Big oil, a pattern and energy

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: August 6, 2008

Why attack big oil profits?

To the editor:

Barack Obama has said he would take the large profits earned by the oil companies and use them to give $1,000 to each taxpayer as an energy stimulus package.

He and other Democrats are constantly attacking big oil as if they are our enemy.

Exxon Mobil is one of several large companies that make it possible for us to drive up to their pumps and fill our cars with gas.

They have more than 80,000 employees. Last year, they sold us $474 billion worth of their products. They had earnings of $44 billion. They paid the federal government $30 billion in corporate taxes — and that doesn’t include the taxes that are added to each gallon at the pump.

Exxon Mobil has 5.2 billion shares of stock that sell for around $80 a share. They paid out $1.60 a share in dividends to those stockholders at a cost of $8.2 billion. About 2.5 million people own 40 percent of those shares and the remaining 60 percent are owned by institutions that hold the investments of mutual funds, public employee pension funds, teacher equity funds, IRAs, 401(k)s and other investments of millions of people.

The company also puts billions of dollars back into the company each year for oil exploration and equipment.

Big oil isn’t our enemy. Exxon Mobil is a company that supplies us a very much-needed product. The high price of oil is driving up their total sales, but the percentage of profits to sales is still about 10 percent as usual — and the profits are spread over a large part of our population that share ownership in the company.

RAY LAWSON

To the editor:

After reading, “A place where beauty and brutality coexist,” (July 27, page A11), I began looking through previous papers to see if there was a pattern.

When you read the Opinion page, you will probably read about every subject possible, with several views from different writers. Well, all of that changes when you read the columns of Roland S. Martin and Eugene Robinson.

I believe these guys have a hatred of white people and that they have been taught to think the way they do — and to use their skills to pass the same hatred along to others who need a reason to justify why they are in their particular situation. If you are poor, you have someone to blame. If you don’t have a job, or are in jail, or don’t want to go to school, you have an excuse.

In, “A place where beauty and brutality coexist,” Martin writes, “But if you close your eyes, you can hear the banging of chains and the rustling of the feet of slaves …” Come on now! You can put on headphones or earbuds, put your favorite CD in the player, turn it on, close your eyes and you are there — at a concert or recording studio, even if it was a year ago or 1965. Yeah, right! Oh, and he can smell slavery, too.

Out of 15 paragraphs, Martin mentions in the 13th that black Africans traded other black Africans that they held captive for things they enjoyed and things to keep up the slave trade. He learned all this from a guy with no last name, whose job is a guide.

As for Eugene Robinson, he wrote in, “Barack Obama has made history,” (June 8, page B7) that because of white people, blacks have not had a chance at anything since 1619. The only hope is for a black president. For a kicker, he wrote in, “The Supreme Court understood what they meant,” (July 1, page A6) that it was loony that a bunch of radicals who had just broken from their oppressors and wrote with quill pens could design the Constitution to cover everything — even the Internet. Not really. The Bible dates back 6,000 years, and it covers every situation you have or ever will have.

As for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, I believe 80 percent of the trade went to South America and the Caribbean and the New England colonies had the remaining 20 percent that they sold to Southern planters. If they didn’t have buyers there, they sold their slaves in the West Indies, like they did the American Indians.

History shows that my family owned slaves and had given them their freedom long before the War for Southern Independence. Compared to what the slaves had to deal with in Africa, my family followed the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 25:35. I am thankful that those who were bound and distressed were taken in and given a chance at life in the new world even if they had to be bought.

My ancestor was an indentured servant and worked for his freedom, but someone had to buy his servitude in order for him to have an indenture.

It has been a few hundred years since slavery began in Virginia, but the Bible tells of slavery thousands of years before that. Instead of blaming someone for whatever, look around — it could be worse. Martin visited a safe place in Africa, but he wouldn’t want to live there.

SAMUEL V. SHELTON

To the editor:

This is the greatest nation on the face of the Earth — one nation, under God, with freedom and justice for all.

What is happening with our leaders is called politics as usual. Each party tried to explain to the people why they accomplished nothing during Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s recent called General Assembly session on transportation.

Common sense tells the farmer that he has to prepare the land and plant the seed if he wants a harvest. Then you have to cultivate, weed, fertilize and hope the good Lord sends the rain at the right time. It takes a lot of faith!

We have water resources but block hydro-electric generating plants over some insignificant fish. Thank God dinosaurs, saber tooth tigers and mammoths were all extinct before these groups that block common sense solutions to our energy needs gained so much influence with our leaders.

Coal needs to be mined, dams need to be built, wind generators installed, nuclear plants built and all alternate energy sources used, along, of course, with wells dripped to tap the oil.

I was just reading about an accidentally discovered Styrofoam type substance found by a NASA experiment that absorbs oil and continues to float on surface of the water and is biodegradable.

Wow!

It’s high time to put things in order. Man is more important than many little unknown plants or animals that block dams and roads.

We, the people, must vote. I find it hard to believe that Election Day is not a national holiday. When only a few vote, our leaders fail to listen, we the people are to blame. Everyone should have a holiday on Election Day and vote.

The four laning of U.S. 58 was started in the 1940s. Nearly 70 years of bickering has not completed the road.

DELANO THOMASSON

Collinsville