Okay.  You want to get really pissed off? Read this post, but first, get rid of any explosive materials and sharp objects you may have in your possession as a precaution against you committing murder.

You know what? Big business thinks that we are freaking stupid.  And you know what else? We are! Because even though we know they are raping us and lying through their teeth to us, we allow them to lead us over cliff after cliff like a pack of lemmings.

Let’s talk about Shell Oil for a minute.  Do you know how much profit they publicly declared for the second quarter of 2011? EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!! That’s an eight with 9 freaking zeroes after it! $8,000,000,000.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And that’s not how much money they took in; that’s what they made in profit!!!!!!

And that’s just in three months time! April, May and June.  92 freaking days!!!!!!!!

That comes out to profits of $86,956,521 per day!

$3,623,188 an hour!!

$60,386 per minute!!!

$1,006 per second!!!!

Imagine that????? $1,006 profit every freaking second of every single day!!!!!

And yet the Republicans in Washington D.C. don’t think it’s right that we should try to balance the national budget by getting rid of the tax breaks that we give these people!

Also, our government gives these companies incentives to explore for more oil! Otherwise, they claim, these companies wouldn’t do it!!!!

Well, you know what? If I was selling a product that gave me $1,006 per second profit, you’d better BELIEVE that I would go looking for more of that product, whether somebody paid me for the exploration or not!

All that really makes me angry, but you know what really pisses me off?  I just paid $4.03 per gallon to fill up my gas tank this morning!!!!!!!!!

AAAAANNNNDDDDDD, Shell Oil isn’t even the biggest oil company in the world.  They are the second biggest! I can’t wait to read EXXON’s profit statement when it comes out next week!

Okay. Enough with the oil companies. Let’s now take a look at the pharmaceutical companies.

Some of the twenty-year patents on popular pills are about to run out.  That means that these medications will soon be made generically at drastically reduced prices.

The typical pharmaceutical patent lasts for twenty years.  That means during that time period, no other company can manufacture that medicine. So, in effect, the patent holder has a monopoly on that product, and they can charge pretty much whatever they want for it.

Okay. In my opinion, patents are important.  They help to guarantee that the company that spent money researching and creating the product can make their money back.  I have no problem with that.  Nor do I have a problem with companies making a reasonable profit on their products. (Hell, I have a copyright on my play, which is kind of like a patent, and I am the part-owner of a manufacturing business that lives on profits.)

But let’s take a look at profits made by one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world – Pfizer.

Pfizer makes a product call Lipitor, which is a medication that lowers cholesterol levels in the blood. In the year 2004, the average price for a month’s supply of Lipitor was $110.   Wanna know how many prescriptions for Lipitor were written in 2004? Almost seventy million. (70,000,000!) That’s roughly 200,000 a day!)

In 2004, Pfizer made five billion dollars for Lipitor alone.

$5,000,000,000.

Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies say that they need to make that much money to pay for their research and development costs.  (You’re kidding me! How much are they paying their freaking scientists???!!!) And that $5,000,000,000 is just for one year! They’ve been selling this stuff under patent protection for twenty years!!!!

I’d say they made their money back and then some.  What do you think?

Now that the patent is about to expire on the product, the price is going to drop from $110 per month to roughly $10 per month for the generic product.

And, do you know what?  Even though the price will drop so drastically, the pharmaceutical companies will still make a handsome profit on the stuff!

There are many such medications that enjoy patent protection and generate huge revenues for their manufacturers. Lipitor is just one of them. There’s also Zocor ($2,300,000,000 in 2004), Nexium ($2,700,000,000 in 2004), Prevacid ($2,400,000,000 in 2004), Zoloft (1,900,000,000 in 2004), and about one hundred or so more.

How do the oil companies and pharmaceutical companies get away with this? Talk to your representatives in Washington, D.C. Whether your senator and congressperson is Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, sane or Tea Party, chances are some of the largest contributors to his/her election campaigns are oil and pharmaceutical companies.

So folks, just lie down on your backs, spread your legs wide, keep your damned mouths shut and enjoy the ride.