Do we really need oil? What would martians think?

Do we really need oil?

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Record Corporate Profits? How’d they Do That? The Inflation Income Redistribution Scam

By the third quarter of 2012 (which are the latest available data), according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, corporate profits were on pace to exceed the record earnings of 2011, despite a pathetic economy. How did they do it? It’s simple. They shipped jobs overseas and redistributed the difference between the higher paying jobs in the US and the new lower wage jobs elsewhere into the pockets of the already rich via higher dividends and share prices. But CEO’s have discovered a more sinister way to increase profits at the expense of the 99 percent.

They jacked up their prices, and the government deliberately hides those increases by understating inflation.

Three years ago, I could purchase three cans of generic label tuna for a dollar. Two years ago, I could purchase two cans for a dollar. Now I’m lucky to get one can of the same tuna for a dollar, although sometimes I can get a can for .79 cents. Same thing has occurred with gasoline, lettuce, milk, bread, meat and other items. Okay, it’s true sometimes prices for certain items don’t rise, perhaps I-Phones, but you can’t eat them, nor can you put them in your gas tank.

Just using the tuna as an example, the price per can rose from .34 cents to .50 cents to .79 cents, or roughly 45-50 percent per year. Take a look at most things you purchase. Prices are rising rapidly. The difference between the old, lower, prices and the new, higher, prices go into the pockets of the rich via higher corporate earnings, rising dividends and share prices. And the government is covering it up by understating inflation. that’s because of the massive corruption of the federal government.

The government says the US inflation rate for 2012 was 1.7 percent. On the other hand, the Everyday Price Index calls it closer to eight percent, which is probably closer to the truth, which is something our government and corporate media no longer provide us, unless it is convenient for them.

Last summer, Harper’s Magazine pointed out that the government’s measurement of inflation for 2010 was slightly higher than three percent, but the government has changed the way it measures inflation twenty times since 1980. If the old method of measuring inflation from 1980 was used, inflation for 2010 would be almost 11 percent. We would be outraged and demand the government do something about this serious problem. But we can’t be outraged, so the media and government simply lie to us, thus ensuring that we don’t know there’s a problem since the government is covering it up. We’re like frogs in a slowly heating pot of water.

Below is an example of how the corporate lies to us.

“The combined earnings of the Fortune 500 corporations rose 16 percent from 2010 to a record high of $825 billion in 2011, Fortune magazine said.”

“Given the sluggish recovery and a strapped consumer, you’d expect to see corporate America trudging along, not racing for glory,” Fortune’s senior editor-at-large, said.

“In fact, the Fortune 500 are thriving as a group. Unlike the US economy, they’ve shown quicksilver agility, rapidly shifting their product mix and producing more goods at little new cost.”

That is total bull shit. These corporations haven’t “shown quicksilver agility, rapidly shifting their product mix and producing more goods an little new cost.” That’s a lie. They’ve achieved this result simply by raising prices and shifting jobs overseas. These actions have redistributed income and wealth from the 99 percent to the one percent.

The first duty of the editor of any corporate news media outlet is to lie to the American people. That way they can keep their corporate advertisers happy. That’s precisely what Fortune Magazine does.

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The Military Industrial Complex: Is it the biggest welfare program of them all?

The military-industry complex is not the biggest government welfare program of all time. It might be second, and like the biggest welfare program, the military-industrial complex is welfare for the rich, the 1 percent. Such corporations as General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin rely heavily on government spending to keep their profits soaring, their dividends rising and their share prices climbing. The 1 percent owns most of their shares.

That’s why the United States has a bloated military that is greater in size than the next nine largest military’s in the world combined, although some analysts suggest the US spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. That’s likely.

At the peak of the US conquest of Iraq, the US had somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 mercenaries earning over a $100,000 each. The government called these mercenaries “contractors,” as if they had been contracted to erect buildings. No, these were just mercenaries that had signed contracts to be US mercenaries. If you count these folks, it is likely the US spends more on its military than all other nations in the world.

Income redistribution from the 99 to the 1 percent. That’s what military spending is all about. Tax money, the blood of working Americans, government lies, they’re all redistributed to the rich.

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Obama under fire for high gasoline prices and then he does something incredible!

It’s an election year and that’s why President “Wall Street” Obama “urged Congress to toughen penalties for improper manipulation of oil markets and called for stricter government oversight of energy markets.” Apparently, the president thinks there is a proper way to manipulate the market. Nobody should take the president seriously.

