Late Night Video — EXXON Hates Your Children

Filed in National by on December 11, 2012

The Other 98% has created this ad that sounds as though it will air nationally next week. It is meant to point out the absurdity of giving EXXON $10B in taxpayer subsidies while climate change is making itself felt. It also helps that this is circulating during the “fiscal cliff” BS — if John Boehner is looking for cuts to save money, here is one to start with.

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

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  1. First lie is there are no 10 billion in subsidies going to Exxon. We made the tax code to encourage development of American energy reserves instead of having us growing increasingly hostage to foreign interests. It brings in more money not less. It is working. The U.S. will become the largest energy producer in just a few years.
    http://www.delawarepolitics.net/thanks-to-the-shale-revolution/

    You just hate it because Bush is right. GW is a fantasy. Exxon is prospering.

  2. cassandra_m says:

    If EXXON is prospering, then why do they need encouragement from taxpayers to do it? Answer — they don’t. It just helps out their balance sheets. Because guess what? If EXXON isn’t exploring and developing new fields, they won’t be prospering!

    No reason for American taxpayers to support work that EXXON would do anyway.

    So the first lie is that you can’t even acknowledge that your tax money is going to pick winners and losers in a game that has nothing but winners.

  3. jason330 says:

    We are just mad at Bush. Bush is right. Global Warming is a fantasy. Tax cuts work. 47% of Americans are parasites, etc, etc…

  4. @Republican David–

    “First lie is there are no 10 billion in subsidies going to Exxon.”

    Are you including the trillions of dollars the American taxpayers have spent protecting Exxon (and the other Big Oil players’) interests in the Middle East? We’re well beyond $10B/YEAR if you include those subsidies.

  5. Dave says:

    And from the middle – the federal government incentivizes, through taxation policy and other means, innovation and conservation, R&D, and many other things. Among these incentives is energy.

    Renewables and other non-oil and natural gas sources received nearly 85% of these incentives (subsidies or whatever name). Oil and natural gas received approximately 13%.

    If one does not like those statistics, you should first ask whether subsidies/assistance/incentives (whether direct or indirect) are necessary and beneficial for the nation and its people. And then target specific subsidies to determine whether they are necessary to achieve a specific national objective.

    In this case, subsidies are intended to promote oil and natural gas independence (reducing our reliance on foreign sources) which has an impact on our national security, foreign policy, and our economy.

    My opinion is that our reliance on foreign oil is a significant national security and economic issue specifically because of the continued unrest in the Middle East and the steep rise in demand due to growth in China and India.

    We can influence industry’s development of our national assets to ameliorate theses “threats” by direct subsidies, taxation policy, controlling consumption (also through taxation policy), development of renewables and alternative energy sources, or all of the above.

    I vote for all of the above, with about 85% of the subsidies going to alternatives other than oil and natural gas. Oh wait, we are already doing that. My point is that rather than homing in on the subsidy (whether direct or indirect), the better questions to be asking are “Why are we doing this?” “How does this fit in with our national objectives?” “Are there better ways to achieve that objective?” and even “Is it the right objective to be pursuing?”

  6. anonymous says:

    Attention Homeland Security

    Repubicans, and fossil fuels interests, promote “profits by environmental terror:”

    By still ‘pretending’ climate change is a hoax – ‘invented’ by 99.9% of legitimate climate scientists from around the world, who have decades of peer reviewed, proven studies.

    By making more CO2 fossil fuel ‘profits by pollution’ available, while they still can.

    By using American taxpayer’ billions, yearly, to do so.

    By releasing unlimited industrial chemical by-products of fossil fuel ‘business as usual’ into the atmosphere, for free, thereby claiming fossil fuels are ‘low cost,” while they are costing the incalculable price – of the only liveable planet.

    Instead, putting the burden and costs of the fossil fuel polluted atmosphere on – children. (Could the greedy stoop lower.)

    By keeping America dependent on more dirty fossil fuel energy. (When republicans say ‘energy independent,’ they mean independent of clean energy. When they say ‘clean coal,’ they lie. All CO2 goes to the atmosphere.

    By destroying climates around the globe.

    By making America the enemy of nature, science and all sensible, intelligent men around the world

    By destroying the economies of Americans and people around the world.

    By satisfying monetary greed while causing world wide climate chaos and extreme suffering.

    By continuing fossil fuel ‘business as usual’ until ‘tipping points’ pass the point of no return.

    By fighting to kill off hundreds of millions, Americans included, who can’t cope with climate changes including floods, droughts, crop losses, fires, extreme storms, lost infrastructure, businesses, lost lands, costs of living in extreme temperatures, migration dangers, wars, etc

    When nature’s feedback systems kick in full force, the planet will be destroyed for most life and all future human generations. There are ZERO ways to stop feedback systems, particularly massive methane releases in previously frozen Arctic regions and shallow ocean bottoms.

    Republicans impose immediate greed (and more CO2 releasing,) over a return to a normal atmosphere. They do so by fighting to maintain low energy prices for fossil fuels, while the public pays the price – for released CO2, CH4. Prime example, Sandy. Taxpayers and public, not the fossil fuel industries, are forced to pay for the ravages of rising sea levels and extreme storms.(One small example.)

    (Republican, fossil fuel interest greed, is the biggest threat in the history of mankind, to life for all God’s creations around the world.

