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Three more items from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top ten list (sorry, Dave) are as idiotic as others presented in previous posts. In item 3 (below) the Democratic Speaker of the House indicates she favors ‘repealing tax subsidies’ but you can bet she will oppose repealing any taxes. But that is a story for another time. Echoing the Democratic party’s disdain for profitable enterprise she believes the oil companies should be taxed into oblivion as energy policy. She states that ‘Exxon-Mobil is making $1,500 a second’ and implies that is the limit for increasing their tax liability. She fails to mention the staggering tax bill of Exxon Mobil, other oil companies and the tax burden to the American citizens she claims to protect. So here is one excerpt from the Tax Foundation to help you see the other side.

February 2, 2007
ExxonMobil’s Record Profits — And Record Taxes

by Jonathan Williams

Today, ExxonMobil reported the largest corporate profits in U.S. History. From Yahoo Finance:

“Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company — $39.5 billion — even as earnings for the last quarter of 2006 declined 4 percent. The 2006 profit topped the previous record, also by Exxon Mobil, of $36.13 billion set in 2005.” [Full story]

While they were recording record profits last year, they were also writing checks to Uncle Sam to the tune of $100.7 billion — two and a half times what they made in net profit. In fact, previous Tax Foundation research found that from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today’s dollars, that’s $2.2 trillion.

So Nancy, you know what you can do with your ‘repeal the tax subsidies’ idea.

Top Ten Questions for the House GOP on Energy

08/06/2008

As a small band of House Republicans remain on the House floor to call for “drill only” legislation that would not bring immediate relief to consumers, their constituents deserve to know why their representatives in Congress have failed to support serious, responsible proposals put forward by the New Direction Congress. Americans have a right to know if House Republicans will reverse their opposition to these proposals; will Senate Republicans, including Senator McCain, stop blocking these bills; and will the President sign them?

3. Exxon Mobil announced the highest ever quarterly profit by a U.S. corporation in history last week. With Exxon Mobil making $1,500 a second, how can House Republicans continue to block efforts to repeal tax subsidies to Big Oil?

4. According to the Bush Administration’s own Energy Department, if we repealed the offshore drilling ban today, oil and gas production would not begin there until 2017, and the impact on prices before 2030 would be “insignificant.” Why do House Republicans keep calling for an action that they know won’t solve today’s energy problems?

5. Senator McCain missed two critical votes in the Senate to promote renewable and conservation. The American people have a right to know why he is putting the interests of Big Oil ahead of American consumers. Why is that?

In item number four (above) the wonderful Speaker of the House offers a stunningly stupid question. She suggests favoring independence from foreign oil yet is to short sighted to understand that the US needs to produce crude in America for that to happen. At the same time she wants to force American oil interests to drill on land for which they currently hold leases. It is fine to want to collect royalties that may be owed to the American tax payer from oil companies holding the leases but forcing companies to drill regardless of the probability for success makes no sense. While payoffs from domestic production may not have an immediate effect on prices at the pump, Ms Pelosi, failing to do so will find us in the same boat on imported oil decades in the future.

This blog opposes oil production in ANWR but primarily due to the fact that there are other locations with more promise that should be tapped first. It would be nice if all concerned could develop effective strategies for what to do when things go wrong…. and they will, they always do. Drill domestically where we can. Have contingencies in place for correcting errors effectively. Increase refining capacity to a level that approaches balance between supply and demand. Add this to the other measures like alternative energy sources and conservation, etc., but remember that only non-petroleum sources will not effect prices at the pump immediately either. Nothing will solve the energy problems immediately. And fawning over ethanol which currently requires more energy to produce than it provides as well as other pie in the sky solutions is irresponsible as well.

Part of what Pelosi says about the long wait for results from drilling ANWR is true. But what she fails to mention is why. Much of what would slow results from drilling in ANWR is government, politics, beauracracy and potential legal action associated with the drilling. Check it out yourself by Pelosi’s own reference both from the Energy Dept and US News.

Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Arctic Drilling Wouldn’t Cool High Oil Prices

Of the ten years it would take to begin oil production in ANWR according to Pelosi (and these sources) she fails to mention a two to three year wait to obtain the oil leases and a one to two year wait to develop a plan and get BLM approval. That would be half of the wait to which Pelosi alludes. The point is, this is merely political theatrics by Pelosi, nothing more, nothing less.

And item five (above) by Pelosi does not even merit a response. The leap between item five’s first and second sentence not to mention her failing to connect the dots is as stupid as the three word question with which she finishes that item.

To be continued……

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

Nan on drilling: No longer the hoax I knew  (Michelle Malkin)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 7:29 am and is filed under wordpress, Democrats, oil, Pelosi, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.