From WaPo:

The Miami trial of a Venezuelan entrepreneur who grew rich doing business with President Hugo Chávez’s populist administration has exposed how some top government officials have profited from a corrosive web of corruption in the oil-rich country.

Kickbacks, bribes and secret payoffs have become a feature in the socialist administration, which had claimed a break from the past but instead has seen several officials implicated in multimillion-dollar corruption schemes, according to testimony and conversations taped by the FBI. The trial has also revealed the Chávez government’s determination to funnel state funds to its allies in Latin America and the lengths it will go to to keep the aid secret…

…Transcripts of the taped conversations reveal intricate details of the collaboration between Venezuelan businessmen and government officials during Venezuela’s recent oil boom as they pilfered public funds through no-bid contracts, kickbacks and secret commissions.

“It’s basically a bunch of guys in their late 30s, all of whom saw an opportunity when Chávez went into power,” said Kenneth Rijock, financial crime consultant for World-Check, a London-based firm that provides risk analysis for banks and other institutions. “They’ve been riding his coattails since, benefiting from sweetheart deals, kickbacks and other corrupt practices.”

Read the whole article. And consider, we’re about to elect a Socialist president who’s former principal financial supporter is in prison for pilfering state funds.

Read the whole thing, but I agree with pretty much everything this guy says:

….From where I sit, the United States government has embarked on two pieces of social engineering in the last few years. One was to make oil expensive as expensive as possible to drive people to greater use of alternative energy sources - because anything less would be irresponsible and destructive to the environment. The other was to enshrine home ownership (i.e., easy-to-obtain mortgages) as a new American right - because anything less would be unequal and racist.

None of us voted on these decisions - indeed, neither was even spoken about directly, much less debated. But nevertheless, both became national policy… and both have sparked national, now international, crises. Then, once they became crises, both were blamed on ‘greedy capitalism’, instead of what they really were: legislative interference into market forces.

Fine. We’ve been through this before, and no doubt we will see similar, government-induced crises again - inevitably accompanied by Administration officials and our elected representatives pointing at everyone but themselves.

But what makes this particular economic crisis so appalling, at least from this vantage point, is the sheer scumminess, corruption, short-sightedness and general incompetence of everyone involved. At least in the business world, especially in the take-no-prisoners world of high-tech that kind of venality and ineptitude either gets you fired or kills the company; by comparison, in Washington, it puts you in charge of the recovery effort.

Nobody in this mess has covered himself or herself in glory. President Bush seems to have had the right instincts on this, but as a lame duck who long-ago burned up all of his public support, he mostly seems dithering and toothless. The Democrats declare that the nation is at risk… then go about as usual turning the bailout bill into another yet another partisan pay-off scheme to fund the next round of crisis-creating social engineering. It is a measure of just how corrupt the Dems have become that Senators Dodd and Frank, who perhaps more than anyone in Washington are responsible for this crisis, not only are allowed to keep their committee seats, but run the press conference on the bail-out. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?…

…As it happens, out here in Silicon Valley, we have been conducting our own social engineering experiments. Three, in fact, have been at least as sweeping as Freddie Mac’s changing of mortgage eligibility rules. One of them has been to wire the entire world in a huge, high-speed global information grid (the Internet). Another has been to restructure the entire entertainment industry and its pricing model (the iPod). And the third has been to empower the citizenry to form groups based upon common interests rather than the limitations of physical proximity (Web 2.0 - social networks).

Here’s the thing. All three of these multi-billion dollar projects have been pay-as-you-go, driven largely by individuals and companies that assume their own risk, they have instantly rewarded smart decisions and punished bad ones, they are tested every millisecond against human nature (i.e., the marketplace), they are biased towards efficiency over seniority, and most of all, they are voluntary.

And they are all succeeding.

We will get out this current financial mess - not by government fiat, but because entrepreneurs and smart corporate executives and hard-working everyday people will innovate us out of it. They will come up with the new financial instruments that restructure this debt, the new technologies that will generate the wealth to make up for this loss (as they did after 9/11) and ultimately create more jobs than are right now being lost.

