The next time you hear about the evil multinationals and/or about Big Oil and/or about America's dirty capitalist pigs and/or about the benefits of the welfare state vs private enterprise, send them this reminder from the archives of Powerline's John Hinderaker and John J Ray (while the 2008 numbers may certainly have changed somewhat in 7-8 years, those changes are hardly likely to be gigantic):
… the largest American oil company, Exxon Mobil, is only the 14th largest in the world, and is dwarfed by the really big oil companies–all owned by foreign governments or government-sponsored monopolies–that dominate the world’s oil supply.
This graph tells the story; you can barely see the American oil companies as minor players on the right side of the chart. The chart was presented to the House committee by Chevron …
… With 94% of the world’s oil supply locked up by foreign governments, most of which are hostile to the United States, the relatively puny American oil companies do not have access to enough crude oil to significantly affect the market and help bring prices down. Thus, Exxon Mobil, a small oil company, buys 90% of the crude oil that it refines for the U.S. market from the big players, i.e, mostly-hostile foreign governments.
Related: The Real Party of the Rich: Democrats Have More Top Donors, Millionaires in Congress Ever since Americans were old enough to crawl in front of a television set, they’ve been told that Republicans are the party of rich white guys, and Democrats are the champions of the poor.
Prepare to flip that thinking upside down.
… 20 of the top 32 donors lean Democrat, while only 6 lean Republican. The rest are on the fence.
Not only that, if you factor in all the indirect benefits the Democrat Party gets from the non-profit sector, left-wing activism, public and private sector unions, Wall Street banks, universities, and superfund contributors, it has been estimated by Dr. David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin in their book The New Leviathan that the Republican Party is outspent in politics by a factor of 7-to-1.
Bear this in mind when the left goes off on a tirade about the Koch Brothers bogeymen, who come in 59th on a list of top contributors. Public and private sector unions leave the Koch Brother’s measly $18 million over 25 years in the dust.
For those “progressives” who are scratching your heads right now, this is very simple. The bigger the government, the easier it is for the increased power to be abused by moneyed interests. Growing the government doesn’t change that fact; it only changes the people who become rich.
Lest there be any doubt about the new “party of the rich,” there are now more Democratic millionaires in Congress than Republican ones.
… While the rich do get expense of the poor in a socialistic economic, a free market economy (not a corporatist one) allows the rich and poor to better their standards of living together.
