The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 598
So contrary to how the Big Oil shills try to play down how much government
support they get while yelling their heads off about subsidies given to ethanol,
the facts reveal a completely different story.
Bryce writes that “Tax incentives won’t result in energy independence, but they
will mean more profits for the world’s largest agribusiness outfit, Archer Daniels
Midland Co.”
Archer Daniels Midland? Bryce is comparing ADM’s profits to the profits recorded by the oil and gasoline companies? He is mad, Bryce is insane. At just
about the time that the paperback edition of GUSHER OF LIES was published
ExxonMobil declared a fourth-quarter profit of more than $40 billion. That’s just
ExxonMobil, not the entire gasoline industry, and it was just for one quarter, and
it came on top of all the subsidies and tax breaks that they received. Archer
Daniels Midland reported its fiscal fourth quarter profit of $372 million. Although
$372 million is nothing to sneeze at, it’s less than 1% of ExxonMobil’s profit.
BIG OIL GETS AN $80 BILLION ‘BONUS’ SUBSIDY
We all remember the $80 billion given to General Motors and Chrysler to bail
them out, right? The taxpayers paid for that. But the taxpayers should never
have paid for the bailout. The bailout should have come from the automobile
industry’s number one beneficiary, the oil industry. Without automobiles, the oil
industry is done. The days of kerosene lighting are over. The oil industry had
the most to lose and they had (and have) the resources to save the two Detroit
manufacturers. The oil industry was given a gift; a gift that they didn’t deserve.
A gift that was twenty times more than the Archer Daniels Midland 2008 fourthquarter profit. ExxonMobil could have provided all the bailout funds by themselves from their annual 2008 profits. Isn’t that what a company is supposed to
do, reinvest their profits to secure future earnings?
In essence, by providing the bailout funds, America paid for a second time (and
perhaps a third time) for the vehicles we bought from GM and Chrysler over the
years. We already paid for them; they’re long gone.
If GM and Chrysler went away, only some American pride would have been
hurt. Losing the specific vehicles that these guys were producing would have
been no shock to the market; they were hardly the best or most popular options
for new vehicle buyers. All the other car manufacturers would have gladly
picked up the slack, and since we already have a very healthy trend towards
foreign brands establishing manufacturing plants in the U.S., in all likelihood the