And if Washington really wanted to help Americans (and there is no indication right now that it does) it would, the instant it passes the bail-out bill, get to work not adding more regulations in response to this crisis, but stripping away the destructive ones we created after the last big one. And a good place to start would be Sarbanes-Oxley, which brilliantly keeps wealth out of the hands of regular workers (by keeping start-up companies from going public), all while costing, by my reckoning, $200 billion over the last six years….

Hypocracy? Flip-flop? Maybe just oblivious. Fortunately for Obama, his base is probably oblivious, too. From AP:

Democratic candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Tuesday for taking a page out of “the Cheney playbook” on energy, overlooking his own support of oil-friendly policies that the unpopular vice president helped to craft.

Vice President Dick Cheney, a former oilman, early in the Bush administration helped draft an energy policy that Obama asserted is biased in favor of tax breaks and favorable treatment for big oil. Obama’s remarks were an attempt to capitalize on Cheney’s unpopularity.

“President Bush, he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, ‘Cheney, go take care of this,’” Obama said. “Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas (executives) 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook.”

In stumping Tuesday in this key battleground state, Obama sought to link the troubled economy with Republican policies and offer his own energy plan in contrast. He has tried to cast McCain as more concerned about oil company profits and drilling than an overall energy strategy.

However, Obama himself voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production, a measure Cheney played a major role in developing. McCain opposed the bill on grounds it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.

The Obama campaign has said the Illinois senator supported the legislation because it included huge investments in renewable energy.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, said, “Barack Obama is opposed to offshore drilling and is also opposed to admitting that he voted for the same corporate giveaways for Big Oil that he’s campaigning against today.”…

We noted recently two members of Congress calling for the nationalization/socialization of portions of the American oil industry. There’s clearly a real yearning for a communist-style command and control economy in this country.

Popular liberal columnist Ted Rall makes the case more explicitly:

THE CURE FOR HIGH GAS AND FOOD PRICES

Vital Businesses Need Nationalization…

…Did you know that Venezuelans pay a mere 19 cents per gallon? It’s 38 cents in Nigeria. Turkmenistanis might not have electoral democracy, but they only shell out $4.50 to fill a 15-gallon tank. Before we replaced Saddam Hussein with…with whatever they have in Iraq now, Iraqis paid less than a dime for a gallon of gas.

One of the things that these countries have in common, of course, is that they’re oil-producing states. Countries that export oil and gas have trouble explaining to their citizens why they should pay for their own natural resources–and most are smart enough not to try. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Burma, Malaysia, Kuwait, China and South Korea are just a few of the countries that keep fuel prices low in order to stimulate economic growth….

….Unlike corporations, governments don’t care about turning a profit. They care about remaining in power. Their reliance on political support (or, if you’re cynical, pandering) allows them to do things our much-vaunted free market system can’t, such as make sure that people can afford to eat and buy enough gas to get to work….

…Like the rest of the world, Venezuelan consumers have been squeezed by rising prices, and even shortages, of groceries. In 2007 Venezuela’s socialist-leaning government decided to do something about it. First they imposed price controls on staple items. When suppliers began to hoard supplies to drive up prices, President Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize them. “If they remain committed to violating the interests of the people, the constitution, the laws, I’m going to take the food storage units, corner stores, supermarkets and nationalize them,” he said. Food profiteers grumbled. Then they straightened up…

…The problem isn’t the weak dollar or the non-existent housing market. It’s capitalism. A sane government doesn’t leave essential goods and services–food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education–to the vicissitudes of “magic” markets. Non-discretionary economic sectors should be strictly controlled by–indeed, owned by–the government….

Food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education…what’s left? I wish more would listen to what these people are saying, and think hard about the implications of putting them in charge.

Lifted from Powerline:

When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, he promised a foreign policy that would reflect the basic decency of the American people. In practice, that meant a foreign policy designed to project far less American power and influence than we had done throughout the heroic Cold War years. Thus, the U.S. remained indifferent when Iran, a key ally in the Middle East, faced the prospect and then the reality of being taken over by fanatically anti-American Islamic extremists. We reacted with similar indifference to the establishment of a Communist dicatorship in Central America. And when the Soviet Union promised Carter it would not invade Afghanistan, its word was good enough for our oh-so-decent president.

Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy successes seemed to vanquish the notion that too much U.S. power and influence was a bad thing for the world, much less the U.S. That notion, implausible on its face, became impossible to defend when our lack of abnegation seemed to produce a victorious end to the Cold War.

Yet domestic policies pursued by Jimmy Carter now threaten partially to re-impose Carter’s foreign policy vision of a diminished United States. For it was mostly in the Carter presidency (the years of sweater-wearing and ceiling fans) that the U.S. began systematically to deny itself access to domestic sources of energy. More than 30 years later, with the soaring price of oil creating perhaps the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world, that lack of access makes it increasingly more difficult for us to project power and influence on the world stage. And, predictably, it is nations with interests sharply divergent from our own — e.g., Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — that are filling the void (Venezuela is a special case; few expected this this country to become the next Cuba, though one should never be surprised when a country with massive new wealth becomes belligerent).

In Europe, Russia, flush with new wealth and now a major oil supplier, is increasingly able to counter-balance U.S. influence. In the Middle East, our leverage with Saudi Arabia is in jeopardy due not only to our dependence on Saudi oil, but also the ability of the Saudis to sell their oil to China and India. More generally, the U.S. is seen as weakened, and objectively our economy is now weaker, due to its lack of status in the great global oil game.

Carter, of course, does not bear all of the blame. Republicans have had substantial power since 1980 and were never able (and not always even willing) to promote oil drilling in the U.S. or the use of nuclear power. Carter stands out at least as much for his eagerness to see the U.S. diminished as for his responsibility for bringing this about through bad energy policies.

More than 30 years of neglect cannot quickly be overcome. But the signal we would send by reversing our policies on drilling and nuclear energy would be unmistakable. History shows that when the U.S. plays, it usually wins eventually. It would be extremely salutary if the rest of the world came to believe that we are back, in a serious way, in the energy producing game.

In the last few weeks stark differences have emerged between Dems and the GOP on energy policy. With gasoline >$4/gal politicians on all sides feel compelled to say/do something. A recap of what each side is offering:

Democrats:

Sue OPEC 

On May 22nd the House passed the “Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act of 2008.” The act does three things: 1) amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (written in 1890)  “…to make oil producing and export cartels illegal…”; 2) Creates a Petroleum Industry Antitrust Task Force inside the DOJ to study cartels; 3) Orders a GAO study on the effects of mergers in the petroleum industry. The bill was co-sponsored by 20 Dems, with Dems voting for the bill by a margin of 219 to 2. Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the cartel’s members have not yet responded to what efforts they will make to ensure their own national activities comply with this new US law.

“Windfall Tax” on US Oil Producers

Obama has called for a reprise of Carter’s “windfall taxes” on domestic oil producers. (Even the NYT editorial board eventually agreed that Carter’s version was a bad idea, although it took them almost a decade to figure it out.) The idea is that somehow the folks who produce oil for us will do a better job if we penalize them, or something.

“Compel” US Oil Producers to Produce More

On June 12 eighteen Dem Congressmen introduced the “Responsible Ownership of Public Lands Act.” The co-sponsors suggest oil companies leasing public lands might be secretly under-producing, a situation that they will remedy by imposing new fees on any acre leased that has not been drilled within one year. Never mind that it usually takes several years to determine whether newly leased land is worth drilling. After paying for the lease (usually 10 years) and the cost of exploration, the majority of these lands are returned to the government un-drilled. Not good enough for the Dems.

Increase Regulation of Energy Capital Markets

Just this weekend Obama outlined legislation directing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to “investigate proposals” for increasing regulation over the way oil futures are trades. New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine added, “I think everyone believes there’s too much speculation in the oil markets. A lot of the price of oil, I think, people put at the doorstep of speculators bidding up and holding supplies off the market.” Corzine thus neatly justifies this attempted power-grab by his estimate of what “people” think - note Corzine (a former bond trader and Goldman Sachs CEO) never says what he actually believes.

