ABC's Gibson Attempts Guilt Trip on Exxon CEO

newsbusters.org ^ | August 14, 2008 | Jeff Poor

[Rufus2007]

Maybe it was a stab by Charles Gibson to provide a national group therapy session for his 8 million viewers, but the ABC "World News" anchor aggressively questioned ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson on the August 14 broadcast for "obscene" profits and asked him to "justify" the company's success.

"As we said earlier, Rex Tillerson - who is the board chair and CEO of ExxonMobil, doesn't talk often to the press," Gibson said. "His company has reported remarkable profits in the first half of this year. The high price of gas brought ExxonMobil close to $22 billion in profit - in profit - for the first half of this year. I asked him how he justifies that amount, that some see as obscene."

...more (w/video)...

[Rufus2007]

I don't like high gas prices, but Gibson was clearly playing to his audience.

[Devilinbaggypants]

He’s just like BOR...another talking head who brings nothing to the table accept his ego!

[RexBeach]

Charlie went past the audience on this one. He was displaying his extreme bias toward one of the companies that helps him get to work every day.

What a magnificent putz.

These “reporters” never tell the audience how much oil companies pay in taxes, and how much it costs to do business.

[Ben Mugged]

If he doesn’t make a profit, I will vote to have him fired.... Part of my retirement fund is invested in Exxon.

[hoe_cake]

“”I saw someone characterize our profits the other day, in terms of $1,400 in profit per second.... “

In one ear and out the other. What liberal really heard what Tillerson said?

[Cyman]

I would have looked old Charlie in the eye and asked how much of that obscene money he was putting in his pocket. Yeah, and oh by the way Charlie how much stock do you own in the oil companies?

[Lurker]

Here's how one 'justifies' the profits that ANY publicly traded company earns:

"Well Charlie you dimwit. If I don't maximize our company's profits in every legal way possible, I'll be sent to prison. Why don't you look up the phrase "fiduciary duty" sometime."

"Do you have any more stupid questions, Charlie?"

L

[truthluva]

Will Gibson do a report on the amount of taxes I pay for a gallon of gas and what the government really does with that money?

[Red Badger]

I’d say, “Charley, define “OBSCENE””................

[Rudder]

"I asked him how he justifies that amount, that some see as obscene."

Well, what the hell did Tillerson say?

[zek157]

Everything we do, the numbers are very large,” Tillerson replied. “I saw someone characterize our profits the other day, in terms of $1,400 in profit per second. Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes. And we spent $15,000 a second in costs. We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So, this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it.”

Interesting statement. It equals 19.6% taxes, 73.5% reinvestment and 6.8% profit. Where would Obama’s $1000 refund come from? The Gov’ts 19.6%?

[Red Badger]

If he doesn’t make a profit, I will vote to have him fired.... Part of my retirement fund is invested in Exxon.

me too............

[Uri’el-2012]

Charles Gibson is one of Lenin's "useful idiots"

[ozzymandus]

I saw part of that interview. It was a real hit piece, but the CEO handled himself well, and Gibson came off as a bully. I’ll bet Charlie was PO’d when it ended.

[AnnGora]

I wonder if Charlie could justify the obscene salaries he and the other teleprompter-readers earn.

[Flycatcher]

CHARLES: Can you justify the obscene profits your company is making?

TILLERSON: They're no more obscene than the profits of ABC World News.

(PAUSE)

TILLERSON: Oh, that's right. Biased mainstream news agencies don't make profits, do they?

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[STONEWALLS]

“.... Part of my retirement fund is invested in Exxon.”

...damn straight!....and I’ll bet the employee’s retirement fund of ABC holds Exxon too....it’s a huge stock for in- stitutional ownership because it’s a company that makes a PROFIT!!!
Stonewalls; a retired guy who owns Chevron stock and is glad of it.

[hermgem]

British Petroleum declared a 36% increase in profits in their last quarterly report.
BP is the company that gobbled up Amoco, the U.S. oil company based in Illinois/Chicago.
Amoco threw in the sponge and sold out after Senator Durbin accused and charged them -twice- with price gouging then came up empty, twice.
Durbin in fact succeeded chasing Amoco plus their Chemical Company out of the country.
Just imagine Charlie Gibbons cries if Exxon would have been the buyer of Amoco and net profits for Exxon would have been even higher.
As is, real losers are Illinois/Chicago taxpayers who are stuck with the nations highest unfunded employee pension obligations of $46 billion and in Cook County with the countries highest sales taxes of 10.5%.

