Happy Thursday to you, TAT readers,
Today’s topic is one that I have been wanting to refocus on… for a very long time. It is one that though very delicate in my wife’s side of the family, must become a primary topic of US and global security… if we dare. I have focused on price-gouging vs. alleged “inflation,” oligarchy, and the pain imposed on working citizens over the past couple of months and this essay continues the trend. I write because politicians, unethical advertisers and other devious tactics employed by big oil, will always hide the truth from you and me. They also continue to push false narratives about the devastation they’ve wrought with climate science denial. Today I have decided that I will try to create a narrative that covers the truth.
First, a disclaimer: I have no issue with people or corporations making huge profits, so long as they do it ethically and don’t hurt others in the process. Big oil boardrooms fail both criteria. I have little issue at all, with the extraordinarily hard-working professionals in the industry that keep our world running as we begin the long transition to renewable and less harmful energy. My criticism is focused exclusively on the Board Rooms of big oil and supporting industries. This includes politicians and murderously unethical marketers who create and perpetuate the lies we all hear, read and see at the gas pump and worst of all, a Congress that rewards these lies with tax protections, subsidies etc.
There is a list as long as my arm of extremely harmful impacts imposed on us all by those board rooms. Today though, I simply don’t have time to address all of them. Today’s effort is to create a truthful narrative that helps us all to see gross offenders like; ExxonMobil, Shell, Marathon, BP, Phillips and countless others for precisely who they are, oppressive and arrogant abusers that are protected by congress.
I have no doubt that today’s essay will draw reprisals in a variety of ways, as they have in the past. Yes, real life negative experiences I have incurred from daring to tell the truth about these thuggish board rooms. Those negative experiences are well-documented stories, for another day. This is no different from the robber-baron era, where the industry was defined by corrosive, intimidating and any number of unethical manipulations to create monopolies. Those monopolies… became empires. Standard Oil was one of the worst abusers of the public trust. Rockefeller even muscled out the Vandergrift contributions that helped to create the empire. Today’s big oil also plays by their own rules, with little or no repercussions. I can’t find a single line in our constitution that says, oligarchs get to run our democracy. Even today, our SCOTUS, by their actions seems to see something that I cannot find. The Citizens United debacle is a prime example.
If you are fed up with price-gouging, unethical congressional cover and letting oligarchs like big oil, big pharma, insurance, food prices, etc. control your life, this essay, though a bit long, will interest you.
Onward
So, here’s the premise,
Big oil, from its inception has been a high-stakes, often cutthroat industry. The Robber-Baron and Trust-Busting eras, clearly demonstrate remarkable thuggery, to say the least. Now, it’s Boardrooms and their lawyers, often operating with little to no regulation in many parts of the world, and lesser oversight even here in the US, that still play the thug game. They do this… to achieve what they crave; constant record, quarterly profits and the power that comes with it. The board rooms care little or nothing about those negatively impacted. The proof is well established but never seems to be able to be included in our headlines, due to big oil exercising their influence, over media.
The harmful impacts range from unsustainable natural disaster costs for government, which taxpayers like us pay for. Many or most of those global disasters that impose drought, starvation, death, heavy global migration and suffering, on billions of human beings, are the direct result of climate denial hoaxes, imposed on the most susceptible political groups. In America’s case, this would be today’s Republican Party.
Okay, let’s get down into the weeds about the details and supporting evidence for my premise. First, as that I am comparing big oil and the rest of today’s American oligarchs to the Gilded Ages and Robber Baron era, please see a couple of historical definitions and explanations below. Even a sixth grader could see the parallels between today’s corporate monopolies and Robber Barons of the Gilded ages. It is almost more like reading modern history, than history that is over a hundred years old. In both cases, it is our working class that does the suffering while concurrently paying the taxes, to support those Robber Barons.