“Nationalize” US Refineries

Video of Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): “We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”

“Socialize” Domestic Oil Companies

Video of Maxine Waters (D-CA) tells the President of Shell Oil she wants to “socialize” his company.

Republicans:

Increase Production 

In his radio address on June 21 Bush made 4 proposals: 1) Drill ANWR; 2) Lift the 25 year ban on drilling on the outer continental shelf (OCS); 3) Lift the ban on exploiting shale oil reserves in the American West; 4) Increase refining capacity by allowing new refineries to be built in the US for the first time in 30 years.

On the second point its worth noting that Brazil has recently announced two massive oil discoveries on its own OCS, possibly turning that country into one of the largest oil exporters within the next 10 years. Its also worth noting that Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and even China (in Cuban waters less that 100 miles from Florida) are all already exploring the North American OCS.

Although McCain is still only “considering” ANWR, he largely agrees with everything Bush proposes. The American people apparently do too - according to Rasmussen only 18% of Americans oppose OCS drilling (including only 37% of self identified “liberals”). McCain is also calling for the construction of 45 new commercial nuclear reactors. The last commercial nuclear reactor in the US to come online started construction in 1973.

The GOP proposals are straightforward. They acknowledge the reality of increased oil demand from emerging economies like China and India. The solution is removing regulatory obsticles that make the US the only major oil producer in the world where new production is effectively illegal.

Some Dem proposals are laughably stupid (i.e. declare OPEC illegal so we can sue them). The rest seek to turn public concern about oil prices into yet another opportunity to expand regulation, expand government power, and grind down and demonize the private economy.

Maxine Waters (D-CA) on her plans for American oil companies:

A little background on Waters:

Waters was named in 2005^[2] and 2006^[3] as one of the “most corrupt” members of congress by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. They said, “Her ethics issues arise from her exercise of this power to financially benefit her daughter, husband and son.” They said that Waters’ daughter Karen charges other politicians to appear on mailers sent to constituents in Los Angeles showing her mother’s support for the politician. Karen has received $450,000 in fees from this endeavor and Waters’ son Edward has received $115,000. Waters’ husband Sidney benefited from his wife’s connections with his hiring as a political consultant by a firm, Siebert, Brandford, & Shank, seeking government investment. Sidney Williams earned $500,000 from this consulting, which consisted of introducing Siebert to politicians his wife had supported. Sidney and Edward Williams also benefitted when they won a contract to run a Los Angeles golf course, with the decision made by a county supervisor who had won a close race after Waters’ endorsement and from which they made financial gain of between $140,000 and $400,000.^[4] Citizens for Ethics says this violates House ethics rules for family members’ financial gains.

Waters seems to realize mid-sentence that her use of the term ’socializing’ might be controversial.

But why not use the correct term? The arbitrary government seizure of massive amounts private capital, purportedly for the common good, is Socialism. HRC espoused a very similar idea regarding corporate profits in February 2007.

Around the world left-wing political parties openly embrace the moniker of Socialism, and rightly so - that is what they stand for. Most developed countries have mainstream political parties that are members of The Socialist International (”Progressive Politics for a Fairer World“). Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, even Iraq are presently ruled by SI member parties. And good for them - at least their voters know what they are getting.

For some reason the DNC is one of few left-wing parties in the world that avoided openly embracing the term. Perhaps it is because Americans aren’t stupid - we know that from National Socialists to International Socialists, political movements identifying with the term Socialism have too often ended up implicated in the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people through depravation, war, and extermination.

As an aside, check out Powerline’s coverage of the rest of the hearing.

Gran Colombia was a South American country from 1819-1831. Previously the Viceroyalty of New Granada, Gran Colombia won independence from Spain in a revolution led by Simon Bolivar. The country included all of present day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama, and portions of Costa Rica, Guyana, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Honduras.