[LomanBill]

[British Petroleum declared a 36% increase in profits in their last quarterly report. BP is the company that gobbled up Amoco, the U.S. oil company based in Illinois/Chicago.]

 

They also gobbled up Atlantic Richfield after ARCO was driven to the brink of bankruptcy by environmentalists and unions during the construction of the Alaskan pipeline.

 

Observe that British Petroleum and Shell (Royal Dutch Shell) are the the #1 and #4 producers of Oil on American soil. 

 

Compare the paltry 131k bpd of Exxon, the "Evil" American Scapegoat - with  BP's 586k.   

 

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/data_publications/crude_oil_natural_gas_reserves/current/pdf/appa.pdf

 

 

Yet the MSM and enviro weenies always pick on Exxon and never mention BP.   Hmmm.... why is that?

 

 

[thackney]

They also gobbled up Atlantic Richfield after ARCO was driven to the brink of bankruptcy by environmentalists and unions during the construction of the Alaskan pipeline.

The Alaska Pipeline was completed in 1977. ARCO joined the BP group in 2000. Did ARCO exist on the brink of bankruptcy for nearly two and a half decades?

[Clock King]

I'd say, "If you're so damn smart, here's a shovel. YOU go figure how to get oil out of the ground and turn it into gas or plastics. I quit. And all my peoples quit too."

Ok, so that will never happen; but I would like to see a CEO put one of these "talkers" (who DO make an obscene amount of money for spouting opinion and reading teleprompters) in their place.

[castlebrew]

Nope. And it won’t come from the reinvestment side, either. And that would leave...?

[castlebrew]

And just whom did Charley sleep with to get this job, anyway?

[Doctor Raoul]

Gibson is overpaid. He makes more than 7 times the lowest paid ABC employee.

In some very progressive circles, he should be killed if ABC doesn't correct that.

Scary thing about that "fix it or die" social justice demand is that a college professor made it in a letter to the editor in a major paper.

[LomanBill]

>>ARCO joined the BP group in 2000.

 

2000 was just when the icing was put on the debt-ridden cake.

 

Foreign-Government Ownership:
An Insidious Threat

Kenneth C. Crowe

[snip]

The Personal Touch

The British applied the pointed personal touch to the matter by having Foreign Minister Stewart inform Secretary of State Rogers that the British government would appreciate a "helpful" attitude. Newsweek, at the time, said that the State Department "tried to calm the uproar with an unusual public statement indicating there was still room for negotiating over the BP-Sohio merger." BP's chairman Eric Drake and Sohio's president Charles E. Spahr also sat down with Mitchell for direct talks to iron out the problem.

The merger eventually was permitted to go through with the proviso that Sohio shed some of its gas stations to keep its domination of the Ohio gasoline market below the 25 percent level. The more complicated and probably more telling issue of allowing a potentially major crude oil producer (BP) to merge with one of the largest independent refiners in the U.S. (Sohio) was never pursued. In anti-trust lingo, this approach to the case would have evolved around a vertical foreclosure of market. A former anti-trust division lawyer said the vertical foreclosure angle wasn't pursued "largely because to make (that) argument could have made it complicated, and because of the State Department's interest, and because the Department of Justice wasn't interested in making oil cases."

In 1971, the BP-Sohio combine along with Atlantic Richfield and Exxon, the other major partners in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System got some additional help from Mitchell when he rejected a request by lawyers in Justice's anti-trust division to begin a formal investigation of the proposed pipeline. Mitchell killed the proposal with a terse memo in which he wrote: "In view of what is going on, this is not the time." He didn't explain what he meant by "what is going on." Between them, the Alaskan trio of BP-Sohio, Atlantic Richfield and Exxon own 95 percent of 9.6-billion to 20-billion barrels of oil in the Prudhoe Bay field and control slightly over 90 percent of the capacity of the pipeline. In an article in the Nation in 1973, William J. Lamont, a former lawyer in the Justice Anti-Trust Division and now an attorney with a public interest law firm in Washington, commented: "Control over the pipeline and the related production agreement will give to three companies operating virtually as one, monopoly control over the marketing of oil on the West Coast and a greater share of total domestic oil production than would be permissible under any view of the antitrust laws."

The BP-Sohio combine alone owns 54 percent of the Prudhoe Bay field and 49.18 percent of the pipeline, which is being built at a cost of about $6-billion. This same Alaskan pipeline bas been considered as a possible means of transporting the oil from the Navy Petroleum Reserve Four when that field is developed at some uncertain point in the future. The Geological Survey has estimated that Pet Four, as the Navy refers to it, could contain between 10-billion and 33-billion barrels of oil. Back in 1973, Deputy Secretary of Defense William P. Clements Jr. recommended in an internal Pentagon document that the Reserve should be explored and developed, suggesting the use of private oil companies to do the job if government funds weren't available. Since government funds usually aren’t available for that type of project, the proposal was tantamount to suggesting the Reserve be developed by private industry.