The price of gasoline in the United States is probably two to three dollars per gallon higher than if there was some kind of real, competitive, market. Gasoline may be even three dollars or more per gallon higher than it should be. The United States has been exporting more oil than it is importing for several months now, for the first time since the late 1940s. That suggests the market has been manipulated for a long time, that US production has been artificially curtailed and manipulated for decades, and that there is an overabundance of oil available, but the president hasn’t done anything as the price of gasoline has risen, fueled by the demands of the financial markets. The big boys are making us pay so they can keep their stock values high. It’s been a scam for a long time and the president hasn’t instructed his Department of Justice to use the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to break up the oil oligarchs and send some of these big and slick oil barons and their Wall Street cronies to prison for their crimes.

Related Story

The Myth of Peak Oil

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The Lie About Peak Oil

Did you ever notice that every time there is a short-term shortage of oil or the price begins to rise, there is talk of running out of affordable oil, an idea captured by the concept of Peak Oil. You remember that slick slimy scam artist who talked of it a decade ago; Dick Cheney, our then unelected but acting president. As soon as he said it, the price of gas zoomed from $1.25 a gallon to $4. People actually believed the liar as income was redistributed from our pockets into the pockets of rich oil company executives and their shareholders. In other words, after Cheney’s propaganda campaign took root, an income redistribution scam took place. The rich were sucking us dry even while there was plenty of oil for which we should have been paying half a dollar at the pump or less, if market mechanisms were allowed to function. Nowadays, the process is happening, but the problem isn’t Peak Oil. No, sir. The problem is too much oil and too few producers that act together to squeeze the middle class and redistribute income from the 99 percent to the one percent. Of course, we have a government of slimy plutocrats, like Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, working to ensure this income redistribution scam works.

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Guess which Senators Voted To Protect Oil Tax Breaks

These senators received $23,582,500 From Big Oil. Who were they?

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How many more of Obama’s lies do we need to endure? Obama cages Native-American Protesters

I voted for Obama to be president of the United States, not to be the president of big oil and Wall Street. I gave his campaign fifty bucks. I manned his phones and called his supporters. I went door-to-door for the lying rat bastard. I voted and worked for hope and change and all I got was a worthless slogan. The lying liar gave his Wall Street supporters everything they could have wanted, which includes sucking us 99 percenters dryer. That’s what they’re doing. Thank you Mr. President.

Today, as he gave his speech endorsing the KXL pipeline, Native-American protesters were “‘caged’ miles away from the event.” They were protesting the destruction the pipeline will have on their native lands. But Obama doesn’t care about anything except pleasing the rich. He’s just another Republican disguised as a Democrat.

Wall street and big oil want the pipeline, but most of the rest of us don’t want this environmental disaster. Remember this when it election time comes. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Don’t vote for the lying rat bastard.

click here for the complete story

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The Brazilian who wants to jail Chevron oilmen

There’s stunning news out of Brazil. There was an oil spill and a federal prosecutor is determined to make those who are responsible for it pay with a little jail time.

Don’t you wish the same form of justice would be used by the government of the United Corporations of America? (USA). That will never happen. You won’t see Obama demanding that the US Justice Department go after those responsible for the economic meltdown. The reason is simple. Too many Republicans and Democrats in congress were willing partners. So was the George Bush gang, as are Obama and the minions he hired to be government servants (LOL) straight out of Wall Street. The United Corporate government is a whore house of political corruption and has been for quite some time.

click here for what's happening in Brazil

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The Bolivian Economy Is Surging. Poverty is Down; So is Inequality. Why?

President Evo Morales of Bolivia had an idea when he took office a few ago; he stopped using the government to redistribute income from the poor and what little middle class there is in Bolivia to the rich. Now demand for goods is up and poverty is down. And he did it without letting in corporate economic rapists.

What did Morales do? He ignored all the advice given him by Washington D.C. economists. Free trade? He tossed that income redistribution scam into the garbage. Bolivia “nationalized hydrocarbons, electricity, telecommunications and mining; renegotiated the presence of direct foreign investment in the country; implemented an expansive fiscal policy and closed borders to the free importation of economically strategic products. The state took 34% of the economy under its control.” That means the profits from those industries weren’t sent back to the United States or the United Kingdom or wherever the corporations that owned those industries are. The profits stayed in Bolivia.

The economy grew 5.4 percent last year. Since and including 2007, as the rest of the world crumbled, the Bolivian grew an average of 4.5 percent per year. Are you listening Obama?

click here for the complete story

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The Corporate Propaganda Blitz is On; But Here’s the Real Reason Why Americans Are Paying More At the Pump

There is a bullshit story being spread around by the corporate media about why gas prices are rising. The propaganda story below is from US Today. In parenthesis below most paragraphs, I’ll tell you the truth. The corporate media throughout the nation will be repeating the same lying talking points.