Bolivar’s vision of a single Latin American state was thwarted by local nationalists, most notably in Ecuador and Venezuela. But Bolivar remains a powerful symbol in the region. His face graces currency and coin in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez has adopted Bolivar as a symbol of nationalism and regional unity. In 1999 he oversaw the drafting of a new Venezuelan constitution, which he called  a “Bolivarian Constitution”. That year he changed the name of the country from República de Venezuela to República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Chavez calls his political ideology Bovarian Socialism (a little like an American communist calling themselves a Jeffersonian Socialist - as a Basque aristocrat Bolivar likely would have had little use for Chavez’s statist populism).

In 1999 Chavez also revived a 170 year old border dispute with neighboring Guyana, claiming sovereignty over 62% of that country’s territory. Chavez’s claim is based on the historic north western border of Gran Colombia.

Just in case anyone thought Chavez was kidding about Guyana, in 2006 he changed the Venezuelan flag, adding a star for the ”lost province.” (He also changed the direction of the charging horse on the National Crest - it now runs to the left, of course.)

This provocation was accompanied by a significant buildup in the Venezuelan military. While his country’s economy was collapsing, in 2005 Chavez spent $2.2B on Su-27 fighters and 900,000 new assault rifles. In 2006 he spent $5B on 24 Su-30s and 58 attack helocopters.

In 2007 he initiated the National Simon Bolivar Project of 2007-2021, basically a complete conversion of Venezuela, which still enjoys some private property, freedom of the press, and other civil liberties, into a socialist dictatorship.

Chavez has a friend in the newly elected president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (the vice president happens to be named Lenin). Correa identifies himself as a ”cristiano de izquierda, al socialismo del siglo XXI“(chrisitan of the left, a 21st century socialist). When Chavez compared Bush to Satan in his 2006 UN speech, Correa said that was unfair to the devil.

Chavez also has friends in neighboring Colombia - the terrorist group FARC, which was established as the militant wing of the Colombian Communist Party in the 1960s. FARC has diversified into the drug trade, but its 8000 man army still claims Marxist-Leninism as its inspiration. The Colombian government recently claimed Chavez gave FARC $300MM last year.

Last week Correa and Chavez used Colombia’s killing of a FARC leader as a justification to begin massing troops on Colombia’s borders. Today we learn that Nicaragua (governed by a coalition of socialist parties) is withdrawing its ambassador to Colombia and sending its own troops to join Venezuela’s buildup. Writing approvingly of the Marxist mobilization against Colombia, Fidel Castro exclaimed, “Bolivar awakens every 100 years!”

Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is extremely popular at home. In 2006 he won nearly 3x as many votes as the next closest candidate, and presently has a domestic approval rating >80%. His popularity comes from from his aggressive efforts against FARC and free market policies that have given Colombia one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

The same things obviously make Uribe unpopular among Marxist dictators and terrorists in the region. It may also explain why the American Democrats controlling Congress regularly go out of their way to undermine him.

Fortunately, Uribe can count on American support so long as there is a Republican in the White House. But if Obama or Clinton wins in November our most important South American ally likely will be left to fend for itself.

The Mexican border state of Sonora, that is. From the Tuscon Sun:

A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora was in Tucson on Tuesday to say Arizona’s new employer sanctions law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state.

At a news conference, the legislators said Sonora - Arizona’s southern neighbor, made up of mostly small towns - cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools it will face as illegal Mexican workers here return to their hometowns without jobs or money.

The law, which took effect Jan.1, punishes employers who knowingly hire individuals who don’t have valid legal documents to work in the United States. Penalties include suspension or loss of a business license…

…”How can they pass a law like this?” asked Mexican Rep. Leticia Amparano Gamez, who represents Nogales.

“There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona,” she said in Spanish.

“Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems” it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and sending money to their families return to hometowns in Sonora without jobs, she said.

“We are one family, socially and economically,” she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona…

Family or not, Mexico has a problem. It could be called collectivism or socialism, but in Mexico’s case its most accurately called statism. The Mexican government consumes nearly half of the country’s economy (in the US its about 35.4%).

The Mexican economy should benefit from enormous structural advantages. 90% of its exports are to the US and Canada with almost no trade barriers. It is blessed with abundant natural resources - its the world’s 5th largest oil producer (right behind Iran). Their proximity to the US means they can get by with almost no military (the US spends 20% more on the Coast Guard than Mexico spends on its entire military).

