Republican Party establishing itself as the UnGreen Party

taxing oil companies profits or removing their tax breaks (pretty much the same) would only result in a higher price at the pump for consumers. Do you really think the oil companies wouldn't pass their increased cost of doing business on to consumers? Do democrat law makers think that wouldn't happen?

There is no such thing as a corporate tax. It will always get passed down to the consumer. The reason law makers like to tax companies is because most people (voters) don't realize the additional cost of the tax gets passed on so they aren't against it.

Would people be for it if the dem's bill was written to raise the gasoline sales tax by $.50/gallon?

Additionally, all of these oil companies are publically traded companies. What that means is that they have stock available for anyone to buy. Who buys it? Well a vast majority of the middle class buys it via mutual funds purchased through their 401(k) or other retirement programs.

So now not only would this bill screw us by raising the price at the pump, it'd mess with our retirement savings as well.

If it will only raise gas prices by 13 cents per gallon over the next 4 years then why wasn't that the legislation? why do they try to hide it behind taxing the oil companies? Why not just say gas now costs 13 cents per gallon extra and that money will go to renewable energy?

I don't believe mandating/legislating environmentalism will ever work, people will rebel, ignore, and find loopholes. What will work is making being green worthwhile to their pocket book (not the environment). Educate people (and companies) how being green saves them money, and you'll see a lot more and much better results than any legislation.

I believe the solution to our problem will not come from government or venture capital, but from a more disruptive force much like the Open Source movement in software.

In my mind, there is ZERO difference between Government and Corporate America. They are both powers that exercise centralized control and we all know how well that works ...

In an ideal world, every household can produce the energy they need just like they can buy ingredients and cook their own food. As utopian as that sounds, there's several great minds working in that direction already, they're just keeping *real quiet*. These solutions will naturally emerge in the developing world, as nothing really disruptive will be allowed here; all innovation will be stopped dead on its tracks by our elected corporate a** lickers in the House and Senate.

The biggest redistribution of wealth in human history lies ahead of us.

Open source software? I love it, and use it for as much as possible, BUT open source is still the poor cousin compared to the big IT players if you look at desktop OS's, browsers, servers etc. While I agree that we need scientific innovation, we also need someone keeping an eye on the big picture and making sure that we are actually acheiving what 'we' want to do.

And don't forget that the only Government solution we have seen in America is from a Bush Administration (Global warming? There is no global warming!)... many countries are working towards making their country more sustainable etc.

That said, I don't hold much hope for the politicians here every actually achieving much....

Don't get me wrong, I dislike paying high gas prices. The upside, yes the upside, it is teaching a lot of us to be more wise about driving. It's teaching us hard lessons that we shouldn't have taken for granted for so long. It's teaching people to ride a bike again. It's teaching us to car pool again. It's showing the world that alternatives are with-in reach. We only reach for them when in crisis, so if it's crisis that's needed, then bring it on!

I dunno, but I think there is a silver linning to this. It's humbling us.

It's unfortunate that it's hurting people who are already down. I do not mean any harm by my statements, so please don't think I'm gloating that prices are high. I just feel that there are leasons for us to learn and maybe now it's too late, and it will help teach us to no be so darned greedy.

Apparently we're arguing around one another, I'm talking about the windfall profits tax on the oil companies (dumb idea) and you're talking about the cap and trade system. I don't know but I think we've seen how great that has worked in Europe haven't we?

Also wouldn't these measures just help continue to move industry out of this country and into countries that don't have cap and trade systems in place? Like I said before people will rebel, ignore, and find loopholes to aviod mandated regulation. They'll jump on the save money bus pretty quickly though.

revoking tax breaks is the same as increasing taxes: If you have a tax break that is some tax you don't have to pay. If that tax break is removed then you now have to pay that tax, ie the amount of money you pay in taxes just went up.

I have less of a problem with this however, than taxing the oil companies "windfall profits." This is because oil comapnies really didn't make any sort of windfall profit. Yes they made a very large amount of money in profit that sounds extremely huge if you look at it in terms of dollars. However oil companies are extremely huge organizations and have extremely huge operating costs. When compared on a scale of revenue to profit oil companies are not all that profitable.

Let’s compare Exxon and McDonalds. In the first quarter, Exxon brought in $116.854 billion in revenue, while McDonalds brought in $5.615 billion in revenue. That means, in terms of raw revenue, Exxon is the size of 20.81 McDonalds - so it would be reasonable to think that it should earn the profit of 20.81 McDonalds. Exxon reported a profit of $10.89 billion in the first quarter, while McDonalds brought in a profit of $946 million. Exxon only earned the profit of 11.51 Mcdonalds. Per dollar of revenue, McDonalds is almost doubly as profitable as Exxon - for every dollar in revenue, McDonalds profits 16.8 cents, while Exxon only profits 9.3 cents.

Should we be windfall profit taxing McDonalds?

What if we were to tax exxon so their profit is around 4 cents/dollar in revenue? This would destroy them financially; investors would pull out, fast. Exxon would lose their ability to extract oil, turn it into gasoline and deliver it to you. Imagine the US in one year with no gasoline to be had anywhere. The economy would be devastated. Is it worth the few billion we'll take from them now?

Instead we should fight oil dependance at the revenue level, not at the profit level. Buy a fuel efficient car or better yet, an electric one. If five million people were to purchase electric vehicles instead of whining about gas prices and oil profits things, would change very quickly. Competition in EVs would ramp up, the cost of electric vehicles would plummet to being comprable with gas vehicles, and when that happens electric vehicles win hands down.

Well, maybe with all the money Democratic politician's have saved consumers by closing the Enron loophole with Senator Carl Levin's recently passed Senate Bill S.2058, we can afford to revisit and implement cap and trade and windfall profit taxes. Just check out what happened to gas prices before and after Democrats closed off the energy market from the out of control deregulated speculation that the Republican culture of corruption encouraged!

Moral of the story, never trust a Republican on matters of the economy... Even when they aren't totally incompetent, they are usually in the pockets of big business and market speculators that live for artificially increasing prices.