Oh, by the way, the price of gasoline is determined in one of two ways; in the financial markets, not by any fake supply and demand between drivers and the gas pumps; or for political purposes.

The most likely reason this time for the rise in prices is a conspiracy by the oil companies to bring pressure to bear on politicians to approve the Keystone pipeline. The oil companies want it built from Canada to Texas. Obama delayed the decision on it. Guess what? The oil corporations decided to go ahead and build the southern portion of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas earlier today. And the Obama administration supports that decision. That means only one thing, and we’ll get to that in a little bit. (click here for the story from Newsweek).

All of this means the oil barons figure they’re putting enough pressure on D.C. politicians and consumers to generate enough support in the white house and in the halls of congress to ensure the pipeline will be built across the Canadian/US border. Why else would they build the southern section of the pipeline and not the important main part that begins in Canada? And why else would Obama approve of building the southern portion?

You know the drill. The ditto heads in print and television will say crap like, “Oh my! We need that pipeline to lower prices!” They’ll do this to generate sympathy for the pipeline even though building it will result in exporting more oil from the United States to wherever. In other words, building it will likely increase gasoline prices in the USA. Click here for the story of how the pipeline will raise your gasoline prices because it will enable the Oil Barons to export more oil from the USA

It’s obvious the oil corporations have already made a deal with Obama to approve the pipeline, but right now they’re trying to convince the public of the need for the pipeline by saying or implying that it will lower prices that always go up in the long term anyway. And did I mention the pipeline will allow the oil barons to ship more oil from the USA, thereby making it easier to raise gasoline prices? Obama, of course, wouldn’t dare alienate his base before the election by approving of the pipeline, unless it was a dire, national emergency. This situation may become that even as we speak.

The big question is this. Is the US government so corrupted by big money that the Department of Justice is not going to investigate this obvious conspiracy in restraint of trade and violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that they will not act? The answer is yes. All levels of government, especially the Koch Brothers wing of the Supreme Court, is rotted to the core. Obama is a plutocrat in reality, although he’s trying to be a fake populist because this is an election year.

Anyway, here is the propaganda piece from US News.

Turmoil abroad and rising costs at home means consumers will have to shell out more for gas this summer. (This is an obvious lie. The media always says the same thing whenever big oil decides to jack up their prices.)

Gas prices–already the highest they’ve ever been in January and February–shot up nearly 30 cents over the past month to a national average of about $3.70 per gallon, sparking worries that a steep increase in fuel costs could crimp consumer spending and hobble an economy that is just starting to show signs of life.

(In other words, “Look out Obama! You don’t approve that pipeline and we will sink the economy under the weight of artificially high gasoline prices and destroy your reelection chances! Play ball with us or die politically. The latest news indicates the president has decided to play ball.)

Unfortunately, those fears may be grounded, experts say. On top of typical seasonal increases in fuel prices, a host of other factors threaten to disrupt supply chains and make financial markets nervous, pushing up the price of crude oil, which determines the bulk of what Americans pay at the pump.

Here are a few more reasons why even higher gas prices may be on the way this spring and summer:

Volatility in the Middle East.

If it isn’t Egypt, it’s Libya, and if it isn’t Libya, it’s Iran. After several countries imposed sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, the fifth largest oil producer in 2010 halted shipments to some European nations, putting more pressure on oil supply and causing crude prices to spike. Since crude oil prices make up nearly 70 percent of the ultimate cost of a gallon of gas, even tiny disruptions to supply can cause a spike in prices when consumers fill their gas tanks.

(Oh, Jesus Christ! We can’t say volatility in Syria is the problem since they have no oil! So it’s got to be these other countries! They may not have any volatility, but who cares! Just have our corporate media say they do! If we tell the same big lies often enough using all media outlets, people will believe them. Didn’t Adolf Hitler say that? Yes, he did.)

“Under ordinary circumstances we would expect prices to climb incrementally from now through May,” Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, told U.S. News. “What’s exacerbating that is the situation in the Middle East. It’s becoming a very dangerous waiting game.”

(See the paragraph above about Syria. Oh, by the way, notice we have to wait for that volatility since it isn’t there, not yet anyway. The most stable nations in the middle east are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. But the corporate media can’t be honest about that. Hey, maybe Obama is planning an attack on Iran. That’s a great reelection strategy. Maybe that’s the volatility we have to wait for.)

Escalating tensions between Israel and Iran have also added to worries about the future of gas prices. An Israeli attack on Iran could push crude oil prices to $200 a barrel, if not higher, according to recent comments from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, causing gas prices to spike to $6 per gallon or more.