In the beginning
There are endless stories of robber barons and captains of industry, but today’s topic revolves around the issue of robber barons, a medieval European concept but brought to high prominence during the Gilded Age, of the US. This period spans the late 19th century until the early 20th century, up until the Trust-Busting era of American History. The terms below are not just about our past but embody the modern US corporate environment of unethical dominance and monopolies by the Robber Barons, such as big oil.
robber baron Robber Baron was a term applied to a businessman in the 19th century who engaged in unethical and monopolistic practices, utilized corrupt political influence, faced almost no business regulation, and amassed enormous wealth. - Meaning and history of the term, Robber Baron - ThoughtCo
captain of industry
: someone who owns or manages a large, successful business or company,
Generally considered a bit more ethical that the Robber Barons but comprised of similar wealth and monopolies.
- Merriam-Webster
Gilded Age Gilded Age, period of gross materialism and blatant political corruption in U.S. history during the 1870s that gave rise to important novels of social and political criticism. The period takes its name from the earliest of these, The Gilded Age (1873), written by Mark Twain in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The novel gives a vivid and accurate description of Washington, D.C., and is peopled with caricatures of many leading figures of the day, including greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. The great burst of industrial activity and corporate growth that characterized the Gilded Age was presided over by a collection of colourful and energetic entrepreneurs who became known alternatively as “captains of industry” and “robber barons.” They grew rich through the monopolies they created in the steel, petroleum, and transportation industries. Among the best known of them were John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, and J.P. Morgan. Twain’s satire was followed in 1880 by Democracy, a political novel published anonymously by the historian Henry Adams. Adams’s book deals with a dishonest Midwestern senator and suggests that the real source of corruption lies in the unprincipled attitudes of the wild and lawless West. An American Politician, by Francis Marion Crawford (1884), focuses upon the disputed election of Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, but its significance as a political novel is diluted by an overdose of popular romance. The political novels of the Gilded Age represent the beginnings of a new strain in American literature, the novel as a vehicle of social protest, a trend that grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the works of the muckrakers and culminated in the proletarian novelists. - Encyclopedia Britanica
Teddy Roosevelt and the Trusts Thick dark smoke billowing out of smokestacks several stories high proliferated across city skylines, heralding America's rise to world prominence and industrial supremacy. After the Civil War, Americans embraced the smog and dirt of rapidly rising cities as a sign that America was fulfilling its destiny as a world power. Eager immigrants withstood the dangerous trip across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Traveling in crowded ships, they left all they knew behind them in the hope that America would bring those better lives. With all the progress that Americans made, new problems arose. While many immigrants found work and new homes in America they also experienced racism, lived in dilapidated tenements, and performed dangerous jobs. As industry grew and revolutionized American life, society became stratified: the poor became poorer and the rich, richer. Big businessmen like J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt lived in luxury during what historians call the Gilded Age (1877-1890). They consolidated smaller businesses and created monopolies; where, for example, Rockefeller drove other oil companies out of business through ruthless tactics and created a giant oil company, Standard Oil. During the Progressive Era (1890-1917), the Progressive Party formed to try to reform American society and the US government, which they believed was controlled by special interests and big business. Conservation of America's natural beauty was yet another way that Americans ushered in this period of reform. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican when he served as President but he believed in much of the Progressive Party's platform (in 1912 he ran for President as a Progressive and lost). During his terms as President, Roosevelt battled big business to regulate it and prevent monopolies from harming American society. He believed that these so-called robber barons (or captains of industry, depending on one's view), had helped America advance and become a major influence internationally, but he also wanted to tame them so they could not to harm the average citizen. - Overview - Theodore Roosevelt and the Trusts - The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History - Elise Stevens Wilson
The truth is, while that Teddy Roosevelt is most often associated with trust-busting, it all began with an Ohio Senator named John Sherman of Ohio and the Sherman Act which was passed under the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, also of Ohio. Teddy though, would wield the power of the US government most effectively in breaking up the trusts, and providing the precedence of reining in the corruption and unethical practices of the Robber Barons.
Okay, enough of the history lesson. What is important with the lessons though, is that today, we must again rein in trusts in order to manage the corrupt, oppression imposed on everyone by modern Robber Barons. Big oil is one of these. Don’t even get me started on healthcare and big pharma. That I will return to another time.
Now… let’s finally get around to talking big oil and the burdens placed on every American taxpayer and billions of others, suffering from Climate Change around the world. Yes, you and I pay taxes for oligarchs to become wealthier and more powerful.