    Take notice Homeland Security.

  7. cassandra_m says:

    In this case, subsidies are intended to promote oil and natural gas independence (reducing our reliance on foreign sources) which has an impact on our national security, foreign policy, and our economy.

    Oil and gas are bought and sold in worldwide markets. Which means that as long as we are tethered to fossil fuels we are always invested in foreign oil for national security, foreign policy, economy. The various subsidies and supports for natural gas or coal or petroleum don’t do anything to change our position vis national security, foreign policy of the economy. All it does is provide balance sheet or shareholder support for the companies getting them. Because no matter how you want to approach this, EXXON Mobil is in the carbon-based energy business and they are making good money at it. There is no reason to believe that they won’t continue their exploration and exploitation without taxpayer funds. Because if they stop — they will be making less good money at it.

    Basically I am looking for a rational explanation as to why a very mature business like carbon-based fuel exploration and exploitation needs any boost from taxpayers. Considering that they already command the entire resources of the American military complex.

  8. anonymous says:

    “Basically I am looking for a rational explanation as to why a very mature business like carbon-based fuel exploration and exploitation needs any boost from taxpayers.” Cassandra.

    There isn’t a rational explanation. Fossil fuel industries don’t need taxpayer money. Taxpayers ‘pay’ the carbon industry, because the carbon industry controls our government officials and our government says, you will.

    U.S. energy policy is heavily committed to the greater use of coal and other carbon-based fuels. Ask Inhofe or Tom Carper.

    Regarding the fact that carbon based energy ‘commands the entire resources of the American military complex,’ one cannot imagine a Iraq style search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, even though the new WMD is in plan ‘sight,’ measurably coming out the smokestacks and tailpipes, the anthropogenic CO2 released by the burning of carbon, the greatest offender being coal power plants.

    Republicans in ‘our’ government (in harmony with the fossil fuel industries) now say, the climate is changing but the cause is unclear….therefore, “there shall be no CO2 tax” to interfere with carbon industry profits. (A CO2 tax would raise the cost of the product, as would fire escapes at foreign high rise sweat shops.) It’s better to produce a $100 pair of jeans for $1, don’t you know. A CO2 tax would also encourage clean energy progress. (Can’t have that either.)

    But of course, third graders know the cause of climate change is the over abundance of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, from burning carbon.

    Meanwhile, the ‘people’ are mere outsiders wondering why ‘their’ government, doesn’t have their best interests in mind?

    By the year 2050-the global temperature could be 3 degrees F warmer than it is now. It has not been that hot for 200,000 years. By 2075 a 5-degree jump would make the planet its hottest in 4 million years, and by the end of the century, the earth could be as hot as it was 65 million years ago.

    No need to wonder why they get tax dollars. Say hello to the government of, by and for the fossil fuel industries, the riches, soulless, corporate entities of the world.

  9. mynym says:

    But of course, third graders know the cause of climate change is the over abundance of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, from burning carbon.

    Hmmm… maybe. There again, people in the past were convinced by their priests of knowledge that they had to sacrifice others in order to move the sun across the sky too. Your goals are too small, save the earth? What about saving the sun before a 100% extinction rate catches up you?

    Ironically it’s likely that shortly after people are educated to believe that human’s use of fire is destroying the earth or whatever that charlatans and psychopaths will emerge to profit off of the “shared sacrifice” that they never seem to share in, same as ever. How about this, I’ll believe you as soon as Al Gore and ruling class U.N. types stop flying around spewing jet fuel into the atmosphere or driving around in SUV convoys built by the military industrial complex and so on and so forth. I.e. if Al Gore puts his flabby ass on the line or his life at risk (no convoy? Imagine that.) then I might buy his type of indulgences.

    Regarding the fact that carbon based energy ‘commands the entire resources of the American military complex,’ one cannot imagine a Iraq style search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, even though the new WMD is in plan ‘sight’….

    Uh huh. Still waiting on Obama Inc. to find WMDs in Assad’s underwear… because Obama has the hopium and change that people have been waiting for.

    If you shift the military industrial complex around then it will probably only shift to run on nuclear energy. Ironically shifting the military toward your favorite theatrics would probably only result in something like the small business plans of Bush Inc. for weapons traders. See: (The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders, The Rolling Stone)

  10. Jason330 says:

    So, science is a religion and scientists are like priests of old.

    Great. Thanks for your contribution.

  11. cassandra_m says:

    And you forgot Al Gore is fat.

    It is interesting, isn’t it, that you ask a simple question and these wingnuts take the opportunity to stupidly sneer at *you*, even though they are the ones completely without clues or ideas. Beyond the ones that Fox and Glen Beck provide them with, of course.

    This:
    If you shift the military industrial complex around then it will probably only shift to run on nuclear energy.

    Is mostly wrong. Unless Bill Gates gets his way. The entire DOD is quite focused on alternative, renewable fuels. They are working towards making installations free to run on their own power (in case the disgruntled teajadhis in our midst take their pretend grievances too far), and both the Navy and the USAF have major efforts ongoing to power ships and planes from biofuels. Why, you ask? Because renewables are seen to be controllable and not subject to the kind of disruptions that fossil-fuels and even nuclear ones are at risk for. In other words, the current DOD (like the BushCo one before it) isn’t especially interested in the long-term risks associated with nuclear or fossil-based fuels.