Exxon to staff: vote for oil

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

http://www.greenpeace.org/features/details?item_id=608937

"According to a story reported by the Dow Jones Newswire, Exxon is mailing its 34,000 employees with election materials and helpful voter guides which -- surprise! --give the Republican Party gold star ratings for spurning global warming regulation, supporting drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge, and letting oil refineries release more pollution by weakening the Clean Air Act.

Exxon is informing not only its employees but also retirees and contractors how they should vote in upcoming presidential and congressional races across the US.

"We obviously are promoting candidates who are pro-business and candidates who recognize the importance of a viable policy on energy," Ken Cohen, the vice president for public affairs and the chairman of ExxonMobil's PAC, said. "Republicans more often tend to line up on those issues than Democrats."

In 2000 Exxon gave 91 percent (US$1.37 million) of it political donations to the Republican Party. Exxon was more than amply repaid when President GW Bush promptly withdrew the US from the only global treaty to control global warming, the Kyoto Protocol."

[TroglodyteScholar]

1. Big surprise... (n/t)

[Kierkegaard]

2. Yes.

Color me astonished.

[NVMojo]

3. yep, and when they came to Elko (butthole), Nevada

with Cheney a few weeks back, they told the gold miners they'd lose their jobs if Bushass got elected.

http://www.elkodaily.com/articles/2004/08/16/news/local/news2.txt

Mining royalties key local issue in race

By ADELLA HARDING, Staff Writer

ELKO - Vice President Dick Cheney told a cheering Elko crowd Saturday that President Bush's administration understands what mining means to Elko and Nevada.

"As Westerners, the president and I understand the importance of mining to Nevada's economy and Nevada families," Cheney said, blasting Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry for his new proposal for mining royalties.

"Over these past four years, we have acted to put government decisively on the side of miners in the Silver State," Cheney told the people who live in the neighborhood of the largest gold mines in the nation.

Kerry wants to raise $600 million a year from the mining industry, and Cheney said this would "hit communities like Elko hard," and cost up to 44,000 jobs across the West.

[NVMojo]

4. Elko, Nevada was featured in this month's National Geographic

You gotta read that to get a real clue as to why Cheney came all the way over here to talk to us. You know the mine, Newmont Gold Corporation? They are the ones who had their mines shut down in Turkey recently, and Peru and Indonesia for environmental contamination? Check it out. Find out why people like this are important to a battleground state. When Cheney was here that weekend, Kerry was over in tree-hugging Oregon.

[MatrixEscape]

5. LOL!

"We obviously are promoting candidates who are pro-business and candidates who recognize the importance of a viable policy on energy," Ken Cohen, the vice president for public affairs and the chairman of ExxonMobil's PAC, said. "Republicans more often tend to line up on those issues than Democrats."

Bush has a viable policy on energy? Oh, THAT viable policy ;) Pro-business is now anti-Democracy then?

So, this is a Democracy or a Politcal Oligarchy? Poltical contributions by corporations should be ended or we are not going to have fair representation at all. They function as nothing more than bribes and tend to work against the best interests of the People.

[underpants]

6. And it is wrong for unions to do the same?

Does every single shareholder approve of their investment dollar being spent in this way or am I just thinking "out of the box"?

[Uben]

7. Okay, then

...they just lost my business! The only recourse we have is to boycott their product. If they want to flex a little political influence, there should be a price!

[mmonk]

8. You're kidding!?!

;-)

[Peak_Oil]

9. Corporations should not have the "right" to free speech

the same that unions do. No way. You can't penalize a corporation in the same way you can penalize a person, so corporations shouldn't have rights. They don't serve in the armed forces, they aren't subject to imprisonment, can't be forced to testify in court...

Why are corporations people again?

[TxGran]

10. Oil Related Industries

My husband and two sons-in-law all work in engineering in drilling/oil tool businesses. They are all constantly barraged with the Republican agenda at work. But guess who they are voting for?? JFK

[jdj]

16. Thanks TxGran, we needed that.

It kills me this article has an environmental slant on the face of it. 34,000 mailings? How many trees did they kill to send those out?

