In light of recent developments, Pundit Review has decided to hold it’s first annual Big Oil Bake Sale to help support the struggling Big Oil companies.
Big Oil is under attack by knee-jerk jerks who grandstand, hyperventilate and sprint towards cameras without ever actually addressing the important issues. I’m talking to you Denny Hastert. And you Barbara Boxer. I’m talking about people like Democrat Sen.Byron Dorgan who is pushing this embarrassing idea,
legislation imposes a 50-percent excise tax on the windfall profits earned by major integrated U.S. oil companies on the sale of all barrels of crude oil derived from existing wells. For this purpose, windfall profits means the amount that a barrel of oil sold exceeds $40 per barrel.
Windfall profits would be exempted from the tax if they were used for investments in the exploration and development of new sources of oil and gas, for investments in the production of renewable fuels or to increase their domestic refinery capacity. Under the bill, any windfall profits taxes paid would be considered a cost of doing business and allowed as a deductible expense for purposes of determining a paying companyâ??s income tax liability.
Big Oil is under attack by the MSM, having to sit through interviews with people who have no clue, not just about the oil and energy markets, but Economics 101. People like Tim Russert,
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, if, if demand is up but supply is down, why are the profits so high?
ENERGY SEC. MR. BODMAN: For that reason.
Sigh.
And Matt Lauer. Expose the Left has Lauer, interviewing Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and asking if Exxon had an obligation to give their profits away. Among the gems Tillerson dropped on Lauer, more than 70% of Exxon’s profit comes from outside the US, and, oh by the way, they work for the shareholders not as a quasi government do gooder who lives to give away their profits.
The final reason for Pundit Review’s Big Oil Bake Sale, this is the best market for integrated oil companies ever and all they can manage is an 8.9% profit margin? That is sad. Pathetic really. I mean, look at Shell today, they reported earnings this morning, and they weren’t so hot,
Shell Says 1Q Profit Up 3.1 Percent but May Miss Reserves Target
3.1%?
Big Oil needs our help. Contribute to the Big Oil Bake Sale by sending a check to the following address,
WRKO
c/o Pundit Review
20 Guest Street
Boston, MA. 02135
All proceeds will be evenly divided among “Big Oil” companies.
Thanks for your support America.
Friends of Teddy Kennedy
By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON — Rich, oceanfront residents of Cape Cod do not want their view of Nantucket Sound faintly obstructed by offshore protrusions of a proposed wind farm. So, they have hired high-priced lobbyists to kill Cape Wind, a project providing an environmentally sound source of energy. Their most important ally in this venture is a fellow wealthy Cape Cod landowner, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Opposition to America’s first offshore wind farm seems a peculiar posture for the liberal lion of the Senate. The self-indulgent squires of Cape Cod likewise seem a strange set of friends for Teddy Kennedy. He is also joined in opposition by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential prospect. Furthermore, Kennedy’s key congressional allies against the wind farm are two senior Alaska Republicans who are reigning princes of pork on Capitol Hill, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young.
Read the whole article
HT: Real Clear Politics.
Columnist Jack Kelly, writing at Real Clear Politics, says that Media Ignores the Nation’s Heroes.
Of course, he is correct, but there are exceptions. Pundit Review remembers our heroes, that is why we have partnered with Matt from Blackfive to bring his Someone You Should Know series to the radio.
Kelly’s column mentions Cap Weinberger’s new book titled Home of the Brave.
Last Sunday evening during the Someone You Should Know segment (9pm est every week), Matt gave us a preview of Cap Weinberger’s new book. Check it out here.
Evan Bayh, Democrat Senator and sure to be candidate for president, acknowledges that the propsects for Democrats in a general election are quite difficult, at least through the 2008 election.
His answer, change the Constitution to make it easier for Democrats to win.
Q: Why do you think we should abolish the Electoral College?
A: “I think our president should be chosen by the majority of the American people. That is ordinarily the case. But in 2000, as we all recall, we elected this president with fewer votes than the other candidate got. I just don’t think in the modern era that is appropriate.”
By “modern era” he means, ‘in a time when I may be running for president’. Sorry Evan, try offending less of the country with your liberal policies, unhinged rhetoric and defeatist attitude in the war on terror, and then maybe you could win an election the old fashioned way.
Here is more from a leading Can’t Do Democrat, Evan Bayh,
Q: How is the war going in Iraq?
A: “Iraq, unfortunately, is a tragic situation. There is no military answer to this issue. … So the first thing we have to look at is: Can the Iraqis get their political act together and make the hard decisions necessary to make that country work. If they don’t, then there is no answer to this and we have to leave sooner rather than later. If they do get their political act together, then with our help they can begin to provide for their own security, and we could then begin to withdraw.