So long as big oil continues to operate with less and less legal restraints and regulation, you and I will continue to pay more for all types of fuel, for natural disasters from the climate change that they pay handsomely to discredit, and via our tax bills. It is precisely that simple.
Well, this last paragraph implies a lot, so let’s put as they say, “some meat on the bones of these comments.”
As we can see from the history lesson above, big oil has been largely dominated by the same trusts, entities and corporations from the very beginning. In the chart below from the LOC/ Library of Congress, the big entities, often called the Seven Sisters had all been formed by 1910 and today, are more powerful than any other global, industrial monopoly.
How do these oil and gas entities handle this wealth and the influence that comes with it? This is a critical question because it is the Federal Tax code, Subsidies and other Federal, taxpayer funded benefits, that enable the massive, almost uninterrupted record profits that they regularly experience, on the backs of working Americans.
So, how much does the industry make? Below is a chart for their total profits or for those outside of the business world, profit is how much they rake in after paying for all of their costs.
Over two hundred billion, for the industry alone, during the first year of Putin’s war on Ukraine.
Let’s see now how their stockholders did.
Finally, let’s see how they did on paying taxes.
The three graphics above show the financial health of the industry, and it is certainly impressive. Now, let’s move forward and see how they did relative to us, the hard-working folks that support all of this wealth.
First off, I don’t recall getting a “subsidy” to make my construction company more profitable before returning to the Army and after 25 years as a custom builder. Big oil gets plenty of our hard-earned tax dollars, directly and indirectly.
I highly recommend clicking on the link in the caption of the preceding graphic. It is a bit eye-opening. Federally funded subsidies have become a focus when considering our deficit and there are reasonable efforts underway to reduce and eliminate select subsidies that no longer apply, other than at the bottom line of the Seven Sisters. Let’s see which elected congressmen and senators have the backbone legislate no or more reasonable subsidies.
“The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan panel of Congress, has estimated that eliminating it could generate $13 billion over a decade.”
- Explainer: Global fossil fuel subsidies on the rise despite calls for phase-out
- Reuters
- Sarah Mcfarlane
Now, I think we should look at the difference between yours and my tax rate versus these companies that rake in billions and more billions, yearly.
As you can see in the graphic from Pew Research, Corporate taxes have dropped significantly over time while that individual taxes have crept up. In fact, the lowest earners as compared to the highest echelons of industry clearly demonstrate who pays to keep government running. When today’s politicians scream about the budget and associated deficit, especially on the right, they are ignoring the fact that they passed the laws that allows corporate and personal oligarchy to not pay their fair share. Consider this, if our deficit is massive and the top earners both personal and corporate, pay less, proportionately than the rest of us, who is straining under the tax load? Yes, a rhetorical question. It is as always, the Middle Class paying for billionaires to play. On the other hand, it is precisely oligarchy that increases our deficit, most poignantly under the Trump administration.

So, what we have learned so far, is that big oil, rakes in billions in profits quarterly and pays less tax. Now we’ll take a look at one of the primary costs that they have imposed on the US and the globe. Climate Change is a controversial topic, but not for the well and ethically informed. I will ignore those still holding conspiracy theory beliefs that Climate Change is a hoax. I deal in facts, not fantasy.
To be blunt, Climate Science denial, is a made-up industry, spawned and subsidized by big oil for over 40 years. It was Exxon’s own engineers that first conclusively understood the impact of fossil fuels on the entire globe, precipitously so. It was a calculated decision by the board rooms of Exxon and the other Seven Sisters, to mount a massive, well-funded, global campaign to obfuscate the impending global disasters and their culpability.
They have known since at least the 1970s, that the world would pay outrageous costs for disasters, while they profited wildly and at taxpayer expense. They knew that certain regions would become uninhabitable and force global migration patterns unheard of since the end of WW II. Part of these mass migrations have ended up on our Southern Border and here in Texas, the same corporations responsible for exacerbating climate change, back the cruelty of the Abbott administration.
