Posted on 05/29/2007 5:21:37 AM PDT by rellimpank
Who grabs the most out of prices at the pump? Politicians are old hands at trying to get some mileage (sorry) out of any current trend that raises voters' ire. They hold hearings, they pass bills with feel-good monikers designed to convince constituents they're "doing something."
Take gasoline prices.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was all over the oil companies last week on the subject of current gasoline prices. Which greedy characters benefit the most from such high prices, Sen. Reid?
"You go to a service station in Las Vegas, and the price of gasoline is $3.28 a gallon," Sen. Reid explained. "That man that has that service station doesn't make any money. He makes pennies -- pennies, less than a nickel a gallon. The oil companies and refineries make it all."
(Excerpt) Read more at lvrj.com ...
After reading this article, I had a thought: I wonder if our government is subsidizing ethanol in part because it lowers mileage, since lower mileage means more gallons bought and more taxes paid. Most fuel taxes are on a per gallon basis. It’s Win Win!/(extreme barf sarcasm)
BUMP
What Mr. Reid and his fellow thieves in Congress have done is impose a 15% tax increase on the drivers of our fair country without having to face any of the negative fall out from voters.
Congress reminds me of the little boy in the 7th grade who lets loose a stinker and immediately points at someone else. The real culprit is Mr. Reid and his den of thieves.
I think the station operators and or the gasoline companies should post the taxes at the pump. I think it would be a proactive step to take the heat off of themselves. If people knew how much per gallon is really tax they might have a clue.
That’s on way to look at it. The government has certainly done nothing to ease the burden on Americans.
Just consider however why government (not just democrats) have done everything in their power to prevent any actual action that will reduce the price of fuel.
Big oil (for lack of a more effective term to describe the oil industry) lobbies hard with incredible amounts of power and money, and politicians do their bidding.
Why would an oil company wish to spend millions (billions?) to increase their refining capacity? This would effectively reduce their profits dramatically.
They are making record profits by NOT increasing capacity and by NOT tapping new oil fields.
It is also important to note that there are a number of peripheral industries that are benefiting from inflated oil prices.
I would think they could.
And I'm very curious as to why they haven't done so, especially since many in the public are so quick to give station operators a ration of excrement every time prices go up....
A large part of government’s ability to tax us to death is to make the amounts small but multitudinous, and to call them all sorts of fancy names to hide their true purpose.
Out of curiosity, is there ever any talk of siting a new refinery there. Seems to me that the states which are economically depressed would seize the opportunity.
Here in PA, Fast Eddie Rendell is doing his very best to make Pennsylvania number one...in gas tax. He got his last one through without so much as a peep of complaint from voters. Thus encouraged about the idiocy of the average PA voter, he’s rying to get another gas tax hike through. Most likely, he’ll succeed.
Funny how profits are so huge and yet investors put their money elsewhere.
I mean, if making cheap gas was so damn easy, you’d expect billions of capital to flow into the refinery and oil company start-ups.
That fact that investors mostly stay away suggests that refining isn’t the big money-maker people think it is.
The total profits of Exxon last year were $39b, and the Dems inserted almost that much in the defense supplemental for spinach and peanuts. Big oil is puny next to Big Brother.
It should be obvious that BP is operating on a shoestring by their insipid “Say Hey” commercials with little cartoon japanime figures singing that inscrutable tune over and over.
WOW! I am amazed that Missouri is second lowest.
Don’t you find if funny that when the last Governor was in office, the news was all over him trying to get him to remove the gas tax. ( This was several years ago. ) Now that the Canadian Mole is in office, the news is quiet about that.
I’d love to tell the next idiot Dem co-worker who complains about gas prices to go talk to our local lib Dem congressman, Ron Kind. Kind is against any kind of expansion of oil refineries, off-shore drilling, or drilling in ANWR. Naturally he is against any kind of cut in gas taxes too.
Yep, and let's not ever forget that this country got started because of a rebellion against a 3% tax. The founding fathers are turning over in their graves with our current tax policy.....
They also pay leases. Tax it coming out of the ground and coming out of the pump. Then try to pretend they are consumer friendly.
Not quite.
$5.00 a gallon - Dillingham, Alaska
http://www.alaskagasprices.com/
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