[Uncle Sham]

I have pulled the numbers from the MMS site that show how much federal offshore revenues have been earned off of the Louisiana coast and how much Louisiana has actually received since 1953. First off, the MMS only has the numbers for what Louisiana has received going back to 1986, so I'll give the numbers from 1986 to 2000 (all dollar amounts are in 2005 dollars).Total offshore Louisiana revenues received by the feds (1986-2000) is 48.27 billion dollars, of which they gave to Louisiana 1.02 billion dollars (2.8%).

This means that the other 49 states, if you divide the leftover 46.71 billion dollars among them, averaged .95 billion dollars during this time. Pretty good deal for them as Louisiana did all of the work and suffered all of the coastal erosion and damages for a measly .07 billion dollars. No one with a straight face on this forum could say this is in any way fair to Louisiana.

Since I was unable to locate how much money the feds have sent to us from the years 1953-1985, I've projected the figures at the 2.8% average that I can account for. Since 1953, the feds have taken in (in 2005 dollars) a total of 199.78 billion dollars in offshore Louisiana oil and gas revenues. If we averaged the 2.8% every year during this period, we were only given 5.69 billion of this amount. Once again, the other states on average got 3.96 billion each for doing none of the work, losing none of the resources, and damaging none of their coast. 47 years of working hard for the 49 other states for a paultry 1.7 billion dollars total. And they have the nerve to accuse us of being greedy?

I'm going to research how much has been sent to each state because I think it actually might be possible that some states might have received MORE than Louisiana did dring this time period. Before 1945, all of this money would have been the property of the state of Louisiana. Must be nice to be able to steal another states money for over 50 years then tell em to go screw themselves when they need help.

[CobaltBlue]

Louisiana has been getting the shaft on that offshore oil revenue since before Huey Long made a campaign issue back in the 1930's.

I think this is one reason that the other states refuse to allow offshore oil production -- they've seen how Louisiana gets screwed on the deal.

[CobaltBlue]

Did you see how the governor of West Virginia just shut down coal mining because it's not safe?

The same could be done in Louisiana -- except that all the politicians are in the pocket of Big Oil.

Everybody that hates Louisiana politicians for being on the take sure enjoys their cheap gas, don't they?

And when the hurricane knocked out the infrastructure and the prices went up, didn't everybody scream then?

I don't live in Louisiana anymore and ya'll's politicians make me sick, too, but damn, this is crazy. But Big Oil is too big to take on. I don't see how it can be done.

[CobaltBlue]

"Too big to take on" means one state can't tell the federal government what to do, and if the federal government wants to let Louisiana's wetlands get ruined then so be it.

This administration isn't going to help, and all the Democrats will do is Big Oil to throw some money their way.

They're all a bunch of crooks . . . . Republicans, Democrats, hardly a nickel's worth of difference between them, just big talk.