(The administration is in on this oil price increase scam, so let’s make it Iran’s fault. They’re horrible and vicious and crazy, even if they haven’t attacked another nation in hundreds of years. The American public better be scared because some of those Iranian women look awfully bad ass!)

Growing demand from Asia.

The Department of Energy reported that the United States became a net exporter of oil for the first time since 1949 last year. But if we have all this “extra” oil to be exporting, why are prices at home still going up?

(Even though everybody knows the US is a net exporter of oil, we need to manufacture a plausible explanation for this.)

A lot of it has to do with demand for gasoline, which has been declining in the United States for the last 10 years, while shooting up by leaps and bounds in places such as Asia and South America. As demand has tapered off here due to more fuel-efficient vehicles and, more recently, the weak economy, oil companies have had to broaden the scope of potential markets–bad news for American consumers.

(Demand for oil by these countries haven’t changed much at all in the last year, if at all. In fact, it’s possible oil use has gone down because of the weakening economies in Asia, like China; but the media can’t let US citizens know this. So the author of this article decided to say something stupid because the American people will believe a big lie spread by the corporate media. There are no statistics available to support or refute this claim about increased oil use in South America and Asia since gasoline prices have begun to rise in the USA over the last few weeks.)

“Oil companies that have increased their exports overseas essentially are depleting the U.S. supply [and] in doing so it’s creating an artificially higher price for American consumers,” Laskoski says. “When consumer demand is weak [in the United States], it’s a very attractive option to export and get those healthier profit margins.”

(So all of sudden in the last few weeks, a massive amount of oil has been shipped out of the United States to foreign users, raising the price of gasoline in ways not seen since the last artificially created oil crisis. People will believe anything, especially that demand overseas have shot up a million percent during the last two weeks. The propagandists can’t tell people that the conspiracy among the oil corporations took time to plan and execute and that the first meetings or telephone calls likely took place shortly after that Obama bastard said “no” to the pipeline on January 18, 2012.)

That trend isn’t likely to change with a burgeoning middle class in Asian economic powerhouses such as China. According to the EIA, Asia surpassed North America as the largest petroleum-consuming region in 2008, gobbling up 25 million barrels a day in 2010.

(We can’t let people know that the latest statistics show that the United States still consumes more oil per day than China, India, Japan and Brazil combined. Also, we don’t want to let on that the latest statistics we have on oil consumption for the nations in question is 2008 and not 2012. Otherwise, we’ll look like propagandists of the corporate media. And we can’t have that happen. Our credibility is at stake.)

Gasoline formulation requirements.

Although crude oil prices account for the lion’s share of what consumers pay at the pump, the process of refining crude oil and making the right formulations to produce gasoline costs money–about 7 percent of the price Americans pay per gallon.

Prices head even higher going into the summer months because refiners have to transition from a winter blend–required by law between Oct. 1 and April 30–to a more eco-friendly–but more expensive–summer blend.

“[The summer blend] has additional additives that add to the cost of producing the product,” Laskoski says. “Not only do the refineries have to go through the process of ramping up production for it, but they’re doing this at a time of year when consumer demand is starting to increase. This is one of the key reasons why the United States sees this cyclical up and down trend every year.”

An improving economy. A growing economy is supposed to be good for everything, right? Not necessarily for gas prices. With economic growth pegged at more than 2 percent this year and a rosier employment outlook, more Americans will have the means–and confidence–to consume more goods and services such as gasoline.

(We’re not going to mention that this contradicts what we wrote above about Americans consuming less oil because they’re using more fuel efficient vehicles. And we won’t mention that the economy is still very weak because that would make this point stupid.)

It’s not just consumer demand for gasoline, either. As the economy picks up, businesses will likely have to produce and shuttle more goods around, putting pressure on gasoline supply and prices.

Summer. Warmer weather and peak driving season usually coincide as Americans take vacations and hit the road. Coupled with an improving economy, more drivers should be on the road this summer, which will boost demand, and ultimately prices.

Taxes. If you take a look around the country, gas prices aren’t uniform. A lot of the variation has to do with supply lines and transport, but a chunk of it has to do with varying state and local taxes. As government budgets have been strapped in the wake of the recession, some states and cities have looked to gasoline taxes to bridge budget shortfalls.

According to GasBuddy.com, Virginia is considering a gas tax hike, which would index the tax to inflation, generating an extra $124 million in revenue each year until 2018. Michigan, Maryland, and Iowa could also face increases on gas taxes.

This story was written by a complete idiot named Meg Handley, a propagandist for USA Today.

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