Posted on 07/23/2010 3:33:52 AM PDT by IbJensen
While many Gulf residents continue to suffer from the fallout of the oil spill disaster, it appears that others are viewing the tragedy as a stroke of good fortune. The Deepwater Horizon incident has served as an impetus for environmentalists to ram through liberal policies in Congress. Left-wing groups have manipulated the facts in an effort to impose huge tax increases on American businesses and consumers.
A memo was recently leaked to the press exposing the work of the liberal firm Clean Energy Works (CEW). The memo exposes a new campaign strategy to spin new tax increases as a Big Oil Welfare Tax. These groups are capitalizing on the publics hostile reaction from the spill in an effort to create animosity towards the entire oil and gas industry. They hope the publics resentment towards BP will translate to support for massive new taxes on American energy companies.
CEWs campaign received a huge boost when a New York Times reporter took the bait and published their propaganda in a recent article, As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Billions from Subsidies. I recently read a great point by point rebuttal to this article by Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty. Langers analysis clearly exposes blatant misrepresentations of the U.S. tax code in the article, that obviously support the messaging goals outlined by CEW.
The end goal of CEWs strategy is to use the Gulf disaster an incident that the foreign owned BP is responsible for to change existing tax code, forcing U.S. oil and gas producers to pay more taxes on income earned from international operations. This ludicrous proposal places our own domestic oil companies and the American workers they employ at a competitive disadvantage, and benefits foreign competitors, including BP and state-owned companies such as Chinese owned CNOOC. Clearly, there is an alternative agenda behind such an outrageous proposal.
The New York Times article provides us with the alternative motive in its mention of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the Senate sponsor working with the administration to re-write existing tax laws to eliminate the dual-capacity rules that currently make our domestic oil and gas industry competitive with foreign companies. The reporter positions this proposal as legislation that would cut tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies.
In reality, Menendezs plan would pose changes to a tax policy that has been on the books for over 25 years which provides an even playing field for U.S. companies in the global marketplace. The tax breaks referenced by Menendez are credits received by every U.S. business, that allow U.S. companies to offset income taxes that have already been paid in foreign countries. Elimination of dual-capacity rules would result in double taxation of U.S. energy companies and give foreign competitors a competitive advantage. Simply put, our government would deliver huge subsidies to foreign companies like BP.
Double-taxing our domestic energy producers will force American companies to cut even more jobs at a time when Americans are hurting to make ends meet. And the impact is huge our nations oil and gas producers currently support more than 9 million American jobs.
Ironically, foreign companies like BP are benefiting from CEWs smear campaign. It is almost like they are rewarding bad behavior. Putting domestic jobs at risk, and handing over the future of our energy supplies to foreign competitors just doesnt make sense. If Congress falls for this biased view of tax policy, U.S. consumers will be footing the bill to subsidize a giant BP bailout.
And for senior citizens this dependence on foreign sources of energy is not only an economic issue it is now, without question, a clear and present danger to our national security.
To the current Congress I bid a hearty goodbye!
Taxes are passed on to the consumer.
“...an impetus to ram through liberal policies in congress...”
Mention that a major American company may have lobbyists in congress and the left-wingers speak about corruption, undue influence, seedy proceedings, criminality and lying.
Yet “environmentalists” seem to be an integral part of this left-wing congress and have an un-questioned role in passing legislation that affects business dealings and the climate in which business takes place.
Question: If “environmentalists” have unfettered access to congress and the legislative process, how much corruption, undue influence, seedy proceedings, criminality and lying are being ignored by the “watchdog” press in order to cast environmentalists as the saints of secular atheism and to further the left-wing “revolution” now taking place?
Just asking.
Our input means nothing to this repulsive Congress, but nation destroying organizations have a direct line!
Eco-fascists are traitors.
“Our input means nothing to this repulsive Congress, but nation destroying organizations have a direct line!”
“Repulsive” is a good start.
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