftists" and "America Haters" talking amongst themselves on a little web site somewhere.
| Quote: |
And his blog echoes what many consumers feel.
For example: "Just as the weather warms and Americans are turning their thoughts to hitting the roads for vacations or weekend getaways, the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel are rising faster than the odds of the Detroit Lions playing in the Super Bowl."
Can't argue, especially the part about the Lions. And the guy at the local gas station has set up a lawn chair and mini-fridge next to his pricing sign because he changes the numbers so often. |
| Quote: |
| Vines says that price hikes aren't the result of supply problems, but simply a matter of greed and that the petroleum industry has a "history of blowing their exorbitant profits on outlandish executive salaries and stock buybacks, and hoarding their bounty rather than lowering fuel costs." |
We've been talking about exactly that in other threads on this subject and being roundly taken to task elsewhere for even suggesting such a thing. We've talked about the current E/M CEO's little reward for enhancing shareholder value and the dividends that keep popping up and into major shareholders' offshore accounts, but how about this next snippet which describes what has to be the biggest golden parachute ever strapped to a CEO's ass as he "stepped down"?
| Quote: |
Perhaps Vines was alluding to the recent news that ExxonMobil Chairman Lee Raymond received a compensation package of about $398 million upon retiring, plus cash to pay the country club fees and tax-assistance service.
Of course, auto executives get the use of free cars, so they aren't immune to perks, though none tool around in a $398 million machine. |
Let's see how they spin THAT into being something great for the economy.
| Quote: |
| "Big Oil would rather fill the pockets of its executives and shareholders, than spend sufficient amounts to reduce the price of fuel, letting consumers, during tough economic times, pick up the tab," Vines added. |
| Quote: |
| Vines also gripes that while petroleum companies are reaping huge profits, the four largest oil companies donated a total of $11 million to Hurricane Katrina relief, a fraction of the $500 million donated by the public. |
Couple of good pieces of irony in that one. Big corporations are notorious for popping a mil or two into disaster relief efforts, often with some veiled reference that more will be forthcoming. They get all this free publicity about what swell guys they are for "caring so much about the little people" and then they scurry back into the dark corners and continue to loot the very segment of society they just won PR doobies for caring so much about.
Try another perspective, however.That $11 mil, donated by the entire industry, amounts to less than a third of just the Exxon/MObil CEO's bonus and incentive package for last year and that the $500 mil that that the entire American public donated was only about $100 million more than than Exxon/Mobil's outgoing CEO's golden parachute. And they have the flipping gall to stand up in public and claim they're only taking what We're willing to give them????
The writer goes on to point out certain failures on the part of the auto industry that have helped to fan the present situation and I agree. As far as I'm concerned the auto industry hasn't been that far behind the oil companies in in efforts to loot the economy for whatever it could get away with but then, the same could be said for Big Business in general. None of these people are in business to make life better for you and I or to do anything but take as much as they can get.
But that certainly does not alter or even in any way mitigate the fact that Big Oil's greed is the primary driving factor behind much of the problem, especially for the working classes, and not only in the price of gasoline, which seems to be the major focus.
As long as a significant portion of any consumer level price increases can be attributed to the massive increases in the cost of transportation for raw materials to finished goods, we're gonna continue to have our hemmorhoids probed with a sharp and very crooked stick.
Big oil's moral and ethical standards appear to be the standards that virtually all other business and industries in this country adhere to.
|
|