For additional reading on big oil’s complicity in climate denial, please see below:
Exxon Lobbyist Caught On Sting Video Describes Anti-Climate Moves : NPR
Big Oil’s lies about climate change—a climate scientist’s take - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (thebulletin.org)
EXAMINING THE OIL INDUSTRY'S EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
How Big Oil Has Misled the Public on Climate Change (pbs.org)
Oil companies discourage climate action, study says — Harvard Gazette
More than two dozen cities and states are suing Big Oil over climate change – they just got a boost from the US Supreme Court (theconversation.com)
Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago | Scientific American
The starvation, insecurity, absence of water and war, imposed unimaginable suffering on billions of our fellow human beings. Now these boardroom billionaires, fly off to wherever they please in their personal private jets and enjoy what few of the rest of us can imagine. Yes, they created this disaster on purpose and now, they still expect us to pay for it.
As a Texan, we are essentially controlled by the fossil fuel industry and GOP politicians that have run the state for thirty uninterrupted years, cater to their every whim, at our expense. For example, a Midland oil billionaire by the name of Tim Dunn, bankrolls Greg Abbott’s pursuit of an unconstitutional theocratic state, where only white Christians have elected roles. We pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation while oil corporations, pay far less than their fair share. Dunn and his fellow billionaire White Christian Nationalists, back Abbott and his thugs, in order to minimize or eliminate environmental oversight, more legislative tax/ subsidy advantages and generally, do as they please.
Our costs for climate related disasters have dramatically trended upward, since big oil began lying about Climate Change. Between you and I paying more taxes than the oligarchs, and the increased financial injury to all of us to pay for disasters, we all know that this is not sustainable. Then again, those oligarchs who don’t pull their weight paying their fair share of taxes, really don’t care, do they? They are too busy savoring the profits taken immorally and by buying influence in global capitals, the US included.
The costs to the American taxpayers take many forms. It occurs at every single gas pump. It impacts colder states in heating costs and the cost at the grocery store due to the cost to fuel trucking industry vehicles that bring our food to market. While big oil and other corporate oligarchs cry inflation, those of us who are informed say, “hell no,” it is price-gouging. The same corporations pay a fortune in advertising and campaign donations to make sure all of the media we digest supports, their conspiratorial false narrative of “inflation.” This allows them to keep politicians in office that will protect their tax subsidies, tax loopholes and fake good guy personas.
Well TAT readers, this has rapidly turned into my longest essay. Fortunately, it is nearly the weekend so that folks can read over coffee or an adult beverage. I encourage reading this more than most of my essays, for the simple reason that it impacts the families of our nation and the world, every single one of them outside the elite wealth classes. One thing that our hyper-partisan political divide can agree on, is that price-gouging by the one percent… is a full-blown assault on lower- and middle-class Americans.
Not only is big oil selling out taxpayers, but they profit wildly from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. OPEC / OPEC + is largely led by Russia and the Saudis. We have seen at least two production cuts mandated by OPEC which dramatically increased profits for the oil industry. Those cuts also fund Putin’s war machine for his genocidal assault on our allies, Ukraine.
Yes, despite all of the conspiracy theories floating around the MAGA crowd, the US is also, still the leading producer of fossil fuels and yet, it helps American consumers, not one bit at the pump or in their energy bills. Big oil is also one of the largest investors in political campaigns and lobbying. In many ways, the boardrooms that rape our wallets dishonestly are also making policy via their politicians in congress. We did not elect these oligarchs so they should have the same say as you and I.
If we continue down the path that we are on, artificially divided by unethical marketers, political parties and foreign influence operations, corporate oligarchy will continue to degrade everyone’s life via climate disasters, price-gouging and the inequitable burden of taxes. Our hype partisan political environment is intentional. It’s done to keep our focus on the “other side” instead of being pickpocketed by oligarchy. I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of going quietly into the night. Our founders had the brilliance and good sense to gift us a nation built on equitability and morals. I’ll be damned if I will allow anyone to destroy this without raising my voice in the public square.
Next time you feel the pinch of corporate price-gouging and high energy costs because of Climate Change, don’t just blame the political facilitators and hacks, blame the core of the problem, oligarchy. In this case, the oligarchs are the individual and corporate oil oligarchs. Our children and grandchildren deserve a healthier planet and a government, not controlled by oligarchy. It’s a fight worth having, don’t ya’ think?
Have a great weekend,
Paul