With inspiartional leadership like that, with such optimism and committment to winning, people are sure to rally behind you. Not.
No wonder he wants to change the Constitution.
George Will continues to pummel the GOP Congress, and who can blame him?
Many Strange ‘Emergencies’
A poll shows that approval of the job Congress is doing has plunged to just 22 percent. One wonders: who are those 22 percent?
Even without the debacle of the Senate’s “emergency” legislation, April was the cruelest month for conservatives, disgusted as they were by Republicans’ floundering, pandering responses to the public’s infantile tantrums about gasoline prices. Republican responses included threats of windfall-profits taxes and other measures to punish “price gouging.” Conservatives, who are supposed to understand the power of markets and the limited power of government, should be saying
About those polls critical of the president’s “handling” of gas prices, who over the age of 7 really thinks presidents can “handle” world petroleum prices? And: A major reason for high oil prices is the rapid modernization of India and Chinaâ??which is desirable and promoted by U.S. policy. And: For some reason, it pleased the Intelligent Designer of the universe to put much of the Earth’s oil in turbulent placesâ??the Middle East, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia. And: The Congress that is in histrionic anguish over high gas prices has mandated adding ethanol to gasolineâ??ethanol which is in short supply, partly because Congress has legislated a tariff of 54 cents per gallon on imported ethanol.
Read the whole article here.
Anyone checking the mail for that $100 rebate check from “Big Oil”proposed by…no, not the socialist leaning liberal Democrats, but THE GOP LEADERSHIP!! Have you ever heard of anything so sophomoric, so plainly grandstanding, so against core principles of not just the party but basic economics?
And now, for the cherry on top of the hypocrisy pie, YOU MUST CHECK OUT THIS PICTURE AND CAPTION. (HT: Andrew Sullivan)
Matt from Blackfive joined us last evening for another installment of Someone You Should Know. This week we focused on the exploits of SGT. Brad Kasal. This is a truly remarkable story of bravery under fire. Severely wounded, SGT. Kasal has made an incredible recovery, has re-enlisted in the Marines, and will be promnoted today, May 1, to the rank of SGT. Major. We are lucky to have men like SGT. Major Brad Kasal fighting for us.
Matt stayed with us for the entire hour and we focused on several topics, including the recent milblogging conference, recent events in Iraq, the role of Iran and the Rumsfeld controversy.
Enjoy.
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“If $75 a barrel oil and a $3 average for a gallon of gasoline isn’t a wake-up call, then what is?”–Senator Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), April 23, 2006
While Northeastern Republicans (A.K.A. RINOs) have joined the liberals in Congress calling for “hearings” on whether Big Oil has been “gouging” customers in a deliberately collusive manner and for the imposition of “wind fall profits taxes” (as if taxing oil companies more would produce more oil and natural gas), the Wall St. Journal Editors perfectly summarize the real objectives of liberals like Chucky Boy Shumer.
The dirty little secret about oil politics is that today’s high gas price is precisely the policy result that Mr. Schumer and other liberals have long desired. High prices have been the prod that the left has favored to persuade Americans to abandon their SUVs and minivans, use mass transit, turn the thermostat down, produce less consumer goods and services, and stop emitting those satanic greenhouse gases. “Why isn’t the left dancing in the streets over $3 a gallon gas?” asks Sam Kazman, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who’s followed the gasoline wars for years.
All Bush has to do here to go from 37% approval to 75% is what we have said all along.
Aside from closing the borders immediately and deporting all “crim-aliens” (illegal aliens who constitutes 40% of the federal prison poulation directly subsidized by the American taxpayers- i.e. not “undocumented workers”), Bush needs to immediately call for Congress to reduce or abolish all federal gas taxes, end the onerous EPA regulations on required oxygenates, and call for immediate opening up of ANWR and other drilling areas in the Outer-Coastal Shelf.
Big oil companies make considerably less than your average Miramax film in terms of raw profit and the price of gas at the pump in the U.S. has risen 25% less than the rise in the global price of crude oil since 2003 according to Wall st. economist Michael Darda as reproted in the WSJ.
While we should always look at technology and conservastion as ways to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, only immediate domestic development and production along with a concommitant reduction in taxes and regulations will result in more plentiful oil and gas, lower prices for consumers at the pump (especially poor and fixed income citizens), and less dependency on unstable ARAB country-suppliers in the near term.
Here is a perfect opportunity for Bush and the GOP to call for an “action plan” that would be primarily focussed on reducing the cost of energy for “average working Americans” and make us less dependent on foreighn oil which he could argue has enormous benefits for our national security.
The question is, will Bush and the GOP leadership emulate Chuck Shumer or Ronald Reagan? The answer will largely determine who controls Congress in 06′ and the White House in 08′.
The American people want and deserve decisive bold leadership now Mr. President!!!