MOTHER NATURE DUMPS ON GEORGE
George W. loves April. Not because the cherry blossoms are in bloom, but because April 22 is Earth Day, which means he gets to put on some Khaki pants, a plaid shirt, some hiking-type boots – and then gets to ride on Air Force One to some national park where he can pose as Environmental Man all day long.But this year, Mother Nature (damn her) messed up George’s day. He was fully outfitted and had been flown out to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where a horde of TV cameras, photographers, and reporters was going to record him working with a gaggle of volunteers to help restore a trail in the park. George loves being depicted as a regular worker guy, and Karl Rove had carefully screened the volunteers so no pesky Democrats or Sierra Club kooks would interrupt his scripted moment with some nasty remark (you know, like pointing out that George has broken his promise to eliminate the $4 billion backlog on repairing our deteriorating park system, and instead has actually increased the back log to $5 billion).
It was to be a swell day – but Mother Nature (damn her, again) whipped up a thunderstorm, and poor George had to give his environmental talk inside a cold, dank hangar at the airport, speaking to his own aides and some military personnel. This made him a bit grumpy in his brief talk: “In the park, had I been there, I would have reminded people today is Earth Day, a day in which we recommit ourselves to being good stewards of the land.”
Then George flew back to Washington to continue pushing for policies allowing oil drillers, clear-cutters, and strip-miners to plunder our national parks and pollute our environment. But he did make one sensible suggestion while in the park – he encouraged Americans to save our environment through volunteer action.
I agree. Please volunteer with your local Sierra Club or other grassroots environmental groups to defeat George’s corporate assault on Mother Earth.
HELP EASE EXXON’S HEADACHE
Friends, there is someone among us who has a big problem, and he needs our help. Knowing the innate generosity of Americans, I’m certain that you’ll reach out and do all you can to assist Mr. Lee Raymond.
He’s the CEO of Exxon Mobil – and wait’ll you learn about his desperate situation: His company has so much cash that he doesn’t know what to do with it. And you thought you had problems. Here is Fortune magazine’s gloomy analysis of the situation: “[Lee Raymond] suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend the windfall wrought by $55-a-barrel oil. By the end of April, Exxon [had] a cash hoard of more than $25 billion. And if crude prices stay where they are, this geometrically growing bonanza could soon give Exxon more cash on hand than any other U.S. company. Each dollar jump in the price of a barrel of oil adds another half billion in earnings. Based on current prices, Exxon is accumulating more than $1 billion a month – even after allocating for dividends, share repurchases, and capital spending. If oil simply stays where it is now, Exxon’s cash could approach $40 billion in 12 months.”
I have no doubt that you feel Mr. Raymond’s pain and will want to help him cope with, as Fortune expressed it, “the headache of what to do with all that cash.” If you have suggestions, e-mail them to me and I’ll forward them directly to Mr. Raymond.
Just to get your creative juices flowing, I’ll offer an obvious way for Exxon to end this “crisis” of excess cash gushing into its coffers: Stop gouging us at the pump! Each dollar of those billions causing such a headache for Mr. Raymond comes out of your and my pockets. Exxon doesn’t have to rip us off just because it can – it could pass on some of its windfall oil profits to its gasoline customers in the form of lower prices.
But I’m sure you have more creative suggestions. Send your ideas for easing Mr. Raymond’s headache to me: info@jimhightower.com.
This article appears in May 20 • 2005.