Prior to becoming the Number 2 man in the Pentagon in 1973, Clements had been chairman of SEDCO, a major oil drilling and pipeline contracting company which he founded and controlled. SEDCO's 1974 proxy statement, the latest available, showed that Clements and his wife owned 1,611,275 shares of SEDCO, or 15.8 percent of the company’s stock, worth approximately $39-million at recent market prices.

A recently published financial analysis shows that SEDCO's pipeline construction division has a two-year, $20-million contract with BP for work on the North Slope. BP also has been leasing two of SEDCO's offshore drilling rigs, built at a cost of $49-million, to search for oil in the North Sea, and the company also is building a drilling ship at a cost of $46-minion for BP.

The British government directly owns 48.2 percent of British Petroleum, while the Bank of England, the country's central bank, holds the other 21.5 percent. This adds up to a total of 69.7 percent. The Bank of England acquired its BP stock from the Burmah Oil Company Ltd. this past January in the process of helping to bail Burmah out of its financial straits.

Two of BP's directors are appointed by the government, which emphasizes that it has a policy of not interfering with the company's commercial activities. The interference represented by Stewart meeting with Rogers about the Sohio merger certainly countervails that claim. Among BP's directors are four English lords and Sir Val Duncan, a director of the Bank of England and chairman of Rio Tinto Zinc Corp. Ltd., a British-based multi-national mining and metals conglomerate, which acquired about one percent of BP's common stock back in 1961. Nicholas Faith in his book "The Infiltrator’s" notes that Rio Tinto's subsidiary, United States Borax & Chemical Corp., mans a mine in California which supplies almost all of the world's boron.

Sir Val is also a director of Societe Imetal, the French holding company controlled by the Rothschild interests, which is in the process of trying to acquire the Copperweld Corporation of Pittsburgh despite the opposition of the American firm's management and unions.

Incestuous Relationships

BP and its corporate American child have a number of incestuous financial relationships — a common happening in corporate families. Sohio's 1975 proxy outlines some of these transactions, but omits the telling detail of how much money is involved. Among them:

• In 1974, Sohio imported 159,000 barrels of crude a day from foreign sources including BP. This adds up to a daily bill of roughly $2-million. BP's share is not delineated.

• In 1974, Sohio signed a five-year agreement under which BP was to provide 1.5-million tons of marine tanker transportation. This tanker agreement was reached in a period when tankers are a glut on the market.

• BP is reimbursed by Sohio for the development of the North Slope Alaskan leases. "Reasonable overhead and administrative charges" are added onto the bill according to the documents on file at the SEC.

The profits to BP are not spelled out, but all of the above transactions are covered by the catch-all phrase: "These transactions were in the ordinary course of business and were at no more than prevailing company prices."

Three BP executives, including two of the British firm's managing directors, sit on Sohio's board. The records on file at the SEC note that only citizens of the United Kingdom may sit on the board of directors of British Petroleum Company Ltd.

Some Conclusions:

Investments by foreign governments or corporations controlled by foreign governments should be unwelcome on the American corporate scene as contrary to our way of life. Conversely, for those who hunger for the U.S. government to become an owner of the industrial companies, the precedent of government ownership — as in BP's case — has been established. The concept of government ownership of industry in the U.S. will be reinforced each time such an investment flows into this country from any government treasury, whether European, Japanese, or from an OPEC nation.

Received in New York on September 30, 1975

©1975 Kenneth C. Crowe

 

[sloop]

gibson needs to focus on the government/private fannie mae that is on the brink of failing and costing the taxpayers billions - fannie mae that has been run by democrats that got tens of millions in bonuses (because they cooked the books)

by contrast, oil companies are successful without government help

interview gorelick, raines and johnson and i would consider watching - bashing success ain't my thing

[thackney]

I'm quite familiar with the history on the pipeline. It has little to do with claiming ARCO was on the brink of bankruptcy for over two decades.

[Enchante]

Whatever millions of $$$ these useless MSM hacks like Gibson and Katie Couric get paid is what I would classify as “obscene” — let’s pass a law to confiscate all MSM salary above, say, $35K (national median salary?) and give proceeds to worthy causes. Won’t the socialists in the media approve of such a nice egalitarian policy?

