oil + bush + terror = profits
by Justin Roper
Published: March 14, 2008
Exxon Mobil posts its highest earnings in company history while lower- and middle-class Americans are canceling their road trips and carpooling to work to get around the still-rising prices at the pump. I thought that by securing every possible oil field in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, oil companies would be able to lower their prices. Unfortunately, corporate executives will jack up rates over the slightest glimmer of a speculated problem. A guy pricks his finger at a refinery and the prices are raised up two cents a barrel. If oil companies are seeing these kinds of profits while the American economy plunges into a recession, something more than fishy is going on. Maybe we’ll start holding these price gouging crooks in the industry to higher standards when “Shrub” leaves office.
Speaking of “Shrub,” I know this may sound completely insane, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that our current conquests in the Middle East may have something to do with a little black gold. It’s probably not coincidental that up until their recent political careers, Bush and Cheney were as connected to oil as the gas tank in my car. So it’s not entirely baseless and unsubstantiated to assume that the industry could still play a minor role in their decision making.
And how ‘bout those terrorists? Joseph McCarthy himself couldn’t have designed a more sinister plan to instill fear in the American public about terrorism. But it’s all for the good of the homeland, right? I’m sure blowing up portions of the Middle East, supporting the Israelis as they blow up other portions of the Middle East and threatening to blow up the rest of the Middle East will bring the entire Islamic world closer to our side. I mean, who has time to pay attention to things like civil liberties and logic what with all of the pending explosions?
Without this KGB-like one-two punch of fear and propaganda, support (what is left of it) wouldn’t exist for a war in which companies like Halliburton, Harris Corporation and Pratt and Whitney nail down inexplicably gargantuan government contracts. Meanwhile, the economic margin between upper and lower class America continues to widen. Somewhere along the way we forgot to send political leaders to the White House and started voting in unsuccessful businessmen. As a result, we now get to deal with a borderline fascist administration that looks out only for corporations. For heaven’s sake, even Iraq, the nation we dismantled only to have rebuilt by big business, is close to having an economic surplus! At the same time, American constituents are being flung into a hopeless financial situation that has led to unemployment, loss of homes and higher crime rates.
But not to worry, business is good - for some.
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