A couple straightforward changes to Mexican law would help a lot. First, they need to dump their Expropiación Petrolera law. In 1932 Mexico nationalized (aka socialized) all foreign assets involved in oil exploration and extraction. It was good politics (domestically), but it has had a devastating impact on their petroleum industry. Pemex is run through a system of patronage and graft. There is no competition for natural resources, so the company is wasteful and inefficient - with side effects including environmental destruction and long term damage to reserves (by, for example, excessive injection of sea water). Opening the industry to foreign capital and competition would mean more exploration, more modern methods, more oil exports, and more domestic jobs for Mexicans.

The other thing they need to dump is Article 27 of their constitution. The Article stipulates that all land is property of the Mexican government, and that private property is a un privilegio creado por la nación. (”a privilege created by the nation” - ie not a right). This is a serious problem that reflects the country’s Continental legal heritage (as opposed to one derived from British common law). A more specific problem with Article 27 is the last sentence of Section I:

En una faja de cien kilómetros a lo largo de las fronteras y de cincuenta en las playas, por ningún motivo podrán los extranjeros adquirir el dominio directo sobre tierras y aguas.

Roughly, foreigners cannot under any circumstances own land within 100km of the border and 50km of the ocean.

One immediate impact of this law is obvious in this satellite photo of the area around Imperial Valley.

Click to enlarge:

Can you guess where the border is?

What’s going on here - is the difference in agricultural development an issue of labor or capital? Well, since a good portion of the laborers on the north side of the border are Mexicans, its probably not a labor problem. Why the capital problem? Because the people owning and developing the land north of the border are legally barred from doing so on the other side. They look pretty crammed in to the valley up there - no doubt some would look south if they could. And with NAFTA their produce could easily be sold in the same markets.

Same thing goes for coastal development. How many thousands of Mexicans are employed building vacation homes for American baby boomers just a few hundred miles inside the US in places like Tuscon, or on the CA or FL coasts? Why don’t more Americans build retirement homes in places like Ensanada, or Playa del Amor, or Cancun? Because they effectively cannot.

Changing property ownership laws and privatizing (including international capital) Pemex would go a long way toward helping Mexico create more domestic jobs. Fewer of their hardest working, most ambitious citizens would working illegally inside the US and would instead be helping grow their own economy. Win-win.

But I think Hillary Clinton has probably the best solution for illegal immigration.

She’s already promised $800B in new annual federal spending (will take our government spending to >40% of GDP), she wants to nationalize parts of our petroleum industry, and she wants to slow our economic growth with increased taxes. She will simply make the US more like Mexico.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

ExxonMobil — the world’s best-run, most underappreciated and most foolishly hated energy company — did exactly the right thing last week at its annual shareholders meeting in Dallas.

When climate cranks came to whine about ExxonMobil’s alleged corporate irresponsibility and try to get the company to accept the Gospel of Global Climate Change according to Al Gore, the oil behemoth’s bosses told them to go fly a kite in a wind farm.

The hero was CEO Rex W. Tillerson, a business exec with old-fashioned testosterone who deserves every dime of the $8.4 million pay package he took home in 2006. He stood up to dissident shareholders (climate cranks) who wanted his company to invest more heavily in alternative energy and to stop giving money to think tanks that question the shaky scientific and political tenets of catastrophic global warming…

…Despite booming demand and ever-elusive oil supplies, ExxonMobil (and its smaller Big Oil siblings) keeps us supplied with the energy our advanced economies and lofty standards of living are built on — and which our children and the Third World will need for decades….

…About 52 percent of the company’s 5.6 billion shares are held by 1,528 mutual fund companies and institutions like CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System, which owns 30 million shares of ExxonMobil for its 1.43 million active and retired members.

That last paragraph is important. Not only is XOM providing for our energy needs, their evil capitalist machinations are providing security for people’s retirement. In a socialist utopia old people would be living in squalor and dependent on the government. No wonder the collectivists hate this company so much.