We are awash in camera hogs. But the mini-cam is being tugged away from John 'live shot" Kerry by his Boys Town mate, Chuck Schumer, in an all too many wrestle offs, deep in the public pudding parlor.
Currently, Mr. Schumer has the firm upper hand over the fading teenaged rock star, whose garbled and hissing afflicted prep school rock recordings are so valued by the liberal cognoscenti today. Mr. Kerry is failing to exploit the run up in gas prices to the extent that Mr. Schumer has, just as he has neglected to chastise Karl Rove as steadily and consistently as Mr. Schumer.
"It is an ominous sign," Mr. Schumer limned the other day to every man with a mini-cam that he and his scrambling staff could find, concerning Mr. Rove's recall to Mr. Fitzgerald's grand jury, said to be examining another ham sandwich, both with and without pickles, in their endless quest to nail someone to the crosses already constructed in their noisy partisan workshop.
Mr. Schumer, in the Rove matter, had taken valuable time from his pressing gasoline investigations, his new axis of attack on the Bush administration, forgetting, in the mobbed up fracas, that the price increase was exactly what he and his allies had always wanted and that his prized personal bailiwick, New York State, charges their gasoline taxes not by the gallon, but by the dollar cost--some 47 cents a gallon, or has it gone up since I've written this?
But it is fun being Mr. Schumer, with a vast and populous state as your playground, with a beloved country as your stage and with an endless supply of live camera angles to prance around in, pontificating to one and all about whatever trumped evil you endlessly spy on the horizon.
an elementary school teacher at heart, Mr. Schumer is quick to point out that Exxon-Mobil is today's tyrant and that Mr. Bush and, indeed, Mr. Cheney are its willing agents. So tightly bound to its fortunes, Mr. Schumer explains, they can be likened to a connection rivaling that of the tar baby.
"The President believes that what's good for Exxon-Mobil is good for america," Mr. Schumer somberly enounced the other day, with his hands crossed in front of him, his head bowed in funereal reverence, in a hushed similarly attired crowd of four flushing lackeys.
and while Mr. Schumer, so adept at the cheap shot, beating Mr. Kerry to this punch, pulls the wool over the eyes of the hastily assembled cluster of fawning mourners, a brief examination of the positive attributes of Exxon should be examined.
Granted, Mr. Schumer would love to break up big oil, smash its profits, destroy its refining capacity and scatter it to the winds, just for the sake of destruction, but in doing so, where would we be?
In 2005, Exxon-Mobil had an effective corporate tax rate of 41.7%, with a total of 98.6 billion dollars paid, across the board, in taxes.
In the same period, Exxon-Mobil paid 25 billion dollars in federal income taxes, while paying 40 billion dollars in excise taxes at the pump.
Exxon paid $5.71 a share in 2005, which was up 25% over 2004.
It appears to me that Mr. Schumer, in his outright deceit, is absolutely right-- Exxon-Mobil, by tossing almost 100 billion dollars into the kitty and by paying almost 6 bucks a share, all in just one year, is good for america, especially when you look back and forward and recognize the amount of dough this one oil company is pumping into the bloated coffers on a federal, state and local level, to supply our appetite for fuel.
Once the scale of the money shaken from this single corporate tree is grasped, the vast ocean of specie contributed by the petroleum industry can then be comprehended.
at the same time, the price of sugar has increased from 6 cents to 18 cents a pound, a 200% increase, yet we hear nothing from Mr. Schumer concerning this vast run up in obscene profits.
We hear nothing about the rise of big sugar--how the roots of big sugar are ensnaring Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney in a conspiracy of profit, opening the doors of power to both big and little sugar alike. Or that Domino and Holly have unfairly and heinously occupied the breakfast tables of america with a wink and nod from their willing tools in the White House.
Knowing Mr. Schumer and the extreme acuity of his razor sharp staff, it may only be a matter of time before we find New York's senior senator standing on the hood of one of his gas guzzling Suburbans before a dusty sugar beet farm, denouncing the unfair profits found in the lowly plant.
Beyond the sugar beet lies saw grass, the next key ingredient in the alternative fuels Mr. Schumer, in the little spare time he has on his gasoline circuit, is hawking.
and will we find Mr Schumer again, shamelessly standing upon a scaffold, with a huge expanse of saw grass waving behind him, as he cries in the beloved country, about the aggregation of unfair income to be harvested from this hardy plant?
Of course we will.
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