Posted on 02/27/2008 6:08:34 AM PST by Brilliant
—GW has made very ineffective use of the “Bully Pulpit,” and shown no leadership on “Energy.” He has even been wishy-washy on “Global Warming,” never even contesting Al Gore’s more outrageous unscientific scaremongering. Imagine the turn-around Mumbles Bush could pull off on this and other issues if he had the wherewithal to just come out and say “we need more refineries, there is no oil shortage, Global Warming is a crock, yes pollution is bad, but we don’t have much in this country ... etc. etc.”
Being a fighting democrat is extra easy when you have George Bush passing you the ammo. Thanks to him and the rest of the country-clubbers at the RNC, we face a very real danger of a wipe-out in the WH, House and Senate. Let’s just pray that this good, but incoherent and nuance-deaf fellow somehow manages to go out with a bang and not just (yet another) whimper—
We have a winner! Give this man a cigar.
Can anyone that is a demonRAT splain that to me?
Gee, you mean when we had the WH, House and Senate, we shoulda woulda coulda gotten this done? Spare me. Our energy policy is a Republican disgrace ... perhaps even more disgraceful than Republican immigration policy.
Do you mean to tell us that a President ... an Oil man ... who could have stated that oil "OIL," is going to power us for the next century, at least ... could not have offered leadership on domestic drilling and led the way on refinery expansion? No, instead we get endless blather from him on "alternative" sources, "global warming," blah blah blah.
We're looking down both barrels of an economic disaster here that an effective President could have headed off a long time ago. We blame the Democrats? I greatly fear the voters will not do so.
We are staring something else in the face: The Republican Party had a glorious birth, a pretty darn good life for a long while, is presently in decrepit old age, and just might be afixin' to die. And it ain't the Democrats' fault, they're just the beneficiaries.
Yeah, I oppose subsidies. I’m not sure that’s really what this is, though. If you invest in equipment, you get to depreciate it for tax purposes. If you invest in oil rights, shouldn’t you also get to depreciate it as you pump out the oil? If there is an element of subsidy in it, though, I agree it should be eliminated. On the other hand, there is no question that it would result in less domestic oil production, irrespective whether it’s a “subsidy” or not.
Ping
Since the tax windfall - that the dims will use to buy more votes - is a PERCENTAGE of the pump price, me thinks the dims don’t want lower prices at all!
They paid $105.7 Billion in Taxes.
Income Taxes - $29.9B
Sales Based Taxes - $31.7B
All Other Taxes - $44.1B
Total Taxes - $105.7 Billion
http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/files/corporate/news_release_earnings4q07.pdf
I don’t consider profits of 10¢ on the dollar excessive. Business exist to make money or they would not exist.
But I do consider taxes 260% higher than profit very excessive. What other industry pays taxes at that rate?
I doubt any other industry could afford the oil industry's current rate of "subsidies".
Bump.
Hush, Comrade! Do you WANT to be sent to the gulag?
This morning I paid $3.29 a gallon with the Twenty I have for emergency cash. I can’t wait till the summer blends come in so I can pay for the clean air it brings and the $4.50 price tag. Wouldn’t it be better to lower the gas to say $2.50 and let the gov keep the rebates? We can live with that. Can’t we?
This morning I paid $3.29 a gallon with the Twenty I have for emergency cash. I can’t wait till the summer blends come in so I can pay for the clean air it brings and the $4.50 price tag. Wouldn’t it be better to lower the gas to say $2.50 and let the gov keep the rebates? We can live with that. Can’t we?
She's going to tax the oil industry more. Don't you know that the way to reduce the price of something is to increase the taxes on it?
Unfortunately, voters are apparently too stupid to grasp that irony.
When this happens you no longer have a free market. It is not the law of supply and demand only that acts to control prices the main thing that controls prices in a free economy is competition.
You know that old idea where a company competes against other companies for your business by trying to give you a better cheaper product, by keeping down overhead and investing in research, thereby forcing other companies to do the same. creating jobs and a growing economy.
What you have now is a bunch of fat greedy extortionists that have a stranglehold on all aspects of the energy market,eliminating all competition, controling supply,and prices.
Oil[energy] is the very lifeblood of any industrial nation. They with their illegal monopolistic friends have a death grip on our nation's economic throat squeezing it as hard as they can for all the dollars they can leaving very little for other business or consumer needs.
As other companies energy cost go up so do their prices out of necessity. That's why everything else has gone up 30 to 40% . Food, utilities etc. That's the reason those anti-trust laws where put in place in the early part of the 20 century was to keep greedy industrial extortionists from getting absolute control of products vital to the nation's economic health.
Big Business no matter what they say literally hate competition and a free market and do everything they can to eliminate it because it makes them have to stay on their toes and strive to give the consumer better products at a better price aka free market.
They are for the most part the most cruel cold - hearted people in the world.
They want the highest profits, highest bonuses and free labor if possible. These things within reason are understandable but when they lead to your own and your country's demise then it's very wrong.
Big Business, when greed sets in as the case of the major oil companies can't see past next quarter's bottom line. Next year there may be one without a bottom.
I work in the oil and gas industry and work with a geophysicist who use to work for the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) and he was part of the seismic surveys in the ANWR back in the 1980s. He says the estimate of 10-16 billion barrels of crude is probably more likely 4-5 times that amount. The area needs new seismic surveys with the new technology of today.
The president cannot force companies to build refineries. With that said, the Port Arthur, TX refineries are expanding as we speak.
Those tax incentives are not tax incentives at all. They are reductions on royalties paid on leases in predominately deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. You have to entice private enterprise to go explore and drill in areas where there is not the technology to do so yet. The R&D cost is massive to even think about pulling oil from the Central Gulf of Mexico given the depth of water and the subsequent depth of the underlying gas/crude fields below the subsurface. The pressures on equipment are tremendous.
That’s BS. What’s driving the price of oil up is the exploding demand for oil in China, India, and Russia.
Do you really think the oil companies are greedier than they were in the 1990’s? Even the biggest US oil company, Exxon, owns but a miniscule fraction of a percent of the world’s oil. They have no power to make any noticeable impact on the world price of oil.
But the Dems’ good buddy, Hugo Chavez, controls a large percent of the world’s oil, and has a significant amount of control over the world’s oil price.
LOL! You assume that the GOP knows who John Galt is.
Not surprisingly, neither is liberal John McCain since he opposes drilling ANWR.
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