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An
Open Letter to New Exxon/Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson
The Corporate Superpower
of Superpowers
By RALPH NADER
Mr. Tillerson:
You have to be feeling pretty
good about your new position heading the world's largest oil
and gas company. You stand astride the globe where, with few
exceptions, the Congress is like putty in your hands, the White
House is your House and the consuming public is powerless. Governments
in the Third World may huff and puff, but Exxon/Mobil pretty
much gets its way in dozens of arrangements completed and about
to be concluded.
Seven years ago, your predecessor,
Lee Raymond, took over Exxon's main competitor, Mobil Oil Company,
through a merger approved by the misnamed Antitrust Division
of the Justice Department. Really, what is left of antitrust
standards when the number one and number two companies in an
industry are permitted to marry?
Profits of your company are
beyond your dreams of avarice. Over $36 billion last year, after
modest taxes, yet you blithely ignored urgent pleas by members
of Congress, especially that of the powerful Chairman, Senator
Chuck Grassley (Rep. Iowa) to contribute some significant deductible
money to charities which help impoverished American families
pay the exorbitant prices for heating oil this past winter. Rarely
has there been such a demonstration of corporate greed and insensitivity
by a company that has received huge government welfare subsidies,
de-regulation and tax expenditures over the years at the expense
of the smaller taxpayers of America.
Exxon/Mobil even relishes the
latest "Big Oil's Big Windfall," to use the phrase
in a recent /New York Times/ editorial, which wrote that "oil
companies stand to gain a minimum of $7 billion and as much as
$28 billion over the next five years under an obscure provision
in last year's giant energy bill that allows companies to avoid
paying royalties [to Uncle Sam] on oil and gas produced in the
Gulf of Mexico. This welfare payment at a time of record crude
oil, refined oil and natural gas prices appears too much even
for one of your industry's giants. A Shell official told the
/New York Times/ reporter, Edmund L. Andrews, "Under the
current environment, we don't need royalty relief."
Exxon/Mobil doesn't feel any
need to say something like that. You're a corporate superpower
at the pinnacle of your superpowers. No Ida Tarbell, no Fred
Cook, no Senator Phil Hart, no Sixty Minutes program can effectively
expose you, because the company has been exposed and exposed
and nothing changes your corporate policies.
Unchanged is Exxon/Mobil's
stubborn refusal to pay the modest $5 billion punitive damage
award following the Exxon Valdez oil spill that damaged or put
so many small businesses out of business. They are still waiting,
according to a recent network television expose. Last year your
company made that much post-tax profits in about seven weeks.
After the devastating spill in Alaskan waters, your gasoline
prices rose sharply in California and you made money there. And
your delay for 12 years resisting the court ordered payout by
legal maneuvers has returned in interest on that award about
that amount. Not that many years ago, a company in your mega-profitable
position would have considered the public relations if not the
simple justice benefits before dragging on the proceedings. Not
so, with the impregnable Exxon/Mobil.
While BP and Shell move to
build and talk about a solar power business, including wind power,
you continue to parade that window dressing pittance of a project
at Stanford University that is going nowhere. Your company is
still seen as a resistant skeptic among a swarm of multinational
companies including BP, that recognize Global Warming and its
direct fossil fuel connections.
To make matters worse, Exxon/Mobil
has funded over three dozen organizations to undermine scientific
findings about global warming or as front groups to engage in
obstructionist or harassment activities.
These and other derelictions
have led environmental groups to urge a boycott (See exposeexxon.com)
of Exxon/Mobil products and employment refusals by university
graduates. Only company insiders know how effective such a boycott
has been at the gasoline pump and elsewhere. My guess is that
you're shrugging it off as inconsequential. The boycott clearly
needs more imagination in getting its message out.
The lessons of history teach
that the arrogance of corporate power eventually meets its match,
either through the decay of internal hubris or the rise of public
law enforcement or from private challenges-innovative, civic
or competitive.
Remember, the awesome power
and market position of General Motors years ago, or the dominance
of IBM. When you're on top is when you should be most alert to
the misuses of power that are sowing the seeds of future decline.
The mean-spirited image of your company, the stinginess of transferring
some of your corporate welfare windfalls to the welfare of millions
of shivering children and their penurious parents are upsetting
even Republican members of Congress hearing from their indignant
constituents about sky high fuel prices.
So observers of your company-official
and regular people-will be waiting for signs of the post-Raymond,
clenched jaw era of Exxon/Mobil under the command of your group
of executives. Let's see if the change is just one of style or
one of more sincere responses to the ways the approaching winds
are blowing.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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