[Fovea]

11. a viable policy on energy

Obviously Mr. Cohen, you and I differ sharply on what 'viable' might mean in such a context.

A very poor choice of terms, IMO.

[PATRICK]

12. The old days

when there were huge numbers of non union workers at the mercy of this influence, threats, propaganda and even small bribes and holidays are gone.

The huge number of eastern and northern workers who could be queued up to to vote Hannah's way and take down the opportunistic populist Bryan have been replaced by an unlikely hodge podge of TV mobs, money fans, racists, military loyalists and assorted sucker legions soothed into supporting some false status quo image and surface fakery. It doesn't sound more stable than the ignorant servitude of the early twentieth century, especially since TV is a two edged instrument and emotional ties are fluid and fickle.

Even Exxon's fading star can't really match the money still available from a threatened middle class were campaign giving really equitable. The corporations are still buying favors on the cheap. Times have changed but they haven't. Warring against people and passing that off as business philosophy is a senile reaction. Like it or not, the world once more is stripping abusive corporations of their power to interfere in civil affairs that are for everyone's best interest in not the immediate short term personal bottom line of idiotic executives.

So? They want to destroy unions and deny history like the Germans did?
Want war in today's environment with today's weapons? Check out the results and the oil is running out anyway. Better to help than sabotage progress itself.

[joefree1]

13. CNN: World oil and gas 'running out'

World oil and gas 'running out'

By CNN's Graham Jones
Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 1245 GMT ( 8:45 PM HKT)
Global oil supplies will peak soon after 2010, Swedish scientists say.

LONDON, England -- Global warming will never bring a "doomsday scenario" a team of scientists says -- because oil and gas are running out much faster than thought.

The world's oil reserves are up to 80 percent less than predicted, a team from Sweden's University of Uppsala says. Production levels will peak in about 10 years' time, they say.

"Non-fossil fuels must come in much stronger than it had been hoped," Professor Kjell Alekett told CNN.

Oil production levels will hit their maximum soon after 2010 with gas supplies peaking not long afterwards, the Swedish geologists say.

At that point prices for petrol and other fuels will reach disastrous levels. Earlier studies have predicted oil supplies will not start falling until 2050.
More ...
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/02/global.warming/

[jdj]

17. Ford has a hybrid SUV. The writing is on the wall.

I saw a doc on PBS the other night on ANWR and this exec. bozo from BP was saying that if consumers were willing to pony up the cash and pay exorbitant amounts for gas that they could be alot more environmentally sound with their oil drilling,etc.

That is about the biggest whopper I have ever heard.

They want to keep the price of gas low enough so that consumers don't swing into a conservation mode and reduce their consumption, that is their main fear...they want to keep gas "affordable" so that we dont' even think when we go to the pump. Furthermore, just like tort reform and malpractice caps/"frivolous" lawsuits, the two variables are not even related, because if the price of gas were outrageous thanks to real gov't environmental regulation, they would still be cutting corners and breaking whatever rules they can get away with.

Still 400 spills a year in Prudhoe Bay.

[Elidor]

14. As if the Valdez oil spill weren't reason enough to boycott the bastards

I stopped giving my money to this rotten company years ago. It should have been bankrupted, broken up, sold off and dismantled.

[TexasSissy]

15. Well, my co. could send me materials pushing a candidate, but

it wouldn't make any difference. (In fact, they have in the past pushed certain candidates I was not in favor of.) It has no effect on me or any of my co-workers, that I know of.

[jdj]

18. I love that user name, from Urban Cowboy?

(Debra Winger fan)

edit: that must be awful though, to have to deal with that at work, work is hard enough.

The only time I've ever dealt was that was with this one boss in 1996 who said to all of us that it didn't matter who we voted for that year because Jesus was coming back any day now.

[TexasBushwhacker]

19. For every person that they sway to their side

there is AT LEAST one person who is turned off by their employer trying to influence their vote. There aren't that many undecideds out there anymore. With all the other dirty tricks that Bushco is playing, this may be enough for some people to say "Fuck you, I'm voting for Kerry."

[PROGRESSIVE1]

20. Isn't this illegal?

:wtf:???

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

21. Neo Liberals believe that Corporations have the right to free speach

so no, no its not