Posted on 05/03/2008 7:26:42 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...Mr. Obama supports most of those "no drilling" rules, but that hasn't stopped him from denouncing high gas prices on the campaign trail. He is running TV ads in North Carolina that show him walking through a gas station and declaring that he'll slap a tax on the $40 billion in "excess profits" of Exxon Mobil.
...Exxon's profits are soaring with the recent oil price spike, but the energy industry's earnings aren't as outsized as the politicians seem to think. Thomson Financial calculates that profits from the oil and natural gas industry over the past year were 8.3% of investment, while the all-industry average is 7.8%. And this was a boom year for oil. An analysis by the Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor finds that between 1970 and 2003 (which includes peak and valley years for earnings) the oil and gas business was "less profitable than the rest of the U.S. economy."
This tiff over gas and oil taxes only highlights the intellectual policy confusion – or perhaps we should say cynicism – of our politicians. They want lower prices but don't want more production to increase supply. They want oil "independence" but they've declared off limits most of the big sources of domestic oil that could replace foreign imports. They want Americans to use less oil to reduce greenhouse gases but they protest higher oil prices that reduce demand. They want more oil company investment but they want to confiscate the profits from that investment. And these folks want to be President?
Late this week, a group of Senate Republicans led by Pete Domenici want to expand oil production off the U.S. coasts and in Alaska. It has the potential to increase domestic production enough to keep America running for five years with no foreign imports.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
When we as a nation use 8.9B bbls of oil a year (price;approx $1.05TR) then the $120B profit of the oil companies ain't all that great.
What about the windfall profits Hillary made on Cattle Futures?
What the GOP needs to do is point out to Mr. Stupid that it makes more sense to encourage oil suppliers to find more oil than it does to punish them. They should also ask why it is less obscene to send your money to Washington bureaucrats, some of whom put it in a freezer, than to let the people who produce oil use it to augment production. Finally, the GOP should direct the EPA to limit fuel production to 3 blends (now refiners have to guess which blend of the 38 to produce), reduce the time it takes to get permits for refineries and power plants from 8+ years to 6 months, and point out that you probably can't ride a snail darter to work to get to a job that doesn't have any electricity to open the doors.
Let’s have a WINDFALL PROFITS TAX on the Gore/Clinton money machines.
More appropriately the George Soros money machine.
* Cease all ethanol production. It requires more energy to make than it yields and the unintended consequence is higher food costs. Corn production shifted from feed-corn to subsidized corn for ethanol. Just say "no" to ethanol!
* Immediately create only ONE "blend" of gasoline and cease regional blends which are stupid, costly, and meaningless. Even if this is the "cleanest" blend, just make it ONE and be done with it. Trucking custom blends around the country is wasteful.
* Drill for oil in Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, and other sites in the CONUS as a matter of national security.
* Construct state-of-the-art refineries and/or retrofit current and dormant ones and crank up production.
* Make all “carbon credit” scams unlawful.
* Construct SEVERAL, regional Pebble-Bed Reactors (or other similar designs) that are not considered "breeders", are rechargeable, and cleaner than any current nuclear generator design.
* Use the residual heat from the reactor above to process motor fuel from coal and/or shale. Even though Clinton "stole" some of the best coal reserves, we still have a lot to use.
* Have Iraq pay for its freedom, and maybe even pay us back for their freedom. We'll still need their oil.
* Bust up the cartels or at least be independent enough to make the cartels inconsequential.
* Convince local taxing bodies to lift or fix the sales tax on gasoline so that as gas prices go up, the local tax collectors don’t see a windfall revenue jump at the expense of the consumer.
One thing is never emphasized enough.
Why not?
Regardless of how outrageous Exxon's "profits" (in absolute numbers) are, they pale in comparison to governments' extortion tax share!
At least three times as much.
Why do you suppose that is?
Why is no one in the MSM willing to mention it?
Why do the politicians play blind deaf and dumb?
Very well said by the Wall Street Journal.
...one more vore for #9.
...woops, so solly Mr. Cartwright, who put the letter r so close to the T on my remington?
That’s vote for #9
-—and start building nukes and state of the art coal fired power plants—at least one per state in the ten most heavily populated states—
What I don’t understand is how the Dems can’t figure out that the tax will just be passed on to us in the form of even higher prices.
These “mean / greedy” oil firms - after paying a good dividend to millions of “stock owners”...
....as well as having already paid billions in state and federal taxes - take all those so called “excess profits” and reinvest them in the discovery and replacement of new oil supplies and/or in the upkeep and expansion of refineries...
All one has to do is look at national oil firms in Iran and Venezuela to discover that whenever the “profits” from oil are stripped away for “social programs” that the result is falling production year after year - and to make a “pun” the “well eventually dries up”...
Exxon-Mobil’s total profit number is meaningless, it is not a percentage, just a total. Exxon-Mobil was not too long ago two separate companies, with the total profit for either company probably about half of the new, merged company’s profit. I would imagine that the Delta Northwest airline merger could produce ‘record’ airline profits, too.
Bump, for the next time I get one of those idiot, “Let’s not buy gas for a day, that’ll show the barsteds!” emails.
Indeed!!!
ping
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