The rhetorical flourishes of an Obama speech may be Reaganesque, but the message is all Karl Marx.
In today’s energy speech in Michigan, Sen. Obama attacks a major corporation by name — Exxon-Mobil — and shames them for having the audicity to … are you ready for this? … make a profit!
This is a corporation that just recorded the largest profit in the history of the United States. . This is the company that, last quarter, made $1,500 every second. That’s more than $300,000 in the time it takes you to fill up a tank with gas that’s costing you more than $4-a-gallon.
Does Obama even realize he is attacking a private company that employs thousands of Americans? Or that it only controls 3 percent of the oil industry, which despite its size makes it incapable of controlling the market price for oil or the price of gasoline at the pump? Does he understand the free market system at all?
Would Obama prefer Exxon go out of business, costing thousands of American jobs and untold millions in tax collections, further reducing the supply of oil and raising gas prices even more?
Winston Churchill famously said:
Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
Private enterprise is a remarkably resilient, steady and sturdy horse pulling the wagon of American prosperity. Obama seems to view profitable companies as the enemy.
I am in favor of a profit. The question is: how much profit?
The humorous (in a sick kind of way) is that Exxon-Mobil stock went down after the record earnings were announced a few weeks ago because the earnings were less than expected!!!