[LomanBill]

>>ABC's Gibson Attempts Guilt Trip on Exxon CEO

 

Not surprising.

 

Disney, gAyBC's owner, is beholden to the Saudis....  "Euro Disney" "Abdul Aziz"

 

[geezerwheezer]

Memo to Charlie Gibson @ ABC News:
Charlie,
As ABC is owned by Disney Corp., please do a story on the highway robbery prices your “mother corporation” charges at Disney World and other Disney owned parks. Perhaps you can interview some parents after they pay their hard-earned dollars for a pass to the park. Maybe they might have enough cash to buy a burger or two at the end of the day, but I doubt it.

[LomanBill]

[I'm quite familiar with the history on the pipeline.]

Apparently so are Kenneth Fromm, ARCO's Chief of Operations in Alaska,  and ARCO Chaplain Lindsey Williams.

 

 

[It has little to do with claiming ARCO was on the brink of bankruptcy for over two decades.]

 

The smile disappeared from his face, and it was replaced by a frown. He closed his office door, then with a very sad look on his face, he said, "Chaplain, Atlantic Richfield has just completed the transaction of borrowing the worth of the company."

I exclaimed, "That's bankruptcy!"

He did not like the word "bankruptcy" but he remarked in his own way that was just about the size of what was happening. I had commented that it was financial suicide, and he acknowledged that was what was taking place.

At that point Mr. X and I talked again about the conversation he had with Senator Chance back in 1975, when Mr. X had remarked that the government wanted to nationalize the oil companies.

As we carried on our conversation that day in 1976, I said to Mr. X, "You have just completed the borrowing of the worth of the company?""Yes, Chaplain," he answered. I looked at him and said, "But why?"
He said to me, "Chaplain, we are struggling for survival."

 

Mr. X is presumably Kenneth Fromm.

 

[LomanBill]

So, thackney, who owned the paper on that debt?

[LomanBill]

[Maybe they might have enough cash to buy a burger or two at the end of the day, but I doubt it.]

 

The underlying reason for FastPass was/is "they can't spend money if they're standing in line".

 

The pig-Latin for FastPass?

 

"A$$ Fast Pay"

 

Or so said the FastPass software team lead.  Heard it from him myself, back in 2000.

 

 

[thackney]

Lindsey Williams

LOL!!!!

His book and video has almost more false claims than words.

Since ARCO continued in business for a couple decades after this, his claim seems rather silly.

[LomanBill]

>>Since ARCO continued in business for a couple decades
>>after this, his claim seems rather silly.

Who owned the paper on the debt?

[LomanBill]

>>but Gibson was clearly playing to his audience.

 

 

Gibson is no Howard Beale, but such manipulation reminds me of an amazingly prophetic piece of work from 1976 - 1976 being the Bicentennial of the implementation of the American Declaration of Independence.

 

 

One of the most ironic scenes in the movie showed communist terrorists negotiating for their profit share of The Network's Mao Tse Tung show. 

 

The message?   Corporatism == Communism == Collectivism. 

 

 

Network - 1976

 

 

 

HOWARD BEALE:

Right now the Arabs have screwed us out of enough American dollars
to come right back and, with our own money, buy General Motors, IBM, ITT,
AT& T, DuPont, US Steel and other American companies.
                  
Hell, they already own half of England!
                
So, listen to me. Listen to me, $%^^mit.
                 
The Arabs are simply buying us.
                
There's only one thing that can stop them
- you.

 

[snip]

 

What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated
to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it.

 

It’s the individual that’s finished.
                  
It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you  out there that’s finished.
                  
Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals.  It’s a nation of some    -odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings

 

and as replaceable as piston rods.

 

              
Well, the time has come to say is dehumanization such a bad word?  Whether it’s good or bad, that’s what is so.
                  
The whole world is becoming humanoid - creatures that look human but aren't.
                  
The whole world .

 

We’re the most advanced country so we’ll get there first.
                  
The whole world's people are becoming mass-produced,
                  
programmed, numbered and...

 

NARRATOR:  

It was a perfectly admissible argument that Beale advanced.
              
It was, however, also a very depressing one.

 

Nobody particularly cared to hear his life was utterly valueless....

 

LOMANBILL:

"To Secure These [INDIVIDUAL] Rights, governments are instituted among men"

 

Valueless?

 

 

They didn't think so.

 

 

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

 

It is rather for us to be here dedicated  to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion  to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion

THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE
THAT THESE DEAD SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom  and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,  shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysberg
November 19, 1863